HOW TENSION DESTROYS YOUR SKATING

So I went on a skate trip with some friends to Marseille and one of them was trying a trick down some stairs he can do on flat every try. He gets in his head a lot when he skates stairs and 30 tries in had barely commit to a single one. He kept complaining that it wasn’t flipping how he wanted, and it wasn't.

No matter how much he tried to force it, he just couldn't stick it.

I told him it’s gunna flip right when you try to commit, as the tension from the stress was clearly making him flip totally different to how he does it on flat. I told him to do a bunch of different tricks on flat to get his body moving differently and release tension, and a few tries later he started committing consistently until he finally rolled away.

The thing is, when there’s too much tension in our bodies, the way we normally move on our boards change completely. Tricks we can do no without thinking become inconsistent, and tricks we just got close to start feeling like we’ve totally lost them.

It’s common to think it's something to do with the way you’re doing the trick, and of course a lot of the times it can be, but many times it’s just that there’s tension changing how you move. If we instead figure out how we can change that, the trick will often follow.

In physics, the definition of tension is a pulling or stretching force transmitted along something, like a rope, cable, or a muscle lengthening. The opposite is compression, where a shortening force is being applied, like your muscles shortening.

Regarding how most people use the word tension in conversation, they’re talking about how they feel. Referring to a feeling of tightness, rigidity or stiffness, that makes you feel like you move worse or have less flexibility. This can come about from both tension and compression in your muscles, and from now on when I say tension, I’m referring to this feeling.

The opposite of this is what you feel as looseness, fluidity, or being able to move and skate more freely. Marc Johnson once said: “sometimes you just wake up and feel on point, it’s like a 6th sense”, and when your 6th sense is activated, tension in your body is no doubt low. 

Why it’s bad

Like my mate experienced in the example I gave earlier, excessive tension can reduce your ability to move freely. Not only can do muscles on one side of a joint need to relax for the other to contract, but you also can’t effectively contract a muscle that’s already contacted. makes sense when you think about how precise the movements involved in skating are. Not only does all of this negatively effect how you skate, but it increases your injury risk and puts you in a vicious cycle where worse skating creates more tension, and the loop continues until you’re shouting and snapping your board.

So why does all of this happen?

Well excessive tension in your body can come about for many reasons, both in the moment from things like dehydration and fatigue within the muscles from an intense session. To a bit more long term like inflammation and fatigue from previous workouts in the week. To even more long term like years of a sitting at a desk to previous injuries changing how your body moves. 

But it’s also an innate response to protect you from danger. If your body doesn’t think you have the strength to control a movement, it’s going to stiffen up so you don’t actually go there. This can come about from genuine weakness, but also after an injury where you haven’t reeducated your body that this position is now safe.

This is why stretching alone rarely solves range of motion limitations, whereas strengthening through more range of motion often does. It’s the movement under load that makes your body feel capable of handling that movement.

Continuing with this innate protection response, your body also stiffens up to handle danger and stress. If you imagine you’re walking in the wood super relaxed enjoying yourself, when suddenly you hear some animal running towards you. Your muscles stiffen up and send a jolt of energy through your body preparing you to fight, flight, or freeze. This increase in tension prepares you to move quickly and handle the sudden stress. 

When we skate, it’s this same deeply ingrained survival response that creates tension in our bodies when we’re scared of a trick and can’t commit. Our bodies also respond the same to stressful situations, like being snaked by a scooter kid 500x or getting pissed off coz you can’t land a trick you normally do. Because these emotions create tension that reduces how freely you move, your normal movement pattern to do the trick isn’t available and you start trying to “fix” how you do the trick.

You tell yourself pop harder, rotate shoulders more, flick faster, etc. but like I mentioned in previous calls, this thinking part of the mind doesn’t control movement, and when it tries it often increases tension.

So you’re essentially trying to fight tension with more tension.

What to do about it

So what do we do instead?! Well, instead of aiming for fixing your skating, you’re likely better off trying to get better at being in that optimal state of tension. The best way to think about this is focused, but relaxed. You’re not trying to control your body, you’re not feeling negative, you’re relatively relaxed whilst focused in on what you’re doing.

Based on the causes of tension I gave before you’ve got some different options, first the general bits like:

• Making sure you’re not going so hard in every training session and skate session so you’re super sore for days, and you feel unenergised to skate

• Make sure you’ve got enough fuel for how long you want to skate, and also that you’re fuelling and hydrating during your sessions

• Not changing position for excessive periods of time and moving regularly throughout the day

Then finally a key piece is making sure you’re not in a constant fight or flight state when you skate by targeting your causes of fear or stress. 

An often overlooked piece of this is how your environment is affecting you. Is the park full of scooter kids snaking you, are you dodging traffic to hit a spot, are the people you’re skating with judgemental and making you feel uncomfortable. Recognising how your environment effects you and your internal state is a first point to check in with. If it stressing you out and you’re unable to break out of that state, you might want to not spend the session learning a new trick, or going for stuff that isn’t working on that day because the added tension will be holding you back.

Next up there are direct tools to help you actually relax more and overcome stress and fear. 

As fear often comes from not knowing what’s going to happen or not trusting in your abilities, techniques like the progression method are super valuable here. By breaking the trick down into pieces, as opposed to going from 0 to 100, you can gradually prove to yourself you can do this, allowing your body to let go of tension. It’s all about showing yourself “ok I’m capable of this, I don’t need to stiffen up when I’m trying this and I can relax into my abilities.”

An essential piece of the equation is also regularly checking in to see how you’re holding tension when you skate, and actively trying to release it. You can do this by doing totally different tricks that get your body moving in a dfiferent way - like I got my mate to do. You can tap into your nervous system directly with techniques to reduce tension through things like breathing, shaking, and eye movement.

It’s wild how powerful and fasting acting these kinds of techniques can be. I’ll use them regularly in almost every session when I notice tension rising, or if I’m stuck in a loop of bailing a trick in the same way.

• For breathing, this might be as simple as taking slow breaths with exhales twice as long as the inhale. Andrew Huberman also popularised something called the physiological sigh, where you breath in through the nose all the way, then take a final top up nose inhale before releasing everything. Doing that 2-3x is super powerful.

• You can also combine this with a really strange technique that you’ll probably not want to do if anyone else is around haha, but whilst you’re breathing you look repeatedly side to side. This technique also activates that relaxation side of your nervous system.

• And finally the good old shake and wobble. From my experience this is the most powerful technique for skaters as it tackles that full body tension. To do this you can just jump up and down and move your body as if you’re shaking out tension.

• Paying attention to where you commonly hold tension and trying to release it there directly is a good skill to build. For me and many others, it’s in the shoulders, neck and abs, so I’ll release these with some neck movements, arm shakes and breaths.

So to sum it all up, quality skating needs quality movement, but physical tension within our bodies can get in the way. It can happen for many reasons, from self-doubt to dehydration to soreness from heavy training. To get better at skating both long term and in the moment, it’s not just about trying to control how you do a trick, but also releasing tension so your body can move freely.