Surfing Waves

1) can you have too much volume? Or is it just my paddling is not up to the job. I went for my nsp as it has Alot of volume in it around 80 litres and most other longboard I see advertised have around 50- 60 litres.
I watch the other long boarders and they can catch waves really early and with no real effort but I seem to be really going for it to catch a wave, in the end I end up going for the steeper waves with all the short boarders. Could the sheer volume mean I just float straight over the back?

2) what am I doing wrong as I keep ploughing my nose when trying to take off.
I have tried moving backwards but then I seem to drop off the back, have tried paddling that little bit earlier which doesn't make too much of a difference?
Alot of the time I still manage to catch the wave but it's annoying and I feel it slows me down loads.

Most of what you are saying indicates your paddling position is too far back. Imagine a snow plough you are doing degrees of that.
The nose of the board your NSP should be no more than an inch above the water paddling on flat water.
When When you are further back you are snow plough stalling the board and as you begin to catch the wave you are slower than it and you tail is raised up the face and nose goes in,.
The fact that you can't catch the waves with the other longboarders and you need extra push where the wave is steeper ( shortboard take off zone) show your paddling and position on the board don't work.
Try a minor adjustment of your position for paddling first off, see how much more power and paddle speed you get. You need to be able to match or exceed the speed of the wave as it comes in.
Get some one to video your paddling too, we can look at that.
If your pop up is wobbly too you haven't got the speed that supports stability.
The board's flotation and volume is not the problem!
Try what I suggest it is minor but effective

most longbaords are fairly flat so changing the angle of the board in the water makes a huge difference. If you look at your board from the nose to the tail you see the profile that pushes water in front of it. On a longboard that is usually just the little bit of rocker or curve in the nose. If you lift the nose up a few inches the profile you are pushing through the water changes very quickly too. So consequently where you are laying on the board can greatly affect how well the board paddles if it alters the amount of water you are pushing as you paddle. Probably your worry about pearling makes you lay further back on the board which makes you more likely to pearl because you can't get into the wave early enough and the wave will lift the tail pushing the nose down making you pearl before you even stand up sometimes.

Your paddle is not up to the job....you should be outside the short boarders and catching when the waves are less steep. Follow OMS advice and change your position on the board until you find the "sweet spot" that allows for a fast paddle but still can keep the nose up......you will find that this position will shift once you improve and start to compensate for changes in conditions, and if you happen to be outside or inside of the ideal catch location.

1) "Can you have too much volume ?" Will too much of ANYTHING is not good. Even drinking too much water can kill you. But in your situation, not enough volume is worse. Little kids in Hawaii catch waves on 10 foot boards.

2) "I watch the other long boarders and they can catch waves really early and with no real effort". To catch a wave you need 3 things:
Power ( you paddling and the board your paddling on)
Position ( you on the board and board on the wave )
Timing ( when to paddle )
The advance surfers have more knowledge of where to be and when to paddle. You are just "going for it". Paddle smarter not harder. Move a lot of water a short distance rather than splashing a small amount in the air.
( by the way, stop gritting your teeth and relax your fingers )

3) "what am I doing wrong as I keep ploughing my nose when trying to take off". Again the bad Domino Effect. Bad paddle, late take off, no momentum, wave pitches you. The more you move your body back to try not to pearl, the more YOU WILL pearl. Your board will push water like a snow plow not glide like it should.

4) "have tried paddling that little bit earlier which doesn't make too much of a difference? " When should you swing at the baseball ? As it leaves the pitchers hand ? After its in the catcher's glove ? Too early or Too late is not good, You have to meet the wave exactly at the right moment, at the right place.

It not the length of the Bat, or the weight of the bowling ball or the straightness of the arrow ( well, within reason ).

