You’re watching a clip: someone rolls backwards, pops an ollie and rides away. Was that fakie or switch? From a distance the two look so alike that magazines, tutorials and video games have been mixing up the names for years. And since the name of almost every trick changes depending on how you’re riding, knowing the difference saves you a few arguments at the park and makes it clearer what you’re actually trying to learn.
This guide covers the four ways to ride (normal, fakie, switch and nollie), how to recognise each one, why a half cab is called a half cab, and where nollies and switch skating came from. To put it together we cross-checked TransWorld’s interviews with Steve Caballero, Tony Hawk and Salman Agah, the Chrome Ball Incident, pieces from Jenkem and Sidewalk, and the guides from Braille and Surfer Today. Where the sources disagree, we say so.
Your natural stance: regular or goofy
Everything starts here. If you’re regular, your left foot goes in front, near the nose, and you push with your right, which then goes on the tail. Goofy is the mirror image: right foot forward, pushing with the left. Neither one is correct, it’s just the one that feels right to you. If you’re not sure which you are, our goofy vs regular test walks you through a few ways to find out.
Mongo sometimes ends up on lists like this, but it isn’t a stance: it means pushing with your front foot, and a mongo pusher is still regular or goofy. There’s a card on it in the explorer further down.
The four ways to ride: normal, fakie, switch and nollie
On top of your natural stance, there are four ways to ride, and each one adds a word to the trick name:
- Normal: your stance, rolling forwards, nose first. You pop the tail with your back foot. This is how you learn to ollie.
- Fakie: your same stance, but rolling backwards. The tail leads and your usual back foot is still on it.
- Switch: the opposite stance, rolling forwards. A regular skater riding switch rides like a goofy one, and the pop comes from their usual front foot, which is now on the tail.
- Nollie: your normal stance, rolling forwards, with your feet shifted up towards the nose. You pop the nose with your front foot.
If you only remember one thing, make it this: in normal and fakie you pop with your usual back foot, the one that’s trained. In nollie and switch you pop with your usual front foot, the one that isn’t. That explains most of what follows, difficulty included, and it’s why Per Welinder and Peter Whitley write in Mastering Skateboarding that a nollie is a lot like a switch ollie done while rolling backwards.
One detail worth getting straight: fakie and switch describe how you’re rolling, while a nollie is a trick done in your normal stance. You can ride fakie or switch without doing anything, but you can’t “ride nollie”. When people say nollie stance, they mean where your feet are.
| Stance | Direction | Pop foot (regular skater) | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | Forwards, nose leading | Back foot (right), on the tail | Ollie, kickflip |
| Fakie | Backwards, tail leading | Back foot (right), on the tail | Fakie ollie, half cab |
| Switch | Forwards, in the opposite stance | Usual front foot (left), on the tail | Switch ollie, switch flip |
| Nollie | Forwards, feet towards the nose | Front foot (left), on the nose | Nollie, nollie heelflip |
How to tell them apart in a video
From a distance, fakie and switch look very similar: a regular skater in either one is travelling towards their right foot. To work it out, check three things in this order:
- The skater’s natural stance. Watch how they push elsewhere in the clip; from a single photo this is the hardest part.
- Which end is leading, nose or tail. Modern boards are close to symmetrical, so look at the graphic, the bolt pattern, or the nose, which is usually a bit longer and flatter.
- Which foot is on the end that pops. Usual back foot on the tail with the nose leading is normal; with the tail leading, it’s fakie. Usual front foot on the nose with the nose leading is nollie. Feet in the opposite stance, with the usual front foot on the tail, is switch.
The confusion goes back a long way: Surfer Today notes that old-school skaters call this fakie where newer skaters tend to call it switch, and in snowboarding, where boards are true twins, “fakie” has mostly disappeared.
The two most common mix-ups
Nollie or switch. Both pop with your usual front foot. In a nollie you stay in your stance and pop the leading end (the nose); in a switch ollie you’re in the opposite stance and pop the trailing end (the tail). Josiah Gatlyn, in a RIDE Channel how-to, describes the nollie heelflip as very much like a backwards switch heelflip.
Nollie or fakie ollie. In both you pop the leading end, which is why they get confused on video. In a nollie it’s the nose, popped by your front foot; in a fakie ollie it’s the tail, popped by your back foot.
How to use the stance and trick explorer
The cards come in three blocks: the stances, tricks whose name changes depending on how you’re riding, and the history of the Cab, the nollie and switch. You can filter by stance or search for a trick by name. Spins are described for a regular skater seen from above; if you’re goofy, flip them. Some cards include an explainer video, and the ones with a Fillow tutorial link to it.
