Recent years have seen a major drift in the number of people who yearn to learn how to ride a longboard. The gaining popularity of the sport is increasing on a massive scale. It is therefore very important for these newbie learners to know each and everything about or even relating to longboarding. People learning to ride a longboard must always start form the basics and then subsequently do to the complex or advanced stage.
Knowing the Basics About Longboarding
- The very basic of longboarding is to know about the components or parts that constitute a longboard. Generally people who have some basic knowledge about skateboarding will obviously tend to know about the components of a longboard. The longboard consists of a deck, trucks, the wheels, the bearings and the bushings. The rest is the hardware, the bearing spacers and the riser pads that allow one to alter or change the height of the board accordingly.
- Knowing about all these components helps a person ride better. The deck is the main foot piece of the longboard which are available in various shapes, sizes, colours and materials. Longboards have different categories such as drop down board (helps in learning to ride a long board), top mount board, wheel cut-outs, double kick, pintail, single kick and lots more. Knowing about all these boards will help a person make effective decision while selecting a board for him or herself.
All About the Discipline and Style
- After gaining adequate knowledge about the components and the types of longboards then next step for a learner is to get well versed with all the disciplines or styles required in longboarding. Different methods of riding gave birth to various disciplines in longboarding, some of which are cruising, pushing, dancing, free ride, and downhill.
- As a beginner one always starts with cruising and pushing be it skating or longboarding. All that it involves is pushing the board with one leg and cruising around.
- Whereas in carving one moves back and forth while skating. Carving requires a very special board with extra trucks and soft grippy wheels which makes it easy to make hard curves and prevent slipping.
- Free style on the other hand is all about technicality, it somewhat relates to the street skating which involves showing some very difficult stunts and tricks. A free style board is small in size and should have at least one kicktail.
- Dancing is a very complex form of longboarding and is also popularly known as boardwalking. It is a very fancy form of riding and in some areas relates to cruising. There are thousands of dancing forms that one can perform on the board that includes tricks ranging from very easy to very difficult ones.
- And as the name suggests free ride is going or riding freely down the hill with added style. This is very technical at the same time because coming down the hill on a board with wheels is not easy provided that there are no breaks in a longboard.
- Designed especially for the riding junkies downhill is a form of style that is all about speed. While performing downhill it is very important that a person wears all the safety gears.
