Some of your favorite skaters believe in rituals and superstitions before they try a trick. Some top psychologist think the obsessive nature it takes to become a professional athlete are signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The disorder is what keeps them training for insane amounts of hours. This defiantly falls in line with skateboarding. It takes a certain kind of crazy to keep inflicting pain on yourself in the name of progress. You’ve got to put in countless hours of falling on your face to become a pro skateboarder. Call it ritual or superstition but the goal is do the impossible and trick gravity with a thought process revolving around magic!
At it’s core skating is a combo of muscle memory and confidence. If the rituals help the confidence who cares right?! Most of the time yes, but a few doctors think it can get out of hand pretty fast. Athletes in other spots have been known to put too much value on these little tricks and not on their own skill set. So much so that it’s lead to compulsive behavior that registers on the spectrum of mental illness! So be carful with that voodoo you do!
A 90’s baseball legend named Larry Walker, had a thing with the number 3. He wore the number 33 for his entire career, made sure the phone company gave him a number with as many threes as he could get, and he would only wake up at 33 past the hour. He even got married on November 3rd at 3:33pm!
Without knowing it, Our friend Matt Berger subscribes to the Larry Walker program of crazy. It’s unclear weather it’s OCD or ritual but he has a thing for tapping and spinning his board before he tries a trick. Check out this interview and decide for yourself if it’s mental illness, strategy for landing tricks or maybe a combo of both.
Interview: By David Broach