G ear for Cross Academy
Boards and gear for street and walking hybrid tricks
Includes padding and safety notes
Project Date: October 2005
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Gravity 40" Brad Edwards BE40 street longboard
Notes about the gear used in this project
Street Longboards
Gravity 43" Concave Carve
Gravity 40" BE 40
I used several boards to develop this style. The two street longboards I used most are shown at left. At leftmost is the Gravity 43" Concave Carve. It is just the right length for the style and has the stiffness to ollie well. The tail is real broad so your back foot won't come off. The complaint I have with this board is the wheel cutaways take away board space. Also the nose is a bit too small, and the tail is too long.
The rightmost board is the Gravity Brad Edwards pro model BE 40. This board is great for street longboard tricks. The shape is surfy, but not too far from symettrical. It's real stiff and bouncy. Also the tail isn't too long, which I think makes for better leverage in tail snaps. There are no cutaways which means more board to walk on. I don't have any complaints about it really, but I wish there were an identical board in a 44 or 46" length. 40 is a bit too short to take two full steps on, and the additional 6 inches don't make much difference in ollieing a longboard.
These boards weigh about 7.5 lb complete. That's a couple of pounds heavier than a short trick board. The weight makes the glide feel happen, but it also makes the board a heavy club if it hits you. The weight can be hard to lift unless your feet are glued right on.
From the side view you see the boards have a kink or kick in the nose and tail. I prefer the nose kick, even though it makes it harder to stand on the nose tip. The kick adds a lot of lift if you do a big ollie. To get up to the kick, you need a big leg stretch, but it will lift the board better. I used a board with no kick, shown below, and found that my front foot came off the end all the time on ollies.
Comet 36" Proflex Park
Another board I used is the Comet Proflex Park. I have some big complaints about the board, but I had to include it because it made a major difference in my ollies. The Proflex is a high tech board which is made of a carbon fiber laminated in layers. I put Krux trucks on it which are very light. It weighs about 7 lb complete, so it's a little lighter than the Gravitys. This is a really stiff, exceptionally bouncy board with good pop.
I immediately added a few inches in ollie height when I got this board. That was a big help for me, because I learned ollies so late in life they are pretty weak. I was able to get up and axle stall on a curb for the first time with this board.
There's a major drawback with this board. Cross Academy is a street style, and the tail of this board will not stand up to repeated ollies off pavement. It wears out badly. I knew about this from Bob's review on Bob's Trick Tips. I was mostly interested in shaving a few pounds or ounces, and I didn't care if it wore out quickly. I would suggest if you use this board, to use it in parks on wood or good concrete only.
The shape as you can see is like an old school 80s skateboard. That's fine as far as retro aesthetic, but it's bad for Cross Academy. The nose is so pinched that there's a big loss of space to stand on. Also, there is very little or no kick in the nose. I found my foot flies right off the front on an ollie drag.
Big Boards for walking
The board used to develop the walking tricks is the Gravity 54" Hardwood Classic. This board appears in many projects on the site. Gravity doesn't make this exact model any more, but they do have a 50" Classic. Also, the Ed Economy is a good current model for walking the board.
There are more specific gear notes about big boards on the Gear page for Cruise Power and Classic Style.
Wheels and trucks
The trucks are Tracker B-2s. The risers are 1/2" angled risers on the Concave Carve, and 1/4" non-angled on the BE 40. Wheels are Gravity Snaps, black or off white, 62mm, 97 duro.
Truck adjustment is pretty loose as far as street tricks are concerned. I use loose rear trucks, with some play around the bushings, and tighter front trucks. Once I get to the nose I like it to be less squirrelly.
On the Comet I used Krux trucks with cutaway hole on the truck. They are very light and grind well.
Grip tape
Stock grip tape on longboards is often incomplete, with stripes or other patterns. I like grip tape on the whole board. Maybe I'll leave the logo exposed, as in the Gravity boards above. I like one piece of tape from the middle all the way up to the nose. Usually one piece won't do a whole longboard. I use fairly grippy tape. It's possible to get too grippy. You're not just ollieing, you're walking the board, so you have to pivot.
