PSA: "Surf" skateboards are not worth it for beginner surfer

[RinkyDink]

Hell no. I am a Surfer. And my passion is to share my love of surfing with others. I ride a Carver on land when I want to "surf", but physically can't get to the beach. In Hawaii, I surfed 5 times a week and lived only 15 minutes by bike from Waikiki beach. Now living in the heart of Tokyo, I live 2 1/2 hours from the beach and maybe if maybe go once or twice in a month. Unless some investor wants to build a wave pool near Tokyo Tower, I'm pretty much stuck with riding my Carver. I guess I could try sand sliding down the grass hills in the parks ?

iI'm just having some fun with you. I know you've put a lot of time in the water. That's obvious. I do think you might want to think about moving closer to a surf break though. It's just nice to live near the ocean if you can swing it.

[pmcaero]

I feel you pmcaero. Learning to surf is hard. Learning to turn is hard. It can be frustrating. You may be taking it out/blaming on your equipment.

I might not be good but I am way better than I was three years ago, but not thanks to using the surf skateboard. The surf skateboard was useless to me for the first year I had it because I was using it wrong. I had to first learn what I wanted it to do before it became a tool for learning surfing. Yes it is helping me surfing and skateboarding in general can help surfing just because it improves balance. But to promote surf skateboards as a learning tool for someone just starting out, or, as it was in my case, someone with bad habits is false advertising.

[steveylang]

So this thread has me intrigued about the Carvers, we have a couple of skateboards in the garage for fun (including a Razor Ripsurf), I take my dogs out with a skateboard because they need the exercise. But if a Carver is good practice/training tool then that would just be an extra benefit.

I am about 5'10', 170 lbs. Any tips on a particular size or model? I see various links to different truck models, I guess the C7 is their basic 'surf skate' truck? Can I put those on an existing longboard deck I have now?

[RinkyDink]

I am about 5'10', 170 lbs. Any tips on a particular size or model? I see various links to different truck models, I guess the C7 is their basic 'surf skate' truck? Can I put those on an existing longboard deck I have now?

I'd take the deck into a skateshop and tell them what kind of board you want it to be. I'm sure the skateshop staff knows the hardware to give your longboard (skateboard) a surf-like glide and trim.

[waikikikichan]

But to promote surf skateboards as a learning tool for someone just starting out, or, as it was in my case, someone with bad habits is false advertising.

I don't know of any advertisements from Carver that promotes it for some one just starting out or to fix bad habits. I have though, recommended it for those wanting to "improve" their turns and learn to turn better.
I'm not sure about False Advertising. BUT I agree with you that they should put a disclaimer on their boards:
"If you just plain suck at surfing, we can't really help you".

[steveylang]

I'd take the deck into a skateshop and tell them what kind of board you want it to be. I'm sure the skateshop staff knows the hardware to give your longboard (skateboard) a surf-like glide and trim.

Thanks for the tip! I ended up browsing around Carver's web site, and ordered a mid-length Venice Blue from the clearance section (new blemished board). It wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be buying straight from Carver, so I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to splurge a little.

I'm not expecting miracles or anything, again I take my dogs out on a longboard now anyway so a more maneuverable skateboard will be fun. But from googling around the Carver front truck is pretty unique (with some similar versions from other companies sold outside of USA). What waikikichan and many others have said makes some sense to me, so we'll see. I'm more just hoping/expecting to find some parallels between riding this and my surfboard and then taking it from there, rather than counting on it as some sort of dedicated training device.

"What gives it this ability is the extra axis of movement provided by the truck’s rotating arm, giving the nose of the board lateral thrust, in addition to the usual rail-to rail turn. With this extra turning capacity, the back truck becomes a pivot from which to snap turns, the way fins hold in the water while the surfboard’s rocker slides on the surface of a wave."
http://www.longboarderlabs.com/slidejam ... ks-are-in/
http://www.longboarderlabs.com/slidejam ... ate-right/

Maybe a longer Carver board would actually force you to walk up and down the board, or at least get you used to doing so while riding it.

[RinkyDink]

I'm not expecting miracles or anything, again I take my dogs out on a longboard now anyway so a more maneuverable skateboard will be fun. But from googling around the Carver front truck is pretty unique (with some similar versions from other companies sold outside of USA). What waikikichan and many others have said makes some sense to me, so we'll see. I'm more just hoping/expecting to find some parallels between riding this and my surfboard and then taking it from there, rather than counting on it as some sort of dedicated training device.

"What gives it this ability is the extra axis of movement provided by the truck’s rotating arm, giving the nose of the board lateral thrust, in addition to the usual rail-to rail turn. With this extra turning capacity, the back truck becomes a pivot from which to snap turns, the way fins hold in the water while the surfboard’s rocker slides on the surface of a wave."

