Rodney Mullen
![Rodney Mullen](/assets/img/authors/rodney-mullen.jpg)
Rodney Mullen
John Rodney Mullenis an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, inventor, and public speaker who practices freestyle and street skateboarding. Mullen is credited with inventing numerous skateboarding tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. Mullen has appeared in over 20 skateboarding videos and has co-authored an autobiography, entitled The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself, with writer Sean Mortimer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSkateboarder
Date of Birth17 August 1966
CityGainesville, FL
CountryUnited States of America
It wasn't until '79 I won my first amateur championship, and then, by '81, I was 14, and I won my first world championship, which was amazing to me, and in a very real sense, that was the first real victory I had.
The biggest obstacle to creativity is breaking through the barrier of disbelief.
Don't let anything poison your individuality. Break away & look in, not outward.
Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense.
Who are you? What is your distinct contribution? That is so valuable whether it gets you anything or not. Trophies? Doesn't matter. If you know you did it, that's what keeps you going, you know? Success is illusive.
You build something but you cant live in the house because you sit around guarding it.
Vert skating was the kind of skating that was done in pools, where you could get airborne and be weightless. The other style, which is what I did, was called free style, which was tricks you could do on flat ground.