Roller skating has a large bag of tricks with many original maneuvers as well as a lot of tricks influenced by other wheel sports such as skateboarding and inline skating. We hope this list helps you to navigate the sometimes-confusing world of roller skating terms. This roller skating trick list is the result of a long research. We put this list together with the help of some experienced skaters and after extensive research.
Where there were terms for tricks that were already used in the early days, we have also used them here. Tricks that originate from or are inspired by inline skating or skateboarding use the original names from these disciplines. It is important to know that the names and designations of all these other sports also vary slightly from country to country and have changed over the decades. This could also apply to quad skating. While there is a trend in quad skating to use inline terms for a lot of tricks, this gets complicated.
Today, a lot quad skaters mimic grinds from inline skating like the sweatstance, fishbrain or kindgrind on the side of their boot, which is more directly correlated to how these tricks are done on inlines. You can find lots of demos on Mike Teixeira’s YouTube channel for example. This is why these tricks should have different names in roller skating when performed on trucks. This roller skating trick list is a work in progress and will be updated and expanded soon (also with video links). In the meantime, have fun trying these tricks out.
BASICS
STANCE
Regular
Skating left foot forward.
Goofy
Skating right foot forward.
Side-stance
Skating in lateral stance where the skates are lined up heel to heel. Also known as side surf or crab. OG way to skate transition and vert as many veterans skated side-by-side with skateboarders which had a strong influence on original trick names).
Switch
Doing airs, grinds, etc. in the opposite way, or not in your natural way.
NOTE: Sometimes skaters learn one trick with their dominant foot and another trick with their “weak” foot, but this doesn’t make any of them switch. For a trick to be considered switch it has to be done both ways, labeling “switch” as the one that is less natural. (It’s way clearer for side stance skaters and in skateboarding or if you need a more obvious example: imagine a right-handed tennis player trying to play with their left hand).
ROTATIONS
180 air
A jump while skating forwards and turning 180-degree to roll away facing forwards in the other direction.
360 air
A jump while skating forwards turning 360-degree aka a full rotation to roll away fakie.
Full Cab (Fakie 360)
A fakie 360 spin known as full cab due to its inventor. In the early 1980s, American pro skateboarder Steve Caballero invented and popularized the fakie 360 air on vert ramps. It is now commonly used for all fakie 360 maneuvers in the skatepark.
Half Cab
Fakie 180 spin. Half of a full cab. (see Full Cab)
Alley Oop
This is the act of turning/carving in one direction but rotating the body in the opposite direction (therefore facing backwards to the direction of travel). For example: Going left with skates but turning (spinning) in a 180-degree right. (visually it will look almost 270 degrees).
True Spin
An alley oop where you are spinning blind into the object. You spin away from the object so it is in your blind spot before you lock into it, making it a difficult rotation, popular for grind tricks.
540’, 720’, 900’, 1080’
All these rotations relate to the number of rotations completed (e.g. a 360 is one full rotation, a 540 is 1.5 rotations, etc.). Rotations can be performed in different contexts and may also include grabs.
Late Spin
Usually performed as an air when you do a spin just before landing.
STALLS
All stalls can be done frontside and backside (turning 180 degrees into the trick), approached and exited forward or fakie.
Frontside Stall
Skate forward towards the coping and stall on the plates or slide block.
Backside Stall
Skate forward towards the coping and turn 180 degrees into the stall.
Fakie Stall
Skating fakie towards the coping and stalling fakie.
Around the World
FS stall, jump 180° to backside stall and vice versa.
Boneless
Air out and land on one toe stop on the deck or coping, grab the other foot behind the body with the opposite hand. Jump back in without touching the raised foot down until it is in the transition.
Box Stall
One skate stalls on the plate/slide block and the other skate stalls with the trucks.
Crooked Stall
A front truck stall where the front truck is pushed in from the toe with all the weight on the hanger right by the wheel, with the heel of the skate pointing outwards. The foot is on a crooked, diagonal angle. It is important to note that the stall is on the truck and not the toe stop.
Elvis
Stall one foot as in a backside axle stall but without turning your upper body ( chest/shoulders stay parallel to the coping). Weight is in the transition, second leg is in the air or pulled up against the chest for more style. It’s like doing a quick twist with your hip, making it look like the legendary Elvis Presley hip shaking. (Named by Silvia Kambouridis, who says that they made it up before Quad Cup as they needed a new trick)
Estro Kick
BS stall on outer foot. Kick the other leg back behind you in the air, then do a 180 and re-enter fakie, remaining with one foot on the coping only the entire time.
