I was thinking about this the other day…skateboards are flexible, bike tires are bouncy. Why aren’t there “performance” skates with shocks? Wouldn’t that be better for your knees?
In: 2620
Roller skates don’t hurt your knees unless you’re talking about doing tricks? Which very few people do. For rough pavement, I recently bought inline skates with larger than normal wheels and they are such an improvement, able to go over somewhat rough pavement and bumps pretty easily.
There are suspension frames for inline skates.
The energy to skate comes from your legs. That means every time you push off you are compressing the springs before you actually go anywhere. And the springs are likely going to be big and add a lot of mass and size to the skates. Skateboards have springs, imagine adding one of those contraptions to a set of inline skates. It would lift you up probably 2-3 inches and make the skate much longer. What does it get you? Not much. They only flex a little, the rest is handled by your knees anyway.
Because you have knees. Spring shocks on your feet means you’re wearing Moon Shoes. Sure, it absorbs the shock, but it also makes you clumsy as hell.
As someone else mentioned, the wheels themselves are usually the shock absorbers, as you can buy softer wheels to absorb more of the surface and not transfer it to you. It’s actually the same with skateboards (has nothing to do with the the board being flexible it’s all in the wheels). Ramp wheels are usually hard, about 99A-103A durometer, where as street would be about 78A-83A, maybe 85A. The lower the number the softer the wheel and the faster you actually go. Softwheels usually also require a hub to stop them from falling in on themselves. It’s similar with inline skates, except they usually top out at 90A.
https://inlineskateworld.com/inline-skate-wheels-a-guide-to-wheel-sizes-and-wheel-hardness/
I mentioned it in a reply, but I should have been more specific… I’m talking more about jumps. This all stemmed from people doing jumps down a flight of stairs on roller skates. It occurred to me that that must be hell on their knees.
Like anything with wheels, more dampening and more softness is less responsive feel. Comfort is not something you’re concerned about when skating, you want it to be as responsive as possible.
You kind of answered your own question – you already have knees. Your knees are adequate enough to handle whatever small terrain disturbances there are while riding on skates/blades in normal conditions.
So why add extra stuff that isn’t needed? Extra shock absorption or springs just decreases the responsiveness of the skates and adds weight, all just in case you ever skate over a field of rocks, which you won’t.
This is actually an interesting thing that has been explored by “Aggressive” Skaters.
There was a company called fiziks that made frames with shocks. This was over a decade ago but the team video is called “Masters of delusion” and its incredible
I inline skate and I feel like my energy transfer would be very hard to judge if I had spring in my jump. I can lock a 3cm right angle on a rail or a ledge 9/10 times. I account for how high the rail is and how high I need to jump. Adding springs just means I have to judge the height of the rail, my jump and whatever extra the springs give me.
I’m currently recovering from that 1/10 times I don’t land on the rail properly hahaha. There are companies that make exactly what you are talking about though.
Latest Answers