Surfing Waves

Hello everyone,

I surf about 3 years now, so I would consider myself as some sort of an 'advanced beginner'.
There is, however, something that has been bothering me for some time.

The board I've had since I started surfing is a 6'10" x 9 3/4 x 2 3/8 shortboard.
Paddling out on smaller days (max. waist high) is usually not so much of a problem. Every now and then I do a eskimo roll if I see a bigger wave/white coming towards me. (Did I already mention I hate eskimo rolling?)
But the moment it gets bigger and the waves and white start being more powerful, the turtle roll doesn't save me anymore and I have a lot of difficulties paddling out. I have tried so many times to perform a duckdive, but I just can't submerge the board enough. I think (after reading tens, hundreds of articles and seeing tens, hundreds of videos) I've mastered the technique, but once I actually try to perform my duckdive, I just don't sink deep enough.
I paddle hard towards the wave, put my hands on the rails (chest level), sink, put my foot on the pad and push, but it doesn't work.

So, I think I'll buy another board. A board I can fully submerge. Because that would give my confidence in the water a enormous boost.
What size of board would you recommend? Is, for example, a 6'0" (x18x2) too small for me?

My weight: approximately 65 kg. My height: approximately 1,92 to 1,94m.
Where I live, the waves are knee to waist to head high most of the time.

Thank you very much for every constructive answer!

Greetings,
AEFW.

That board might be a bit too big of a drop in size for you. You should be able to duck-dive it but dropping 10 inches in one hit might be a bit much, and your wave count may suffer. Try renting a 6'8 then a 6'6 and so on and see how you get on. You want the biggest board you can successfully duck-dive really, especially on a bigger day.

garbarrage wrote:That board might be a bit too big of a drop in size for you. You should be able to duck-dive it but dropping 10 inches in one hit might be a bit much, and your wave count may suffer. Try renting a 6'8 then a 6'6 and so on and see how you get on. You want the biggest board you can successfully duck-dive really, especially on a bigger day.

Ok, thanks for the advice!

AirEarthFireWater wrote:Hello everyone,

I surf about 3 years now, so I would consider myself as some sort of an 'advanced beginner'.
There is, however, something that has been bothering me for some time.

The board I've had since I started surfing is a 6'10" x 9 3/4 x 2 3/8 shortboard.

Thank you very much for every constructive answer!

Greetings,
AEFW.

Hi Elements, I chopped your post to get to what I think may be the problem for you.
Is the board an epoxy model with a different core , quite often the foam in epoxy boards can be a more buoyant foam and make the board corky and harder to duck dive, you've tried everything and changed the angles I see by your weight and height you are tall and skinny but it sounds like foam may one possibility, the other is just that technique is still letting you down. BTW Turtle rolling doesn't work as well for short boards so even if you do go shorter ( which I wouldn't) you are still going to have to get the technique working. Check your timing of when you do it, a slight bit of a tweak in timing may help too.

Wow, you have pretty much the same body type as me! I think you could duck that board; the idea isn't to submerge it and hold it there, but to push up yourself and use your momentum to drive it down. As long as it is underwater, the wave shouldn't push you back very much as it acts as an anchor. The most important thing is to focus on pointing the board down when the wave comes to you and up as it goes past you, the rest will follow.

Try and get into the habit of using your foot on the tailpad instead of your knees, as it is a lot more effective.

Garbarage is right, at 65kg you could probably surf a 5'10, but at your ability you aren't ready to. So, go somewhere in between. 6'10 is hard to duckdive, and a smaller board would work better.

In my humblest oppinion, your next board should be 6'4 x 19 1/2 x 2 3/5, my step up is 6'5 x 19 1/2 x 2 1/2 and have no problems unless there is monster surf out there.

You will eventually surf potato chip boards, 5'8 to 6'0, but give yourself a transition step

Thank you all for the advice.

Jaffa: it might indeed be the foam, since it's not a hand shaped board.

