This incredible sport is almost similar to skateboarding. If you learn certain skill types that mean riding on a longboard with safety precautions, you can get smooth-riding experiences. In this awesome game, you need to use a longer board, a giant truck, and sometimes a bigger board to provide the sport of longboarding, including speed, freeride, slide and slalom.
If you have a little bit of time in your hand and have a longboard, this list of tips will help beginners as you get started with this funny and recreational activity.
To ride on a longboard and learn the process, you need to understand the process in three groups:
- Primary preparation and training
- Beginning riding skills: balancing, moving, pushing, stopping
- More skills: going fast, foot braking, carving, falling
First of all, You Start Riding on a Longboard:
Step-1: Select the Right Longboard to starn on
Longboard Selection is the most important thing to learn to board faster. It would be best to ride after learning this process if you had such a type of board. Take a very decent board like the distance between the wheel and trucks are more for safety purposes. It would be best if you decided why you use this board. Different size longboards have various advantages as well. Shortboards are more agile but very less stable, but longer boards are less durable than the other. The beginner must like the longer one.
Step-2: Wear Some Protective Gear
When you start practicing, you need to pad up first. Fall and get hurt will discourage you from learning Longboard. Generally, the first injuries the longboarders incur are to the elbows, wrists, and knees.
To protect yourself, you have to wear the following gears :
- A fitting helmet
- Elbow pads (optional)
- Skateboarding shoes
- Slide Gloves
- Knee pads that are optional
Step-3: Try to find your natural stance
When you are regular or goofy, if you skate with your right foot forward, it’s called goofy, and on the other side, while you are sliding, if your left foot is facing forward, it is called regular. To find out these types, you shove you from behind with no warning. What foot do you want to put on the state board in the one foot will lead with on the skateboard? If it’s wrong, try to switch to the other foot. You can also put your feet on the ground’s surface; which foot you use to get up must be the foot that will be leading you on the Longboard.
Step-4: Try to Practice in and Around for a Couple of Time
Try to move on the flat surface smoothly. The low you can keep your center of gravity, the better you will feel. It will be best if you felt comfortable then you will feel better about longboarding.
Step-5: Practice Balancing on a gentle Slope and do it on the Longboard
For more balance, use your arms and band your knees. Sometimes you may feel that your wheels are not rolling correctly, but the deck will lean to the sides as if you need to shift your body weight around. Try to practice rolling back and forth with your ankles and making your deck lean on each edge. Thus you will turn to ride. By shifting your body weight forward and upward, you need to lock your ankles and make the deck lean.
Step-6: Now Balance Yourself
If you think that you cannot control yourself, you need to focus on yourself using the peripheral vision that guides you. Thus you can control it naturally.
Basic Skills:
Step-1: Learn to Step on the Longboard
Now it’s time to place your Longboard on a sideway or parking to roll on. First of all, you need to step on your board correctly. Put one foot on the deck than the other. You have to decide which feet work best for you. Place your front foot near the front truck at a 45-degree angle. Then place the rear foot balancing with the other one. Then place the back foot about shoulder-width behind your front foot, which is 45º to 90º angle with the deck.
Step-2: Learn to Roll Down with Soft Preparation
Now you are entirely ready to start rolling. Before starting rolling, try to hold something; with smooth pavement, do the soft practice. When you do the first step like this, you can also do the second one; maintain the balance according to the wheels’ balance. Avoid the primary turning level; never try to push with the balls or the heels of your feet onto the sides of the deck. First of all, go straight with a comfortable motion.
Step-3: Push The Longboard
Find out a flat area where you can push the Longboard, and you need a flat surface. Please take off your rear foot on the deck and down it to the ground by folding your front knee. Then lower your hips and balance your front foot; after that, turn your front foot to make balance forward to the deck and low your rear foot to the ground. When your bare foot can touch the footway, then push back to roll your wheels. Do this process again to maintain the balance. When you can speed up, take your rear foot back off the ground and onto the deck and return to the previous space, both feet to a 45º angle. No, I think you know how to ride on the board with speed.
Step-4: Learn How to Stop
Now you know how to push and how to roll your wheels. And in this stage, I will tell you how to stop the board. The most effective way for the beginner is to jump off from your Longboard and then run it out. At that time, the speed is not that high. But the most effective way is to step with your rear on the ground in front of your Longboard. Thus your front foot will push the board backward before hitting the ground, And this is how you can stop and slow down your board. Or you can roll on the rough surface or the grass area, and then you can slow down your speed. But make sure there will be no rock at all. Then the board will fly again, and you may get hurt.
Step-5: Learn how to Do Simple Turning
When you learn to static and stop using the Longboard, all these experiences will help make your wheels turn by pressing on the rails with your toes and heels. On the flat ground, give a slight kick push that you did it before. When you are rolling, press with your toes onto the deck’s front edge, and then make your wheels turn. If you are regular, go to the right and if you are goofy, then go to the left side. When you press with your toes, you need to shift your body slightly toward the turn by giving more weight to the rail. Don’t move hardly, then, because your Longboard doesn’t turn too quickly. Just provide the right pressure on your toe. Then shift to your weight slowly onto your toes onto the heels; then turn the board in the opposite directions. Again practice this control turning process accordingly.
Learn the Intermediate Riding Skill:
Step-1: Try to Go Faster on your Longboard
Now you are ready to go your Longboard faster than before. Try to find out a small hill and there naturally try to ride down and make little to and heelside turns while you come down. Try this process in a more exhaustive and narrow area and practice to shift your weight to learn shifting your weight between both of your feet to learn which foot works better for you. If you gather more experience than, put more weight on your front foot and doing more turnings. ON the flat ground and small hill area, practice more with other activities.
Step-2: How to Foot Break on Your Longboard?
This step is a challenge to learn the foot break. When you see an experienced person do this technique, it looks easy for you, But it will take lots of practice then you can. It would be best if you balanced your front foot for the kick pushing while lowering your opposite foot to the ground to create friction and then slow down. Foot braking techniques are like kick pushing. If your foot is near to the ground, try to get low on your Longboard and keep your knees close to the stability. You can do these techniques at a moderate speed, but it’s hazardous while increasing your speed.
Step-3: Control Your Speed Through Craving
As a beginner, you need to do craving for controlling the speed. Find out a slightly slippery slope with enough space, and you have to turn at a 180-degree angle with your board without any traffic. Now get onto your board and start heading slightly downhill. Before increasing the speed, you have to turn slowly to the uphill and ride perpendicular motion to the slope. When you are at the last of the road, turn quickly across to the opposite direction. This process is known as curving; it will make you do downward movement and turn soon. For doing curving, you need enough practice.
Step-4: How to Fall
Another important thing for the beginner is how to fall on the Longboard. When you fall, you have to catch yourself on the ground and in this way you can avoid lots of accidents like- a broken arm. However, you have to learn how to fall entirely, indeed. You have to tuck your arms across your upper body and land on your forearm, and finally roll on sideways on your shoulder. Try this process over the grass on the mattress before riding on the Longboard. And don’t forget to use the kneepads to save you.
Final Words :
I am here to show you the actual steps which will make the beginners riding the Longboard effectively. Longboard needs enough practice, and by following the above steps one day, you will be the master in this sector.