Flamingo
Stall with one foot while the other is lifted and grabbed with the hand on the same side of the body. (i.e. the right hand grabs the right foot, while the left foot stalls on the coping.)
Half Cab
Skate fakie toward the coping, 180 into a frontside stall on the coping.
Marylin
One-foot stall while grabbing the other foot crossed behind the back. (i.e. the right hand grabs the left foot, while the right foot stalls on the coping).
Rock to Fakie
Stall with your back foot on the coping or plant your toe stop in the transition (classic old school way) and tap your front skate on the deck. Re-enter fakie. Style points for getting the front foot stretched and laid out!
Rock n’ Roll
Stall with your back foot on the coping or plant your toe stop in the transition (classic old school way) and tap your front skate on the deck. Do a 180 back in to enter forwards. Style point for getting it stretched and laid out!
Seducer
Stall and slide your legs apart, then back together before re-entering.
Staple Gun
Roll your front foot forward on the deck and lock the back leg on the coping or in the transition (on the toe stop), then use it to give yourself the boost and re-enter fakie.
Split Stall
A variation of the staple gun, in which the front foot slides as far forwards as possible and performs a split.
Spiderman
Stall and slide one leg out to the side. Bonus points for getting as low as you can go.
Tabernacle Stall
A plate stall where one foot is facing forward and one backwards, (the shoulders are turned 90 degrees).
Toe Stop Stall
Stall on the toe stops. It can be done on coping, on deck or in transition.
Unity
Stall on coping with your feet crossed, landing on the outer edges of the slide blocks or plates.
UFO
Stall where the ankles are bent and the knees touch. The support is on the inside of your foot.
Wrap Around
Stall on the coping on one foot. Wrap the other foot behind it, and place it on the deck. Style points for getting the foot stretched out in front and laying flat on its side!
HANDPLANTS
A handplant is a maneuver executed with the assist of one or both hands against the coping or wall. (also see inverts)
Handplant 180
Skate up the transition forwards and plant the leading hand against the wall or coping to lift yourself up, turn 180° to roll away forwards (doing this fakie would be a fakie handplant 180).
Handplant 360
Skate up the transition and plant the leading hand against the wall. Push off the wall or coping to complete a full 360 spin and roll away fakie (doing this fakie would be a fakie handplant 360).
Layback Grind
Mostly done on transition. A slide where you place your back hand on the coping while you lay back and grind one foot out. Tuck them back in and re-enter fakie or for a more difficult version re-enter 180.
Layback Slide
Also called frontside layback rock & roll. Mostly done on transition. A slide where you place your back hand on the coping while you lay back and slide one or both feet out. Tuck them back in and re-enter fakie or for a more difficult version re-enter 180.
INVERTS
Handstand
Skate towards the coping and do a handstand on the coping. Re-enter fakie and roll away.
Death Drop
Doing a handstand on the coping so that your back is towards the transition and you are facing the deck while in the inverted handstand position. Then, for the drop in, simultaneously pull your knees in towards your chest and push yourself away from the coping with your hands. Roll away!
Invert
Skate towards the coping and air out, grabbing down to reach the coping while the feet rise above the coping, either straight like a handstand, or curled and grabbed. This trick gets its name because of the inverted position the body is in. This can be done with one hand, or both hands grabbing. One hand grabs allow the body to replicate the traditional ‘skateboarder’ invert more accurately. There are multiple handplant variations.
Fakie Invert
Skate fakie towards the coping, fakie air and reach down to grab the coping, inverting the body (handstand position). Re-enter forward.
AIRS
Airs are usually performed on half-pipes, pools or quarter pipes where there is a vertical wall with a transition (curved surface linking wall and ground) available. Airs often combine rotation with different grabs.
Air to Fakie
A jump without a rotation in transition. Skating up the transition, air, land back in the transition skating fakie (backwards), always with your face towards the coping.
Fakie Air
A leap without rotation performed by rolling fakie, doing an air, and landing to then skate forward.
Acid Drop
Jump in from an obstacle into a ramp or onto the flat with a free fall between when you jump and when you land. E.g. You might acid drop from a high box next to a bowl into the transition.
FLIPS/ AERIALS
Aerial
A cartwheel with no hands! See: Cartwheel.
