The Secret to Teen’s Skateboarding Success

Nyjah Huston started skateboarding at age four, and competed in his first X Games at 11. Now, at 18, he’s still one of the youngest competitors in his field. But just this past month, he brought home a gold medal, wowing the crowd with an impressive display of technical tricks.

Nyjah says that in his many years of skating, after countless dangerous tricks, he’s never broken anything. (Although he has done something called ‘sacking the rail,’ which sounds pretty painful.) He attributes a lot of his solid safety record to his diet. “I was raised vegan for the first 15 years of my life,” he says, “and I never drank any soda…it eats away at your bones!”

Nyjah has also started a charity with his mom called Let It Flow, which raises money to build wells and sanitation facilities for communities who need better access to clean water.

Nyjah also gave us a clip from his new skateboarding documentary, The Motivation, in which he shows off some of his death-defying moves.

One of his most difficult challenges, however, was to teach Ali how to do the most basic of all skateboarding tricks: the Ollie. Check out the video to see if any hosts were injured in the making of this episode.