Pads and protection notes
Leg protection
Cross Academy means ollieing big heavy boards. Also the walking nature of these tricks means your front foot doesn't kick up to the nose real quick, in other words it doesn't do enough to defend you from the board much of the time. I strongly recommend some knee and shin protection. Ankle protection helps too. You can just use regular skateboard knee pads, but I found them too bulky when crossing my legs. Also the place I was getting the most hits was on the shin below the knee.
Soccer style shin guards
I found the best solution is to use shin guards designed for soccer. The ones shown here are made by Brine. They can be found in the soccer equipment section of a sports store. The great thing about these shin guards is they are light and not at all bulky, and yet give you complete ankle and shin protection as well as a little bit of knee protection.
Volleyball style knee pads
Another way you can protect your shins is to wear some volleyball knee or elbow pads, but just wear them below the knee slightly. This will absord most of the shocks of the board whacking your knees.
The only thing is, the knee pad gives you no ankle protection. As you get more skilled with Cross Academy, you don't hit your legs as much and need less padding. You can wear only one shin guard, as I do in the Academy basics pictures, or you can leave off the shin guard and just use one knee pad on your shin.
Volleyball pads are really cheap and available at a sports store like Sports Authority or Modells.
Wrist protection
If you like skating with minimal padding, it's hard to beat wrist guards. I like to use wrist guards because I take the blow of most falls on my wrists. Many skaters take the fall on their knee pads. It's definitely correct to take falls on your knees if you are skating on ramps and half pipes. Much of what I do is on flat ground, curbs, or low banks. I don't fall to my knees much. I can take the force of a bad fall completely on one wrist guard. Lots of times I just want to protect my right hand, and I'll leave my left hand bare to do grabs.
Wrist guards help with the Cross Academy style because the plastic splint gives you another defense against the board when it pops up out of control. Instead of hurting your leg or arm, the board is deflected by your hand, and you don't hurt your hand.
Triple Eight wrist guards
This is the type of wrist guard that is most available. They are cheap and work fine. I used these guards for the Cruise Power shoot.
The trouble with these guards and all rollerblade type wrist guards, is the splint bends your wrist up at an awkward angle. The wrist guard manufacturers are convinced that your wrist must be bent back to keep your fingers or palm from hitting first. I disagree, because with other types of guards such as the Harbingers below I naturally put my wrist in the break fall position when I fall on it.
The Triple Eights make your hand styling look bad when your wrists are bent back. I wear them loose so I can hold my hands straight. I can't complain much, because I took a lot of bad falls on these guards. They were not suitable for this project because of the grabs involved. It's real hard to do a grab with this type of wrist guard on.
Harbinger wrist guard gloves
I've been using these Harbinger gloves for a few years and they are the best wrist guards I've ever used. Not only do they have a wrist guard splint, they have a strap that wraps around and gives your wrist more support. They have gloves that protect your fingers when doing grabs or scraping the pavement.
Best of all, the splint is set up so you can hold your hand naturally. This means you can do hand styling that isn't only bent back wrist positions.
The splint isn't so big that it gets in the way when you do grabs.
Use of wrist guards and padding
Although I don't use full pads much, I almost never skate with no padding. When I used to in-line trick skate a lot I loved wrist guards because I could take a fall onto pavement from up in the air at high speed completely on one wrist, plus the skate itself. I'd skid on the guard and the toe or side of one boot, or keep rolling on the toe wheel and scrape on the guard. Many times, after a long loud scraping skid, I would pick myself up while still skidding forward (or backward) and just keep skating. Several times on a good fall I scraped wrist guard splints down to the metal. I've gone through a lot of them.
A fall without padding I would have to distribute or "roll" onto two or three different parts of my body. These areas would all get minor injuries as a result, but the fall would be cushioned and no real injuries would be sustained. With wristguards, I can take the entire force of the fall on one wrist and come up without even a minor scrape. My wrist doesn't even hurt, and my body doesn't get racked up. It works for me, and it should work for you unless you're very tall or heavy or have frail wrists. If that's the case, you're going to have to take falls on two or more points and will have to pad those areas. You could start with four pads, wrists or elbows and knees, and see how a couple of falls leave you. If you're okay, work down to two or three pads.
