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Frame height
If you are looking for stability in order to reduce fatique in your legs, you should choose a frame with low decks. The lower deck provides more feel and control over the wheels, which become closer to the foot. Less effort is required to make angles. You may have a little less power with a lower deck (therefore shorter effective pushing leg), but efficiency and control are both improved. Realise that a low deck can cause the boot to scratch the road surface in a fast corner.
Frame length
If your looking for more power in your push or you use longer, more powerful strokes you should choose a longer frame. A longer frame allows the stronger skater to experience less deviation of the skate from their direction of travel during a push, and provides a better platform to push off of for the larger, stronger athlete for whom stability and sureness during transfer of power to the ground is most important.
Wheel diameter
If you want speed, larger wheel diameters provide access to higher top-end speeds, and added rolling momentum. You can maintain a high speed easier. Smaller wheels, with their mass acting closer to the axle, are easier to accelerate though. A number of factors, acting together, affect the rolling resistance and contact area offered by a wheel on the road – and therefore affect roll and grip: urethane, profile, durometer (hardness), diameter and number of wheels. Aside from the wheel design and urethane compound used, the number of wheels and sum circumference of all wheels on a skate is a good indication of the available top-end speed of the setup.
Wheels setup
If you want grip, you should consider a 5-wheel setup. A 5-wheel skate offers you: potential grip, skate length, less deviation of the skate during hard pushes. A 4-wheel skate however, has a short wheelbase, is potentially lighter and offers the ability to skate with higher cadence particularly when accelerating. The particular new Hi-Lo setups – 100, 84, 100, 100, for example, allow 165mm mount boots to use 100mm wheels, and provide the low deck height and control of the 84mm/165mm mount skate with the short wheelbase and large diameter wheels of the 4-wheel, 100mm skates.
Material and Extrusion profile
Extrusion profiles largely determine the extent and type of deformation that a frame is subject to under power, as all frames deform momentarily to some degree when the athlete pushes hard. The control of that deformation determines the ‘feel’ of the frame to skate on, so affects stiffness, flexibility and steering. The profile also affects the stability of a frame, particularly at the boot mount/frame platform connection.
CNC profile
The CNC profile, or machining of a frame, largely determines the frame’s appearance, weight, and further affects the frames stiffness or flexibility. A frame with a lot of cutouts, or a large quantity of material milled away, can become quite light, but can also behave quite differently under power and the frame material more susceptible to fatigue and breakage. |
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specifications