One thing I noticed about my Carver was that it felt a little too high off the ground to me. I think my experience riding a skateboard as a kid, where I was closer to the ground, kind of made my Carver feel less like what I remembered a skateboard to feel like. I could have kept riding it to get more comfortable on it, but then I got injured with it and I just kind of let it sit in the garage after that. Maybe I'll take it out again one of these days when I find a nice piece of clean concrete to ride it on.

[GlassyLinesMP]

Check out the positioning of Courtney conlogue's back foot at 1:54 over the back trucks and NOT behind them on the tail in this video. This is crucial to being able to do backfoot-heavy carves on any skateboard; if you put your back foot on the kicktail you will either do a kickturn or most likely just do a front-foot heavy carve and learn how to bog your rail not how to turn your surfboard.

You can even put your back foot very slightly forward of where she has it, and you then have zero possibility of lifting the nose even with 100% back foot pressure.

[Namu]

I have a carver Fort Knox (31.25”) with C7 trucks. I had already figured out the basics of trimming and carving turns on a longboard surfboard and wanted a skateboard that would help me learn to pump. I found the carver board very useful for not only learning how to pump but also to get more drive and speed out of my turns, as well as linking turns together and keeping the board moving from rail to rail. I think carver boards are great tools for surfers moving out of the beginner stage and into the intermediate stage. For a raw brand new beginner that can’t catch green waves, a carver isn’t terribly useful, but certainly isn’t a waste of money. A beginner has to learn to catch the damn wave in the first place, pop-up and trim. Once they figure that out, training on land with a carver is a good way to work on improving weak lean turns into deep carving turns. No, a carver won’t teach you how to move your feet or cross step on the board, but it will give you muscle memory and the feeling on how to move your body for a turn or pump, probably the best (or only) training you can do on dry land to work on your turns and pumping. Worth it.

[steveylang]

So I got the Venice board and have only played around with it for about 45 minutes. First of all, it's a blast to ride! It doesn't feel unstable to me at all in normal cruising, it just has that extra ability to really turn on a dime that I'm still learning how to do (my dogs are gonna lose some extra pounds this year!) My impression is that it's gonna teach me how to really turn by feeling how to get down and pivot on my back foot, which I think is what I need to do on a carving turn in the ocean?

What I'm sensing is that this board is gonna teach me how carving turns feel, how my body feels and how to make my body work for those turns. So it's not just do this with your back foot, do this with your front/trailing hand, shoulders, etc. but how it feels when it all comes together. And be able to practice it over and over.

The other cool thing is that the side of my driveway has a short steeper bank. I can go down it on the Carver already (with a little trepidation), but what I think will make for great practice is to learn to go down the bank to simulate a good drop-in, and then do a bottom turn right onto the sidewalk.

I get what OP says in terms of maybe this board or that board not giving you negative reinforcement on back foot/front foot riding. But I think it's more important that the board gives you positive reinforcement for doing things right. I have a Penny board with loose trucks and a caster board, neither feel the same as the Carver. No matter how loose your regular skateboard trucks, it won't have the same turning ability and snap. A caster board can turn on a dime and is a lot fun to ride, but the physics are totally different.

[steveylang]

One thing I noticed about my Carver was that it felt a little too high off the ground to me. I think my experience riding a skateboard as a kid, where I was closer to the ground, kind of made my Carver feel less like what I remembered a skateboard to feel like. I could have kept riding it to get more comfortable on it, but then I got injured with it and I just kind of let it sit in the garage after that. Maybe I'll take it out again one of these days when I find a nice piece of clean concrete to ride it on.

It is definitely higher up than a regular skateboard. Not terribly so, but you notice it for sure. I don't have a lot of skateboard time but I can cruise around comfortably, also I learned how to ride a caster board which is the twitchiest of all so that probably made getting started on the Carver pretty easy. It will take me time though to get to those nice carving turns people are doing in those videos.

[steveylang]

Yes other no:
Will a Carver board turn if you apply significant toe or heel pressure with your front foot?

Will a surfboards turn if you do the same or will it stall on a rail?

If you want to do sharp carving turns on a Carver board, you won't do it by applying pressure on your front foot. It may not catch a rail in the same way as a surfboard, but carving well on both land and sea is closer than you think IMO. If you're doing the equivalent of trimming/ shallow turns, you can lean forward or back but that's not too dissimilar to a surfboard anyway.

