Ghost's theory of a skaters development skateboarding

If any of you guys are taking psychology at school, you may know about a guy named Erik Erikson and his theory of social development. I believe that the period of time that you skateboard is sort of like a little life with stages and such. I want to share my ideas about these stages using Erikson’s theory as a model. First of all, I tried to make the stages as true to a real skaters life as I could. Secondly, I think that all the stages go in a specific order and usually can’t be skipped. Your not going to learn to tre before an ollie for example. Alright enough talking, lets get to the stages…

Infancy
For most skaters, these first few stages should fly by very quickly. For others it might taken a while, but the first few stages just deal with getting used to the board. But Infancy is the first stage, which is characterized by the birth of your “skate life” so to speak. Your first time stepping foot on a skateboard, and this has an impact on the rest of the skaters career. The skater basically gets accustomed to their board and hopefully nips pushing mongo in the bud.

Toddlerhood
This is another very important stage in a skaters career. What do babies do when they’re toddlers? The answer to that question is simple: they explore. How do you explore on a skateboard? By learning basic mechanics and workings of your board. They learn balance, flow, and maybe even try to learn ollies. This stage is simple and even though not much gets accomplished, it’s still vital to the development of your abilities.

Pre-School
This stage is marked by the onset of one thing: learning the Ollie. Most skaters think of the ollie as some trivial trick that isn’t anything. But the ollie is a vital fundamental in skateboarding. Most, if not all, ariel tricks are variations of the ollie. The kickflip, the heelflip, the frontside flip all require ollies to do. Recently a lot of kids have been getting stuck in this stage and not progressing. This is what’s killing skateboarding today, this lack of progression. If kids were to persevere through this stage then all would be well. The ollie is a rudimentary skill in skateboarding and if you don’t want to learn it then you might as well quit now. This sets you up for the rest of the stages and it is important that you practice, practice, practice.

School age
This stage and the following are the bulk of your skateboarding life hopefully. This current stage is made up of all the time learning tricks. From the time you learn your ollie until you stop skating. You’re always learning tricks and that’s why this stage is so long. When you learn kickflips, and heelflips, and anything else you’re in this stage. This is a period of rapid learning, or slow learning for most people.

Adolescent
This stage and the previous sometimes blend together. This stage is made up of you developing your own style. In this stage you find out your own way of skating that’s unique to you, and you alone. This is another simple stage but I feel that developing your own style is very important. So important, in fact, that I took about six or seven months off of learning tricks to develop mine.

Young Adult- Middle adulthood
This stage, unfortunately, is where you start to get rusty, it’s the end of your youth and your learning curve tends to not only slow down but ultimately stop. You may still continue to develop style but overall your performance drops. Kind of like Michael Jordan after he retired if you’re catchin’ my drift…

Maturity(old age)
This is the period in your life where you quit skating. For whatever reason, maybe schoolwork got in the way, maybe you got a job, or maybe you got into a serious relationship with your girlfriend and you just quit. It’s inevitable that this stage will happen. No matter how many times you promise yourself you wont quit, people always do, I’ve seen it myself hundreds of times. People are in love with skating and then they realize there is more to life. It happens and there is nothing wrong with it.

Well there you have it, my own theory of your "skate life" and how you develop during it. This article was fun for me to make and I hope you guys had fun reading it.

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