There are so many different board sports now that it can be hard to know which one is best to get started with.
Skateboarding is perhaps the most popular of wheeled board sports, but it can be quite difficult to learn at first.
Longboarding is often touted as a great starting point—so are longboards good for beginners?
Yes, longboards are great for beginners. It obviously depends what you want to do in the long term, but longboards are much easier to learn to ride than skateboards. There’s less involved in terms of minute footwork, though they’ll only go so far in setting you up to ride a skateboard—the two are quite different.
So, longboards are definitely a good way for beginners to get started riding.
They’re safer, much easier to balance, and overall easier to pick up than a shortboard or standard skateboard.
You’ve just got to be prepared for a bit of a transition if you want to eventually move on to a standard skateboard.
Let’s find out more.
Should a beginner get a longboard or a skateboard?
It does depend a bit on the person.
For plenty of people, learning to skate on a standard board or even a shortboard is their preferred way of doing it.
It may be worth trying a standard board first if what you’re ultimately wanting to do is use a standard skateboard.
If you feel comfortable training with it at first, then it could be the better option for you.
But, like I’ve said, the fact is that longboards are, in many ways, far easier to use than skateboards for beginners.
Footwork is crucial and incredibly sensitive, and the placement of your feet as well as how to move them can be one of the hardest parts of learning to skate.
Getting to grips purely with how the board moves at first is a really good way to slowly introduce yourself to the sport.
There’s also something to be said for the relative safety of learning on a longboard.
While there are unique dangers with proper longboard cruising, learning the basics on a longboard is a lot safer as you’re a lot less likely to fall off.
So, if you can, try both a longboard and a skateboard.
The most important thing is that you find what you are most comfortable with and begin there.
Is a longboard easier to ride?
Generally speaking, yes, a longboard is easier to ride.
That said, the two boards are used for very different purposes by those who have mastered them.
Longboards really are not used for doing tricks, but purely for cruising and transportation.
That is easier to pick up than riding a skateboard, but skateboarding usually isn’t really about long-distance cruising, but the tricks.
So, longboarding is easier than a skateboard to ride, and it will teach you the basics of riding a skateboard.
But there’s always going to be a transition once you move to an ordinary skateboard, and they’ll be a lot more to learn.
Even then, I still just want to stress that longboarding is not easy, necessarily.
Learning will still take a bit of time, and mastering it is really difficult.
The longboarding scene is incredibly competitive, after all, and sometimes on downhill races, participants can reach speeds of up to 60mph.
How do I choose a longboard for a beginner?
So, how to choose a longboard to start with?
There are a few things to consider, but most often the best kind of longboard for beginners is a cruiser longboard.
You’d want to it be at least 30 inches long and around 9 inches wide.
You want your deck to be nice and long and wide to give you the easiest time balancing on it.
You also want large and soft wheels, which will smoothly and easily ride over cracks, bumps and other inconsistencies in the surface you are skating.
Cruiser longboards with nice wide decks are the best choice for beginners, essentially making it as easy as possible to keep your balance.
But how do you stop on a longboard?
How do you stop on a longboard?
There are a few different ways you can stop on a longboard.
Depending on the speed you’ve picked up, one of the simpler, if less elegant, ways is to jump off your board and run it out.
This runs down the momentum you’ve picked up—just make sure your board doesn’t roll off!
You can also just steer the board into a rough surface that will stop it, like grass.
This is a good way to stop, though be careful your momentum doesn’t throw you from the front of the board.
You can use the sole of your foot to break, too, which is one of the more common ways of stopping.
Don’t press your foot too hard at first, or you’re likely to hurt your foot and throw yourself off. Breaking like this on hills can be risky at certain speeds.
These are your best options for stopping on a longboard, but again, this will take practice no matter how much research you do.
Longboarding is a great way for beginners to start learning to skate, then.
They’re safer and much easier to just jump on and start riding, although there is, of course, still a learning curve.
Don’t expect to be able to just pick it up immediately. But seeing the process of learning to skate in stages is a great way to look at it, with longboarding being your first stage.
And who knows, you might wind up preferring longboarding!
