Bob's Trick Tips - skateboard trick archive -- Tuck Knee YOYO Plant

Tuck Knee YOYO Plant

The Tucknee-YOYO Plant by YOYO Photos by georgio, taken in May 2000.

The history of the YOYO Plant starts back in the early 80`s. Due to the fact that we did not have a Half-Pipe in our town I started to goof around with my Freestyle board to get some kind of invert feeling. The first attempts were done as stationary varial plants with both feet on the ground and pushing the legs up and putting the board close to the feet. I thought about going higher up and came to the conclusion that something like this can only be done by rolling backwards in order to gain enough momentum to go really high. Just by accident I pulled off the move after some time. Finally at the German Nationals in 1982 I did the first YOYO-Plant in a Freestyle routine. In the summer of 1983 I visited California and a sequence was taken by Per Holknekt and later published in TWS. In 1984 I also had a sequence in Thrasher in the ,Something Else` page with a Plant down a small wall. During the next years/ decades I perfected the move with all imaginable contorsions and versions.

The move is all about coordination (rolling/grabbing/ planting the hand) and no special handstand abilities. As far as I know there are only a few skaters in the world who ever pulled off the trick. Namely: Rodney Mullen, Graham Mac Eachran, Chester Sass and maybe others. Here is how it's done (for goofy footers)

Check out the video clip here.


In frame 1, I stop in a Tail Stop position. Frame 1:You start slowly rolling backwards, preparing to go down with your upper body to go low. The knees are bent and the upper body is bent down. Frame 2: The right hand grabs the inside rail while the left hand touches the ground not too far away from the tail. This is the crucial part of the trick, study this photo really well -- it shows the secret of the trick. The backward moving speed is suddently stopped by also dragging the weight on the tail (not seen in this shot) in order to gain enough momentum for the upswing. Don't go too fast, otherwise you will just flip over your shoulder!! Frame 3 Going up, bending the right leg to reach around with my right arm.

Frame 4 Going up, starting to straighten my back to fully extend it . Frame 5 This is the fully extended tucknee, stall it if you can (note: the shirt coming down here). Frame 6 Still extended, but with a slight rotation from the upper body and hips preparing for the landing.

Frame 7 Go down just like on a handplant in a big ramp . Frame 8 Land solid with the knees bent and roll away with a smile be ready for the next trick. Frame 9 Getting up and rolling; that was a great feeling to have pulled it off so clean. Good luck!