Carver quiver (Or other surf trainers)

In most action sports that point is when you learn how to stop and how to fall gracefully. At this point you aren't as likely to go over the falls with your board upside down and 3/4/5 fins pointed at your crotch, you can slightly alter your course on a snowboard and miss the tree, or miss a light pole on your skate, or knee slide on a ramp. When you fall in big surf you relax and don't panic when you get held under because you know you will float to the top eventually.

You need to put the hours in so you can make subtle adjustments in order to stop or to at least fall with a little bit of grace and not bang yourself up too bad. Once you reach this level you can try things that are a little harder and a little more sketchy 'cause you've reached the point where you can somewhat protect yourself when things go tits up. And, due to the time you've put in, you know when things are going bad much sooner than when you're a newb and you basically have sensory overload.

 

My son and I made our own "Goof Boards." Easy and cheap.

 

Dude, what are those things, I want them.

 

Well known hoax by Funny or Die.

 

Very well said bro, thank you. I fully agree on the vast increase in sensory input absorption the greater you go on experience and skill. I've seen this happen with all my other athletics, although surfing is happening FAST for a long time when you're starting out. It's great when you find yourself in a full-speed situation but have the "ok, I've been here before" feeling and I swear just staying loose and not tightening up helps a lot.

True dat on the spills. I know how to fall and get hit in several sports without getting hurt, yet again, surfing and skating is often much more dynamic at speed, especially surfing with terrain that's forever morphing. When I started on the Carver, I'd hit a rut or rock and fall forward right onto my lead hip and also the base of my palm. I've got pretty strong bones and my upper body is adept at cushioning a fall that I break with my hand, yet it's never gonna be my first choice to land with impact on a palm or hip or similar.

I feel like I'm falling as a stunt man would these days as I'm not feeling much impact when I eat it hard despite my speed on the board being double or more now on any given maneuver or hill carve than earlier in my progression. When goose just mentioned getting thrown under water, it's very parallel. The non-resistance to where our body is going is what keeps us safer and smoother. I've also noticed I can stabilize all types of wobble and lack of traction now by staying loose, and pumping and snapping on beach boardwalks with sand all over them take away a lot of your traction.

What intrigues me is seeing how my style is evolving given no prior skate background, both for my Carver riding and surf. Take mrcoop for example, braddah hops on a Carver and in days he's tearing crete like he made the wheel round. You can see certain movement patterns emerge from his skate days and those are both pure and helpful to the Carver. I'll never have those in the pure sense - as I continue to integrate some regular skate work in on my PP deck with CX truck, it'll still have the underlying imprint of all my motor learning this far on a surfboard and Carver. Just the same, I've noticed from the start that there's some skate movement patterns and habits that inhibit quality flow on a Carver or surfboard.

I think it's the cerebellum of our brains that can reactivate prior motor learning from years ago. Did that when I got back on a snowboard this year for the first time in a decade and a half and it's far cooler to see you skate rats reactivate your skills from yesteryear.

As I wrote this, mrcoop just authored the alley-coop move on the Carver.

 

Haha! Great quote. Too bad we can't have signatures on this board.

 

Hahaha ya breh, it was square before mrcoop changed the game.

I thought we could have siggies - didn't rcarter have one or did he MANUAL that in there?

 

I'm guessing you don't actually own the new CX.4? If not, its very different than the older incarnations...

 

I got it in SD in December and do believe it's CX4. 6 or 7 parts to it right?

 

Emass, this thing is sick. I think my wife and kids think iam nuts. When I get into something, I go full bore. Been out everyday except when surf is up or pavement is super wet. Did surf for 2 hours and headed out on the carver right after for 2 hours. I was beat after that double session.

Been working on keeping my head and eyes up looking where iam going, just like surfing. May sound strange but using the carver to help with back foot placement...my biggest problem with surfing is moving my foot all the way back on the pad to do hard deep gouges or sharp slashes with tail slides...When iam on the carver and pumping, my foot is not all the way back but when I go for a major carve or snap or drift on the carver, I move my back foot as far as possible to the back to mimic how it should be done surfing.

Took the board down to the boardwalk Sunday, concrete part, and skated for a couple hours. Pass some kids doing some crazy stuff on their board but when I blew by them, they looked like how in the hell is he doing that...I don't think they ever seen or heard of the engine I was using...they seem bewildered or maybe it was my age or doing a handstand for three blocks...one thing I like is my feet never touch the ground and can go at crazy speeds by pumping...then throw in hard carves and drifts with my feet never hitting the ground. I think iam going twice as fast as when I first tried it...crazy speed with no hills.

Btw, when I first got this, I couldn't go much longer then 5 minutes pumping hard, but now can go 15 minutes, maybe longer. Crazy workout and IMO, you do not get that kind of workout with a regular skate on the street.