The stances
Regular
A regular skater rides with the left foot forward, near the nose, and pushes with the right, which then goes on the tail to pop. It isn't the correct stance, or the more common one by definition: it's just the one that feels natural to that person.
Everything else (fakie, switch, nollie) is defined from here. In this guide, spin directions are described for a regular skater; if you're goofy, flip them. Not sure which you are? Our goofy vs regular test has a few ways to find out.
Goofy
Goofy is the exact mirror image of regular: right foot forward, pushing with the left, which is the foot that pops the tail. For a goofy skater, goofy is their normal stance, and riding switch means riding like a regular skater.
This causes some confusion with names: two skaters with different stances can do the same movement and call it something different, because each one names it from their own natural stance.
Mongo
Pushing mongo means pushing with your front foot while your back foot stays on the board. It isn't a stance: a mongo pusher is still regular or goofy. The usual criticism is that you have to reposition your feet before every trick so you can pop, which makes setting up tricks slower.
It's frowned upon in skate culture, although it isn't wrong as such. It also has an interesting link to switch: Salman Agah told the Chrome Ball Incident that riding backwards felt natural to him because he pushed mongo when he started.
Fakie
Riding fakie means keeping your natural stance but rolling backwards: the tail leads and your usual back foot stays on the tail. You pop with the same foot as a normal ollie, you're just popping the end that's leading.
That's why it's usually the first stance people learn after their normal one, and a quarter pipe or mini ramp is the easiest place to start. The short definition is in the dictionary.
Switch
Riding switch means riding the opposite of your stance, forwards: a regular skater riding switch rides like a goofy one. The pop comes from your usual front foot, which is now on the tail, and the push, the balance and the flick foot all swap too.
From a distance it looks a lot like fakie, because in both a regular skater travels towards their right foot. The difference is which foot is on which end of the board. More in the dictionary.
Nollie
Nollie comes from nose ollie. You ride your normal stance, forwards, with your feet shifted towards the nose, and pop the nose with your front foot. Unlike fakie and switch, a nollie is a trick rather than a direction: when people say nollie stance, they mean where you put your feet.
Because the pop comes from your front foot, several sources relate it to switch. Sidewalk describes it as basically a switchstance fakie ollie. The step-by-step is in the nollie tutorial.
Tricks that change name
Fakie ollie
A fakie ollie uses your usual back foot and the same motion as a normal ollie, only rolling backwards. It's normally the first trick people learn fakie.
It often gets confused with the nollie, because in both you pop the leading end. In a fakie ollie that end is the tail, popped by your back foot; in a nollie it's the nose, popped by your front foot.
Switch ollie
A switch ollie is a full ollie in the opposite stance: your usual front foot pops the tail and the other foot does the slide. The whole movement is reversed, which is why it's harder than a fakie ollie.
According to Surfer Today, quoting Welinder and Whitley, once you have a switch ollie the nollie comes quickly. The step-by-step is in the switch ollie tutorial.
Half cab
A half cab is a fakie ollie with a 180 turn: you roll backwards, spin half a turn and ride away forwards. For a regular skater it turns clockwise seen from above, the same way as a backside 180. Tony Hawk told TransWorld in 2025 that it's backside by default unless you say frontside.
Skate IQ's video goes through every 180 and has a chapter on the half cab (at 38:27). There's also our half cab tutorial.
Frontside half cab (fakie frontside 180)
The half cab spun the other way. The older skaters TransWorld spoke to in 2025 (Hawk, Mullen, Steve Olson, Kris Markovich, Jeremy Wray, Lance Mountain) say it was always called a frontside half cab. Mike York and Mullen are also fine with fakie frontside 180.
Most of the younger skaters asked at Stoner Plaza didn't know the old name. Both get understood. On the street, it showed up down the small Carlsbad gap with Markovich (1992) and down the big one with Wray (1994).
Cab or full cab
A Cab (Caballerial, or full cab) is a fakie ollie with a full 360 turn. Steve Caballero's original was backside, but he told TransWorld it can be frontside too. Tony Hawk did the first frontside Cab around 1988.
Paul Zitzer, from Skatepark of Tampa, points out that saying "fakie full cab" is redundant: a Cab is already fakie by definition.