FWIW, the stage you are going through is a stage that pretty much all beginners go through. Some of it is counter intuitive eg keeping your nose closer to the water prevents you nose diving. So long as you understand the 'physics' behind padding speed and how to catch a wave, it becomes trial and error and you will get there (the 'physics' has been described above by the others)

highly recommend watching the surf simply video tutorials - all of them are worthwhile, but for your problem look at 'catching unbroken waves' and 'paddling to spot X'

http://surfsimply.com/surf-simply-tutorials/

dtc wrote:highly recommend watching the surf simply video tutorials - all of them are worthwhile, but for your problem look at 'catching unbroken waves'

Ah, you beat me to it, I just wanted to throw the Baby Elephants in..

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure I can move any further forward on my board otherwise I end up pearling paddling all the time, even when I'm just paddling from a to b. Half the time I am still catching the wave so it's not as bad as it was where I was constantly nose diving and being catapulted across the beach. I just now seem to plough the nose through the water for a few seconds then that slows me down and I end up having a fairly steep drop down the wave.

I have tried even moving my head up and down depending on how steep the wave is, as this helps with pearling.

I have altered my paddling and thought that I had improved it massively.

Millsy82 wrote: I just now seem to plough the nose through the water for a few seconds then that slows me down ......

wait a minute, do you mean a "few seconds" or a "split second" ?

Seems you are very preoccupied with the nose. STOP looking at the nose and "feel" the board and the wave. Look to the next point, down the line, etc. Embrace the pearl, pearling is a good thing. ( better than constantly getting off the back of the wave, )

It feels like a couple of seconds but it may only be a split second.

Is it normal for the nose to go under for a split second then?

Millsy82 wrote:Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure I can move any further forward on my board otherwise I end up pearling paddling all the time, even when I'm just paddling from a to b. Half the time I am still catching the wave so it's not as bad as it was where I was constantly nose diving and being catapulted across the beach. I just now seem to plough the nose through the water for a few seconds then that slows me down and I end up having a fairly steep drop down the wave.

I have tried even moving my head up and down depending on how steep the wave is, as this helps with pearling.

I have altered my paddling and thought that I had improved it massively.

The nose needs to be about one inch/25mm above the water when you are paddling,will punch through chop but the whole front of the board need to have the feel of glide while you are paddling and actually have some momentum. On flat water paddle quite a few strokes hard, then stop paddling and without having any bits of you in the water see how far you go with momentum. The prime paddling position will go the furthest.
You also need to deliver power in your paddle strokes by having the strokes glide along the rails from entry to exit, no losing power by flipping out to the side.
I use an S shaped paddle stroke, like a swimmer's stroke that goes partially under the board.
I also paddle with the intent to catch the wave not the diffident paddle of "I hope I catch the wave, oh I'm scared I might pearl" technique.
I learn the timing of the break and where the best takeoff point for the day's conditions is.
A lot points to you not reading you break as well as you might too.
You will improve

Millsy82 wrote:It feels like a couple of seconds but it may only be a split second.
Is it normal for the nose to go under for a split second then?

Yes, it's normal. Watch surf videos as surfers are taking off. The nose goes under and as the waves steepens, the nose pops back up ( that's if you keep the momentum going forward ) If you death grip the rails, straighten your arms and try to yank the nose back, it will have a opposite effect.
By the way, you may think/see the nose goes under, but it's more the effect of the tail getting drawn up the face by the wave, that's making you get pitched to the beach. ( so stop dragging your feet in the water, get them on the deck )

Millsy82 wrote: I just now seem to plough the nose through the water for a few seconds then that slows me down and I end up having a fairly steep drop down the wave.

I have tried even moving my head up and down depending on how steep the wave is, as this helps with pearling.

I went through this as well.....I actually was too far forward on the board. I would paddle for the wave and as soon as the tail was lifted it was like I was a shovel, not the momentary dip but I'd actually submarine the nose and get it about a foot under water. It would kill all momentum and then I'd get flipped; there was no way to recover since paddling a round nosed longboard with the nose a foot or more underwater wasn't going to move too fast. I sorted it out by floating on my board in the pool, and seeing the reflection from the windows I could look at my body position which was pretty far forward.....I moved back until the board looked in good trim. Since I was learning and always surf alone I didn't have much of a frame of reference. Laying on the board further back felt weird, but I got better results when I went out the next day. Board paddled well on the flats and I was able to paddle hard on takeoffs without shovelling the nose.

