What makes slacklining popular in Cape Town? When you’re ready to slackline in South Africa, either connect with the local slackliners mentioned in our post, or visit any of the parks mentioned below to set up your own line. Our natural spaces in the city are impressively clean and we encourage you to leave no trace. The Mother City’s abundance of tall trees and expansive lawns make it perfect for beginner to intermediate-length parklines. For keeping the balance our own tests showed that it makes most sense to visually “hold on to” something non moving – therefore not the line itself.If you are looking for the perfect anchors, or you want to meet up with local slackliners, you’ll want to visit some of Cape Town’s most popular slacklining spots. Looking down to the ground or watching your own feet when balancing most often results in leaning forward of the whole body as most often the head is not moved solitarily. NOTE: Focus a point with you eyes, preferably at the end of the slackline. By doing so a so called “neutral position” is reached without leaning forwards or backwards. When standing just on one foot the centre of gravity should be located vertically above the foot on the line if possible. When standing with both feet on the line the main weight should be placed on the front foot (about 80%). The fundamental position can be described as follows: The knees should be bend slightly, the chest upright, the arms in the typical “Hands up!” position. What we will present in the following and refer to as the fundamental position, works and is the result of many years of experience and has proofed its efficiency in numerous slackling courses. This first of all limits the movements of the line and thereby directly decreases your options to move and stay on line.įirst of all: When slacklining there is no strict right or wrong. If you tighten a slackline even harder it does not necessarily mean that balancing becomes easier – by doing so – especially on short distances – the amplitude is lowered which will increase the frequency respectively. One thing that should be considered is that the line should not touch the ground in the middle when balancing. As a rule of thumb “normal” slacklines are set up using a midrange tension of about 50-200 daN. That means that in contrast to the traditional tightrope walking it is especially that movement, the swinging-through of the line under ones body, which forms the key to this unique form of balancing we call slacklining. NOTE: We recommend helping and supporting one another while taking your first steps on line.Īs the term Slackline indicates one of its key features is the slack, referring to the fact that the line will give under the slackliners weight. However the line should also be not too short (meaning the line should not be less than 5m in length), because in that case the amplitude of the Slackline becomes very high which firstly most often increases the random shaking of the legs and secondly will not allow the Slackline typical adjusting/ balance out movements.

The longer the line the bigger the amplitude (especially in the middle of the line).

For beginners we recommend a Slackline length of about 8-10m.

Learn to slackline