Nothing chills out your stoke like getting speed wobbles, crashing hard into pavement, and limping back home to sit out the rest session picking gravel out of your skin. But speed wobbles are preventable and recoverable. The wobs are also somewhat mysterious and even some experienced riders (who deal with wobbles almost subconsciously) don't really know how they work.
Here's my take on the wobs. A lot of it is based in the physics of oscillating systems, and the rest in observation of the wobs in the wild. There's probably more going on than this simplified take on it, but I think it's sufficient. If you'd like to add something, please do. If you think parts of the model are crap, please help improve it.
The goal here is to understand what causes the wobs so that they can be dealt with the in the fastest, safest possible way.
Basically the board starts turning back and forth, your body gets slung back and forth, and the whole thing amplifies out of control until you end up getting thrown sideways off the board.
What to Do: The Conventional Wisdom
Popular advice for dealing with wobs includes the following: "relax", "stay loose", "shift more weight onto your front foot", "carve into a turn", "ride it out", and "be more confident". They all work, and if you stop reading here, that'll do.
What Doesn't Cause Wobbles
Tight trucks, loose trucks, particular boards, particular bearings, particular wheels, phases of the moon, or sunspots. People get wobbles regardless of all of these.
What Contributes to Wobbles
Tense legs, knees, and ankles. Riding straight downhill. Speed. Crosswinds or bad pavement. Too-loose trucks. Too-tight trucks. Worn or sloppy pivot cups. Shorter wheelbases. Skitching. Standing up or crouching down suddenly.
A Theory of Speed Wobbles
When you're standing on solid ground and someone pushes you backwards, you try to maintain your balance by pressing down with your heels into the ground. As you lean further backwards, you tend to press harder and harder on your heels to try to stay upright. Same deal with your toes and being pushed forwards. Unfortunately when you're on a board, this reflex betrays you.
Speed wobbles begin small. Something (a pebble, the wind, uneven road) causes your board/trucks to turn just slightly. Say it turns the board to your toeside. If you initiated the turn yourself, you'd already be leaning into the turn to counteract the centrifugal force that's going to be pushing you heel-side. But you didn't anticipate the turn, so your body is suddenly, unexpectedly pushed backwards.
You instinctively try to balance by pushing down on your heels. But by pushing on your heels you make the board turn to your heel-side. As you start turning heel-side, the centrifugal force pushes you onto your toes (just as you'd gotten straightened up!). Now you press down on your toes to balance, turning your board toe-side, and the cycle repeats and amplifies.
Beating Wobbles
Small wobbles start all the time, and the wobbling forces are greater at higher speed or with a shorter board. (Have a look again at the Teutonia video and watch most of the riders get mini-wobs at some point in time. They're doing 60+ mph on quasi-sketchy pavement!) The trick is controlling the wobbles by not reacting to them.
Physically, concentrating on keeping your ankles loose helps moderate your heel-toe balancing reflex. Bending your knees and relaxing your hips helps keep your balance without using heel/toe inputs (and turning the board). If you can keep loose until the wobbles naturally damp out, you're set. Breathe deeply and let it flow.
Actively carving into a turn helps keep your body weight on one side of the centerline, so you won't be pushed alternately onto your heels and toes. (As a side benefit, if you're carving uphill it'll slow you down.) Shifting your weight forward helps also with this -- you're leading the turns with your body weight, rather than letting your weight react to turns. That said, when you're at speed, gentle adjustments and small movements are your friends. Pick a side and begin to carve intentionally, but ease into it.
This is also where rider confidence comes into play. Confident, active riders are less likely to be just standing there locked into a tight, upright stance. They're likely to be leading their turns, directing the board rather than reacting to it, and bent down into a stable, flexible tuck.
Mentally, do whatever you can to keep from getting the fear and tensing up. Working your way up a hill helps a lot -- start with the bottom 1/4, then the bottom 1/2, etc. Or try carving side-to-side down a hill first, then gradually turn less and less as you gain confidence. Plan your run and know your runouts so that you're thinking ahead to where you're going. Look far ahead instead of looking down at your toes. Learn safety slides and footbraking so that you're able to comfortably stop from speed if you need to. Finally, try to find hills with light or no car traffic and especially no risk of cross-traffic at the bottom. Surprises add to wobbles.