Barani
A Barani flip is an aerial maneuver consisting of a front flip and a half twist (180°). The 180 degree turn is carried out usually halfway through the frontflip. Roller skaters perform it jumping out of a transition (bowl/mini ramp). It is used in many sports and named after Italian circus acrobat and tumbler Alfonso Baroni, who performed the trick around 1881.
Cartwheel
Roll up the ramp fakie, as the feet rise up the transition throw the hands down to do a cartwheel. Roll away fakie.
Miller Flip
One handed flip over the shoulder where you go all the way around to fakie. Hand can be planted on the transition or coping. (Invented by 70s/80s skateboarder Darrell Miller.)
Monkey Flip (Banana Flip)
A 360 flip to the side where you plant both hands on the transition or coping while flipping around in a banana shape. In this rotation, the skater stays facing the ramp.
GRABS (Air variations)
Airs can be performed with or without grabs and there are a variety of grabs you can use!
Cannonball
An air where you pick up and grab both skates with both hands. The same hands grab the same feet (left to left, right to right).
Judo Air
A backside air where you kick out your front foot straight and tuck in the other, grabbing the tucked in boot.
Liu Kang
Going forwards you kick your front leg out straight, tucking in the back leg and grabbing it. (e.g. Kick right foot out, tuck left leg in and grab with left hand).
Method Grab
Grab one or both heels, straighten your hips and pick up your skates behind your back.
Safety Grab
Grab the side of your skate/plate on the same side of your body (e.g.: left hand grabs left skate).
Tip: It’s probably the safest grab you can do in the beginning as you tuck your knees in and bring them closer to your chest.
Seatbelt
The hand passes in front of your body and grabs your opposite foot (like a seatbelt in a car).
Stalefish
Keep your feet together, tuck your knees up a bit, reach behind your back and grab the the opposite skate (back wheels).
Straight Leg Air
Frontside, pop both legs out straight in front of you. It can be done without a grab but can also be executed with grabbing the outside of the skates, or cross grabbing with one hand.
Straddle Air
As the name suggest you perform a straddle (kicking both legs out to the side) while in the air and touch your toes with each hand.
Zen Air
An air to fakie where legs cross in a zen position (usually knees are grabbed by both hands). Trick invented by Desi Jones.
GRINDS & SLIDES
In roller skating, grinds (on trucks) or slides (on slide blocks or plates) are tricks that involve the skater moving along a surface, making contact with the trucks or slide blocks (or plates). The tricks can be performed on any object such as curbs, rails, the coping of a ramp, fun boxes, ledges, and anything else you can lock-in on. All grinds and slides can be done backside and frontside and can be approached forward, fakie, alley-oop, truespin and with rotations: 360, 540,…
SLIDES
Frontside Slide
Sliding on both blocks or plates facing frontside.
Backside Slide
Sliding on both blocks or plates facing backside.
Backslide
Sliding with your back skate only (fast and difficult). Front foot is lifted or grabbed. (For the front foot see ”Fastslide”).
Fastslide
Sliding on front skate only. Back foot is lifted or grabbed.
Cowboy
Sliding with both feet on the outside edge of both sliders/plates, with the feet kept close together. Think of a cowboy riding a horse. (Also known as a cab driver.)
Romeo Slide
Front foot sliding on block or plate and back leg sliding on the knee on the deck (pads recommended :).
Royale
Regular slide but with your ankles bent so the front foot locks on the inside edge of the block and the back foot on the outside edge.
Savannah
A Savannah is an alley oop unity. Sliding with your legs crossed in the direction of your back.
Tabernacle Slide
Slide with one foot facing forward (toe pointing to the outside) the other backwards (toe pointing to the inside), the shoulders are turned 90 degrees.
Full Torque /Fahrvergnügen (slide)
Much like a reverse royale slide. Sliding with both feet on the slide blocks/plates with your ankles bent so the front foot locks on the outside edge of the block and the back foot on the inside edge. The terms are borrowed from blading, also referred to as “farver” slide.
Torque
Front foot sliding on the outside edge of the slide block /plate while the back foot is lifted or grabbed.
UFO
A slide where the ankles are bent inwards (and the support is in the inside of your foot). Knees might touch in an extreme UFO.
Unity
A slide with your legs crossed. Leading foot is crossed behind your back foot so you slide in the direction your chest is pointing.
