Longboarding is a fun entertaining activity on weekends, convenient transportation within a short distance around town or even exciting sport that relieves your stress and strengthens your health.
Whatever you use a longboard for, choosing the right longboard is the first step.
Any beginners may feel confused in the jungle of various longboards on the market’s today.
And many people make the mistake when they focus only on the cool designs that lead to failures when they start to learn how to ride a longboard.
Finding the best longboard is more than its appearance and style. It should be the sum of important components that need you to devote your time on researching.
To make everything much easier for beginners of longboarding, in this article, I would like to introduce the useful tips and techniques on how to choose a longboard.
1. Consider Your Basic Needs And Choices
There are different styles of longboarding that are designed to be suitable for different basic needs and choices of customers.If you are starting to learn how to ride a longboard, I suggest you choose the one with “cruising” style. It is used as a mean of transportation on the smooth street and requires the basic levels of skill only.
When you are familiar with longboarding, you can buy the advanced form of a longboard.
For example, the freestyling longboard is good at doing tricks, freeriding longboard helps you ride on hills and use technical maneuver and downhill longboard with high speeds is suitable for someone who has precise maneuvers and wants to conquer the high hills.
Finding out what are your needs also allows you to choose an approximately shaped board.
Let me explain more.
- Ideal board shapes for beginners (cruising) could be a commuter, bamboo, cruiser, drop through, drop down and pintail.
- For freeriding and freestyling, the drop through and drop down will be the best choice.
- Top mounts, speed boards, and cruisers are ideal for downhill.
2. Determine The Length And Width
When it comes to the board’s dimensions, we need to concern about the width and length.The width should be the same or more than your shoe size.
Also, keep in mind that the longer your board is, the more balanced and stable you run a longboard.
Your height also plays an essential role.
- The board for taller people should be longer than one for young children and shorter riders. Beginners can choose the midsize boards for versatility and safety.
3. Think About Your Deck
The way on how the deck also affects the quality of your board.There are three kinds of board deck, including camber, flat and rocker. Cambered decks that rise in the middle are ideal for the beginners who ride a cruising longboard.
If you have mastered the advanced skills, you can go for flat decks (the suitable board with flat shape for freestyling rider), or rocker (lower in the middle, can be used for downhill and freeriding).
Moreover, always check the flexibility of the decks.
- Soft decks are the best choice for cruising while if you want more than that, you can choose the deck rated as soft/medium (for freestyling and cruising), stiff (downhill), or medium/stiff (freeriding and cruising).
4. Choose A Longboard With Or Without A Kicktail
Some decks have a kicktail in the back while others do not.A useful tip for beginners of longboarding is to know which are the benefits of a kicktail before purchasing a board.
A kicktail helps a longboard run faster, which is awesome for advanced riders.
However, beginners of longboarding had better use decks without kicktail because of more stability and safety.
5. Consider The Right Truck Size
The truck of a longboard is a T-shaped object attached to the deck’s bottom.A thumb rule on how to choose the longboard for beginners is that the truck size should be matched with the deck’s width.
There are two measurements you have to concern are the axel’s width (the distance between two ends of the T’ cross piece) and the hanger’s width (the total distance of the axel after you minus the area where the wheels will be put).
Let’s look at the chart.
- Deck width
- Truck size
- 7-8 inches
- 130 mm hanger / 195 mm axel
- 7.5 – 8.5 inches
- 150 mm hanger /220 mm axel
- 8.5 – 10 inches
- 180 mm hanger / 250 mm axel
- More than 10 inches
- 185 mm hanger / 265 mm axel
6. Choose The Wheels’ Size And Shape
The wrong decision on the wheel dimensions also results in bad longboarding.So, you should choose the wheels’ size and shape if you want to master longboarding skills.
The longboarding rider needs to focus on the length of wheels rather than the width. Board models on the market have different lengths.
However, remember the rule that the shorter your longboard is, the smaller the wheels should be when it comes to the wheels’ size.
Deck length
Wheels’ size- 34 inches
- 60 – 65 mm
- 42 inches
- 65 – 75 mm
- 50 inches
- 75 – 100 mm
The wheels have two common shapes, including square lips and round lips.
Square lips can be an ideal choice for a beginner who is learning basic skills.
Round lips enable the rider to the fun faster, so most advanced players prefer that.
Choosing the proper longboard is a complex task because of the endless range of components like decks, wheels, and trucks. We did not mention other factors like bearings, spacers, bushing, etc. This article can not tell you the whole thing but I hope that you will find useful information. Keep in mind that the best longboard for you should depend on your basic needs, personal usage, physical abilities and riding style.
