A total of 4979 articles were identified with the search strategy. After 544 duplicates were removed and title screen exclusion criteria were applied, 257 abstracts remained for screening. An additional three studies were identified from the reference list of articles meeting full eligibility criteria. The final title and abstract screening left 30 relevant full-text articles (Fig. 1). Two separate authors reviewed the full-text articles (SD and MC), identifying 18 appropriate studies, utilising the exclusion criteria in Table 1. Following the updated search in May 2023, one additional article was included, resulting in 19 studies for inclusion in the final analysis (Table 4). Excluded full-text records and associated reasoning are included in supplementary Table 2 (a summary table of the excluded studies and associated reasoning for exclusion; see the electronic supplementary material). Articles assessing the physiological (n = 9), biomechanical (n = 8), and technical (n = 10) demands of skateboarding were found; however, tactical demands for competitive skateboarding were not analysed in any included research. Moreover, competitive skateboarders were used as participants (n = 3), but the remaining research did not specify participant competition history.

Flowchart of study selection process regarding skateboarding performance

Articles obtained were published from 2006 to 2023. Most research was published after 2016 (n = 11) [29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39], including nine studies published between 2020 and 2023 [39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47]. Journal articles were predominant [30,31,32,33,34,35, 38, 39, 41,42,43, 45, 47], with a single conference proceeding (n = 1) [29], letter to the editor (n = 1) [36], pilot study (n = 1) [37], research note (n = 1) [44], technical note (n = 1) [46], and thesis (n = 1) [40].

The search returned only cross-sectional study designs, including descriptive (n = 4), correlational study designs (n = 14), and a simulation study (n = 1) [31]. No longitudinal or training studies were identified.

The average number of participants was 17 ± 19 (n = 19 studies), ranging from a single-subject design (n = 2) [29, 31] to 71 participants (n = 1) [32]. The average age of participants ranged from 10.4 ± 2.7 years [32] to 33.3 ± 1.8 years [36]. Participant age was not reported in three studies [37, 46, 47]. Youth participants were included in two studies [32, 39], but only one specifically investigated youth skateboarders (< 18 years) [32]. Where included, the average body mass of adult participants was 65.5 kgs (n = 15) and average height ranged from 1.7 to 1.8 m [29,30,31,32,33, 35, 36, 39,40,41, 43, 44]. Approximately a third of the studies included female participants [30, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44], but only two studies had more than two female participants [32, 39] and only one analysed females separately or reported sex-related differences [39].

“Non-competitive” skateboarders [31,32,33, 35] and “competitive” skateboarders [30, 43, 47] were used as participants; however, it was not specified in 12 studies whether participants were competitors [29, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41,42, 44,45,46]. Preferred skateboarding discipline (street or park) was only reported in three studies (i.e. “street”) [29, 36, 43], with preferred competitive discipline only identified in one of the three studies using competing participants [43]. Ten studies adopted experience-based inclusion criteria [29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39,40,41,42,43,44].

All but four studies required participants to skateboard for the research [30, 33, 36, 42]; performing a variety of jumps [29, 34, 37, 38, 41,42,43, 47], flip tricks [29, 38], grinds [45], and basic locomotion [40, 44, 46]. Only one study investigated a non-flip trick, a grind (or slide) on a handrail [45] (Table 5). When specified, ollies and flip tricks were performed both statically [31, 34, 37] and rolling (while moving) [34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 45, 47]. Vorliček et al. [41] conducted the only study that investigated switch stance manoeuvres. Also, in one study, researchers attempted to use sound to simulate a rolling ollie while participants stood stationary on force plates [42]. Beyond tricks, locomotion-based movement (repeated kick-push), like regulating speed to set up a trick, was also specifically examined for shoe frictional and physiological demands [40,