Aggressive Skating: The New Skateboarding?
Skateboarding has long been the king of extreme sports. Professionals continue to push the “extreme” envelope with more daring tricks, ramps and competitions. While skateboarding has become a mainstream sport, its “aggressive skating” cousin has not. Until now, aggressive skating was not a very popular sport because people didn’t imagine it could be very extreme. Aggressive skating professionals have invented new tricks that have brought the sport into the spotlight.
Front-side Grind
This is one trick you must master if you are just diving into the sport of aggressive skating. If you can grind across it, any surface will allow you to do this trick. As you are skating along side the area you wish to grind on, line up the area in your mind that you want to grind. With moderate speed jump towards the edge by turn your body 90 degrees. With your legs spread shoulder-width apart, land on the edge so that it hit between the two middle wheels on both of your skates. Stay on the edge until your “grind” slows down and then simply jump off with another 90 degree turn. You can master a back-side grind by jumping on a ledge with your back to it. This is more difficult than the front-side grind.
Spins
Spins can only happen while being suspended in the air and this is what makes them so difficult. Anyone can jump up and spin but stopping your spin for a successful landing is the tricky part. Professionals often land huge spins to get the crowd excited. To master a spin trick you will have to be skating on a vert ramp or in a skate park that allows you to jump a good distance in the air. The more air you get the more time you have to complete your spin before landing. As soon as feel you are airborne turn your torso in the direction you wish to spin. Keep your torso in this position for as long as you want to spin. You momentum will keep you spinning. Before landing bring your torso back to the center and prepare your feet for landing. It’s as simple as that but will take a lot of practice.
Skating Vert
A vert ramp is a huge u-shaped ramp that is commonly seen in skateboard competitions. The art of skating a vert (without even doing tricks) is difficult to master itself. Try to move from side to side without much effort. You don’t stop at the top every time you go to the other side, but do a “u-turn” when you are nearing the top of a side. If you reach the top, don’t turn and come back down backwards it is a lot harder. After getting the hang of skating a vert ramp you can begin to “pump” as you skate from side to side. Pumping is when a skater stops at the top and then jumps back into the ramp with more speed. If you want to jump and do tricks you will need to get a lot of speed before you reach the top of either side of the ramp.
Morgan Turley is a yoga instructor at Essence Yoga Studio, providing a variety of Arizona yoga classes .
This entry was posted on 19. June 2010 at 15:18 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
