- Hey, surfskating friends,
Steve here to give you four quick and simple steps
for choosing your ideal surfskate.
Over the last year, I've spent over $10,000
on 40 surfskates, and I've done that not for me,
but because I've been trying to figure out
a good buying process, because for me,
it's been one of the most confusing parts of this process
from day one when I got into surfskating.
And so I have been trying to solve this problem
of a really good predictable process
for choosing the proper surfskates,
not only from one company, but from company to company.
And so after riding that many surfskates,
I finally cracked the code and figured it out
and came up with a formula.
Now, if you're a geek like me,
I put out a 44-minute, very long, technical explanation
of this whole formula, and you can click on the link above
if you want the full explanation.
But if you're a bottom-liner and you just want it fast
and furious, this video's for you.
But before we get started, the very first thing
you're gonna do is go to www.MagicSurfskateFormula.com
where you're going to get a free download
of the entire formula.
It's 16 pages, full color, it comes with detailed graphs,
charts, and measurements, and the most important thing
that you're gonna get out of that is this cheat sheet
that gives you some very important measurements.
And you're not really going to be able to fully apply
the formula unless you have this cheat sheet.
So real quickly, go to www.MagicSurfskateFormula.com,
grab your free download so that you have the cheat sheet,
and then you can follow along in this process with me.
So the very first thing you need to understand
when it comes to choosing a surfskate that works for you,
is that the single most important aspect
of a surfskate deck is the wheelbase.
If we come from a skateboarding or longboarding background,
typically we approach the deck choosing process
from a paradigm of looking at the length of the deck
as based on our height.
But with the surfskate truck,
the way the trucks are designed,
this is a very flawed methodology
for reasons that I'll explain.
So because of the way surfskate trucks are designed,
it means that wheelbase is by far a more determining factor
of how a ride will feel and function for you
than the deck length.
So the formula can be boiled down to these two principles.
Principle number one, the surfskates that fit you best
are the surfskates that have a wheelbase
that most closely align with your stance width.
And then the follow-up principle to that
is, because surfskate trucks are designed differently,
you have to account and compensate for the change
in wheelbase from truck system to truck system.
And my formula does all that math
and all that translation for you if you get your cheat sheet
at www.MagicSurfskateFormula.com.
You'll see all the measurements
for the top seven surfskate trucks on the market.
Really quickly, to understand why wheelbase is so important
on surfskating is because, in contrast to skateboarding
or longboarding, we are doing side-to-side lateral pumping,
and we are also doing tight carving.
So intuitively, the narrower your wheelbase,
the tighter your carving's going to be.
The wider your wheelbase,
the less of a tight carve you're gonna get out of it.
But there's a trick to this.
With surfskate trucks, if you get a wheelbase
that's too narrow, it will be unstable.
For example, if I take the Yow Meraki truck,
if I am on a surfskate truck and my foot is too far forward,
what will happen is this board is going to tip.
It's gonna jackknife and wheelbite
and I'm going to eat pavement.
What that means is if my wheelbase is too narrow
for my stance, I will be too heavily weighted on the front
and my truck won't support it,
because you have to ride behind most surfskate trucks.
Or if you don't have the issue of tipping off the front,
here's an example, this is a Mindless board,
and this has a very narrow wheelbase.
I'm not actually sure.
But the issue with this one for me,
and I can just stand on this and you can see
how my natural stance, I want to be like this.
And the result of this narrow wheelbase with my foot
hanging back here, it means that this board is tippy on me.
So this Mindless, I can ride it, but it's not ideal for me,
because the wheelbase is too narrow.
So with the surfskate, wheelbase is king.
No other aspect of a deck matters
if you don't get the right wheelbase first.
Length doesn't matter, concave doesn't matter,
shape doesn't matter, foot placement,
all of those other factors.
The very first thing you have to start
with is getting your wheelbase.
So once we understand the importance of wheelbase
on a surfskate, step one of the formula is to determine
the wheelbase range that your stance width will support.
So how do we measure our stance width?
Well, here's my methodology.
Essentially, what I do is I grab a tape measure
and I stand, I just kind of get in my natural stance,
and I just kind of like pretend like I would be surfing
or skating, whatever, and I'm just kind of moving,
I'm flexing.
Pretending like there's movement and just trying to settle
into the most natural stance for me that most feels
the most comfortable, that feels the most balanced,
and once I feel exactly how I wanna ride,
then I'm going to measure the distance
between my inner feet of the arches.