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That feels long enough. What did I miss?
Last edited by hexagon5un; 12-27-2007 at 09:05 AM.
Very nice thread, I agree 100% about the less traffic thing at the end. When I ride down hills with some cars that come every minute or so, I feel really bad in my tuck, when I went to central park today and went down a nice little hill going 20 or so (which is the speed I normally reach when going downhill, yes I know it is blazing speed) I felt so much more comfortable, I wasn't weird in my tuck, I was fine with moving around on the board and all.
-oh you forgot to add "global warming" to things that cause speed wobbles, hey maybe if that pavement were .2 degrees warmer, that crack wouldn't have formed, and you wouldn't have wobbled to death
I also think that speed wobbles occur because your trucks automatically bounce back to the middle. If the rider is uncomfortable or unprepared his body will naturally force the board back to the middle. However, the board does that naturally so the force of the rider and the trucks push the board to the other side, and if the rider is still unprepared, the same thing will happen, and the board will wobble again. The cycle will then keep continuing.
Like you said, pebbles and small objects in the road will cause wobbles, but try not to let it affect you and just keep riding as if nothing happened. If you hit a rock and try to correct yourself most likely you'll develop massive wobbles.
Man, that's a great one. Good slo-mo of the wobs too. I'm gonna have to frame-by-frame that one when I get home. And at least he did a good roll at the end. He could have supermanned it.
I'm still looking for one where there's a van at a stopsign at the bottom of a hill, and dude freaks out, is unable to turn, and wobbles straight into the back of the van. Classic combo of target fixation (look where you want to go!) and wobbles all in one. Post it if you happen to run across it?
Re: No pads. Word. When I was looking through Youtube for examples, I noticed that most of the crash vids have no gear on. Pads prevent wobbles!
Dude your friend has some balls! Keeps on going after those hard falls? Crazy! Props to him, but he should really wear a helmet.
Word. Great filming and huge balls. Skill? Style? Sense of self-preservation? Not so much.
But back on topic, when he's doing that crouch thing before the big wobbles: is it me or is crouching down like that really unstable?
At least when you're standing up you can keep your weight from turning the board by being loose in the knees and ankles. When you're all crouched up like that, any shift in your weight to one side or the other transfers to board lean and turn. You gotta be really sure that you're leading the turns rather than getting behind them.
I find being crouched down is more stable, but obviously my friend doesn't agree. I think it was more the change of stance that messed him up. Maybe his stance had something to do with it. I find the Brazilian tuck to be much more stable than the American tuck. When I go over bumps and the board moves around, I can stop the wobbles quicker with my weight low because it is easier to stay centered over the board. When you are high it is easier for your weight to get out over the edge and magnify the wobbles.
I find that crouching is more unstable, since your ass is off the board, it messed up my balance a lot. I was going about 15-20 in central park and I went down in a stance that is normally used for a coleman slide, just to get ready to turn, and I actually started to wobble (I always do wobble but thanks to the Evo, it never becomes anything more than a weird sensation).
that's cause usually when you go into the crouch your just really crouching over the middle of the board, and don't have much weight over your front truck. try putting more weight forward, and if you did, well, why am i typing
Physically, concentrating on keeping your ankles loose helps moderate your heel-toe balancing reflex.
Sorry, this is repeatedly stated here but I have to disagree. First of all the wobbles I get are of such high frequency that consciously "over-correcting" just doesn't come into play. Secondly, when I get the wobs I purposely shift my weight forward and stiffen my leading ankle to counter the oscillations. (think increasing pressure on the front edge of the leading foot)
I find this tactic effective and in direct contradiction to the conventional "wisdom".
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Speed Wobbles and You
Good examples on YouTube abound, including this one with good slo-mo, this one of a dude skitching, this shortboard one, this one develops slowly, this one where the kid survives, and even some from Teutonia 2007.
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Originally Posted by assumeivan
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