Love this thing and now a fan...May take it to our local bowl, but right now iam having to much fun carving the streets and sidewalks.

 

I found one at goodwill brand new in the box for 60. I didn't get it but my wife went back and got it for my Christmas gift. She is awesome!

 

mrcoop, did we just become best friends? YUP.

I'll get back to this later on after my own sesh since you hit on so many good points. You're down with the sickness. Wifey's always known you're nuts - it's why she jumped in for the ride long ago. When the kids see you be yourself, they wanna be just like you. Heck bru, all I needed to see were those laybacks and I wanted to emulate some of your swagger. Give it to thanksgiving, you'll be carving the turkey at Clemmy's with your Knox 31".

Stoked.

 

Clem, what angle is your front foot pointed towards? My toes are pretty far towards the nose/stringer and close to facing straight forward. If nose is 0/360 then my lead foot is at about 330-340 and back foot 260 or so. Also, when you transfer weight back to front, what are you doing with back foot - are you keeping it relatively flat or are you leaning onto your arch/instep after the shove? I've progressed much towards the latter and it's very surf-specific. You should be able to see this on photos of most pro surfing maneuvers and take a look at back foot mid-air of skaters doing an Ollie. The weight is being pushed from tail to nose so if your back foot is perpendicular it's got to be pushed onto its side after weight is moved.

I'm all about symmetry for muscular development and movement patters in general for training and athletics, though we'd have to be riding equal amounts fakie/switch and pumping similarly as to not overdevelop some areas relative to others in surfing and especially with Carver riding. These aren't gym weight training movements per se and definitely not equally distributed bilaterally at that. They're completely specific to the needs of surfing movements and relative to which hand/foot we lead with. Can you offset this perceived imbalance with additional dry land and gym training? Of course. Do you need to? Not in my opinion. All I do is surf and Carver now and I'm happier with my strength and body type than during 15+ years of highly-skilled weight training.

You'll probably see your teardrop quad muscle in the rear leg grow faster as well as the largest head of the quad in your front leg. Overall, Carver riding has ripped up my legs beyond belief and developed every muscle group to a much higher level, especially the hip flexors. The good thing about riding the Carver with regard to muscular development is that there are so many slightly different positions and movements that we are performing under resistance which all change depending on the speed we are skating at, the type and smoothness of surface we are on, the incline or decline, all the way to your wheel choice, and looseness or tightness of C7 main bolts. There are simply too many movements (in my opinion) that we are performing under regular resistance for there to be a detrimental effect on our physiology as it all evens out very well.

There's not much else I can think of that would be better for overall leg development than what we are doing, concerning flexibility, resistance training, functional strength, and full-leg development. Take a look at legs of chicks that do barre classes and compare their legs to other women. That's a good comparison. You're not even getting close to this level and quality of training doing most anything else and it's virtually no-impact. It's so specific to surfing as well, not just with movement patters but also in that I don't think you'll have trouble with leg burner waves (10-30 seconds) if you ever find yourself in a session lucky enough to have those that you are catching wave after wave.

 

I know my dress pants are fitting tighter...I pump with my back foot slightly off the tail...seems to makes me utilize my front foot (leg) more, and then slide the back foot all the way back for maneuvers and hard carves. I mogul ski and actually almost move my feet parallel to the board for that skiing sensation...not totally parallel, but close to it...can be very sketchy feeling as far as balance goes, but is almost identical to skiing bumps, but without the bumps...That works legs eaqually for sure and many who compete or loves skiing moguls should give this thing a whirl...mimics skiing and surfing equally.

 

Bangin with mrcoop!!!! So much I wanna add to this tread but Spicoli is too frothing at times to even get the 1k words out. So much damn stoke on both the Carvers and surf stix last couple wks. Total breakthrough streak I'm in the midst of.

coop, what you mean by parallel to the board? Please detail more brah.

Been really keeping my front truck cleaned and lubed on the reg lately. Gotta get the most out of that C7 and you don't hardly when it's crusty. Clean and new bearings too braddahs. Need to pick up more Bones Reds (my usual steeze) but threw in ABEC 5's Saturday as that's all the store had. You skate brahs think that makes a difference for speed? I'm looking for as much horsepower as I can get for max maneuvers.

Absolutely crushing the pools and bowls at the park now (best in 4-8ft) when I could barely stay moving and not get stuck to the wall on top turns back in the winter. The pools really let you loose and give you a true wave feeling once you find your lines. Hard to do goofy though I feel. Getting up to coping quite easily now on the 6-8ft walls. Maybe work in some 5-0 tech for fun even though that's not so surf-specific and I'm starting from scratch without a prior skate background pre-Carver. I'm doing roll-ins from 4-6 smooth and fast now and may try drop-ins off the coping for progression. Pleased that I'm doing all this will the Roundhouse stock wheels (70mm 81a) and they perform great for me unless the crete is sealed real smooth and coated semi-gloss.

