Hi - for background, I'm a 37 year old dude who skated a lot in my teens until early 20s, took about 10 years off while I worked in construction, shifted careers and found myself getting back into skating casually for 4-5 years, and in the last couple years skating consistently. I made a goal to learn 360 flips while my body can still take the abuse required to get them. Landed one fairly early on, then decided I wanted to get them consistent and get a good one on film. This took me almost 2 years - I took so many slams and injuries along the way, plus I live in Canada so winters took time off. The discussion on this thread definitely helped a lot - most the main helpful points have been reiterated several times but I have a few things I figured I'd add. Just last week I finally got a clean one on film (will post link below), so this is all still very fresh in my mind.
-Firstly, it's worth mentioning that one might want to play around with the tightness of their trucks. I am embarrassed to admit I tend to ride rather tight trucks (embarrassed because in my opinion it requires more skill to harness loose trucks), have been slowly loosening them over the past couple years. The day that I recently got the clean land, I was getting super close but not quite sticking it. Went over to my tool, loosened the back truck a half turn, and then cranked one out right after. My theory is that since my trucks were too tight, I was struggling to get the board to turn that 90 degrees you want it to turn before it pops off the ground. There's a real fine line of balance you need to achieve to get that spring and scoop just right off the back foot, and adjusting the trucks definitely helped me.
-As others have noted, you have to lean back more than one might expect. For me, in order to land this trick, I have to lean back to the point that it feels extremely awkward and unnatural. When reviewing my footage of attempts, I was frustrated to see that there were tons of times where the board popped nicely, spun around perfectly, and my front foot caught it - but my back foot just hung out and didn't commit. In hindsight, the reason that happened was because I FELT like I was leaning so far back that the board was just going to fling out in front of me so my body didn't bother trying to commit to the trick. The times I was committing were when I "felt" straight up and down, but in fact was leaning too far forward (often craning my head and neck forward), and was often landing but at goofy angles that often led to the board shooting out and smashing me into the ground extremely violently. I messed up my back, ankles, and wrists many times due to this. The only way this trick works for me is if I'm leaning almost comically far backwards, which feels very uncomfortable. Maybe I just have weak ankles or something that aren't comfortable with the level of pressure that needs to be built in that back ankle for the pop and scoop. So really pay attention to the position of your head, even if you think you're straight up and down, I've noticed many people will crane their head forward and this robs of you of the ability to generate the proper momentum.
-The way I was able to figure out how to control my posture and proper level of leaning back was to closely watch where my hands end up when I crouch down. I also have a tendency for my front shoulder to be too open for this trick. so I make sure my front hand is hovering directly over the middle of the board (side to side-wise), roughly around the bolts (front to back-wise). One major game changer for me was to also monitor my back hand - for me, it needs to be hugging my back knee, almost elbow nested on top of knee. The hand ends up above my back foot, and I try to make sure my back hand is slightly closer to the earth than my front hand (this will help ensure my weight is more to the back when popping, which allows me to jump straight up rather than up and forward, and also ensure more weight on that back foot during the split second of pop/scoop).
-Since I'm a hardheaded individual who often tries to do things more through brute strength than finesse, I also tend to try to use my leg muscle power to aggressively jam the tail into a scoop. Watching people who are good at this trick though, they don't seem to put such an insane amount of effort into the scoop like that. And when you do that, it makes it difficult to even fathom jumping back on the board after, because your foot ends up flying back super quick and aggressively and it's difficult to control it enough to bring it up to your chest and back to the board. One of the secrets of this tricks seems to be developing the timing of shifting weight right at the pop, making sure that there is so much tension and pressure on that back foot that when you jump, the release of your body from the board is enough in and of itself to spring the board into a 360 flip motion. Of course you have to make a conscious effort to do the scoop, but I imagine like me, other people are focusing too much on SLAMMING that scoop and not enough on the subtleties of weight distribution at the exact moment of the pop and jump. Anyway, the scoop is more about pressure than power or force.
Seems to me that unless you possess natural talent (which I certainly do not, every trick seems to take me 10x longer to learn than people who are actually good at skateboarding), you really just have to put in the time to consistently train your muscles to get used to this trick. There's a very specific way your back ankle needs to articulate to facilitate the scoop, and in that moment there is a lot of pressure on it too.
In October of last year, I was sooo close to landing this but couldn't get it, and I spazzed out one day at the park and just threw my board around then gave it away to some kid. I was ready to give up on my dreams of landing a tre flip. But it kept bugging me, I couldn't let it go. Bought a new setup this spring (actually bought like 4 boards to try different shapes) and made sacrifices in other areas of my life to make sure I could get this. Just trying to provide some motivation for anyone else who may be at a similar stage to me. This was definitely a "bucket list" item for me and even if I don't end up getting them consistent, at least I got one nice one on film. It's not perfect (I caught with both feet at once instead of front foot, my balance is a bit off on landing) but my feet are close to bolts and I rode away smooth.
Check out my older videos too to see my progression. Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone even a tiny amount!