I would experiment, move around on the board a bit, do the flatwater test that Jaffa described in paddling hard then gliding....you should be able to feel when it is right. I know this now but when I was at that stage "feels" were just developing so it is a little easier said than done. I still do this when I switch from board to board sometimes.....especially from a shorter board that has a faster swing weight (how long it takes the nose to respond and come up when you shift weight back and vice versa) to a longer board.....I will lie too far forward or back and not be able to massage the takeoff last second like on a shorter board and I will either miss the wave or shovel it. I change my body position and it's good times again.

FWIW I generally err too far back at first on my flatter rockered longboard and too far forward on my current and previous high rockered longboards. Shortboards it doesn't really happen because you know straightaway if you are in the sweetspot or not.

This is the best video I've seen about paddling and catching waves.

(Can't imbed this for some reason....anyway this is the link.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noeyq5n98pI

Great suggestions all around, but I really love this:

waikikikichan wrote:( by the way, stop gritting your teeth and relax your fingers )

As am I am really guilty of this like probably many other beginners. Smooth powerful paddling is so much more effective than stressed, high frequency water splashing, but it requires some kind of relaxed confidence that takes time to get.

And to one of the the initial question that bothered me a bit, too. I think the typical beginners mistake is having not enough volume, But finding your own sweetspot takes some time and I am still very much an old and heavy (90kg, 51years) beginner.. With my current board (8.4 x 23 x 3 1/4 CI Waterhog at 71l ) I can catch weak 1ft mushy waves, and if I don't I know it is me. The thought of getting your board down the wave as in the videos posted helped me a lot! If I would look for more paddling help, I think I would rather go longer and wider than adding volume as such.

Big H wrote:

Millsy82 wrote: I just now seem to plough the nose through the water for a few seconds then that slows me down and I end up having a fairly steep drop down the wave.

I have tried even moving my head up and down depending on how steep the wave is, as this helps with pearling.

I went through this as well.....I actually was too far forward on the board. I would paddle for the wave and as soon as the tail was lifted it was like I was a shovel, not the momentary dip but I'd actually submarine the nose and get it about a foot under water. It would kill all momentum and then I'd get flipped; there was no way to recover since paddling a round nosed longboard with the nose a foot or more underwater wasn't going to move too fast.

That is pretty much 100% the same.

Some times I can get around it by leaning slightly to the side and the board comes back up.

Would 1" too far forward or back make Alot of difference?

waikikikichan wrote:

Millsy82 wrote:( so stop dragging your feet in the water, get them on the deck )

I have noticed I have felt my feet drag in the water from time to time.

If your feet are dragging off the back of a long board, you are too far . If your feet are hanging off the side, you have a set of sea anchors.
A common mistake is to have your feet away from the centre line of the board while paddling and they act as pendulums first one then the other catching water and acting as alternating sea anchors.
Some longboard paddlers paddle with their knees bent and their feet in the air, this projects the weight forward on the board, some even beat time with their feet in this position ( I think it breaks the glide motion ).

jaffa1949 wrote:If your feet are dragging off the back of a long board, you are too far . If your feet are hanging off the side, you have a set of sea anchors.
A common mistake is to have your feet away from the centre line of the board while paddling and they act as pendulums first one then the other catching water and acting as alternating sea anchors.
Some longboard paddlers paddle with their knees bent and their feet in the air, this projects the weight forward on the board, some even beat time with their feet in this position ( I think it breaks the glide motion ).

So in theory if I'm in the correct position but then notice I'm dragging my feet and bend my legs I will then 've that little bit too far forward?

The reason I ask is that is what I do! I notice my feet dragging on wave 1 so I really pick my feet up, nose plough on wave 2 then catch wave 3 sometimes with a nose plough sometimes without.