Surfing Waves

So ive been on a shortie for about a year now and have oddly developed a much stronger backhand than forehand. I have my bs bottom turn dialed and put pretty decent power into my top turns bs. However whenever i drop in fs and start to bottom turn i cant find the same power and i usually get super hung up and go out the back. I just dont have enough speed to throw a proper top turn. Even when it gets bigger i still feel that im not getting an optimal amount of speed off the bottom. All other aspects are fine, I can pump fine frontside but when i want to dig deep off the bottom i just cant find any speed. Any suggestions?

Some time ago I was watching a tip clip from a pro surfer and he said a good way to build some extra speed when doing a front side bottom turn is:
Make sure your knees are bent
start your bottom turn and do like a pump mid bottom turn before you start heading up the face
Also, a good thing to pay attention to when you are watching surf clips and what not is whatch how the pros position their arms through out the move as this actually makes all the difference in the world
Keep your eyes on the spot on the lip that you want to hit to make your turn
That's all I can think of off the top of my head
Hope this helps

I'm the same in that my frontside bottom turns just don't feel fast enough or that satisfying as a back side carve.

My backside turns just feel better, and oddly, I'm pretty sure it's because I don't surf backside much, let me explain why:

I don't go left much so I'm not good at an angled drop so generally I take off straight and then put in my bottom turn. As the bottom turn is a little later I have more speed as I've used the slope of the wave more on the decent.

As I spent most of my time learning, going right, I am very good at doing an angled take off and speeding down the line frontside. If I were to do more of a straight take off and delay the bottom turn some more I would generate more speed and also turn later. Turning later means you are heading up the wave when it is steeper and you will get more speed and be able to use the steep angle to hit the lip and do a re-entry.

So really the trick is delay your frontside turn and don't angle too much, try to get as much speed as you can through the drop, then compress at the bottom through your knees, turn, and then release the pressure from your knees to shoot you up the face again.

Easier said than done, but that's probably what you are doing wrong.

Also frontside can be a little harder to figure out due to weight distribution. Backside turns are easy, just lean on the back foot's heel and the board turns.

I found that on frontside turns it's much easier to bury the rail and then lose speed. I found the best way for me to keep my weight more on my backfoot through the turn was to pivot around my right hand (left hand if you are goofy). If you watch some pros, quite a few of them do this too. So when I'm ready to start my turn, I bend my knees and stick my right arm in the water kind of relative to the outside corner of the tail.

It's as if you are surfing down the wave and you dropped something, so you bend down and reach for it, of course as you are moving, the object is now near your tail you so you reach for it and pivot around your hand. Meanwhile putting pressure more on your back foot.

In the pic below I'm doing, just that. It's not the best bottom turn but you can see I'm using my hand to pivot around. And I've found this helped me do better bottom turns front side, I don't need to do the opposite back hand as I don't have a problem there.

Aloha wrote:I found that on frontside turns it's much easier to bury the rail and then lose speed. I found the best way for me to keep my weight more on my backfoot through the turn was to pivot around my right hand (left hand if you are goofy). If you watch some pros, quite a few of them do this too. So when I'm ready to start my turn, I bend my knees and stick my right arm in the water kind of relative to the outside corner of the tail.

Same here, my frontside bottomturn likes to dig in most of the time.