Apparently, it takes nearly a week straight of rain to remind me of an essential way to play around with a skateboard: boarding on carpet with no trucks or wheels, deck only.
As I got into messing around on my last deck, one with a split apart nose and razor sharp tail, the movie “Airborne” popped into my head. In it, a California surfer in Cincinnati, Ohio, hops onto his surfboard that he has propped up on a table with a couple of pillows underneath it.
The kid bends down to the board, carves frontside, carves backside, all while verbalizing his fantasy of riding a tubular wave back home. While I didn’t narrate my little practice like a baseball announcer, I did imagine myself on a full setup at my local park.
I used to do this, too. In our basement growing up, there used to be plenty of shove its, front and backside, where I worked on the angles of rotation and getting the tail to end precisely where the nose had been. I started the same today with the bonus of realizing more clearly the importance of pushing with the front foot once the board is popped. Somehow I’d never seen myself flick, flip and shove the board as I did today.
I hope this means I can land fancier tricks more efficiently and, more importantly, with more awareness. If I can transfer that sense of manipulating the whole board with just my front foot and my legs rising off the ground to an in-motion skateboard, I’ll have gotten to a level of skating I’ve never been.
Still, the work I did today may not make a huge difference once I’m back on four wheels. Maybe the experience won’t translate, but I saw something today. I saw how changing motion and position makes all the difference in landing tricks.
And that significant advance from a lame little session with half a setup in the basement (no plywood required).
If you like what you’re reading, sign up for email notifications of new blog posts!
Fill out the form to send me an email!
Read More Here:
Average Skater 