Welcome to the ultimate guide on mastering the art of pumping and carving on your longboard, brought to you by Wake2o, your go-to destination for all things skateboarding. Whether you're a seasoned rider looking to enhance your skills or a beginner eager to dive into the world of longboarding, mastering these techniques is essential for unlocking a whole new level of fluidity and control on the streets. In this blog post, we'll delve into the fundamentals of pumping and carving, providing you with expert tips, step-by-step instructions, and insider tricks to help you ride like a pro.
Pumping is basically carving, but with an extra layer of 'umph'. The key thing to grasp for pumping is that it involved more than just your legs. If you want to pump properly you will want to incorporate your whole body into that equation.
First, pumping is an alternating, full body notion. Starting in your shoulders, then your hips, travelling to your legs and feet and finally your board. The actual act of pumping comes from twisting in one direction and then the other. The force that comes from when you twist is what allows you to accelerate.
There is a delay between what your upper body is doing and what your lower body is doing. Your shoulders start the rotation and while your hips and legs are trying to catch up, your shoulders are already rotating in the opposite direction.
Each turn is immediately followed by an opposite turn and doing this back to back it what give you speed and allows you to become... the pump.
While the twisting motion is essential for learning how to pump, there are a few little details contribute immensely to the effectiveness of your turns. Using your arm and moving it side to side, kind of like a tail on a crocodile, allows you to use the rest of your body to use it as a counter force to push off of. The back arm doesn't just move side to side, more in a circular motion. This is more efficient and overall less tiresome for your shoulder muscles. Your arm shouldn't be doing a repeated slapping motion, more of a wax on, wax off motion.
Your front arm leads the way into each carve. Whichever side you swing your front arm towards, that's the direction you will start turning. Though it's not entirely necessary, it does look and feel pretty cool.
Last thing that contributes to pumping is lifting and lowering your body weight. Whenever you lean to your heels your going to want to sink a little bit lower, almost dropping into the turn. As you shift to your toes, you're going to want to stand up and extend your whole body.
Dropping down into your heelside turn and standing up on your toe side turn makes it easier to push your back foot outwards and gives you more power in each carve. However, doing this will tire you out pretty quickly so it's a great source of cardio.
Your front foot is going to be doing majority of the leaning for your turns, with each twisting motion, your front foot is going to dive into the direction you last twisted, almost trying to catch your weight. Meanwhile, your back foot is going to be pushing outwards and away from the direction you're carving. So, if you're leaning on your heels, your back heel will push towards the toe side edge. If you're leaning onto your toes, your back toes are going to be pushing towards to back heel side edge. If you are doing it right then you should feel a crazy burn in your back thigh from the constant kicking your back foot is doing.
Remember how we talked about your back arm being used as a counter force to push off against? Well, your back foot is pushing against that counter force. Whichever direction your back arm is swinging to, your back foot will be pushing towards the other direction.
We know that was a lot of information to take in but once you've got the movements, you'll wonder how you couldn't do it straight away! Why not shop some surfskates with Carver trucks and start practising? Shop Boards Here