Nollie cab
Caballero was clear about it in the 2025 TransWorld interview: a Cab has to include an ollie and has to be done fakie. A spin popped off the nose isn't a Cab, however similar it looks. Jeremy Wray said the same in that piece: if a trick has Cab in its name, you're riding fakie.
A 360 popped off the nose is named as a nollie trick, for example a nollie backside 360 (Rodney Mullen's helipop).
Helipop
The helipop is a nollie backside 360, and the name is Rodney Mullen's. Mullen remembered doing nollie back heels and switch front heels in 1987 and 1988 while he was working on it.
TransWorld's piece on Mullen makes a point about names: a switch nollie backside 360 on flat is essentially a frontside Cab. A switch nollie is your natural back foot popping the leading end, which is what a fakie ollie is, and once the reference stance changes, backside becomes frontside.
Switch frontside 180 and switch backside 180
Riding switch, frontside and backside are named as if you were the opposite stance. A regular skater's switch frontside 180 spins clockwise seen from above, the same way as a goofy skater's frontside 180.
That's the convention in Wikipedia's frontside and backside chart. The Never Stop Improving video goes through how frontside and backside apply in every situation. The basic spins are in our frontside 180 and backside 180 tutorials.
Fakie bigspin and nollie frontside bigspin
Braille describes the nollie frontside bigspin as the mirror image of the fakie backside bigspin: the natural nollie spin is frontside and the natural fakie spin is backside. In its list of easy tricks, Braille defines the fakie bigspin as a fakie backside 180 with a shove-it.
Where you land changes too. According to Braille, a normal backside bigspin (board 360, body 180) lands switch, while a fakie bigspin lands rolling forwards in your stance. Here's the bigspin tutorial.
Nollie heelflip and switch heelflip
In both, your usual front foot pops and your usual back foot does the heel flick. What changes is the stance and the direction: a nollie heelflip is in your stance, rolling forwards; a switch heelflip is in the opposite stance. Josiah Gatlyn, in a RIDE Channel how-to, describes the nollie heel as very much like a backwards switch heelflip.
According to Rad Rat, a regular skater's nollie backside heelflip looks the same as a goofy skater's frontside half cab heelflip. If you don't have a normal heelflip yet, start there.
Nollie flip, fakie flip and switch flip
A fakie flip feels like a normal kickflip rolling backwards, because you use the same feet. A nollie flip is popped off the nose, with the front foot popping and the back foot flicking. A switch flip is the whole kickflip in mirror image.
Rodney Mullen said that around 1983 he saw nollie flips and fakie flips as variations of the kickflip. The nollie flip as a street trick is linked to Ali Mills and his 1990 part. Before any of this, there's the kickflip.
Switch 360 flip
In the early 90s the switch tre became the trick switch skating was measured by. Guy Mariano's down a four stair in Tim and Henry's Pack of Lies (1992) is often cited as the first on film, although some argue it was Jed Walters, in Love Child.
In 1993 Eric Koston did one down the EMB seven in Falling Down. Some sources also mention a Thrasher cover that year with Rick Howard. The regular version is in our 360 flip tutorial.
"To fakie" tricks
When a trick ends to fakie (rock to fakie, frontside boardslide to fakie), it means you go in rolling forwards and come out rolling backwards. It describes how you leave the trick, not how you enter it.
Jenkem notes that a lot of fakie ramp tricks moved to the street under plain names, like a fakie nosegrind. The classic one to start with is the rock to fakie.
History: the Cab, the nollie and switch
The Caballerial (1980)
Steve Caballero did a backside fakie 360 ollie on vert in 1980, and Stacy Peralta named it the Caballerial. That date comes from TransWorld's 2025 piece, Caballero's own website and Ben Marcus's book. Caballero turned pro that same year at the Gold Cup series, at Oasis Skatepark, with the trick already invented.
Surfer Today gives a different version, placing it in 1981 at the finals of a contest in Upland, California. According to the same source, Caballero was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010.
The half cab and the Half Cab shoe
Within months of the Cab, Kevin Staab and Tony Hawk were doing the 180 version and calling it a half cab. Staab was doing them at Del Mar before he could reach the coping. Surfer Today credits the trick to Staab alone, so the fair way to put it is that it's credited to Staab, with Hawk close behind.
The name ended up on a shoe: skaters were cutting down the high-top Vans Caballero, and according to Surfer Today, Vans made that low version the official Half Cab model in 1992.
