You don't need an ollie to learn the no comply: 5 steps — which one do you start with?

You can roll, you can stand on it, you can stop. And for three weeks now you've been slapping your tail into thin air hoping the board will come up. It doesn't. So you wait. You wait until you've "got the ollie" before you're allowed to do a real trick.

Bad news: that wait can drag on for months. Good news: it's pointless.

There's a trick you can land without knowing how to jump with the board. A real one, filmed in parts, still used by pros today. It's called the no comply. The whole idea fits in one sentence: your front foot steps down to the ground and does the job your pop can't do yet.

Five steps. Not one of them needs an ollie. But you don't learn them in the order you read them — and that's exactly where 90% of beginners blow it. The right way in is further down.

A curb trick that made it into Thrasher in 1988

The no comply isn't some beginner move you get away with until you know better. It was invented by American skater John Lucero, then named and made famous by Neil Blender in the 80s. In 1988, Thrasher ran it as a how-to — demoed by Natas Kaupas, one of the most influential street skaters of the decade.

Originally it went down on a curb: front foot plants on the edge, back foot knocks the back truck against the concrete, the board bounces back up under your feet. No jump. No perfect pop. Parking lot improvisation that turned into a standard.

Ray Barbee pulled dozens of variations out of it through the 90s — to the point that almost every trick that exists with an ollie also exists in a no comply version. That's the part that should sell you: you're not learning some watered-down trick, you're opening up a whole family.

Read next: The ollie in 6 steps — because yeah, you'll get there eventually.

The wall everybody hits the same way

You're going to feel like you're the only one who can't get it. You're not. The no comply hang-up is always the same, for everyone: your brain refuses to take a foot off the board while it's rolling. It's convinced you're about to eat it. It's wrong, but it's loud.

That reflex takes two or three sessions to let go. Not two or three months. And once it lets go, the rest of the trick shows up on its own — because the movement itself is dead simple: you step down, you push off it, you come back up.

The 5 steps of the no comply

1. Foot setup: front foot mid-board, back foot on the tail

   Back foot on the tail — the kicked-up end at the back of the board — toes near the edge. Front foot in the middle, angled, toes hanging just past the toe-side edge. That overhang is what lets it slide out without you having to think about it. Roll slow. Really slow: walking speed.

2. Front foot steps down to the ground

   It doesn't jump, it doesn't kick: it comes off the nose side and lands flat on the pavement, slightly ahead of the board. Your weight shifts onto it. That's the move that replaces the ollie pop — and it's also the one that freaks everybody out the first time.

3. Back foot brings the nose up

   As the front foot lands, press down on the tail with the back foot. The board pivots, the nose comes up toward your thigh. You're not after height: you want it to stand up and stay glued to your back leg.

4. The bounce: you jump off the planted foot

   You push off the leg that's on the ground, like a running skip. That's where all the height comes from — not the board, you. Front knee bent before the plant, extended through it. Stay stiff and you stay on the ground.

5. Front foot comes back over the bolts

   In the air, bring it back onto the board, over the front bolts. Both feet land at the same time, knees soft, and you roll away. If you roll away, you landed it. Even from two inches up: you landed it.

The 4 classic fails and how to fix them

Where you start: step 2, standing still, no pop at all

Here's the answer, straight up: you don't start with step 1. You start with step 2, and you work it on its own, standing still, without ever touching the tail.

In practice, your first session looks like this. Board sitting on grass or gravel so it can't roll. You step on. You drop your front foot to the ground, next to the nose. You put your weight on it. You bring it back over the bolts. Twenty times. Thirty times. No pop, no jump, no height.

It looks ridiculous. But it's the only piece of the trick your body refuses to do — the other four, it already knows how to do. Everybody skips this step to go "try the trick for real," and everybody then spends three weeks wondering why the board keeps shooting out front.

Once step-down-step-up goes automatic, you do it rolling, still with no pop: drop the foot, bring it back, keep rolling. And only then do you add the pressure on the tail. Three layers, in that order. The people who respect them land their first no comply that same afternoon.

One last thing nobody tells you: do it both ways from day one. The no comply also works planting your foot on the other side, and that reflex builds way easier now than it will in six months. Same logic as the manual: balance gets learned in pairs, not one-sided.

The click, and what it opens up next

The click shows up out of nowhere, and you feel it in your legs before you see it. All of a sudden the foot going down isn't a controlled fall anymore: it's a push. You go up, the board goes up with you, both feet land together. The sound is different too — a dull crack instead of a scrape. That's the day you get that your body can lift a board off the ground without any pop at all.

What it opens up: the no comply 180, the most classic follow-up, where you spin a half turn during the bounce. The frontside 180 gets way less scary once you've already spun your board once. And the slappy, that truck smack on a parking lot curb, runs on the exact same principle: the city gives you the pop.

Figure 1 to 4 hours for the first one, spread over two or three sessions. No more than that. And if you're still not there by the fifth, film yourself from the side: nine times out of ten you'll see your foot isn't coming down early enough, or far enough out front.

No skatepark near you? Doesn't matter here. A smooth patch of parking lot, the square in front of city hall, a dry warehouse when it rains: this trick needs nothing but flat ground and room to roll at walking speed. That's exactly why it was born on a curb. If you're still unsure about your gear, our beginner setup guide tells you what actually matters.

Front foot won't go down, or the bounce just isn't happening ? Tell us which step you're stuck on. Drop it in the comments ↓