Above: Steamer competes in the women's street skate finals at the 2008 X Games in Los Angeles
POPSUGAR: What sort of life lessons has skateboarding taught you?
"You spend a lot of time failing in skateboarding, and just a little bit of time succeeding. That little success is enough to get you through all the failures."
Steamer: Skateboarding's a great tool. It teaches you how to navigate the world, it teaches you how to navigate your surroundings, how to take a line and jump and have cat-like reflexes. But the most important thing is how to get back up after you fall — perseverance. You spend a lot of time failing in skateboarding, and just a little bit of time succeeding. That little success is enough to get you through all the failures.
Armanto: I feel like there's so many life lessons I've learned. One of the most basic ones is when you fall, you get back up. Skateboarding teaches you persistence because it's so rare that you learn a new trick the first try. Sometimes you get hurt learning a new trick and then it builds — it makes it that much more mentally hard to break through that fear and then get the gratification of figuring it out and learning a new trick.
On another note, skateboarding is one of the few things where you can have someone who can barely walk and they're learning how to skate. And then you'd have someone who could be in their sixties and learning the same trick. Those two people relate and talk to each other about learning a new trick together. It doesn't really matter your background or your age for skating. It teaches you how to get along with anyone, really.
Nishimura: I have learned not to give up because skateboarding has a lot of hurdles. It's hard to learn a trick sometimes. Once you hit that wall, a lot of beginners kind of stop there and then their progression ends there. But as long as you put your mind to it and don't give up, you can go to the next step and improve. I think that's the biggest life lesson I've ever learned.
Image Source: Getty / Spencer Weiner