What flatland tricks should I start out with? And in what order should I learn them? (A sample curriculum)

These are questions commonly asked by new riders; and with all the different kinds of tricks that have come out over the years, they are very good questions. "All these tricks look equally impossible, so where do I even begin? And how can I go from not being able to do any tricks at all, to doing something crazy-looking; like, say, a backward hitchhiker?"

Backward hitchhiker

As always, the answer is to learn whatever tricks you want to learn, in whatever order you want to learn them. Unlike college, there is no set "curriculum" of tricks; you can work on whichever ones appeal to you and ignore the ones that don't, and that would be perfectly fine.

Having said all that, a lot of the more advanced tricks certainly require the skills and techniques learned from simpler moves. To use educational terms again, you can consider basic tricks to be like "prerequisites" for harder ones.

If you are a new rider and are completely clueless as to where to start your training, here is a sample "course of classes" that other riders have started with, and that you might find useful as well - especially if you'd like to start by "majoring" in front-wheel backward-rolling tricks.

First, learn the fork glide. We have a how-to page for the fork glide up now; similar pages for the other tricks below will follow in the future.

Our man Tateo here can fork glide all day.

Next, get a taste of one-wheel action with the backward steamroller:

Fishyvincy27 demonstrates a backward steamroller.

Now you'll want to learn do do that backward steamroller double-footed, with one hand on the seat and no hands on the bars:

At this point you're ready to learn the backward halfhiker:

Psychoholicpimp representing for MD with a backward halfhiker

And finally, a mini-graduation milestone for this particular course of classes: the backward hitchhiker.

If at first you don't succeed at a backward hitchhiker: dust yourself off and try again.

Even with focused effort, this small sample curriculum should keep most new riders busy for many months, if not years; so have at it. (No one said this stuff was easy!)

If you progress far enough to learn these tricks all the way up to the backward hitchhiker: congratulations! You must be a true student of flatland to have gotten this far.

But of course, by no mean does your education stop here. You're now qualified to move on to all manner of variations and combos. And when you're not content to copy tricks that have been done before, then start inventing new ones and teach them to the rest of us!