He Took Up Skateboarding at 70. At 88, He Went Viral.

Most of what this site writes about is coming back to skateboarding — picking a board back up after a gap of years or decades. Juanjo Urbizu’s story is a slightly different, and in some ways more useful, version of the same message: he never skated as a kid at all.

Urbizu took up skateboarding at 70, in retirement, partly because it was cheaper than the snow sports he’d loved for years. At 88 he was still rolling around a concrete skatepark in Bilbao, in northern Spain, and in 2025 clips of him skating went viral well beyond the skateboarding world — the kind of story that reaches people who’ve never thought about a skatepark in their life.

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re “too old to start,” Urbizu isn’t a novelty account. He’s a genuinely useful case study in what starting from zero, decades later than usual, actually looks like when it’s done carefully.

He didn’t skip the boring part

One detail matters more than the viral clips: Urbizu has a ritual before every session. He clears the bowl he skates of loose pebbles and debris before he rides it. Not occasionally — every time.

That’s not a quirky habit, it’s exactly the kind of unglamorous groundwork that separates someone who skates for years from someone who has one bad session and quits. A wheel catching a stray pebble mid-turn is one of the most common causes of an unpredictable fall, and it’s also one of the easiest to prevent. If you’re getting back into skating, borrowing this habit costs you thirty seconds and removes a genuinely avoidable risk before it happens.

His own words on falling

Asked for advice for people considering skating later in life, Urbizu has been direct about the two things that matter most: go little by little, and wear full protection. He’s said plainly that falls on a skateboard are worse than the falls he used to take snowboarding — not a small comparison from someone who spent a lifetime on snow.

That’s worth taking seriously precisely because it isn’t the marketing version of this story. Nothing about “start slow and protect yourself” is exciting to post, which is exactly why it’s the part that gets left out of the viral clips and is the part you actually need. If you haven’t read our guide to falling safely after 40, start there before your first session — it’s the unglamorous groundwork equivalent of clearing the pebbles out of the bowl.

“Little by little” is a training plan, not a slogan

It’s tempting to hear “go little by little” and nod along without changing anything about how you actually approach your first sessions. Treated as an actual plan, it means:

• Short sessions, especially at the start. Twenty focused minutes of pushing and stopping beats ninety minutes where the last hour is fatigue-driven and unsafe. Our guide to short sessions for adult learners covers why this isn’t a compromise — it’s the more effective way to build the skill in the first place.
• Full protective gear before you need it, not after a close call. Helmet, wrist guards, knee pads — every session, from session one. Our safety gear guide covers what actually matters versus what’s optional.
• A structured sequence rather than winging it. Something like our 8-week return plan gives you the “little by little” scaffolding Urbizu is describing, instead of leaving you to guess how much is too much in week one.

None of this is about becoming cautious to the point of never progressing. It’s about the same math that’s let an 88-year-old still be skating eighteen years after he started: a person who paces themselves and protects themselves gets to keep doing the thing, session after session, year after year. A person who goes all-in in week one and gets hurt often doesn’t get a second chance to decide whether they like it.

The part that actually matters

The viral hook of Urbizu’s story is his age. The useful part is what he did with it: he picked something new up in retirement, took it seriously enough to build a routine around doing it safely, and kept going for the better part of two decades because he never gave his body a reason to make the decision for him.

You don’t need to be 70 for that lesson to apply, and you don’t need millions of views to prove it worked. You need a cleared line, the right gear, and a plan that respects “little by little” as the actual method, not just a nice thing to say before doing the opposite.