Surfing Waves

At 200lbs this is my first 6'2" board that isn't a fish. Is the pad too far back or is it just that I have to get used to the board? Here is a pick of where I fit it. Occassionally I stall the board, the nose goes really high, but not sure if it's that I have to get used to the new board or the pad placement. Please advise:

i have a 6'1 and 6'2 and on both of them my traction pads are preety much just where yours is, maybe just apply more weight on the front or shuffle your foot further forward on the traction pad, i never really apply alot of weight on the traction pad unless i need to (Bottom turn, during speed pump ect)
P.S. glad to hear you got a 6'2 ... i have a JC nx-1 6'2 i luv it XD

Looks like a good spot, I usually run mine almost touching the leash plug on my 6'2" and im 5'9". I do notice that i move my backfoot up to the front of the pad when im pumping and slide if further back if im getting ready for a turn. My 6'3" seemed to stall alot easier. I seem to surf with my backfoot heavy and i would find myself stalling out alot on it if i put any sort of heavy pressure on the tail. It seemed to just be the board in the end. It liked the weight really forward. The 6'3" had alot of width in the tail and back half of the board that caused alot of drag when weight was back there.

should be fine. i usally put mine basically in the same place. Interestingly enough i experimented with a quad without a tail pad and from the scuffs in the wax i could see my feet were hitting exactly where they would be with a tail pad.

I asked the same question a few months back, check out this post, I think it's helpful:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=13307

Cool, thanks for the feedback. Maybe it is my stance but I think I'm gonna end up getting a new pad and moving it up so I don't have to be left wondering if it's the pad or me. I can tell you that I it has made me more aware of my back foot placement, I have it squarely on the pad and not on the arch, but on my other boards having it on the arch is not a bad thing, this one it feels like it is.

Like I said, maybe I just need to get used to the new smallness of this board.

Bro it ain't the tail pad.....it's you. If you want to get your vert reos whipped around you are going to need to have your back foot jammed up against the kick.

Surfing is all about learning the board you are riding.....and you are going to want as much of the tail as you can get. Getting a new pad and placing it up the board more will just get rid of those important inches in the tail.

I suggest watching some surf vids and see how the pros are consistently moving their feet up and down the board. No one just plants their feet in one spot and rides a wave. if you do, you're not doing much on a wave.

If it were me, I'd leave the pad where it is. The kick is over the back fin and the front is over the front fins. If anything (nit-picking totally), I'd move it back as close as you can to the leash plug, not forward. But it looks pretty good where it is.

I reckon it's okay where it is.
Just shuffle your feet to trim the board and plant your back foot at the back for rad moves on the face.

Yep, pad is fine.

Today we finally had some size. I was out at IB in head high wind swell walls, super heavy and not much out there, but the size what fun to drop into. So I take off on the first wave and notice that I have my back foot is planted but my front foot too light, I guess I got used to the bigger boards from the small surf we've been having, the board pitches up and I wipe out. 2nd wave I adjust and pull into a huge wall, not problem, pull back out into the flats.

Next wall I drop in, dig in the rail and fly up it missing the re-connect, so now I have to adjust how hard I turn. My old shortboard is 6'5", I needed to set the rail harder than this one. So the next wave I drop in, take it a little easier on the cutback and then hit the lip and re-enter into a closeout.

Had a half dozen other waves, fun stuff, no problems. I think partially it was that I was surfing really small waves last week and needed to try it on bigger waves.

Thanks for the input, guess all of you where right, which also means I don't know it all, humbling.

Bringing this back for an update. I almost sold the board, but I decided to take off the tail pad and move it up like I originally thought of, and, guess what, I love the board. No more wheelies, no more stalls, great board.

It might be my weight, maybe the board is really too small for my 205lb size and I'm cheating by moving it up, but now I have a board I totally dig instead of one I was thinking of selling.

Might be a big guy thing or maybe my style of surfing, but moving it about an 2 inches made a world of difference.

Good post - thx for the info.
I guess as long as the board works for you, set it up to suit as best you can like you have done.
Us ‘lightweights’ just need to move our heads and shoulders to alter our weight distribution so we might have an easier time out in there surf than you man-mountains !

Keep it up and have fun !

Update: I did buy a new pad and put it further up and it did take care of the problem, but it's not a good solution. It didn't do wheelies any more, super stable, but now I noticed I surf it more rail to tail cause my foot is not back far enough to pivot my turns. If I did not know any better I would be great with it, but I do.

I'm buying a new bigger pad and putting it farther back where it belongs.

So, cheating the pad forward works but at the expance of turning ability, food for thought. Will update once I get to throw it around more...

my feet like never even go back that far. maybe tahs why i suck lol

Ok, so put on a new pad, but this time I bought a long one, the others where the smaller type, I guess it's the new thing for them to be small. It worked great, I guess what was actually happening is that since the pad was so small my foot was way too far back, with the new pad my foot is more in the center of th thrusters, where it is supposed to be. So, pad forward works to stabilize the board at the expense of turning, but it's not a good way to progress your surfing.

So, end of thread