Longboard Riding / Pumping
Shortly after purchasing the Carver Greenroom with CX trucks and experiencing it first hand, I was instantly hooked to the entire feel of gliding on smooth concrete according to the flow of one's body motions. The subtle pushes from the feet and the resulting feedback from the board during the ride is incredible to sense and incremental improvements in control are wonderful experiences to be sure.
Riding a longboard successfully is in essence an observable integration between the real world and the forces it manifests during a ride, represented in the brain as electrical signals that are used to compute all the balancing and movement necessary to stay upright. It is truly a miraculous thing when you think about it all happening in real time.
So it did not take long before I was looking at all the other disciplines within the longboarding scene and began acquiring examples of the boards necessary to achieve my goals in mastering the essentials of each.
The most important benefit of starting with surfskating for me personally was that it provided the important progression needed to perform deep and powerful carves which could increase speed quite explosively when needed. I can for example use these techniques on my Loaded x Pantheon Trip collab to ride endlessly as if on a snowboard (more like a cloud for me personally) given a flattish surface as long as there is no strong headwind.
The techniques of surfskating that start from an ankle wiggle progressing to knee and hip wobble, to a body compression and rotation, and beyond are hard to relay completely. For me at least, many of these moves were acquired by watching videos of others doing them. The brain has a special class of neurons (brain cells) that are called 'mirror neurons' and these are activated in the very regions that would perform an action in the real world, without activating the muscles that would do it for real.
So think for example of watching someone pouring tea from a pot into a glass. There are people who when observing this, who will have firing in the very same areas of their brain that normally activate to do the same action that they are watching, but without their arm moving and doing it. The purpose or utility of these mirror neurons are not entirely proven by science, but I am certain that the ability of some people to progress quicker can be linked to their brain's ability to mirror the action being observed. Surely this is an essential survival enhancing skill for the creatures that have this system in-built.
Of course the slight nuances, the change of weight distribution between feet and lean of body to achieve moves and so on, need a degree of trial and error during riding also, as observation does not always reveal these hidden elements which must necessarily be learned by experience or good tuition.
Surfskating is (and certainly has been for me) I think, the ideal starting point for learning how to pump or carve on any other longboard. Once the pumping technique is acquired properly it can be used (in my experience again, at least), on any other board whether it was designed for it or not, as long as it is setup (loose trucks, appropriate bushings) for it.
There are four longboards in particular up to this point that have given me the most satisfaction in achieving progression in this way and they are all from the Loaded brand..
Left to right...
- 'Tessy' - Loaded Basalt Tesseract, Paris V3.50 Medium knuckle bushings and 86A Orangatang Stimulus
- 'Platty' - Loaded Tarab II Flex 2, Paris V3.50 Soft knuckle bushings and 86A Orangatang Fat Free
- 'Fishy' - Loaded Poke, Carver CX trucks with stock bushings, 76A Orangatang Love Handles
- Loaded x Pantheon Trip collaboration (2022), Soft knuckle bushings otherwise all stock 80A Orangatang Caguama
I plan to write and continue to update my experiences of these boards and how they evolve as they have all had a few important but limited number of other options tried on them. These particular formulations are what I am riding regularly at the time of publication of this introduction to these key four boards in my progression up to this point.
We shall start with the Loaded Poke with Carver CX, trucks which even from these four would be my go-to board atm. More to come on this soon.