Still not sure if this should be in the newbie section, since that's exactly where i belong for now
Anyway, so i have only had one 'session' on my boots so far, which consisted of me getting dumped by waves and dragged back to shore, but i am going off of what i have read in a few places.
some people say that you cant just throw boots on a free-riding style board because of problems like
'they don't have a big enough girth' (lol) 'so the boots create drag'
or
'they are too short' (lol)
OR
'they will rip the inserts out'
Up until now i have always thought a board is a board, i mean i know my X-Ride is not designed for freestyle but i just wanted to learn to ride with boots, and also save losing my board. I also thought it would be better for my health since i had an ACL reconstruction not too long ago and have heard horror stories about twisted knees. But does the geometry of the board REALLY affect how the boots work or is it just not good for the board if you crash?
Sorry for the long post / if this is not the right section
Cheers,
Jay
Yes. Yes.
A board properly designed for boots dramatically increases performance and ease of use. Obviously almost any board can be ridden with boots as can anything be ridden behind a kite... obviously a properly constructed piece of hydrodynamic art is going to perform far better than a fence palling, the same can be said when it comes to something designed to be ridden with boots Vs something that isn't.
To summarise, what you need as a minimum is a board with adequate width (something at least over 41cm wide) and something that has a decent rocker line (at least 4.5cm) with these dimensions your new life in boots is going to be much easier to adapt to. Without these small details you will be increasing the risk of injury to yourself and your equipment.
Hope that helps.
The shinn street and supershinn use snowboard techniques and have never had a product recall on damaged inserts, Mr shinn says they are placed from the underside so the chances of them pulling through are slim, this manufacturing doesn't help with board choice though
All good boot specific boards designed these days are made in that fashion. Or even better the inserts are placed within a block of solid HDPE. Obviously there are exceptions... North, SS etc, who persist on producing a product (the track concept) that just doesn't work and has been proven not to work many times before in similar sports.
