Skateboarding is not a crime
“Skateboarding is not a crime” was a very popular bumper sticker that was floating around in the late eighties and early nineties. It was a cultural response to how we, as skateboarders were treated by the general public. We were seen as criminals, not athletes, delinquents, not Olympians. This is the “sport” I had fallen in love with, the culture I had adopted. I had chosen a sport that didn’t need teammates or a coach, or a playing field. The depth of my mind was my coach, the urban landscape was my field, my skateboard and other skaters where my “team”.
I was embarking on what ultimately would be the pioneering generation of a new athletic medium. I was a part of a social movement that not only gave fringe athletes an opportunity to express themselves as creatives, I was helping to create what is now an Olympic sport from something that was just a fun way to keep surfing when the waves were flat. I learned how to perform a “sport” before it was ever even considered a sport.
This was a belief in our artistic expression that ran so deep it changed culture on a global scale. This type of mental toughness can also be described as deviant, rebellious, masochistic, and even criminal. This type of mental toughness is what we find in elite athletes and revere when it’s on a socially acceptable stage but may discourage or reject when it’s outside our normal perspective.
The things I learned from skateboarding have helped mold me into the father, business owner and disciplined athlete I am today. I am still racing and training at a professional level of performance at the age of 45 because of the fires and forge of skateboarding. My dedication to seeing something in my mind manifest into reality, the ability to perform a life threatening trick, and the ability to manipulate my visions into a visual and audio medium to share with the world, all taught me how to train my brain to believe in things I couldn’t see. I had to believe deeply that I could make things in my mind become reality with my body.
I had to develop a system of steps that could help me create a trick that never existed before, teach my body to manifest it and then replicate it over and over again so I could take it to different obstacles and perform it in new ways. I had to learn mastery over my body but also over my skateboard and without the help of a coach or a mentor. The mental toughness I developed in skateboarding has served me well in other areas of my life. It helps me be a better parent, a better boss, and a better athlete.
Having this mind set came from trial and error being my life. Living in a constant state of creativity I had to learn how to harness the energy and ability it took to perform these tricks I was creating by mentally building up my own sort of training regiment. I had to teach myself a process of training the mind, the body and the will all without a blueprint. What I was doing had never been done before and it was pure, raw creation without discipline. My ability to create a system was what made me successful in not only becoming a good skateboarder but in making it a profession that could support my life. All of this came from my mental fortitude, not just my physical ability. My physical ability wouldn’t even have had an outlet if it weren’t for what my mind could conceive.
Everything we do as athletes comes first from the mind. Whether it’s taking something someone else has done before and doing it differently, or by forging in a new direction, with a new sport, we all have to perceive what is possible first in our minds. Everything begins there, and what is possible is ultimately up to what we can get ourselves to believe is possible. Conceive, perceive, practice, refine, repeat, refine, repeat, refine, repeat, forever. This is how mastery is done and never done. It is a craft forever in refinement and exploration. Skateboarding even though it’s in the Olympics, is still considered a crime. It will always be an art form, an expression of raw creativity, a semi masochistic endeavor by street kids that live in a concrete playground. To them, skateboarding will always be a crime.