I agree that buying a surf skate board and riding it around on the street will not automatically make you a better surfer or teach you to carve. The good thing is knowledge is free these days, there are so many videos on Youtube showing how or even teaching how it's done:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwA37O ... RvAv2rU9mg

What the Carver promo videos do well is show surfers carving on the Carver board, then carving in the ocean as well. The Courtney Conlogue video is one of the first Carver videos I saw, and it's uncanny to me how well the maneuvers seem to match up. I also own a longboard with reverse kingpin trucks (I think like your Atom board), and it is a totally different experience than the Carver board- even after loosening the trucks. My longboard is fun, but like your board it taught me absolutely nothing that applied to surfing (reverse kingpin trucks are a relatively standard truck used on longboards.) Basically the board belongs to my daughter now.

I've only just started with my board, but I've finally learned how to push the 'carve button' on my forehand side on my surfboard (it's more accurate to say that my entire body has learned as I'm finding its very much a muscle memory thing.) Not very well yet (I haven't been able to make sections with it), but I now know what it feels like on land and sea. The advantage of a surf skate board (Carver or otherwise) is that you can easily practice 15-20 bottom turns in about 10 minutes going down a driveway (or other incline) and doing a somewhat sharp turn onto the sidewalk. A beginner trying to practice bottom turns can't come remotely close to that repetition in the water alone.

For me personally, it turns out that getting the Carver has been a no-brainer- it's a lot of fun to ride (more than my longboard), it's a great way to take my dogs out for exercise, and I'm finding it so far to be a good training tool for surfing.

[pmcaero]

I also own a longboard with reverse kingpin trucks (I think like your Atom board), and it is a totally different experience than the Carver board- even after loosening the trucks. My longboard is fun, but like your board it taught me absolutely nothing that applied to surfing (reverse kingpin trucks are a relatively standard truck used on longboards.)

My Atom board has a front truck with yaw range of motion, maybe not as much as the Carver , but it's definitely not a reverse king-pin. It is called the Atom Surf-Skate.

I do think leaning too hard on the rail on a front-heavy stance should be punished by stalling in order to simulate what it's like to effect a dramatic turn a beginner surfboad - typically a longboard.

[RinkyDink]

I also own a longboard with reverse kingpin trucks (I think like your Atom board), and it is a totally different experience than the Carver board- even after loosening the trucks. My longboard is fun, but like your board it taught me absolutely nothing that applied to surfing (reverse kingpin trucks are a relatively standard truck used on longboards.)

My Atom board has a front truck with yaw range of motion, maybe not as much as the Carver , but it's definitely not a reverse king-pin. It is called the Atom Surf-Skate.

I do think leaning too hard on the rail on a front-heavy stance should be punished by stalling in order to simulate what it's like to effect a dramatic turn a beginner surfboad - typically a longboard.

You talk about a front-heavy stance on a skateboard as a kind of simulation of a front-heavy stance on a surfboard, if I understand you correctly. I think you might be expecting too much from a skateboard in terms of it acting like a surfboard. If I put most of my weight on the tail of a skateboard the front wheels will come off the ground, the tail of the skateboard will scrape the ground, and the skateboard will slow down and eventually stop. That could be considered similar to putting the brakes on a surfboard by applying pressure over the fins. That, however, is about as close as you'll get to a match between the way a skateboard and surfboard ride. For the most part, when I ride a skateboard I don't ever think about my stance. I do on a surfboard though. Anyway, that's not why a skateboard can be useful for helping your surfing, in my opinion. Skateboards help with surfing because skateboarders shift their center of gravity in a similar way to a surfer--that's the simulation you get on a skateboard. In other words, you become accustomed to moving your body a certain way (rotating your torso, compressing with your knees, shifting your arms around to get speed, etc.) that's similar on both a skateboard and surfboard, not how you weight your stance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F06FlVg6vtI

[pmcaero]

Skateboards help with surfing because skateboarders shift their center of gravity in a similar way to a surfer--that's the simulation you get on a skateboard. In other words, you become accustomed to moving your body a certain way (rotating your torso, compressing with your knees, shifting your arms around to get speed, etc.) that's similar on both a skateboard and surfboard, not how you weight your stance.

I agree with you, I am noticing all that on the skateboard, however, I was not taught how to do it by the skateboard.
The surf skateboard is an OK simulation tool if you already know what you are supposed to do on a surfboard. In other words, a beginner can get it and quickly acquire bad habits if using it as a teaching tool. Only someone intermediate can get any benefit from it.

[RinkyDink]

Skateboards help with surfing because skateboarders shift their center of gravity in a similar way to a surfer--that's the simulation you get on a skateboard. In other words, you become accustomed to moving your body a certain way (rotating your torso, compressing with your knees, shifting your arms around to get speed, etc.) that's similar on both a skateboard and surfboard, not how you weight your stance.

