Some Thoughts On The Little Board/Downhill Slalom Setup Thing
The emergence of short, narrow, slalom-influenced downhill boards is a decisive break in downhill skateboard gear design, comparable to the short-board revolution in late 1960s surfing, the emergence of the double kick street skateboard in the early 1990s, or the introduction of the parabolic ski.
Advancements in riding technique and gear design, specifically around wheels and trucks, have come together to produce a radically new style of downhill racing skateboard. In the past, we had to choose between stability and responsiveness when selecting trucks, and between smooth slides and the ability to grip when choosing wheels. These performance trade-offs are no longer necessary.
This change began with improvements in wheel technology. In the early 2010s, fresh racing wheels tended to chatter violently when slid. Long wheelbases, dropped platforms, and wide trucks helped compensate for this tendency. Over the course of the decade, advancements in core design, urethane formulas, and lip profiles largely eliminated wheel chatter. Modern race wheels like Venom Magnums grip tenaciously, but nonetheless slide smoothly even when fresh, which made long wheelbases, lowered platforms, and wide trucks less necessary, allowing riders to experiment with shorter, narrower boards.
As boards got shorter and narrower, riders began experimenting with different trucks. This process began with split angle baseplates, which increase stability by making the back truck turn less than the front, and continued with tall bushings and the narrow truck trend I describe here. The truly radical break with traditional downhill truck design came when riders like Zak Maytum borrowed technology from slalom skateboards and began combining split angle baseplates with specific front and back hangers that had different geometry. Compared to the downhill trucks of the mid-2010s, these modern truck designs are astonishingly responsive, stable, and grippy.
As a result of these gear advances, downhill racing boards look nothing like they did ten years ago. In the absence of better, more accurate terminology, I call these shorter, narrower, slalom-influenced boards popular with racers “little boards” to differentiate them from longer, wider downhill boards currently popular with freeride skaters. (Those longer, wider freeride boards aren’t going anywhere. Little boards are great for hands-down style, but they’re not the best setups for standup-slide-heavy freeriding.)
Actually riding a good little board setup is, for lack of a better term, rad as hell. The simultaneous increase in grip, responsiveness, and stability feels like playing a video game with cheat codes enabled. Everything is easier, so you can skate harder and more confidently. I will always remember how utterly, irrepressibly, effusively stoked Cat O’Dell was after her first run down San Marcos Road on Aaron Breetwor’s well-tuned little board.
(This is mostly an article about gear, but a quick aside about riding technique: getting used to riding these new boards is kind of a head trip. A lot of the skills you develop riding a big board are required to compensate for your gear’s performance limitations: you figure out how to delicately feather in and out of slides, and how to lean hard into a corner, but not so hard that you oversteer and lose traction. All of that goes out the window with the little board. The more aggressively you ride a little board, the better it works. If you’ve been skating for years, it takes a little while to get used to.)
Unfortunately, building a good little board setup is extremely difficult due to the sensitivity of the steering and the outsize effects of even minor tweaks. A lot of people’s little-board setups ride like total garbage. These people are not bad skaters or incompetent skate mechanics. Little board setups are just hard to get right, especially if you don’t have easy access to a ton of parts.*
In the interest of saving everyone else a headache, here are some guidelines for setting up a little board:
Very narrow chopped downhill trucks do not ride the same as slalom-style trucks with dedicated front and rear hanger designs. If you’re going to do this, invest in some downhill slalom trucks. I personally ride Rogues. I hear great things about the Bear Smokies and lots of people like Don’t Trip trucks.
You cannot slowly transition from a freeride-style board by switching out one part at a time. If you’re going to switch to a little board, you need to get new trucks and a new deck all at once.
You want a relatively narrow, torsionally stiff deck with mellow concave and a wheelbase that puts your wheels under your feet at a shoulder width stance. Depending on your body size and proportions, this is likely between roughly 21 and 23 inches.
The importance of torsional stiffness cannot be overstated. I tried to run slalom trucks on a noodly maple/Formica deck that twists like crazy and it did not work well at all. Slalom boards turn almost entirely from the front truck. All your toeside turning and sliding leverage comes from your back foot. If your deck is not torsionally stiff, you will not be able to actually turn toeside. Spend the money and get a board with carbon fiber.
Mellow concave is also important. Many pros sand out the concave under their front heel and back toe to slightly dampen their steering.
You want your front truck around 53º and your back truck around 18-23º.
Try to match the height of your trucks. It’s ok if your back truck is slightly higher than the front. A higher front truck is nearly unrideable.
The front hanger should be equal width or narrower than the back hanger. On spaceable slalom Rogues, you want to run the front on the skinny setting and the back on the wide setting.
Pretty much everyone rides the stock Rogue slalom truck/2020 Bear Smokie bushing setup—73a/78a Venom HPF in the front truck, 95a/97a in the back truck—regardless of weight. I am a large man. I ride the same exact bushings as Aaron Breetwor, who is 100lbs lighter than me. I have no idea why this works and it has sent me down an intellectual rabbit hole regarding bushings, truck width, and rider weight. If you have thoughts, get in touch.
Almost all the pros use super-grippy aftermarket shoe soles to keep their feet planted. (I use Free Brake Soles, which I happily pay retail for.)
Second-generation coarse grip like Seismic Lokton or the forthcoming Venom grip is a must.
Most people with little boards that ride well have a foot stop and a foam tail wedge. I ride my foam wedge with the front lip about 1.5” in front of my inside back hardware.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to build a good little board without spending the money on a set of CNC trucks and a carbon deck, but I think the performance benefit is well worth the initial expense.
If all of this sounds kind of intimidating and hard to figure out, that’s because it actually is intimidating and hard to figure out. To save you some time and headaches, here are a few deck and truck setups that Just Work Good:
MIDS Black Arrow, Rogue Slaloms (the 2020/21 all-gold models with the height matched 20º back baseplate), stock bushings, thin flat shock risers, torque block and foot stop to taste. This is what I and a bunch of friends ride.
The Comet Orbiter complete, as it comes from the factory.
Landyachtz Small Blind, Bear Smokies, stock bushings, thin flat risers, foot stop and torque block to taste.
This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and it’s solely intended to help people with a jumping-off point.
As a longtime stand up freeride guy who doesn’t really enjoy racing or pure speedboarding, I have to say it’s been a lot of fun to adapt my deep carving, slide-through-the-corners style to hands-down riding on a little board. Maybe it’s a product of getting older and lazier (those carve scrubs are a lot of work), but I’m skating as well as I ever have and enjoying it like crazy.
*I am a pretty good skateboard mechanic who had the personal assistance of Zak Maytum, arguably the best skateboard mechanic in the game, and even I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to make my first little board ride well. I spent the better part of what should have been a fun weekend struggling to make it down the hill on my board because, as it turned out, my back truck was too low and my foam wedge was in the wrong place. Stressing out about gear is not my idea of fun.