Skateboarding
Skateboarding
The five avatars of skateboarding
Street, vert, downhill slide, freestyle, longboard are the five disciplines carved out of skateboard.
The old, the new, the most popular or the one for the pro; these 5 avatars of skateboarding are bound to hone your skills in some way or the other:
Street skating
The most popular form of skateboarding at this moment is street skateboarding. It has evolved since new tricks were invented and skaters realized that you don’t need a ramp to do something gnarly on a skateboard. Once ollies were invented, the natural progression led to flip tricks and grinds. You would essentially find a spot which wasn’t really built for skateboarding and try to creatively skate obstacles such as stairs, rails, ledges and almost anything that has the possibility of being skated.
Vert skating
Surfers in California discovered that using a skateboard in a swimming pool was very similar to the feeling of surfing a wave. They soon started making ramps to mimic the shape of the pools which over the years slowly evolved into what we now call a vert ramp. There is no standard size but a vert ramp usually has two large quarter pipes which will have a foot or more of vertical ground at the top. Vert skating involves doing grinds and lip tricks on the coping of the ramp and using the speed generated by the ramp to make airs.
Vert Skating: performing acrobatics on wheels
© The Holy Stoked Collective
Freestyle skating
This is probably the oldest form of competitive skateboarding. In 1960, skaters were trying to come up with new stunts that can be done on a skateboard. Most of the original tricks involved wheelies, handstands and spins. In the 1970s, skaters like Rodney Mullen and Russ Howell majorly influenced freestyle skating and took it to the next level by making new tricks. Fluidity and motion to music plays a large role in freestyle skating. In recent years freestyle skateboarding has made a comeback with skaters like Killian Martin showing off their technical flat ground skills required for this form of skateboarding.
Never too 'board'!
© Michael Tærsbøl Jepsen / Red Bull Content Pool
Downhill slide
Sliding downhill is one of the effects of longboarding. When longboarders have to make tight turns or slow down while going at high speeds, they powerslide the board which always looks stylish. The nature of skateboarding is to push the limits of everything and the powerslides soon became an art form of their own. Downhill slide is now a skateboarding discipline which involves making long powerslides at high speeds. The powerslides have tweaks like dragging hands, knees, elbows and maybe even the head.
Longboarding
There are a bunch of possibilities with a longboard. For one, it is built for speed. Even while cruising at low speeds you can do a bunch of tricks like body varials, shuvs, old school flips and a load of others. It is the transportation choice of many skateboarders because of its ability to keep rolling fast on tarmac. Longboards were originally shaped like surfboards but have now evolved onto a square shape with the wheels jutting out of the board for maximum turning capabilities without wheelbites.
This article is courtesy The Outdoor Journal.
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