The things you wear while you board are some of the most important factors in how you enjoy longboarding. If you’re wearing bulky clothing like jackets and jeans, you’ll feel restricted and in the long run you’ll get much more tired in a smaller amount of time. This means less good pushing time and more huffing and puffing trying to catch up to your friends, which is never good! In this article, I’ll explore what kind of clothing I wear when I am boarding and tell you what’s so great about it.
So, to begin with, I usually wear sweatpants or shorts when I’m out pushing around. This is because sweats are usually pretty stretchy, and they won’t get in your way when you are moving your legs. Also, they are usually cooler than jeans or khakis, and they won’t make you all sweaty and disgusting in the middle of a downhill longboarding run. Although they are less durable, a patch of duct tape on the butt will do you good and save you from a pretty decent fall. Shorts are the same, except even better. Although they won’t save your skin, they will let you feel the wind in your shorts and it’s the best feeling ever. Also, theoretically it’s probably more aerodynamic. Also! Don’t throw away your wrecked pants. Just patch them up, nobody cares if your pants are ugly on the hill! Or you could just get crash pants.
In terms of shirts, wear a pullover sweater or a T-shirt, depending on the weather. Zip-ups are uncomfortable because the zipper makes the whole sweater so much less flexible, and that’s a pretty big problem when it comes to being flexible for slides and all of those shenanigans. I also find that shirts with round necks are incredibly uncomfortable for some reason when I’m longboarding.
Another pretty important thing is shoes.
Shoes are probably the one piece of clothing that really, really matters when it comes to longboarding, and the type of shoes that you wear will absolutely, definitely affect your performance when you’re going down a hill all the way to when you’re pushing around on the street or the riverwalk. Strangely enough though, this is something that a lot of people skip out on when they get into the sport. Truth is, you should be wearing a good quality pair of skate shoes and nothing else.
Skate shoes are defined as simple shoes with flat soles and flat bottoms. This allows you to feel the board when you are riding and also it doesn’t put your feet in any weird angles when you are standing on your board. Running shoes are usually slanted forward for running, but you’re riding a board, and your foot should be as flat as possible so that you don’t lose your balance. Also, skate shoes usually have more support for your feet in the right places when you are boarding, especially for pushing and lateral stresses on your feet.
Just a tip for shoes: get good laces. Good laces will save your life, because you don’t want to be re-tying your shoes every run, and shoes that get loose in the middle of pushing are the most annoying things ever.
Push harder! –Ryan L, Longboarder.