And you're gonna do this in your bare feet.
So in my case, if you look at this,
you'll see that my stance width between my,
the middle of my inner feet is 18 inches.
So what that means is that for me,
the surfskates that fit me the best are the ones
with the wheelbase that are closest to that 18-inch stance.
And the measurements of wheelbase matter very much.
Like, literally a quarter difference
will make a very big difference in the ride.
And so it's very important that you keep that
within a fairly narrow range.
So once you have your stance width,
then what you're going to do is you're gonna add
an inch above it, and then you're gonna subtract
an inch below it, and that gives you your wheelbase range,
and once you have your wheelbase range,
you are only looking for the surfskates on the market
within that wheelbase range, because no other surfskates
will even work for you, no matter what the other aspects
of the board are that you may like.
So for example, if you measure a 16-inch stance,
your surfskate wheelbase range will be
between 15 and 17 inches.
In my case with an 18 inch stance,
my wheelbase range that I'm looking for in a surfskate
is between 17 and 19 inches.
Okay, so once we have our wheelbase range
as determined by our stance width.
Now, we have to understand how the different truck systems
influence this whole process.
Not all surfskate trucks are alike.
Here is a Carver C7, and on the Carver C7,
when they measure wheelbase the most common way
to measure it, there's actually three ways they do it,
but the most common way is between the inner bolts.
So this is the Carver Greenroom and the wheelbase on this
is 18 and seven eights.
So between this inner bolt to this inner bolt
is 18 and seven eighths inches.
But it gets complicated with surfskate trucks.
because the way this truck is designed,
your axle hangs below your pivot point.
So you cannot stand above this pivot point
or you're gonna tip.
Now, in the case of the Carver C7, the axle on the Carver C7
is the most closely aligned with accurate
wheelbase measurement than any other surfskate truck.
So for example, if you'd compare the Carver C7
to the YOW Meraki, you will notice that the YOW Meraki
actually hangs back an inch and three quarters
from behind where the axle of the C7 fits.
Take the Carver Proteus and this is an 18
and three inch wheelbase as measured from the inner bolts.
If you can see that measurement.
Now, if you take this YOW Pukas Dark,
you're going see that it has no-
Again, this is a, to make things even more complicated,
I think YOW's measurements are off
by probably like almost like a half inch or a quarter inch,
but should supposed to be 20 inches,
but you can see that's closer to maybe 19 and a half
or 19 and three quarters.
But regardless, even though you've got a wider wheelbase
on the Pukas Dark, if you can see down here,
you will see that they essentially have
the exact same wheelbase.
Why?
Because the axle of the YOW Meraki hangs back
further than the Carver CX.
So now here's where we grab our cheat sheet.
I did the measurements to determine
on the top seven surfskate trucks how the measurements
compare and how they influence wheelbase.
And what you'll do is you'll get your stance width,
which will give you your wheelbase range.
And if you'll look on this, you'll see that the Carver C7
is the base truck, which means that it has
what I'm gonna call "stance width equivalency,"
by which I mean, if you're stance with is 18 inches
like mine and your wheelbase range is between 17 and 19,
on a Carver C7, those are the exact measurements
I'm looking for on a Carver deck.
I'm looking wheelbase ranges between 17 and 19 inches
on a Carver C7.
But all of the other trucks from there need to be accounted
for how they move back from the Carver C7.
So if I figure out my measurements for a Carver C7,
and then I wanna go buy a YOW,
what that means is I'm gonna take, in my case
my 18 inch stance on a Carver C7,
my wheelbase range is between 17 and 19 inches.
But if you take this down to the YOW Meraki,
you lose one and three quarters inches of wheelbase
on the YOW Meraki compared to the Carver C7.
Therefore, for a YOW Meraki,
the stance width I'm looking for on decks
are between 18 and three quarters and 20 and three quarters
of an inch.
And this is so critical, because too many surfskaters,
including me, I've spent thousands of dollars
buying surfskates that didn't even work for me,
because I didn't know it.
For example, on the YOW Meraki,
I first started on the YOW Malibu,
which is a 23 and a half inch wheelbase,
and then I wanted something more nimble,
and so I got the YOW Padang Padang,
but as I just showed you on that chart,
my minimum wheelbase range on a YOW Meraki is 18.75 inches.
And this is where I say a quarter inch
makes a huge difference.
