surf, skate and... surfskate
The Skate and the surf are two sports that go hand in hand. However, one is born from the other. The skateboarding has its origin in the development of surfing.
The story of the birth of skateboarding begins when a group of surfers decided, in the mid-50s, to place some planks on four wheels to be able to “surf” on the street those days when there were no waves and the sea was calm. calm.
In the beginning, as is evident the skateboard models were big, they had a fairly high weight and the wheels were made of metal and clay. Like everything, as the years went by, the materials evolved and urethane wheels were incorporated and much more dynamic designs were devised, bringing lightness to the skates.
As skateboarding became more popular, especially in the United States, where national championships began to be held, the sport began to be treated as an extreme sport and did not have a very good reputation among those who did not practice it . Skateboarding began to adhere to cultural, political, musical currents... And it was not well received by everyone. Over time, as with most trends that end up settling down and normalizing, skateboarding reconnected to the concept of "cool" and "alternative", seen from a good perspective.
Today there are numerous ways to use these seemingly simple tables. You can surf skate, Down Hill,
Although skateboarding is largely influenced by surfing, surfing has also been inspired by skateboarding at times. In the 1970s, skaters began to jump, to fly over the ground, and surfers then began to test aerials over the water. These steps were born on the mainland and surfers like Christian Fletcher or Kelly Slater were the pioneers in completing this technique.
Skateboarding is also used as training to improve technique in the water. This gives the surfer muscle memory when he is on top of the board, helps to improve his balance and allows him to practice the maneuvers that are going to be done in the water infinite times on the skatepark floor.
Today there is an industry dedicated to designing skates that recreate the movements that are made in the practice of surfing. The best known is the Carver model, which was born in 1995 in California when two surfers decided to create a board that would eventually be called a “surf skate”.
The surfskate has been the sport that has combined the practice of surfing and skateboarding separately. The vast majority of the movements that are carried out in surf skateboarding are a decal of those that are practiced in the water. To be able to perform them on dry land, the same muscles and brain sectors are activated as in surfing, so when you go to the sea, the movements are carried out almost involuntarily.
The surfskate helps to chain movements in a fluid way, which is of vital importance when you are surfing. Dynamism in movements is essential in both sports, but it is much more difficult to achieve in the water, since there are many more factors to pay attention to than on dry land. So, what better than to practice this Flow first in a skatepark before putting it into real practice?
Whoever practices surfskate a lot is like practicing a lot of surfing. When surfing, you don't spend enough time on the board for your style to improve quickly, so surfskating is the best way to increase efficiency, and especially to speed it up.
Knowing when to change the direction of the body in search of the perfect position in relation to the wave is something very difficult to do, it is what all surfers seek to achieve without hardly flinching. The surfskate also helps in this regard and can speed up the learning process. Although water is a practically uncontrollable entity, knowing how to descend a slope or a ramp depending on its inclination is, to say the least, beneficial.
Although surf skating and skateboarding may look similar at first glance, the truth is that they have many things that differentiate them.
The skateboard has small and rigid wheels, while those of the surfskate are usually larger and softer; On the other hand, the size of the skateboard wheels is usually between 50 and 60 millimeters, and those of the surfskate are somewhat larger.
Although the big difference between the two tables lies in the axles of the wheels of each one. Skateboard trucks are symmetrical, and this symmetry is what gives them two pivot points. For its part, a surfskate, as with surfboards, only has one pivot point.
On the other hand, surfskate trucks are not usually symmetrical, their front truck has a wide and horizontal tilt, and a rear truck is similar to that of a skateboard. What is intended with this structure is that the surfskate allows much more range of motion. The skate is stiffer.
And, are surfing and surfskating similar?
Of course, the sensation of surfing, on a board on top of the waves, in the sea, is not comparable to that of skateboarding on asphalt. However, the movements, gestures and body posture used in the surfskate are very similar to those used when surfing. In fact, the surfskate has more in common with surfing than with skateboarding itself.
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