Rodney Mullen and the first nollie variations
There's no documented inventor of the nollie (nose ollie), but Rodney Mullen is the name that comes up most. In a 2019 TransWorld piece reposted by New Deal, he says that around 1983 he treated nollie flips and fakie flips as variations of the kickflip, and that in 1987 and 1988 he was doing nollie back heels and switch front heels. There's no footage of him doing a straight nollie.
Rad Rat also cites a trick tip of his in Thrasher, from April 1983, that suggested practising ollies with the front foot. Mullen, for his part, credits Ali Mills with taking the nollie flip to the street.
Natas Kaupas and Ali Mills: the nollie goes street
Salman Agah told the Chrome Ball Incident that he saw Natas Kaupas nollie up onto one of the Brown Marble benches in San Francisco in the late 80s, and that after that he was obsessed with learning every nollie trick.
Around the same time, Ali Mills was doing nollie flips in southern Maryland, alongside Chris Hall, who already had nollie heels. The first one most people saw was in his part in Useless Wooden Toys (New Deal, 1990), although Mills doesn't claim to be first. Rad Rat later credits Dan Gallagher, in Ground Rules (1991), with nollie hardflips and nollie tre flips; we haven't found a second source to confirm it.
The beginnings of switch
Before it was called switch, magazines talked about opposite foot or switch foot, according to Jenkem. Sidewalk explains that switch only really took off with the double-kick popsicle board. Agah remembers a switch method air in a late-80s video, maybe by Mark Gonzales or Tommy Guerrero, although he isn't sure.
By 1990 and 1991, in his own account, Agah was doing switch kickflip backside tailslides at Embarcadero; an ankle sprain on his leading foot pushed him to learn tricks the other way round. Sidewalk also mentions Andy Howell in 1281 (New Deal, 1991).
1992-1993: switch becomes standard
In Tim and Henry's Pack of Lies (1992), Henry Sanchez skates switch at full speed a year before Agah, and Guy Mariano does his switch tre. The following year comes Agah's part in The Real Video (1993), which Sidewalk calls the obvious starting point for switch skating; after it he was Thrasher's Skater of the Year.
1993 also brought Koston's switch tre at EMB and Curtis McCann's switch flip in Skypager, in the UK. Jenkem remembers the switch mongo of those years, exaggerating your push so people could see you were riding switch. In 2011 Agah said he could see the word switch becoming obsolete.
Nothing matches those filters.
Frontside and backside when riding fakie, switch and nollie
There are conventions here, but not everyone applies them the same way.
Riding fakie, a spin keeps the name the same shoulder movement would have going forwards. For a regular skater, a half cab (fakie backside 180) turns clockwise seen from above, the same direction as a normal backside 180. Rad Rat explains this as a holdover from 80s ramp skating: the body does the same motion even though you’re rolling backwards. It throws a lot of people, because a fakie frontside 180 looks quite like a nollie backside 180 and is still called frontside.
Riding switch, frontside and backside are named as if you were the opposite stance. A regular skater’s switch frontside 180 spins clockwise, the same way a goofy skater’s frontside 180 does.
Nollie spins use the same names as your normal stance: a nollie backside 180 turns the same way as a regular backside 180. Braille explains that the natural nollie spin is frontside while the natural fakie spin is backside.
Some cases show how tangled the system gets. According to Rad Rat, a regular skater’s nollie backside heelflip looks the same as a goofy skater’s frontside half cab heelflip: one movement, two names. The same site points out naming mistakes in several skateboarding video games, and in TransWorld’s 2025 piece younger skaters tend to describe tricks by what the body does instead of using the inherited names.
The Cab and the half cab: Steve Caballero’s trick
The Caballerial is a fakie 360 ollie, named after Steve Caballero, who did it on vert in 1980. Stacy Peralta came up with the name, and the original was backside. That’s the version in TransWorld’s 2025 piece, on Caballero’s own website and in Ben Marcus’s book The Skateboard. Surfer Today gives a different account, placing it in 1981 at the finals of a contest in Upland, California.
In that TransWorld piece, written by Mackenzie Eisenhour, Caballero sets out the rules: a Cab has to include an ollie, it can be frontside or backside, and it has to be fakie. That’s why there’s no such thing as a nollie cab. Jeremy Wray sums it up in the same article: any trick with Cab in the name means you’re riding fakie.
The half cab is the 180 version. Within months, Kevin Staab and Tony Hawk were doing them; Staab was doing them at Del Mar before he could reach the coping. Surfer Today credits the trick to Staab alone, so the fair way to put it is that it’s credited to Staab, with Hawk close behind. Hawk explains that a half cab is backside by default unless you say frontside. He did the first frontside Cab around 1988, on a backyard ramp in Phoenix, and the frontside half cab went street with Kris Markovich down the small Carlsbad gap (1992) and Jeremy Wray down the big one (1994).
