Zorbing — extreme without consequences

Most peo­ple per­ceive zorb­ing as a fun enter­tain­ment, and few peo­ple know that this activ­i­ty is a full-fledged sport, and extreme, which unites many fed­er­a­tions and asso­ci­a­tions around the world. How­ev­er, in order to feel all the delights of this sport, it is not at all nec­es­sary to be an ath­lete and mas­ter spe­cif­ic skills, because in order to ride in a zorb, your desire alone will be enough. More­over, for the major­i­ty, the first descent inside the ball will sure­ly give a range of inde­scrib­able sen­sa­tions that you will want to repeat more than once. And who knows, per­haps with time, it is you who will become a pro­fes­sion­al in such a fun sport as zorb­ing.

His­to­ry

Zorb­ing is a rel­a­tive­ly “young” sport. For the first time, the idea to climb into an inflat­able bal­loon and go down an inclined plane in it came to the mind of a French­man named Gilles Eber­solt in 1973. Then he patent­ed his inven­tion. How­ev­er, the first zorb was sig­nif­i­cant­ly infe­ri­or in size to the mod­ern one and was invent­ed as an alter­na­tive to snow­board­ing in the snowy moun­tains.

The zorb acquired its mod­ern look only in the 90s of the last cen­tu­ry. The authors of ideas for improv­ing the ball were New Zealan­ders Dwayne van der Sluiz and Andrew Eck­ers. It was they who chose the opti­mal size and began to think about what mate­ri­als would be best suit­ed for such a design.

In recent years, the zorb­ing ball has not changed much, only “adapt­ed” to new require­ments and cir­cum­stances. After all, every year more and more species and sub­species of zorb­ing appeared. And the speci­fici­ty of each of them involves mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the zorb itself.

Types of Zorb­ing

Zorb­ing will please with its diver­si­ty. Well, the fol­low­ing vari­eties of it are con­sid­ered the most pop­u­lar vari­a­tions of rid­ing in a ball:

Hill zorb­ing

This direc­tion involves the descent from the hills. Sim­ply, you sit down with a ball, and he, pick­ing up speed, rolls down the hill. Depend­ing on the lev­el of train­ing, you can be offered the fol­low­ing types of hill zorb­ing:

• Rid­ing with bind­ings inside the zorb (har­ness hill zorb­ing)

In this ver­sion, the posi­tion of your body is fixed inside the zorb with the help of spe­cial garters. Some balls even require the place­ment of a spe­cial chair. In ski­ing with bind­ings, the risk of injury and dam­age is prac­ti­cal­ly reduced to zero.

• Rid­ing with­out bind­ings inside the zorb (free hill zorb­ing)

In this type of zorb­ing, you are in the ball with­out any clamps, which means you can move freely. This enter­tain­ment is not for begin­ners, because as a result of such “floun­der­ing”, with­out spe­cial train­ing, you can eas­i­ly earn an injury.

• Escape in a zorb from hills (hill run zorb­ing)

This type of zorb­ing is also not for begin­ners, because you will have to move very active­ly inside the ball. Visu­al­ly, you will resem­ble a rodent in a wheel. And if the “ham­ster” is not fast enough, then he will fall.

Hydro zorb­ing

This type of zorb­ing is enter­tain­ment for those who are bored with sim­ple ski­ing from hills. In this case, you are also wait­ing for a flight from a hill, but only in a ball in which, besides you, water will splash. Just like reg­u­lar hill zorb­ing, hydro zorb­ing is divid­ed into sub­species:

• Hydro zorb­ing with mounts (har­ness hydro zorb­ing)
• Hydro zobring with­out mounts (free hydro zorb­ing)
• Escapes in a zorb filled with water from hills (run hydro zorb­ing)

Aqua zorb­ing

Aqua zorb­ing involves enter­tain­ment on the water. The ball in this type of skat­ing is dif­fer­ent from the usu­al one — it has only one sphere. A per­son is placed in it. And then, the rest of the space is filled with air. The bal­loon then floats down into the water. In addi­tion to the usu­al walk­ing or run­ning on water, there is anoth­er type of aqua zob­ing — har­ness aqua zorb­ing. In this case, the ball is tied on a flex­i­ble cable to the boat, which pulls it along the water sur­face.

Snow zorb­ing

In snow zorb­ing, a ball rolls over snowy sur­faces. As in hill zorb­ing, there are sev­er­al basic rid­ing vari­a­tions:

• Snow zorb­ing with bind­ings (har­ness snow hill zorb­ing)
• Free snow hill zorb­ing
• Escape from snowy hills (snow hill run zorb­ing)

Aero zorb­ing (Aero zorb­ing)

This type of zorb­ing is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon enter­tain­ment. After all, it can be safe­ly attrib­uted to the most extreme. The zorb is placed inside the wind tun­nel and rotates there at an incred­i­ble speed.

Night zorb­ing (Night LED zorb­ing)

Night zorb­ing can be called one of the most beau­ti­ful vari­a­tions of rid­ing in a ball. From the out­side, this action resem­bles a whole show. After all, lumi­nous ele­ments are built into the zorb, which looks incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful at night.

Zorb­ing on flat sur­faces (Run zorb­ing)

Zorb run­ning can be per­formed on almost any sur­face and includes ele­ments of phys­i­cal exer­cise and even light “fights” called zorb fights. In any case, in this direc­tion of zorb­ing, there is no lim­it to fan­ta­sy!

Ride and have fun!

Author: Natalia Kay

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