der hess

I am skating since 1996 and I still enjoy it very much. I never was this big talented skater, who did every handrail in the town or who did high technical tricks. I am able to skate transition, gaps and rails on the same level. So I was and I am still a good allround skater. But there was one thing, which distungished me from my other friends... I had a different perspective on spots. When we went out for exploring new spots, I was not interested on perfect handrails, I was more interested in using the urban (public space) architecture in a new way. I did not do the best trick on the new spots I found, but everytime I shared my trick ideas withmy friends on which they never thought before. After that sharing process they evolved my ideas and in the most cases they did better tricks than me. Sharing inspiration and toughts are the reason why I wrote this article.

The last years I could see that the level of skating increased rapidly. I am happy to see this evolution, but there is one thing I am little bit worried about. There is a big movement of doing big stunts and high technical tricks (especially switch-ups). The most  clips are showing people, who do 720s or 900s or 360inspin Grinds and switch-ups. I really miss the creativity of using the transitions, the park obstacles or the architecture in general in a new way. In the end of the 1990s and in the beginning of 2000 it was a big movement to skate spots, which looks not really as a skate spot. Or at least doing tricks, which nobody expected... What makes me a little bit sad about seeing skating nowadays,  that the people (the skaters) are physical capable of doing this creative things, but their lost the enjoyment of being creative during skating. The most time they use the obstacles how they should use... I don't want to complain here, I just want to remind on the existing and freedom of creativity in our skating sport.

The movment parkour can give some nice inspirations for handplant tricks and wall ride tricks. Especially the french and these russian guys are an incredible source of inspiration:

Russian people:

The next interesting movement is Tricking. It is a mix of gym,parkour and Mixed Martial Arts and could be interesting for fun box tricks?!