Land On Both Feet: Skateboarding’s Life Lessons

It’s not surprising that philosopher Jordan Peterson defends skateboarding. “Do Not Bother Children When They are Skateboarding” is one of Peterson’s “12 Rules For Life.” Skateboarding, Peterson argues, teaches life lessons about persistence, confronting danger, failure and balance.

Land On Both Feet: Grind Through Life with a Skateboarder's Mindset, a new book by skateboarder Brett Sorem, fleshes out Peterson’s argument. I’m overly effusive because I’m a lifelong skateboarder, but I think Land On Both Feet is a self-help book as profound as any written by popes, self-help gurus or life coaches.

Take the first of Sorem’s lessons: Don’t “mongo.” Mongo is a term for skaters who use their dominant foot to push, rather than leaving it on the board and pushing with the non-dominant foot. Sorem’s tone in Land On Both Feet is mostly friendly, like a caring instructor, but when he talks about mongos he turns serious and irritated. Addressing patrons of new skateboarders, Sorem writes: “The single most important thing you can do (besides buying their first board, of course) is make sure they push with their back foot—not their front foot. Not Mongo. Seriously. 'Who taught you to push that way, your mom?’ Spare yourself and your kid the embarrassment. Start them off right.”

Why such obsessive emphasis on what seems like a small thing? “The point is, small, purposeful actions create momentum,” Sorem writes. “Without them, the whole routine can unravel. Skip making the bed once, and it’s no big deal. Skip it a few more times, and soon you’ve abandoned the habit altogether. It’s a slippery slope, but the reverse is also true: small, intentional actions can snowball into greater discipline, confidence, and purpose. So, why is pushing with your back foot so important? Because it’s about leading with your front—being balanced, grounded, and focused. When you push Mongo, you’re steering with your back foot, leaving you off-balance, unfocused, and looking down. It’s chaotic. But when you push correctly, you’re stable. You look ahead, out at the world, not down at your feet. And once it’s second nature, you don’t think about it anymore—you just go.”

Sorem also rightly calls skateboarding “more art than sport.” He thinks that “a handrail, a painted curb, a loading dock, or a sewer ditch—things most people pass by without a second glance—are my canvas. The stroke of your foot, the pop of the tail, and the grind of the trucks combine to create something both beautiful and raw. With imagination, you can do almost anything.”

Along with jazz, movies, modern dance, and comic books, skateboarding is one of America’s great original art forms. It’s a $5 billion industry with 16 million members in the United States.

Sorem also devotes a chapter to failure. In skateboarding a “slam” is a bad wipeout. There’s simply no skateboarding without them, and as long as you wear a helmet and respect your learning curve you can get through them: “Slams aren’t just a rite of passage; they’re how you learn. Every time you fall, your body and brain make micro-adjustments. You subconsciously calculate how to better position yourself next time to avoid the same mistake. You learn how to fall in ways that minimize damage—rolling out, breaking your fall with your arms, or tucking your chin to protect your head. It’s a skill.”

You’re not going to learn how to navigate setbacks if you don't land a kickflip, heel flip, nosegrind, or tailslide at the first attempt. I was out riding in a familiar neighborhood recently when I decided to detour into an unfamiliar driveway. What I didn't know is that it had recently been treated with some kind of slippery overcoat. In a split second my Carver board was at eye level instead of beneath my feet. I instinctively curled up and waited for it. As in many instances in life, I was going to eat it. There was nothing you could do except take it and learn.

Slams instill in riders that ability “to handle failure when it comes—and it will come. That’s why we’ve been training. As skateboarders, we’re prepared for this, even if we don’t realize it. Deep down, we carry a tenacity that’s waiting to be put to use. We’ve learned that failure isn’t the end—it’s part of the process.”

Sorem makes the case that most of us lifelong riders know—the small reason you learn skateboarding changes the way you present yourself to the world. “Skateboarding teaches you to look forward, he concludes, “to navigate obstacles instinctively. Over time, this habit spills into the rest of your life. You walk differently, with your head up and your eyes ahead. You notice the flow of foot traffic, make eye contact with strangers, and recognize humanity instead of obstacles.”