How To Manual On A Fingerboard

The tail manual is one of the easiest tricks you can learn, and you can learn it even before ollie-ing.

To tail manual, press the tail of the board down so that the front wheels come off the ground and the tail doesn’t hit it. Ride forward while balancing there.

This trick by itself is super easy, but it’s a good one to learn for when you want to start doing combos. Here’s how.

Step 1: Finger Positioning

Position your fingers similar to an ollie. Put your middle finger on the tail, and your index finger somewhere in the middle of the deck, closer to the front bolts.

Step 2: Start The Manual

Press the tail down enough to get the front wheels off the ground, but not so much that the tail hits the ground. Boom. Manual. You’re doing it.

This is really not a hard trick in fingerboarding, all the difficulty in skating comes from the crazy amount of balance required… but there isn’t much balance here.

Step 3: Ride Away

Practice rolling around in that position. Get used to holding your fingers and wrist there. It will make it easier to land other tricks in a manual for added style.

Final Thoughts

As we’ve said, this trick isn’t all that hard, to begin with, but it takes a lot of skill to land a trick in a manual. Or land on a rail in a tail manual to do a 5-0 grind. Landing any trick in a manual makes it much more challenging, and thus more impressive.