What is Wizard Skating?

Leon Basin is the founder of the style and of the Wizard Skating brand — but he didn't get there alone. From the earliest years, Colin and Stuart Brattey skated with him and were essential to the development. Between the three of them, they shaped the vocabulary, the technique and the gear design that made this way of skating possible.

That vision crystallized into the Wizard Skating brand, founded in 2014, which brought the ideas to the market with much shorter frames (rockered), smaller wheels, and a radical proposal: prioritize dynamic balance over raw speed. Instead of going for big tricks or aggressive urban lines, wizard skating seeks a conversation with the ground — pivots, transitions, circular motions and shapes that feel closer to dance than to conventional skating.

The style originated and was first developed in Canada, where Leon Basin laid the foundations. From there it spread worldwide: it grew strongly in Madrid, Barcelona and the United States, and today there are active communities in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, China and many other countries. Arco Skating is one of the projects documenting and teaching the style in Spanish.

Before talking about setups and moves, it's worth pausing on a question: what is a style? A style is the way of skating that emerges when a group of friends decides to explore beyond what already exists. Wizard Skating is exactly that. A vision pushed by Leon and a close circle — Colin and Stuart among the first — that didn't just expand movement, but also the technology that made moving that way possible: frames, liners, hardware, wheels. A constant search to expand the capabilities of body and skate together.

Three elements define it today: the setup, the stance and the repertoire. A wizard setup uses rockered frames in many configurations — from 4×80 to 4×100 and asymmetric hybrids like 100-80-80-80-100 — with a millimeter rocker that allows tight pivots and turns. The stance is usually low, with feet close together or crossed, and movements prioritize continuity over power.

The repertoire is built around moves like the fakie gazelle, the S move, the toe press spin, and transitions that mix forward and backward fluidly. But those names are just the current inventory — the style keeps growing, and each wizard skater develops their own vocabulary. Creativity matters as much as technique.

Compared to freeskate, wizard gives up speed and range to gain expressiveness and control in small spaces. Versus aggressive skating, it drops the classic obstacle grinds — though it shares the urban language — and focuses on what can be done on the ground. And compared to traditional artistic skating, wizard keeps the informal, street feel: it's practiced in parks, plazas and skateparks, not on judged rinks.

There's an important point that often gets misread: although wizard is trained on flat land, it isn't a style limited to flat. As Leon himself says, flat is your practice rail — your rehearsal track. The style truly comes alive when it's brought into urban space. Watch almost any wizard video and you'll find 3D elements at play: walls, ledges, stairs, ramps. It's not about isolated shapes; it's about reading infrastructure and moving with it.

That's why many describe it as a bridge: between skating and dance, yes, but also between flat and urban skating. Music, the whole body and the space matter as much as the feet.

You don't need wizard frames to start learning the style. Any freeskate setup works for the first months: learning to skate backwards, mastering one-foot balance and loosening up the body is what matters most. Once you decide the style is for you, it pays to migrate to a real wizard setup — shorter frames, smaller wheels, better rocker — because it unlocks movements that are impossible with longer frames.

If you don't know how to skate yet, start with the basics: forward skating, braking, falling. Then introduce backward skating, which is the foundation almost the entire wizard vocabulary is built on.