How To Apply Cruising Styles On A Longboard

Why?

The 40” or longer deck is so stable to stand on. Meanwhile, the flat deck without concave has moderate flex, which is ideal for riders to cruise easily because this flex provides you with comfortable rides and less stress on your joints. You should invest in large and soft wheels, having a great suspension feel.

The bigger your longboard is, the heavier its overall weight is. If you buy a longboard for boardwalk cruising, carrying it around may not be your purpose.

Most of the big pintail longboards have more lean than turn, so pressing on the rails doesn’t cause your board to turn a lot. Because the board doesn’t react too much and turn fast, you can set your mind at rest to relax and enjoy around when riding.

The main techniques of the boardwalk cruising are foot braking, mellow pushing, and leaning for wide turns.

Compared to a small board, it’s always easier to push a large pintail. What you have to do is to lean forward to balance your body onto your front leg while drop your back foot to the ground to kick.

Cruising requires you to ride at a low speed to brake naturally by dragging the sole of your foot on the ground.

In case your cruising pintail turns slowly, you should lean a bit before turning.

It’s also crucial to keep a proper posture: your spine braced and your rib cage high.

To perform this cruising, you need to have more speed and mileage with less effort to ride faster.

Long-distance cruising style is excellent when you ride on a drop platform or a double drop with good stand-over length.

This board is not only very push-friendly but also stable, so you can cruise comfortably and safely on the longboard without worrying about falling.

Unlike more turnable classic pintails, the dropped platform has more lean than turn.

In sum, it’s best to choose a cruising longboard with excellent stability, lean, and slow turning.

When it comes to wheels, you had better invest in large ones (about 70-75m) for speed and soft ones for the absorption of shocks from holes, and bumps.

What’s more, some high-quality bearings like Bone Reds will help you maximize distance after each push.

The right posture of the long-distance cruising is to stand up front, close to the nose of the extended deck. When putting most of your weight lying forward, you can control the balance and speed of the whole model better.

As I mentioned, power pushing plays a vital role in cruising a longboard in long distance.

To be successful, you have to balance well on the deck with your front foot at a slight angle or forward. Remember to keep your front knee bent to lower the gravity’s center. This way keeps your body stable while kicking the ground with your rear foot.

After practicing a few times, you will identify your optimal pushing range, how far your back foot should stay to contact with the ground, for example. Moreover, you can determine frequency, which is the time lapse between your successive pushes not to lose momentum.

Besides, you also feel how powerful you need to strike a balance and speed.

In some cases, you may be required to push uphill on a mild slope for better speed. This thing needs your more considerable effort as well as a higher level of fitness.

To quickly pass over people, vehicles, and obstacles on the city way, I recommend a short longboard (32” to 38”) and a tight turning radius. And a stiffer deck will provide you with more leverage in turns. That means that you can transmit road to road, cut street corners and ride along narrow sidewalks comfortably.

The primary feature of a short longboard is more lightweight, so it has excellent portability. Anytime you want to step out of the traffic, pick your board up and walk.

You can choose a product designed with a kicktail which helps you pass over the small obstacles, jump on and off of curbs. But, make sure that you have excellent riding skills.

Why?

This design lacks stability due to the short wheelbase.

Types of Longboards

When cruising longboard in the city, it is obligatory you have to readjust your posture, your balance, and your body weight regularly, so you need to have good riding skills.

But, to be safe, it’s better to slowly ride in crowded areas, use your hands to signal when cruising on a sidewalk. Keep in mind to stay in your “lane” and leave space for pedestrians.

As I said earlier, cruising and enjoying around your city requires you have good skills such as quick turning, continuous pushing, small jumps, especially instant foot braking.

For instance, you have to use your back foot to kick the board tail for over bumps and pebbles lightly.

To experience this style, you don’t have to use your foot to push since your powerful weight shifts can make successive turns and impulsing energy.

And you should choose a model which can make quick turns. But, it’s not essential to look for something works as fast as a city mini cruiser.

If you want to turn as a smooth and pendulum-like flow, you may be interested in a small and midsize board with loose RKP trucks for deeper turns.

The deck designed with concave keeps your feet in place while swaying back and forth.

Top mount board can meet these requirements. It has soft square wheels for grip to make deeper turns.

Carving cruising requires the good combination of full body rotation and weight shifting originating from your head to shoulders, hips, knees, ankles even toes, producing energy into the edge of your board while turning.

Identifying when you need to lower the center of your gravity and when you need to release as well contribute to turn successfully.