Loosened up the CX4 on my PP old school deck and that made a major difference. I can pump pretty damn well with that similar to the C7 now and enjoy the tighter benefits still. Rocked PP Bombers on that in the pool with no wheel bite yet only one riser on the trucks. So all of this park and pool progress came from my street Carver and surf progression rather than more time in the park. This was my first park visit in months other than Seattle a couple weeks ago where I felt equally smooth. It's to the point now where I can really up the speed I'm hitting the bowls with and therefore the explosiveness of power snaps off the top. Only holdback was how narrow my stance on a 31" deck (PP Stedham) feels compared to the 34" Green Room which I've rode regularly since January. It is very close to my surf stance so I feel like I need to go with this across the board despite recommended pool stance being a lot narrower.

Everything, I mean everything I'm doing on the Carvers now are pure, pure choreography for my surf maneuvers and overall style whether it be simple pumping and trimming or deep carves and power snaps and tail slides. Key to note is that I'm now pushing often with a foot to ground to get speed at times when I didn't once in the first 7-8 months of riding my surfskates. Why am I doing it now? It works different muscles well but also gives a rest to the drivetrain muscles that do need a brief rest from deep pumping for speed. The biggest benefit pushing with foot has given me is that each time I do it, I have to reach it back to place it back on the tail once I'm at speed. This is virtually a rep of getting to feet on the surfboard since I'm having to "find" my stance and foot placement with the reach. How's this translated to stance quality when getting to feet for a wave? Damn near perfect now which makes such a big difference in ability to execute many other simple fundamentals of riding a wave. Before, having a mediocre or bad stance for half my rides was ruining them.

Another major discovery is that on hard and forceful backside turns, my front foot is better off more perpendicular to rail compared to far more toe-forward alignment when I'm going linear or turning towards my frontside. I'll see how this does on the wave and in sure it will be a quick transfer and instant improvement.

Many more recent observations but I'm cooked right now and DP sesh is in 4 hours. Still so far to go with all my technique and skills but the last 2-4 weeks I've really doubled my skills overall and my surf sessions are at a whole new level now. Really respect more by the day you guys that have progressed to advanced surfing levels purely on surfboards. The Carver gives me a daily canvas and unlimited virtual wave time to improve my skills. Don't know how you other guys did it. Props.

I love surfing and nothing compares to getting the next great ride and nailing a move or simple skill for the first time. Still, I legitimately love ripping it up on the Carver for hours a day and that's a progression and pastime of its own now in my life. They're amazing tools and inventions of board sports and I'm motivated to innovate on them and push their limits.

All your Carverholics best post your recent stoke reports and keep this great thread going with tech and skill talk too.

 

Thank you frontsidecrotchgrab. I didn't realize until just now revisiting this forum that you have posted up exactly what I was hoping to see.

If only Captain Clemmie will let me join the Carver Clown Crew ... perhaps I can take a shot at what that Henderson dude is doing. F*cking shredding a park up.

 

I also recently started riding the park and bowl with my 33" Carver Matt Hoy with C7s. Seriously fun and got me stoked on riding park again, i don't think i can ever go back to normal trucks. Although i'm also more surf cross training/carve oriented on my last session i started doing 50-50s and axle stalls on small transitions. Really fun, look forward to bringing the grinds to the bowl sometime. Would be also nice to try to do some layback grinds in the future


My experience in the park is though that the standard carver wheels, while great for carving streets, are too soft for smooth park terrain as you loose a lot of speed. I bought myself some Divine 60mm Trail Blazers 92a that work really well in the bowl and also rougher park terrain. So far a good compromise for grip and speed. I've been thinking to get some additional harder wheels for really smooth parks though. We'll see.

I'm not sure how well the C7 front truck takes the grinding though. Been thinking about getting some CXs. A lot of you guys seem to be stoked on them as well and they are more sturdy for grind abuse.
The only problem seems as these two guys in the following links have mentioned that the kingpin is in the way on the CX.4:
https://www.facebook.com/carverskateboards/posts/10203511496134635?stream_ref=10
http://www.carverskateboards.com/faq/tune-tips/

The second link mentions flipping the kingpin and installing a shorter top bushing to solve this.
I've flipped the kingpin on traditional trucks, works well.
Anyone here tried that on the CX.4?

 

My back wheels wear down much quicker than the front wheels. And also the outside wears quicker than the inside of the wheels.
So i flip the wheels inside out and change front and back wheels from time to time. Also means i only buy center set wheels for my carver.

 

How did you manage to get it out? Looks like it is pushed in harder than on a traditional truck.
Luckily my kingpin hasn't broken yet but definitely worries me when doing grinds.