I've been practicing a lot and like Rickyroughneck already pointed out: by pushing it under water 30cm, it already makes a difference as to when you do nothing at all. I still get pushed back slightly, but at least I am more or less 'submerged'. Now I worry more about the water in my eyes and not seeing sh*t for 2 seconds than being knocked off my board (which, honestly, still happens sometimes), so I like to call that 'progressing' .
I'm looking for a 6'2-6'4 at the moment, so I can start doing proper duckdives.

EAFW, duckdiving is a skill it needs to be practiced as well as having a board you can do it on the advice you have been given is sound and it seems like you already have noticed a difference. Keep on keeping on!

I'm a beginner too or maybe an "advanced beginner", but here are my 2 cents anyway.

I started practicing duck-diving when I got a 6'10 shortboard (6'10, 20', 2 3/4 if I'm not mistaken). My duck-diving was at first inefficient. Then I tried a friend's 6'4 and started getting the hang of it. Once I moved back to my 6'10, the newly learnt skill transferred over, it became much easier to duck-dive my 6'10. Finally, I was recently surfing a very buoyant 7'3, but even that I managed to duck-dive under less powerful waves. The key for me was emphasising the push of the board under water - the arms must work hard on a buoyant board. You also need to make sure your arms are towards the end of the rib cage, kind of where you put them to pop up (critically, the arms should not be too far forward). You probably already know that from the videos. What the video don't tell you though is that the arms need to work a lot on a larger board.

Another problem with bigger boards is that they don't quite come up from under the wave as quickly. Or maybe they do come up quickly but incorrectly - instead of coming up nose first, the bigger boards somehow tend to come up flat. So again you need to apply a bit of pressure to make sure that the nose is coming up first. Press harder with your knee and direct the board with your arms as well. Coming up nose first is important for two reasons. Firstly you'll miss (more of) the whitewash, and secondly, and more importantly, this movement counteracts the wave direction (board: up and towards the lineup; wave: down and towards the shore). If you do not have any speed or direction when you are coming up from under the wave, the board will get washed off to the shore if the wave has not passed completely yet. All that direction is from your arms and your knee and speed is from the initial paddling towards the wave before duck-diving.

Finally, it seems that you are duck-diving on bigger days. Try duck-diving on smaller days and even under really tiny waves or no waves at all to get the hang of it.

(I don't claim my duck-diving is correct. Maybe it's completely off the mark, but it seems to get the job done on smaller days, and I don't go out on bigger days anyway)

Technically if the duckdive works it was correct

There are some very helpful tips here that actually make a big difference when you execute them correctly. Thanks to the contributors!

I have recently bought a 6'3 shortboard and this week I'll go and make a fool of myself (not that I care one bit) in the water! Conditions are very windy and there's a lot of whitewater. I'll focus more on duckdiving instead of surfing for a while.

I'll let you guys know how it goes!

Time for a little update!

So, the last couple of days I've trained on duckdiving in knee to (max) waist high waves. I manage to avoid the whitewater in ca. 50-75% of the cases.
The good thing is that I can fully submerge my 6'3" and "dive" (more or less).
There are, however, still some issues. For example: once I have sunk the nose/middle part of the board and I put my foot on the tail pad, I always seem to push my board to my left or right. The result being that my body is 'next' to my board when I resurface. Any of you experienced surfers have a trick for that? Or is it normal?

Anyway, practice makes perfect!

AirEarthFireWater wrote:Time for a little update!

So, the last couple of days I've trained on duckdiving in knee to (max) waist high waves. I manage to avoid the whitewater in ca. 50-75% of the cases.
The good thing is that I can fully submerge my 6'3" and "dive" (more or less).
There are, however, still some issues. For example: once I have sunk the nose/middle part of the board and I put my foot on the tail pad, I always seem to push my board to my left or right. The result being that my body is 'next' to my board when I resurface. Any of you experienced surfers have a trick for that? Or is it normal?

Anyway, practice makes perfect!

