Does Skateboarding ACTUALLY Help Your Surfing and Vice Versa?
For most surfers, skating and surfing go hand in hand. In the most basic ways, each are similar in that they use a combination of gravity, forward momentum, centrifical force, and perpendictular balance over a board. When the waves are pumping, most would say it’s time to surf. When it’s flat or choppy with winds howling on shore, sidewalk surfing can be a legit alternative to wave surfing.
Dylan Heydon from The Inertia poses the question; Are skateboarding and surfing complimentary? In a recent promo for the upcoming X Games in Minneapolis, Pro Skateboarder Alex Sorgente explained that he picked up surfing after skateboarding. Both, he says, have similar sensations. “You stand up and you make your own lines on the wave like you’re skating a bowl or something. It’s rad,” he says.
Sorgente’s comparison, though, reminded me of an old video of John John Florence skating the Cholo’s bowl (see below). In it, John John explains he doesn’t skate to improve his surfing, he just does it because it’s fun. Even Curren Caples has said the two are so different these days, one doesn’t really inform the other.
So, which is it? Does skating transition help you read wave sections better? Or, are surfing and skating two totally different worlds?
Start young, keep skating, keep your edge…
John John grom days…