The recent developments in downhill and power slides have led to some crazy freestyle moves ... for sliding videos and sliding tips visit the other sections of the Lush website. Here's a short guide to buying kit for sliding.

Slide gloves
Slide gloves are the most important piece of kit when learning to slide, and crucial for many advanced moves too. You'll need some kind of sliding surface on your hands to get the weight off your wheels to allow them to slide. Your options are:

Make your own

If you're building your own then plastic chopping board (kitchen board) combined with gardening or welding gloves is most people's favourite choice. Cut the chopping board up with a jigsaw into finger and palm pieces and melt them onto the glove using a gas hob or a camping stove. You hold each piece in the flame until it's just about on fire and the surface of the board goes all guey, then stick it on the glove and hold it there until the melted chopping board fuses with the glove surface. Using a fork, sharp knife or bbq skewer to hold the pieces is a good idea, as the board conducts heat quite easily and gets very, very hot!

WARNING: melting chopping board and other slide puck substances creates evil gnarly fumes - do it outside or with lots of windows and doors open! And ask your mum first before destroying her favourite kitchen equipment yeah?

Buy some

Now in their third incarnation, the Lush slide gloves are designed to take you from your first slides all the way up, they are light, comfy and safe, with replaceable finger and palm pieces. The palm pucks are made from stupidly hard, mega slidey polycrabonate - a step or two up from chopping board! These things, in our opinion, are streets ahead of gardening gloves. But that's up to you to decide...

Wheels for sliding
It is possible to slide on any skate wheel if you push it hard enough, but you'll find it much easier to learn on harder wheels, above 85a durometer. A harder wheel has less grip so will slide out sooner. The shape of the wheel also makes a difference - generally a radiusses (rounded) wheel will slide without catching. Sometimes squarer wheels will judder and catch on rougher roads. Softer wheels need more energy to slide and grip back again, making technical spins much harder.

A larger wheel will allow you to travel faster on the approach to a slide, but also bear in mind that although a big wheel has a faster top speed, a smaller wheel will accellerate faster in between slides, so you don't want them too big. It's hard to find large, high durometer wheels. There are 73mm 94a wheels available, these are good for larger boards and high speed sliding, but not great for technical rotation slides as they are too heavy to flick around fast. They also take a lot longer to slow down and speed up again during a rotation slide.

Side note - during a pendulum or layback slide, your wheels will actually come to a complete stop, start rotatiing in the other direction, then stop again before spinning up in the original direction. A smaller wheel will do this much more easily than a large wheel. Watch your wheels during the slide - it looks cool. If you let them stop spinning for too long, you're going to get flatspots for sure!

What's the ideal durometer?
This depends on what you want to be doing. A really hard wheel around 99a will be great for technical spin slides, but you'll struggle to hold a line on a corner during a high speed bend. You'll also find it harder to snap the board back into rolling after a big spin - 99a or 100a are often difficult to control for this reason!

A softer wheel (80-90a) will be fast on rough roads, and will allow you to slide to keep your speed down or come to a stop. Somewhere in the middle is a good all round slide wheel, fast and grippy on smoother roads and high speed corners, good in the skatepark and good for technical spin slides. We reckon that 97a is pretty sweet.

If you get centre-set wheels then you can rotate them when they start to wear unevenly.

What about flat spots?
Flat spots are created on wheels when they travel sideways without rotating for a while. The best way to avoid flatspots are to make sure your board is always rotating or facing downhill throughout the slide. Some wheels go for ever without flat spots and some seem to die real early. The quality of the urethane is important, as is the size of the core and how well it is bonded with the rest of the wheel. A large core will help prevent the wheel from deforming and sitting in one position.

Read also: All About Wheels

We all run Lush Cannonballs - designed specifically for sliding from the best Urethane on the planet with a big fat core, 97a duro and a radiussed shape. We spent months and months getting these this good...

Decks for sliding
Again, you can slide anything if you push it hard enough. A longer board is more stable at speed and gives a more progressive slide (it won't spin out too fast) - so is usually better for learning to slide. Something up to about 42 inches long is good to get going with. A shorter board will allow you to throw down the more advanced moves more easily as it will rotate faster and is lighter. It depends what sort of sliding you want to be doing.

Board length is dependent on your height - longer boards for taller folk ... many slides need you to get down pretty low, crouched over your deck and if your feet are too close together you'll struggle. Try to decide what kind of riding you want to do and go for the appropriate deck length. If you want to get into stand up rotation power slides and start mixing street tricks in with your silding, then you'll find it easier on a short deck, 33-35 inches long. Something around 35-42 inches is a standard at the moment, and you can have a lot of fun drifting fast corners with a laid back, streched out style on a 40-50 inch pintail.

Wheelbase is an essential dimesion for sliding. A short wheelbased deck (15-18inches) will spin fast but be less stable and almost too repsonsive at speed and through long drifts. A longer wheelbase deck (22 inches and above) will spin and respond slower, but will be a lot more stable in a drift and riding at speed.

Concave is one feature that is really handy on a slide deck - it gives you much more grip than a flat deck. Make sure you have grip tape all the way down each rail - that's where it matters most.

A kick tail and kick nose are pretty handy for tail slides and nose slides, and make stand up slides easier too. Not so important for high speed drifting slides, but if you're buying a deck for sliding then get one that won't prevent you from learning more tricks in the future.

Deck width is more about personal taste. Some people like it really wide, but don't get a deck too wide as you'll have a heavy board that will be harder to rotate than a light one. Your foot moves around a fair amount on the board during the slide as half your weight is on your hands, so it's nice to know that you'll remain in contact with it. A regular longboard width of 8.5 to 9.5 inches is about right.

When you you start getting it wired you'll be able to do standup and spinning moves on a 58 inch board and mellow, smooth drifts on a shorter 33 inch board, but go for something in the middle while you're learning. 35 to 42 inches long is just about right for beginners.

Good sliding decks from the Lush range are the Globe Series (the 35, 38 and 41 are most popular), the Mako Slide, and if you're brave - start chucking a Kisiwa around!

Trucks for sliding
Unlike with carving, there's no real demand for slide specific trucks. Some say that low trucks are better than high trucks as it means you can get on and off the board more easily. Go with whatever you like riding normally. Wider trucks will be more stable and help prevent your board flipping over. When your trucks and wheels are set up on the board the total width should be about the same as the sides of the deck.

Other
Bearing spacers are dead handy for keeping your wheels spinning when there's a stack of side load on them. Make sure they are the right size for your wheel! Sliding kills bearings as well - some people pack their bearings with heavy grease to keep them running longer.

Pads and helmet. You're gonna come off - pads will keep your blood inside your skin and a helmet will keep you alive. Kneepads especially are good - try melting or epoxying some pucks to the outside side of your kneepads lets you do tricks like cap slides.

Remember - reading about what board is best on the internet isn't going to make you a good slider. You can slide anything. Go out, try it and have fun!