I agree with you, I am noticing all that on the skateboard, however, I was not taught how to do it by the skateboard.
The surf skateboard is an OK simulation tool if you already know what you are supposed to do on a surfboard. In other words, a beginner can get it and quickly acquire bad habits if using it as a teaching tool. Only someone intermediate can get any benefit from it.

I like to play chess, but I have absolutely no feel for the game. I became obsessed with it a long time ago, but my progress as a player has been extremely slow. Embarrassingly slow. A friend of mine, however, rarely plays the game. I don't think he even finds the game amusing unless we're drunk and trash talking. When we play chess though, to my astonishment, my friend always gives me a tough game. He just has an intuition for the game that I lack. I envy his chess ability, but it doesn't prevent me from enjoying the game.

Nevertheless, if I throw my friend a basketball (I found this when we played in a pickup game), the ball will just bounce off his chest. He struggles with tracking and catching a ball. I thought he was joking the first time I discovered he couldn't catch a basketball, but he genuinely struggled with it. He's a brilliant guy, but when it comes to his coordination at doing things I take for granted, he has to practice, think it all through logically, and work out each step of an activity. I suspect that surfing and skateboarding don't come naturally to you, but just like I never get tired of playing chess, I think you just need to keep plugging away at surfing. You're developing skills, I can see them in your videos, and those skills will eventually become intuitive to you. Just keep having fun and your skills will follow.

[waikikikichan]

The surf skateboard is an OK simulation tool if you already know what you are supposed to do on a surfboard.

The surf skateboard is a GREAT ( if not the best I found to teach my students ) simulation tool. It is to help replicate and reinforce what you do in the water. It might not teach you how to cutback, but teach you how to make the cutbacks you have, more smoother and powerful.

a beginner can get it and quickly acquire bad habits if using it as a teaching tool. Only someone intermediate can get any benefit from it.

Again you blame the arrow. You say buying a surf skate taught you bad habits. Can you explain what bad habits you picked up riding surf skate ( I almost put Carver, but I forgot you don't own one ) ?? I know you said it doesn't teach you to step back. That's not it's fault. A basic rule is your back foot should be over the fin(s) to turn, when you're not turning you don't need to be over the fin(s). Riding a Carver is about carving and turning, it's not really fun going straight and actually a bit wobbly to input. It wants to be on Rail. So yes, if you can't do a basic cutback and you can't get the lean angles with the proper body line, I agree with you that it's not for beginners. Look at you videos and see how straight up and down your body line is. How stiff your arm movements are. Now look at this Smoothstar video.

( yeah, I know what you're going to say, " but that's a shortboarder, I want to turn on my longboard". Again the mechanics of turning a shortboard or a longboard is the same. Timing, pressure, and where on the wave changes but the basic body movements and flowing from rail to rail stays the same. ) You keep saying "Front foot", "front weighting" blah blah, look at the slow motion shots and how the rider weights and un-weights his whole body, twist his upper body before the legs, rolls from heel to toes. STOP focusing only on one aspect.

Only someone intermediate can get any benefit from it.

Almost every person on this forum who actually owns a Carver, has benefited from using it. Agreed, I wouldn't teach someone on Carver until they start to do turn downs and turn outs on their surfboard. Maybe beginner-intermediate can't do a nice bottom turn yet, but after a few hours/days on a Carver, I guarantee they will do them better, faster and with more confidence ( which leads to a better 2nd turn ) First things first. I agree with you that maybe you're not ready to be on a surf skate just yet.

[Oggy]

Think I might get one, they sound good!

[RipShitt206]

The lean/movements you're saying are not emulated in surfskating, are quite literally, EXACTLY what you HAVE to use, in order to pump/carve, the very first thing u learn. I've learned the hardest way possible, on a low vol, 6 ft shortboard custom made for my local Kauaian friend, who I met Bruce and andy irons thru. (RIP andy) and it was Pine Trees in Hanalei bay, overhead barrels... ideal if ur my buddy or Kelly fleshin' skater. I learned a few things that day... that the paddling was half the battle or more and could've been trained for just by swimming laps, and thus I spent every flat bay day paddling to the pier and back til I couldnt feel arms. I also learned that skating in general was how surfers emulate and practice, while its flat. Longboards are similar except the surfskate requires more balance and maneuverability. The exact maneuverability on a carver or swellltech let's you do everything u can to prepare your legs and body movement besides paddling, outside surfing. If u think otherwise... u never rode one or dont understand surfing.

[billie_morini]

I disagree 100%

Well Big H, I disagree 50% with you.

Drawing credit: https://imgur.com/user/ShaneHuntArt