I woke up later than usual today, and went over to the skate park nearby to skate a bit. It’s really been ages since I’ve gone skateboarding so consistently, but I really felt the need to, especially when the new skate park is so much nearer. The skate bowls are also easier to skate in, but with every new place, there’s a need to get familiar with a place. A breaking in of myself, in a way.
Skateboarding demands such confidence and determination. It’s not the easiest sport to approach, and the amount of time and effort that’s needed to make pros is insane. They have already spent years skating, and those childhood days of just messing around would add up.
The person’s position and facing needs to be trained when skateboarding. The proper term would be the skating stance. I am really not consistent in skateboarding so my stance is really not the best. I end up usually facing straight, which doesn’t make sense, because on a skateboard, you’re actually moving sideways. My mind tells me to position myself properly, but my body just automatically swings back into a regular squared shoulders position. So I end up taking a good half hour or so, just getting my body into that position and shape.
Tricks that once were consistently easy, or easier for me to do, are now all just out of my reach by a little bit. I had to build back so much confidence to try, and just to make sense of some of the movements. I don’t dare to do a lot, and I keep being afraid of falling. In skateboarding, there’s really almost no space for that. Everyone skating has to have full confidence that they can do the trick, or at least they have to attempt their tricks with that. If they don’t and if there’s any form of doubt or uncertainty, they would land wobbly and fall. It’s a lot to do with trusting the board to do its thing, and to be part of the movement as a whole.
Maybe one day I would be able to express the experience better, but for now, I’ll just start rebuilding my skate confidence all over again. One fall at a time.