You are doing fine, the board you bought is great for your ability, the problems you are experiencing on the duckdive will go away with more practice. Also, remember that we suggested a slighlty bigger board so you could enjoy the surfing, but you do give up a little on your duckdive. Once you get better and buy the small potato chip it will be even easier to duckdive.

So, for now, practice, enjoy, rip, stoke...

Since buying a shorter board I've been duck diving it to get out the back.....been fairly successful in 3 ft waves so far but anything bigger and I am bring dragged back a lot of the time. I don't think the board is too big, just my lack of technique and practice.....
One of the comments on here earlier was interesting - it mentioned your hand placement being at the same place as your pop up. Is this right? On the pop up up my hands are at my bottom rib which is fairly far down the board...I can understand the logic of having th majority of your body weight over your hands to get the board down far, but most of the advice I've seen so far mentions holding the board about 1/3 of the length from the nose....
Also on when sinking the nose are you actually trying hard to push the board down or is it just a case of sinking the nose under your body weight?
Lastly a question of timing - when the whitewater reaches the front area of me and the board should I have already pushed the tail down with my foot?

No one has mentioned paddling towards the wave before the duckdive. You need to paddle as fast as possible towards the wave so when you duckdive you will end up farther behind the wave, thus avoiding the pull of the wave. Forward motion is key to a good duckdive.

jasedrummer wrote:One of the comments on here earlier was interesting - it mentioned your hand placement being at the same place as your pop up. Is this right? On the pop up up my hands are at my bottom rib which is fairly far down the board...I can understand the logic of having th majority of your body weight over your hands to get the board down far, but most of the advice I've seen so far mentions holding the board about 1/3 of the length from the nose....

Why do we duckdive? So you can keep making forward progress. The idea is to duckdive, come up and start paddling right away so you can make it out. You need your hands comfortable where you usually lie on your board, so when you come up you can paddle right away, changing your hands will mean adjusting after the duckdive which means when the next wave hits you won't be moving forward, so you will be dragged back. Your hands should be naturally in the top half of the board, so don't think too much about placement.

jasedrummer wrote:Also on when sinking the nose are you actually trying hard to push the board down or is it just a case of sinking the nose under your body weight?
Lastly a question of timing - when the whitewater reaches the front area of me and the board should I have already pushed the tail down with my foot?

If you just push the nose down the wave will hit and drag you back. The idea is to push the nose down, then when the wave hits push the tail to make the board go deeper and be horizontal to minimize how it pushes you. After it goes by you pull up on the nose but not completed to use the boards own buoyance to rise away from the wave behind you and put the board under you so you are ready to paddle.

Actually, I seem to find it easier to duckdive by repositioning myself a little on the board.
I'll visualise it, because I feel a bit lazy to type a whole lot today! The "O" is my body.

This is how my board looks like without me on top. Quite the board, right?

^
II
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II

This is how I paddle into a wave:

^
II
II
O
II
II

This is how I paddle out when I see I'll have to duckdive to get out the back:

^
II
O
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II

So the idea that works for me is to actually paddle 'too much forward' on the board (not that much forward that I start pearling, of course) so that, when I sink the board, I (1) have more speed and (2) get the board under much easier and deeper.

Any thoughts on that, dear experts?

Have a look at this guy paddling out in Hawaii duckdiving a longboard!

It comes down to technique nothing else really by practice

Ok, update time.
I've been surfing nearly every day for the last month or so and I think I've found my personal 'duckdiving style'. No more laying further forward on the board, no more near-pearling experiences.
And the best part: I can duckdive both my 6'10" and my 6'3"!

I can now duckdive foam from 3-6ft. waves without thinking "xxxx, I'm screwed". It really gave my confidence in the water an enormous boost. Whenever I go wave spotting now, I'm sincirely happy to see big sets, whereas before, I was half happy, half 'scared'.

PRACTICE. That's all there is to it, actually. And good advice.

Mahalo!

Hi EAFW, it is really great when guys come back nd talk about how the advice helped and they are succeeding.

Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing your journey

Great stuff AirEarthFireWater