Longboarding

[Alan]

I've had a longboard for a year or so now. I don't go out on it as often as I should though, so I'm still not very good! I was actually thinking of dusting it off this weekend and taking it for a spin, but it's now decided to pee it down with rain after several weeks of great weather - typical

My board is nowhere near as swanky as your collection, it's just a low-budget beginner's pintail. I'd like a drop-through or a drop-deck board at some point, as I only have little legs and it would take a lot of effort out of the pushing!

A bit of a longshot... I don't suppose you can give me any tips on pumping a longboard? I've tried to follow various explanations I've read online but without success!

[Leanne]

Yay, another longboarder, hi Alan!

For pumping, it's really down to your setup. The first thing that I would do though for any pumping setup would be set the front truck nice and loose, and tighten the rear truck so there's very little turn in it. That should get you snapping into your carves nice and quickly. If that's not enough, another cheap fix you could try is wedged risers, they'll have a very noticeable effect on how turny your trucks are.

As for technique, try twisting your hips a bit so they're facing forwards as much as is comfortable, keep your knees slightly bent, try not to tense up too much, and really push it into the carves.

And yeah, I know how you feel regarding the weather, it stymied my plans today as well.....grrrr!

Good luck with the pumping!

[skinny-k]

Excited to find a longboarding thread doesn't close to describing it!!
Even though this post is really old I thought I'd inject some life into it again instead of opening a new thread about longboarding. Is that okay? Hopefully the OP and Alan are still on TZ and maybe there are some other skaters on here...
I'm moving down to Brighton soon and it would be so good to meet some transy skaters down there to do crazy skating things with...

ps. no introduction as a longboarder would go down without biggin' up your quiver, so here goes...

For Downhill:
LY Switchblade 40, cRonins, Rad Advantage 80a, S9 abec 7's
Cruiser:
Loaded Vanguard Flex3 (cos I'm Skinny-k), Paris V2/Bear Grizzlies 840's, Gumballs 78a, UBC's

pss. please let there be some skaters on here

Love,
k x