Chainsaw Magazine

Inward Heelflip Not N-Word Heelflip

By

T.R. Washington

Growing up down south in hell, or you might call it Florida. there was a lot of casual racism flying around so for most of the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s I really believed this skateboard trick was called the N**** Heelflip. but I also thought literally meant figuratively, that irregardless was an actual word and the turn of phrase “for all intents and purposes” was actually “for intensive purposes”, I also thought “force of habit” was pronounced “forcive habit”. I thought “checks and balances” had something to do with bank accounts. sheeeeet I even thought the Ramones were singing about Kosher salami or some weird shit. so if anyone is confused let me clarify what an inward heel flip is.

An inward heelflip is one of those highly technical, slightly elusive flip tricks that looks incredibly unique when executed cleanly. It has a distinct visual “wrapping” motion that separates it from standard flip tricks.

Mechanically, an inward heelflip is a combination of two distinct movements happening simultaneously: A Backside Pop Shuvit. A Heelflip (the board flips along its axis away from the rider’s toes).

Because the board is spinning backside while flipping away from you, the tail has to scoop forward while your front foot flicks outward. The result is a trick where the board spins “inward” between your legs. If it’s caught high, it has a beautiful, vertical, almost-dolphining aesthetic before flattening out perfectly under your feet.

Like many fundamental street tricks, the lineage of the inward heelflip traces back to the late 1980s and early 1990s boom of technical street skating.

It surprise nobody that the foundational architecture of the trick belongs to Rodney Mullen. Mullen engineered the mechanics of the inward heelflip in the late 1980s on flat ground. He laid down the blueprint for how to manipulate the board’s axis to combine a backside spin with an opposite flip.

While Mullen invented it on flat ground, a few key pros in the early-to-mid 1990s took it to obstacles, down gaps, and onto stages that cemented it in skateboarding culture.

Skaters like Pat Duffy and Sean Sheffey started exploring variations of the trick over gaps and down stairs in iconic early 90s videos. Kareem Campbell: Kareem brought immense style to the trick, often executing flawless nollie inward heelflips, making the trick look effortless, floating, and deeply stylish in the late ’90s.

When it comes to filming absolutely definitive, iconic inward heelflips, a few modern pros stand out for taking the trick to a whole new level of speed, scale, and perfection. If you ask almost any skater who owns the definitive inward heelflip, Bryan Herman is usually the first name mentioned. Herman pioneered the “hardflip-style” dip on his inward heels. Instead of a flat, spinning rotation, he pops them incredibly high, catches them at the apex with his back foot while the board is nearly vertical, and snaps it down. His parts in Baker Skateboards’ Baker 3 (2005) and Stay Gold* (2010) features some of the cleanest, highest, and most textbook inward heelflips ever caught on film.

Known for massive pop and using technical tricks on huge obstacles, Torey Pudwill took the inward heelflip out of the “small tech trick” category and went massive with it. In his Hallelujah (2010) part, Torey blasted an absolutely enormous inward heelflip down the massive big-three stairset at the Carlsbad gap location, showcasing incredible control at high speed.For the ultimate masterclass in how the trick looks on flat ground, ledges, and lines, French tech-wizard Lucas Puig is unmatched. He brings a classic, effortless European style to the trick, popping them perfectly into manual pads or sliding them into switch nosegrinds with zero wasted movement.