The end result of that narrower wheelbase
is that it was too narrow for me,
which meant it narrowed up my stance,
and therefore I had to be kind of ginger on it.
It was tippy.
I couldn't be really aggressive.
All as a result of a quarter inch.
So it's very important that you get within
that proper wheelbase range for your truck.
So those are our first two steps.
We understand wheelbase, we get our wheelbase ranges
based on our stance width after measuring our stance,
and then we go to our cheat sheet and that tells us
exactly the wheelbase range that we're looking for
on any particular surfskate truck that will work
for our stance width.
Once we're to that point, of the 106 models
that are in the top surfskate companies
in the world right now, you'll narrow that down
to only the models for every single company
that will actually fit your stance width.
From there we go to step three, and that is narrowing down
our deck based on our style and purpose.
And when you look at your free download in the formula,
you're gonna see a wheelbase range calculator.
Here's the bottom line of how to look at that.
The wheelbase ranges that are in the upper range
of your stance.
So for example, for me with an 18 inch stance,
it means the wheelbase ranges that are in that 18 to 19 inch
range, think of those as cruising sedans.
The surfskates within the lower range of your stance width,
in my case, that's the 17 to 18 inch range,
think of those as more nimble sports cars,
because again, the simple principle is the tighter
your wheelbase, the more nimble you're carving.
The wider your wheelbase, the less nimble you are.
So wheelbases on the narrower range, sports car.
Wheelbases on your upper ranch, sedan for cruising.
So for example, with me on my Carvers,
I use my Carver Proteus, which is my favorite Carver
for cruising, because it's pretty much
my exact stance width.
18 and three eighths inches.
So this is my cruiser ride and my cruiser ride,
I have some concave on this deck, but you don't need
a lot of concave on a street cruiser, right?
I'm not doing real tight, super sharp maneuvers with this.
We're just doing glidey cruising for longer distances.
On the other hand, when I ride in poles,
I use the Carver Black Tip.
This is a narrower wheelbase.
This is a 17 and a half inch wheelbase,
so it automatically makes it more nimble,
more like a sports car.
And then since I want more of a sports car feel,
on the lower end, I typically want decks
that have higher concave.
So you can see the concave on this Black Tip
as compared to the Proteus, and it's a major difference.
And again, I'm using this for bowl riding.
It's like a sports car.
I want that locked in feel.
I've got good feet, foot pockets.
But it's understanding that wheelbase principle
and that wheelbase calculator that helps you
make those determinations.
So if you're looking for more of a sports car feel,
that's tighter, nimble, tighter surf maneuvers,
you wanna be locked in, you want more concave.
Now, you know, the attributes of a deck
that you're gonna zero in on.
You know, the lower wheelbase range
that you're gonna be zeroing in on.
If you want just more of a basic street cruiser
for longer distances,
then you're gonna look for that upper wheelbase range
and you're probably gonna need less concave.
So for example, this YOW Malibu,
this was one of the first I bought
and it's a very flat deck and all YOW decks for me
are way too flat.
I'm not a fan of them.
But this is the one YOW deck where it doesn't matter
if it's flat because it's just so long.
It's 36 inches long, 23 and a half inch wheelbase,
and I just don't need much concave.
You're just doing glidey cruising,
like a longboard, surfboard.
So once you've gone through these first three steps,
by then, you should have a really clear idea.
Your list should be narrowed down to,
I'm gonna say probably no more than, I mean,
eight or 10 models on the market at most.
And then from there, you're just gonna be making
your final decisions.
You're just gonna look at all of the other factors.
What's the concave look like?
What is the foot placement look like?
Does it have a good kicktail for what you're doing?
So if you have a clear idea of what you're doing,
once you take it from 106 models on the market
from the top six companies down to 10,
well, at that point, it becomes actually
a fairly easy choice.
So those are the four steps of how you go about choosing
a surfskate deck that will work for you.
The first one that you buy from this formula
may not be your very favorite ride that you ever buy,
but I can guarantee you that if you follow
the formula properly, it will at least fit you
and you won't be wasting money on a surfskate
that has a wheelbase that's either too narrow
or too wide for you.
If it's too narrow, it's not even gonna work
and it's gonna be even dangerous for you.
If it's too wide for you,
it's just gonna be harder to pump,
not as fun, not as nimble,
and you're just not gonna get as much performance
out of it.
So go to www.MagicSurfskateFormula.com.
If you haven't already, download the full formula,
follow those step-by-step instructions
for choosing your ideal surfskate.