P-Rod's Simple Method to Stack MORE Clips & Film Better Parts

A footage generating machine

My name's Matt, I'm the founder of The Daily Push and the guy running everything you see on this page.

I’ve been skating 20 years + and filmed a few parts over that time, but nothing I’m truly proud of, so one of my goals right now is to film a part I'm hyped on with my best skating, and over the last year I’ve been out in the streets working hard to make it happen.

I got lucky that my good homie Dmitry is not only a beast of a filmer, he’s the most committed filmer I’ve ever met, and as I won’t stop trying a trick until I either land it or I’m so destroyed I literally can’t continue, it’s the perfect combination that can only produce an excessive amount of clips - a footage generating machine if you will.

At least it should be...

Instead, the reality was session after session with no clips. Not just normal sessions either, long and intense ones, the kind where you should have stopped hours before, but instead you’re on last try number 72 and still going.

I’d often go home after these sessions feeling stressed, like I was letting Dmitry down. I started doubting myself, wondering if I was even good enough to try what I was trying.

And after hitting rock bottom, and nobbing my own board to punish myself, I had a realisation. 

I realised I’d been doing it all wrong and there was a much better way to go about stacking clips (or learn tricks in general)... The way that P-Rod stacks his clips.

P-Rod's clip stacking method

So in a video on the More Nine Club channel P-Rod broke down his ‘Me, Myself and I part’, and in it he said when he started filming this part his method to stack clips changed - he went from filming more at random to adding structure.

He said he’d make a list of tricks and work through them 1 by 1. He'd recreate the spot he wanted to film at in his park and spend the whole week practising the trick there. Then at the weekend he’d go out and try to film it.

If he didn’t get it, he’d repeat the whole process until he did, sometimes spending 4-5 weeks on a single trick.

Skating better makes you worse?

So over the years I’ve noticed that beginners practise a small number of tricks over and over, but then that often changes when skaters get more advanced. We stop committing so much time to locking in individual tricks, and instead just half work on like 30 at the same time.

Maybe we try each one a handful of times over the course of a month, which can give us the perception that we’ve practised a trick a lot, because spread out across the years we have. But in comparison to the 6932 tries someone learning to kickflip does over that same month, it's nothing.

I personally lived in this delusion where I felt like because I’d done a trick a few times at the skatepark over the last few months or year, I could go into the streets and film it. But it’s usually not that easy...

Not only are you usually trying harder tricks when you’re filming, skateparks are so much easier to skate than the streets. So if you don’t have a trick relatively consistent at the park, chances of you getting it in the streets are much lower.

This method made the filming missions longer, more stressful and ultimately led to self doubt because reality was, I wasn’t landing shit.

This isn’t what P-Rod’s doing though. He’s spending massive amounts of time across a short period to lock in the tricks he wants to film, just like the beginners do.

The unfortunate truth is to lock a trick in and increase the chances of getting it, you usually need to practise a shit load over a short period of time, and this is exactly what P-Rod does. He puts in the work behind the scenes to increase the chances of him getting the trick out in the streets.

Testing P-Rod's method

I wanted to switch heel this stair set for my part, so I thought I’d test P-Rod’s method and see if I could break the curse.

The 5 stair at MACBA is the perfect set to practice tricks on and as I live just 2 minutes away, I decided to go there multiple times across the next week to hone in on my switch heel skills.

Once I felt comfortable with the trick and confident I could put it down pretty easy, I felt ready to try and film it.

So we went out to the spot. I felt fresh, started warming up and ollied the set a few times. But then, out of no where, street cleaners came up and drenched the run up with water.

We waited for it to dry, and just as I was warming up again, cops came and kicked us out. The universe clearly didn’t want it this week.

So back to MACBA I went and did another week’s worth of switch heels. The following weekend we went back to the spot and boom! I got the clip in about 10 mins and rolled away on the first one I put down.

Since this trick, how I go about filming has changed. Instead of just going out and hoping for the best, essentially setting myself up for sessions twice as long and twice as stressful, I’m doing what P-Rod does. I’m going to take time to prepare and actually practise tricks.

Even though I know there’ll still be battles and days where we’ll go home empty handed I feel now like I’ve got a much more reliable system to get the clips I want and the part feels so much more reachable.

So have a think about how you’re currently learning tricks - Are you doing it like P-Rod or are you just winging it and tricking yourself into thinking you’re practising?

Check the following video/articles to go deeper into how to learn skate tricks faster, and how to overcome fear to stick the tricks you want.