Surfing Waves

Hey I was wondering how to pick up when you are on a wave surfing it. After I catch a wave and make some turns I will loose speed quickly and then the wave will just either knock me off or pass me. Is there any foot movement or way of building speed on a wave?

When watching surf films I notice them rocking forward and back on the board to gain speed as they go up and down the wave. It kinda reminds me of when you are a kid on a skateboard you will jiggle your legs back and fore to go forwards. Is this the way to do it?

Gravity is the basic principle of speedin this case. If you rock back and forth and carve in closely not making big dynamic turns, you will for sure lose speed eventually. If you are going to carve up a wave, do it with conviction nail the top of the wave and you will come flying down with great speed.

Ye i know what you mean, its just being able to keep the momentum going and making it up the lip and back down several times.

It also depends on the size of the wave you are talking about. Try to stick where the wave is about to barrel, or break.

To avoid losing speed... There's lot of things to be doing depending on where on the wave you are. So think about these, and decide when you need to do them when you're on the wave -

Stay at the top of the wave - then gravity is constantly pushing you down.

Put some weight on your front foot and fly down the face.

If you're flying along the face, turn away from it, down the wave, then turn back up it.

Pump the board - that is put weight on the front so it moves forward, then rescue it by shiffing the weight to the back, repeat.

Stall the board - let the powerful section of the wave catch up with you.

Remember your upper body and head are big heavy things - you can use them to gain speed (the board will follow where your head goes) but to, fr'instance, turn up the face you need to have generated the speed before heading back up to the lip.

Lots of ways to gain/keep speed. Good one is to try to always be on the steepest bit of the face - just keep looking for a bit of the wave that is the steepest and steer onto it.

Thanks for the help. These are some really good replies and I think I have a better idea now of what I must be doing. Thanks

I suppose it is all about transferring your weight, foot placement, and where you are on the wave.

drowningbitbybit wrote:
Pump the board - that is put weight on the front so it moves forward, then rescue it by shiffing the weight to the back, repeat.
.

I thought you'd do something like this to pick up speed. Ive heard people say when surfers are doing this, that they are "Gunning it" is this correct as well as "pump the board"?

As far as skateboard pumping... I bought a longboard skateboard and pump it as my main source of propulsion. It was tough to learn at first, but once you get it, the speed generated from it feels alot like surfing. The trick is to get to know your rails intimately. When you are leaning on a rail and then transition to the other rail you have to focus on weighting and un-weighting to engage/dis-engage a rail. This weighting/un-weighting acts just like the front-back weighting motion described by drowningbitbybit but is done in a side to side motion and can generate speed when there is not enought power in the wave. I use the front-back method alot also, but the side to side method works well coming off a bottom turn. I'm not that good at it in the water, but on my skateboard I can propel myself indefinitely on a flat road, or until my legs give out. In surfing, I use it to speed away from whitewash and find the face. It comes in really handy on an inside reform. You an see the pros use this technique a lot in their videos and it's even a technique included in the Kelly Slater Pro Surfing game. I think the rail sensitivity of this technique really helps produce good cutback and slashing maneouvers.

try to surf rail to rail rather than front to back, if you shoot out in a straight line to far in front of a wave onto the flats then youll lose speed and drop off the plane (sink) so try and keep close to where the waves power is (the steepest section) by carving and doing little cutbacks. You can bounce the nose up and down to get through flat sections but its not the most stylish way to do it. Like that other guy said think about trying a longboard skateboard, if you can get speed from pumping one of them then youll find pumping a surfboard easy.

Ride high on the wave, and when you slow down, drop down the face.

Or, if your wave is big enough, slow down untill you start to be drawn up the wave, then push hard on your front foot.

Gaining speed

As people have already said you gain speed by dropping down the steepest part of the wave. As you take off turn off the bottom and then look down the line and look for the steepest part of the wave you need to climb and drop in a flowing motion across this section.

As you climb this steep bit you should try and unweight yourself make yourself go light and then as you drop back down make yourself go heavy. Sounds wierd but practise makes perfect. You need to this very smoothly though. I have seen paeople trying to climb and drop accross the fgace with there arms failing like pendulems and their bodys twisting wildly. This is a very crap way to do it and you will notice they are not gaining any speed at all. Watch a good guy and you will see that they seem to use the whole face and they gain so much speed its incredible. it takes a lot of prcatice but if you keep things smooth you will gain a lot of speed.

Backhand is another matter though you have to use your body more but you should be able to gain as much speed.

When your in a flat section instead of pumping and boucing your way through it (which looks Fugly) try and weave bouce like tik tacking on a skate board it looks better and is a lot more function at maintaining and gaining speed. USe you trailing arm as well bring it around on cutbacks and turns its aheavy bit of pink stuff that really helps to bring that board around. Also you should have a an arm in the water during most maouvers watch a surf vid and study the pros they use an arm in the water as a pivot point. Anyway thats enough tips from me. If we ever compete against each other your gonna know all my secrets!!