Surfing Waves

Hello all, i have just moved to shortboarding and have some trubles on upper body positioning while paddling. A friend said that to find the right position to paddle out on a shortboard i should lay on it so that the nose of the board sinks under water and than arch my back so that i can raise the nose out again a few inches.
To catch waves he recommended to arch my back even more from the board so the arms have a better pushing power. Some other people say instead that to catch waves i should move up the board a bit and place the chin close to the board to get more speed.

I´m really confused here, please help me to find the right tecnique!

Thank you!

What size board you riding? For the most part everyone has their own natural groove / position on a board. Trial and error is the only real way you are gonna find yours

You can put your chin nearly on the board, or you can arch your back.
If really putting an effort in, to catch a wave, sometimes ill put my head down and paddle my very hardest.
You dont want to position yourself too close to the nose of the board, you want to be fairly central, so that when your paddling, the board gets up on a plane and sits fairly flat in the water.

Thank you for your help and your tips guys, i guess i need to make small adjustment until i find the best position.

ANZAC wrote:You can put your chin nearly on the board, or you can arch your back.
If really putting an effort in, to catch a wave, sometimes ill put my head down and paddle my very hardest.
.

Sometimes putting my chin down makes me ahead of the broken wave and arching my back makes me go late and does not give me much ride. Any tips on how to charge better with arching my back??

sup, i rekon u should arch ur back when ur just cruisin so u dont look like a kook but yea do wateva comes naturally if u catchin a wave, just paddle ur hardest and u dont even think about your body position, just try not to nosedive.

Pushing your chin down or arching your back more to adjust your weight distribution is more efficient than having to move your entire body more forward or backward on your board to adjust for takeoffs. You are basically redistributing your weight on the board. Pushing your chin down places more weight towards the nose of your board and may give you that extra ummph to get into the wave. Whereas arching places more weight closer to the tail which can prevent your from pearling/nosediving on a steeper take off. The more you surf, the more intuitive these adjustment become while you're taking off on waves and like nz_grom said, it just "comes naturally".

i arch my back if i feel like im gonna pearl

i arch my back when i paddle and put my chin down for the final couple strokes just before catching the wave to make sure i get in as early as possible.