Longboard Guide

The Difference Between High-Performance Longboards and Logs While longboards are generally pretty easy to identify—they are wide, high in volume, and typically around 8'6" or longer—there are subcategories of longboards that are harder for the uninitiated to identify, ranging from high-performance longboards and noseriders to gliders and oversized fish. For the most part, however, longboards can be broken into two main groups: high-pro and logs.     High-performance longboards use modern concepts such as relatively thin rails, hard edges, lightweight foam and glass, relatively low volume, rocker, and thruster or 2+1 fin setups to facilitate aggressive, shortboard style ripping, but...

Fin Options for Longboards   Six decades ago, there was no such thing as “longboarding”—there was just surfing, and people did it on boards we would now consider “longboards.” Then the Shortboard Revolution came along and completely changed surfing. Suddenly there were shortboards and longboards—and for a while, longboards sort of fell out of favor.   Photo Credit: Ellis In the 1990s, longboarding made a resurgence—but it looked very different than it had in the 1960s. Instead of heavy, single-fin boards, the longboards that were surfed on the world tour were lightweight, high-performance boards with modern design elements that allowed them to be surfed...

Traditional Noseriders vs. Involvement Logs Written By: Matt Rott When most people think of traditional noseriders, the board that comes to mind is quite similar to the Bing Nuuhiwa Noserider—and rightly so. After all, that surfboard was considered to be one of the greatest noseriders of all time. Surfboards of this style are typically shaped sort of like a popsicle stick. They have a wide nose and relatively wide tail that is abruptly cut off in a square tail, with a pretty straight outline and a lot of width and volume. They often feature reverse rocker (with a lot of...

While longboarding can be a highly specialized and technical approach to riding waves, many people often think of it as a pursuit for beginner surfers, since longboards are easier to catch waves with and many people learn on them. While expert loggers and even intermediate longboarders likely don’t need any instruction on how to paddle their boards and navigate the lineup, those who are riding longboards to help them learn might find the following tips useful.         PHOTO CREDIT: SWELL SURF CAMP Paddling Your Longboard Longboards have a lot of volume and length and not much rocker, which makes them quite...