The name of that last trick is exactly what the TransWorld piece is about. The older crew (Hawk, Mullen, Steve Olson, Markovich, Wray, Lance Mountain) say it was always a frontside half cab, while most of the younger skaters asked at Stoner Plaza had never heard that name and say fakie frontside 180. Mike York and Mullen accept both.
The half cab also gave its name to a shoe: according to Surfer Today, in 1992 Vans turned the cut-down Caballero that skaters were already wearing into an official model, the Half Cab.
Who invented the nollie?
Nollie comes from nose ollie. Some people trace it to “Natas ollie”, but that theory has no primary source behind it. What doesn’t exist is a single documented inventor, so the honest way to tell it is as a lineage.
Rodney Mullen is the name that comes up most. There’s no footage of him doing a straight nollie, but in his own words, from a 2019 TransWorld piece reposted by New Deal, he says that around 1983 he treated nollie flips and fakie flips as variations of the kickflip, and that in 1987 and 1988 he was doing nollie back heels and switch front heels on the way to the helipop (a nollie backside 360, his name for it).
On the street, Salman Agah told the Chrome Ball Incident that he saw Natas Kaupas nollie up onto one of the Brown Marble benches in San Francisco in the late 80s, and that from then on he was obsessed with learning every nollie trick.
The nollie flip has a more specific story. Ali Mills was doing them in southern Maryland in the late 80s, alongside Chris Hall, who already had nollie heels, and the first one most people saw was in his part in New Deal’s Useless Wooden Toys (1990). Mills doesn’t claim to be first, and Mullen credits him with turning it into a street trick.
How switch became normal
Before anyone said switch, magazines called it opposite foot or switch foot, according to Jenkem. Agah remembers a switch method air in a late-80s video, maybe by Mark Gonzales or Tommy Guerrero, though he isn’t sure. What changed things was the board: Sidewalk points out that switch only really took off with the double-kick popsicle.
Agah says that by 1990 and 1991 he was doing switch kickflip backside tailslides at full speed at Embarcadero, and that an ankle sprain on his leading foot is what pushed him to learn tricks the other way round. Sidewalk mentions Andy Howell in 1281 (New Deal, 1991) and Henry Sanchez in Tim and Henry’s Pack of Lies (1992), skating switch at full speed a year before Agah. The same video has Guy Mariano’s switch 360 flip down a four stair, which a lot of people consider the first switch tre on film, although some say Jed Walters got there first, in Love Child.
Agah’s part in The Real Video (1993) is, for Sidewalk, the obvious starting point for switch skating, and after it Agah was Thrasher’s Skater of the Year. The same year, Eric Koston did a switch tre down the EMB seven in Falling Down. In 2011, Agah told the Chrome Ball Incident he could see the word switch becoming obsolete.
What order to learn fakie, nollie and switch
There’s broad agreement that fakie comes first. You keep your usual pop foot, you get used to rolling backwards, and you take the first step towards switch. Surfer Today recommends learning to ride fakie on a quarter pipe or mini ramp, and points out that the half cab needs fakie riding, an ollie and kickturns first.
Nollie or switch is where people split. Sidewalk lists the nollie among its beginner tricks and calls it a gateway to switch. Surfer Today, quoting Welinder and Whitley, goes the other way: if you already have a switch ollie, the nollie comes quickly, and the hard part is getting your legs to cooperate with your mind. Both can be true at once, since both tricks train the same pop foot.
On difficulty, JudgeMate ranks the stances from easiest to hardest as normal, fakie, nollie and switch, while noting that World Skate judging has no official difficulty coefficient per stance. Switch usually comes last because it’s the only stance where everything is mirrored (push, balance, pop and flick); a nollie only swaps the pop foot.
If you want a concrete order, this is the one we’d suggest, as a recommendation rather than a rule: ollie, riding fakie, fakie ollie, half cab, nollie and switch riding side by side, switch ollie, fakie and nollie flip tricks, and switch flip tricks last. If the nollie clicks before the half cab does, that’s fine.
Keep exploring
- Goofy vs regular: how to find your skate stance
- How to ollie, step by step
- Nollie tutorial
- Half cab tutorial
- Switch ollie tutorial
- What fakie means, in the dictionary
- What switch means, in the dictionary
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