How To Slide An Electric Skateboard
So when it comes down to sliding, it’s a lot of practice and personal preference, and a lot of feeling the board. So, you’re going to be practising for a few days, a few weeks maybe, and then you’re going to get a little bit better and better. Then one day, it’s just going to flip the switch, and you’re going to all of a sudden go, “Oh wow, I can do this.”💪
The first thing to consider is to look is at your wheels. We recommend the Evolve 97mm standard wheels, if not Caguama stoneground finished wheels also great. We don’t really recommend using the 107mm wheel or the all-terrain wheels, as they’re a little bit difficult to slide. Secondly, always ensure that your tracks are nice and loose. If they’re a little bit too tight, it’s going to be a bit harder to turn.
After setting up the right wheels, it’s time to have a very good understanding of how your board feels and reacts under your feet. Find yourself a nice open car park. By practising short, sharp carves, you’ll begin to get a feel for when wheels lose traction, and the board starts to slide. Another way to understand the breakpoint is to skate in circles and progressively tighten the loop until you feel the wheels starting to slip.
Approach the spin as you would in step two. As you initiate the turn, you want to be leaning backwards. Shift most of your weight onto your front foot and use your rear foot to push the back end of the board into a slide. As the board spins past 90 degrees, your front foot becomes the back foot, and you can shift your weight back to a normal stance. Once you get the board around 180 degrees, it will naturally want to straighten out and keep you rolling. The biggest challenge is redistributing your weight to stay stable enough to roll out.
A few things to note: Your weight is always behind the board, so you should never be falling forward. You can drop your inside shoulder slightly and use your arms to help you with the momentum. But the twisting movement comes mostly from below the waist. Some people like to tap the brake quickly as they start spinning to help brake traction. If you are struggling to get the full rotation, you need to put more pressure into your spin. Lean back further, go faster or increase the speed that you begin the turn with. Once you are rolling out backwards, remember not to hit the accelerator because the board will shoot backwards. As you do this more and more, the movement will become natural, and you can begin doing it faster.
Once you get the basics down, you can learn a bunch of other cool tricks like reverse to spin your board around and get you back in the right direction.
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Sliding on an electric skateboard is a little bit more dangerous than normal skateboarding, so always helmet’s are a must, elbow pads and knee pads. Also, slide gloves are always a good idea. Slide pucks will stop the gloves from wearing straight into the ground, protect your hands and stop you from losing too much skin.