GRINDS
50-50
Grinding with all four trucks on the coping, rail, or ledge. Can be executed frontside or backside. The 50-50 is named this way because 50% of the wheels are on the deckside and 50% on the transition side of the coping.
5-0
Grinding on one foot and only on the back truck. The other foot is lifted and does not skate. Extra steeze points for grabbing the other foot.
Heel-heel (SOSO)
Grinding with both skates only on the rear trucks with the front trucks lifted.
SOS (also known as lifted 50-50)
Position like a regular 50-50 but your front truck of the leading foot is lifted (in other words: back foot grinds on both trucks, leading foot grinds on the back truck). Also colloquially called ‘lifty fifty’.
Axle Grinds
Grind on one foot, with both trucks.
Anchor
Both feet grinding on the front trucks in a crooked position with the rear trucks hanging down. Also known as Lazy grind.
Acid
Back foot grinding, front leg extended and twisted to the outside, sliding on the outer edge of the slide block or plate.
Box Grind
Front foot grinding with both trucks and back foot sliding on slide block or plate. (Backside trick: the back facing the obstacle or the deck. Can also be performed as a ‘heel’ version.) Some background: This trick has been through many iterations since the 1980s. At that time most skaters in the US skated side-stance and used the same trick names as skateboarding. But the European (vert) quad scene was big in the 80s and 90s. They called the variations of this trick a grind-slide and slide-grind depending on whether they were doing it frontside or backside, or which foot was in front, the GRINDING or the SLIDING one. Skaters from Madrid called it a “Milqui” (pronounced “milky”). Remember, social media was not a thing back then and there were no quad magazines around to define the terms. CIB were the first to call it by a more distinctive name by labelling it a box grind more than a decade ago in the very first tricktionary that was published.
Now, there are a lot quad skaters who are mimicking inline tricks like the mizu, sweatstance, or kindgrind on the side of the soles of their boot which more directly correlates to how they are done on inlines. Things get complicated when we call tricks on blocks and trucks by the same names.
Chimi
tba. Named by skater Barbara “Barbie” Arganaraz.
Catwalk
Do a 50-50 grind on coping and take consecutive forward steps while still moving. See “Moonwalk” if travelling backwards.
Citric Acid
Back foot grinding on both trucks, front leg is extended and crossing behind and sliding on the outside edge of the slide block/plate. Think of an acid grind, but the front leg wraps behind the other to then extend out in front (yes, it’s very hard!).
Crooked
A front truck grind where the front truck is pushed from the toe with all the weight on the hanger right by the wheel, with the heel of the skate pointing outwards. The foot is on a crooked, diagonal angle. (The side of the wheel might touch the obstacle, the toe stop should not.)
Overcrooked
Grinding with both front trucks in a crooked position with heel slighlty lifted over the obstacle. See crooked grind.
Darkside
Sliding or grinding the edge of the obstacle furthest from where you approached, i.e. jumping over the box and grinding the ledge that is on the other side. (Note: If it’s an obstacle that has just one skateable side it would be a farside).
Hot Dog
Double axle grind on a slappy or wider ledge where you grind an element that is between your legs.
Lunge Grind
A frontside lunge grind is a grind in side-stance position. The leading foot grinds on both trucks, while the back foot grinds just on the back truck.
Moonwalk
Do an alley oop 50-50 grind on coping (travelling backwards) and take consecutive backward steps behind while still moving. See “Catwalk” if travelling forwards.
Mistrial
Front foot grinding on both trucks with the back foot sliding on the outside edge of the slide block while tacked against the heel of the front foot.
Romeo Grind
Front foot grinding on both trucks, back leg sliding on the knee (pads recommended ) on the deck.
Soul
Back foot grinding on both trucks and front leg extended sliding on slide blocks/plate on the inside edge.
Torque Soul
A forward trick only. Back foot grinding on both trucks and front foot tacked against the toe of the grinding foot and sliding on slide block/plate on the outside edge.
Star Grind
Leading foot is grinding, back foot is tacked against the heel of the front foot sliding on the outside edge of the slider. (See “sidewalk” for an easier version of this trick).
Sidewalk
Similar to a star grind but performed lower due to the back leg being bent. The boot rest on the obstacle on the toe or laces. Depending on whether executed backside or frontside your knee will hang on the side or slide slightly on the obstacle.
Vamp
Booth feet grinding on the front trucks but in a crooked and semi side stance position. Heels are raised so they create a V shape.