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If you're afraid of falling, wear protectors and just deliberately fall a couple of times to test the level of protection and practice falling to build confidence.
I'm bad at sports and use skating to exercise, so I suck and regularly fall ~3 times per hour, but it's not a big deal at all and rarely hurts. And over time you really learn how to fall in a more controlled fashion, which is a useful skill to have by itself - it's prevented me from getting injured when I tripped and fell on a hike.
practice falling
I'm not a skater, but I do parkour and I really can't stress this enough.
If you know how to fall it takes away your fear, because you know how to act when it happens. And pro skaters are damn good at falling, even from a parkour perspective.
I ice skated when I was a kid and learning to fall was the first thing they taught us.
Funny thing - forty five years later, if you asked me how to do it, I would have no idea. The technique is completely lost to memory. Except when I actually fall. To this day, I have an unconscious instinct to fail so that i suffer scant little damage whenever I take a spill.
This was me up until recently.
My advice: get a board and just go try it.
So much of basic skateboarding is just building confidence on flat ground. It's hard to hurt yourself when you're like 2 inches off the ground, at worst I've gotten some scraped knees and palms.
This guy's videos are down to earth if you want some quick motivation:
Also it might look goofy, but just get some basic knee and elbow protectors and a decent helmet. Those are the only areas you easily hurt as long as you are on flat ground with no obstacles.
When I was a kid I also had hand protectors for roller skates. So if you want to you can even protect that.
Oh yeah forgot about hands lol
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Terrific advice in this thread, definitely start on flat ground (hell i started off practicing ollies in the grass) and wear helmet/pads (some people might give you shit about these; those people are idiots), BUT:
You absolutely will eat shit from time to time, and you have to accept this and be ready for it. I must have tumbled down the side of the bowl 50 times before I finally dropped in successfully, and it was worth every scrape and bruise.
Someone else said "learn to fall." I'll go one further and say if you have the means to do so then take a judo or parkour class - they will teach you how to minimize injury when you hit the ground.
Also, it's not a terrible idea to walk an area before you skate it, and note large cracks/gaps in the sidewalk, scattered bits of gravel, etc. so it isn't a suprise when/if you run over them.
Start slow. A skateboard is like an inch off the ground, in the worst case you can always jump off. Practice jumping off when standing, when rolling slowly and just start to build up confidence like that.
I started to learn to skate at like 27 and innthe first 2 years only badly sprained ankles twice, fractured a rib and snapped my arm bone in half. It's not as bad as it sounds.
Everyone else has already said it, but I'll say that if I can do it, you can do it. I'm a huge chickenshit. You really do gradually build confidence just by doing what you can and gradually working up from there.
Always wear a helmet, and invest in a decent setup (doesn't have to be expensive)
As almost everybody already said: Just try it. Get some protectors and a helmet - don’t give a single shit whether anybody would think that’s not cool or goofy or whatever. You love your body and want to protect it. That’s rad imo. Also: a helmet is more real estate for awesome stickers ;)
Then remember two things: bend your knees and lean forward. Also, you will fall and get up again. That’s part of skateboarding. Try to learn how to correctly fall: loosen your body and try to always divert the impact by rolling and “pushing the ground”. Find out if you’re regular or goofy and just go for it.
I highly recommend the beginner videos from braille Skateboarding on YouTube! They have a lot of tips for everything.
Skating's rad. Longboarding is sweet. Rollerblading is tiiiiight, yo.
Just get the protectors and you'll be fine. Elbows, knees, helmet, wrist guard, and (depending on your age, if you're older than 12 you'll want) ankle reinforcement. If you really want to go all out, hip, back, and tailbone pads are cheap and still not constricting. Are you going to look goofy? Sure. Is everybody else just as goofy? They're wearing clothes, aren't they? Of course they're goofy. Just make sure the helmet covers the parts of the head that are going to get hit, not just the top.
You're only goofy if you skate with your right foot forward.
All the others are just posing. Goofy is for life.
Everyone else here has good tips to get started, so I'll just say - do it! Even if you suck it's fun as hell.
I am embarrassed at many of these comments I had to read before realizing this wasn't about ice skating.
Get protective padded pants.
I feel called out, as someone who can't ride a bike.
Do it! You'll *learn how to bail. Get wrist guards or something, try a long board.