What is Longboarding? Longboarding is considered to be an art, a hobby or a sport wherein individual is to ride a long skateboard with length of 24 to 80 inches. The term is also known to root from surfing that’s why longboards look the same as the surf boards. Longboarding is also known as sidewalk surfing which is considered as combination of skateboarding and surfing that originated around 1959 in Hawaii once the commercial skateboards had appeared. The revival of longboarding started early in 1990 once Tony Hawk together with other celebrities fond of boarding have popularized skateboarding and tricks. And because of snowboarding longboarding also arises. So from that day on, longboarding and skateboarding continue to reach popularity to many people.
Longboarding is perfect for those people who admired comfortable and more soulful ride. And longboarders are the term referred to those people practicing the said activity and the one being utilized is called as longboards. And there can be many types of longboards.
What is Longboarding?
What-is-Longboarding
Longboards is known as longer variant of the skateboard and the size of the wheel makes it faster than skateboard. Longboards are utilized for downhill racing, cruising, and slalom racing, transporting and sliding. It is also referred to have longer as well as wider sometimes in its shape and being utilized for longboarding. The shape of longboards can be into different shapes depending on the riding types being intended. Longboards as well are considered to have greater weight and also bulk that makes them less appropriate to some skateboarding tricks but still contributes to the so called fluid motion through providing greater momentum. Most of the time, longboarding is compared to surfing concretely. Longboards allow bigger turns or fast and short carves making it similar to surfboard. And there are still numbers of types of longboards that can be options once into longboarding.
What are the Types of Longboards?
Since there are many types of longboards it would be of great importance if you are to choose the best one that suite for you. Choosing the types of longboards of your choice could start from choosing from its construction type. And here are some of the materials used on longboards:
- Maple – considered as the most common material used on longboards. It is known to be reliable and durable. This construction material offers solid and thick set up that will surely last for longer period of time.
- Bamboo – longboards made of bamboo are now becoming more popular. It offers more flexibility compared to maple. Bamboo is considered as perfect for cruising and carving the streets for it is lightweight and contains lots of flex. Bamboo made longboards is known to be thinner compared to maple and is known to be perfect for transportation.
- Carbon Fiber – known to be the most expensive material being used for longboards. It has foam core in order to lighten up the weight perfect in helping riders to push off the start line quicker and also move effortlessly around every slide and turn. More often, experienced riders are considered to be the one using carbon fiber longboards.
Those are some of the materials used in order to create different types of longboards. And two of the most common types of longboards are the Cruiser Longboards and the Downhill Longboards. Cruisers are considered to be used by almost majority of people especially those treats longboards as means of transportation around the area or town. And because of Cruisers longboards, cruising and carving is considered to be very popular today. Cruisers longboards can make carving the streets a lot easier for it provides riders with greater distribution of weight on the longboard deck. The use of Cruisers is known to be form of riding that focuses on getting from one point to another compared to focusing on speed.
On the other hand, Downhill Longboards are perfect for those who admire downhill racing but not actually advisable for those beginners. If you are to use downhill longboards there will be an assurance of intense high speeds once longboarding. It is considered as flat ones and having long wheel bases that provides greater stability. Once you are selecting downhill board it is of great importance if you are to choose a deck that stays stable at high speeds and also doesn’t offer lots of flex. And another reminder, it is important to wear protective gears once doing downhill racing such as helmet and pads.
And because of increasing popularity of longboarding, there are still many types of longboards offered for those who want to experience doing longboarding.
