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I never got any good ollies in high school. Watching the vids and reading the article I think I realized something I never understood. It looks like most of the skater's upward body acceleration is coming from using the the _left_ leg, with the right foot going along for the ride (and smacking the tail down). I always tried to get the major jumping lift from my right leg, while also somehow smacking the tail at the same time. I think I've always had it backwards!

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The highest ollies come from jumping with both legs, and using the ankle of the foot on the tail (right if you're regular-footed) to flick the tail down and pop the board.

It's basically a two-foot jump; the hard part is getting the board to stay with your feet.

Jumping on a bike is also basically a two-foot jump, where you pull the whole bike up after yourself using the handlebars. There is no special "pull up the front first and then push forward" as many people believe. The initial jerk is just to get the handle bars above the COG so that you can actually lift the bike from there and to put your pedals above the balance point of the rear wheel so you can push down hard for the actual jump. This might seem strange at first but when you think of it, apart from the legs what parts of the body have enough force to jump yourself that high, it's not like you can magically jump higher just because you are standing on some weird contraption.

On a bike you do get some help from preloading the tyres to give you a bit of bounce but that's minor compared to the rest of the movement.

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