Bob's Trick Tips - skateboard trick archive -- Helipop

Helipop

The Helipop is a freestyle trick that is great to take into street skating. In today's terminology, it would probably be called a frontside 360 nollie. As far as I know, this move was invented in the early 1980s by Rodney Mullen. I first saw it in the "Bones Brigade Video Show", which was the first Powell-Peralta Video. In the second Rodney part, he does a Helipop over another board.

In freestyle, we used to do this trick without the pop, and we called it a "Gazelle Shove-It".

Anyway, a few weeks ago I let Fletcher watch the old Powell video, and the next thing I knew, he had learned this trick. I think the fact that he could already do frontside 180 nollies helped.

Notice throughout this move how Fletcher keeps his body centered over the board. This is the trick.

Check out the video clip here.


In frame 1, Fletcher begins the trick rolling forward, with his front foot in the nollie position. His rear foot is just in front of the rear truck, and is across the board. As you can tell from his arms, he is winding up to spin his body. In frame 2, he begins the the move by simultaneously spinning his body and board while popping the nose on the ground.

Frame 3 continues to show him popping the nose and rotating. You can see in both these frames that he is using his rear foot to drag up the board. His rear foot remains positioned across the board, and pretty much on top of the rear truck.

In frame 5, you can see that it would be easy at this point to just put the board down for a nice 180 nollie to fakie. In frame 6, you can see that Fletcher's rear foot is right above the rear truck. He's still in the air, and is still spinning.

In frames 7 and 8, he completes 270 degrees of rotation. He lands on the back wheels, ready to complete the 360 with a 90 degree pivot.

And in frames 9 and 10, he completes the pivot and rolls away.