Surfing Waves

I was thinking of asking for a half day surf lesson for Christmas from my wife and I'm wondering how worth it you think they are.

I know from taking guitar lessons that instructors see things that we can't and can fix bad habits that we might not even know we are doing...saving quite a few months or years of frustration.

Are surf lessons like that?

I'm wondering if a single lesson would be the equivalent of going out on my own and figuring things out by myself for 3 months or something like that...a real time saver.

If you've taken lessons, let me know your feelings.

I wouldn't be taking really expensive ones like "Surf simply" or anything, just the local florida beach lessons in my area.

Are you a complete beginner? In that case, a surf lesson is worthwhile. Sure you can learn it all yourself, but an initial lesson will speed up some of that, give you some good basic knowledge, will let you surf in a safe situation with someone looking after you, give you some confidence. As all the gear is provided, its a cheapish way of learning whether surfing is actually for you.

Its probably more akin to golf - someone will teach you the grip and a basic idea of the swing, and you hit a few balls on the driving range. Then you go out by yourself for hours to improve and refine, only to realise how difficult and frustrating it actually is...Of course you can teach yourself golf if you want, but hardly anyone does - and surfing is a skill like any other sport, so no reason to treat it differently to any other sport.

If you find a good school it can be worthwhile having one lesson followed by a few weeks on your own, then a follow session back at the school. A good school will cater for you being slightly more advanced, but honestly at that stage its probably just you not going through the 'on the beach pop up' lesson at the start and hitting the water straight away rather than anything more specific.

What you want is a school that has instructors who teach you things and arent either only trying to get you to stand up regardless of whether you are doing anything right (the 'give the tourists the joy of standing knowing they will never surf again' lesson) or are checking that you arent going to injure yourself, but are not interested in actual training. It can be hard to identify the better schools up front, just do usual and read reviews and look at websites etc. For your first lesson it doesnt really matter too much, but if you want to continue then it is more important

However, its also fine to do 1 lesson and then spend the time figuring it out yourself. Lots of online resources to guide you when you hit an issue.

Thank you. I definitely want something more than "here's how you pop up" lessons.

I was watching the surf simply videos and that's what made me think of it. The guy said that standing up was not their aim, it was to get the student to learn how a surfboard acts and how to get it to do things...standing up was secondary.

that made a lot of sense to me.

I guess I'll try one and see how it goes.

I doubt there will be many beginner surf schools that are going to do what surf simply does ie providing you with a base of knowledge that you work on to build up skills brick by brick. most of them are aiming to get you to stand up, that’s about it. But at the early stages, these are key skills so there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that they don’t teach you much else - of course, they don’t have you for a week (nor are they charging $6000 or whatever surf simply charges).

If you have a board and give it a go yourself, you can probably figure out if you actually need a lesson.

rpavich wrote:I was thinking of asking for a half day surf lesson for Christmas from my wife and I'm wondering how worth it you think they are.

In Waikiki, a customer came up to me and tried to bargain for a lesson. He said a surf stand down the beach would do a 2 hour lesson for just a few dollars more than the stand I was at. I replied, " Then they're ripping you off since most newbies don't last 45 minutes ".

If she's a great swimmer, than maybe it's worth it. But if she's not used to salt water burning her eyes and throat, neck pain from arching her head back and rash from the wax ( and sponge decks ), then maybe a 2 hours lessons will be enough.

Question: isn't the waves pretty vicious in the winter on the East Coast ?

I guess I wasn't clear enough, the lessons are FROM my wife to me

I don't know how strong the waves are here in the winter, I've just moved here but unless there is a storm, I don't think that they are anything really scary. It's pretty flat here much of the time.

rpavich wrote:I guess I wasn't clear enough, the lessons are FROM my wife to me

I guess I'm also confused about who is giving who a lesson.

My general thoughts on the "bucket list" foamie and a picture on the beach surf lesson... They are useful for people who want that introductory experience and who may need professional supervision to have fun and feel safe in the ocean... Nothing wrong that, I've been there as newbie and needed that person next to me as I went out the back for the first time

rpavich wrote:
I'm wondering if a single lesson would be the equivalent of going out on my own and figuring things out by myself for 3 months or something like that...a real time saver .

Probably not. Surfing is largely about figuring it out by yourself. It is very difficult to produce an effective accelerated method for teaching surfing. At the more experienced level, there are some high end programs like Surf Simply, as mentioned, that can help seasoned surfers analyze and correct mistakes in their technique, develop new skills, etc. But even these programs are largely working on the margins, with the prerequisite of having a lot of experience out in the water for this to be worth it at all.

There's no way you'll learn a great deal about controlling the board, rather than just standing up, in one lesson. There just isn't time for that.
I did used to instruct on 5 day surf tours though, and some of the students made massive improvements through the week. But it's quite surf dependant. If you have 5 days of good clean waves, it's much easier for both you and your instructor to really make progress. If it's 5 days of slop with 1 second rides, it's much harder for both of you.

I think so! I'm a brand-new surfer (started in July and have gone out maybe ~10 times). I started by taking a lesson when I was on vacation in NJ, went out the next day on a rented board by myself, and then took another lesson back in NYC in Rockaway. There are a lot of things I would never have known to do if I had just tried by myself, and even by second lesson, which was my third time surfing, my surfing instructor was able to give me more tips and help me refine my pop-up vs my first lesson where I was brand-new.

Yes! However it depends on the surfschool. If possible go for private lessons.

Depends, if you are going daily and you are standing up then no. But if you only surf once in a while it will give you all the fundamentals.

I think they are worth it, as a good teacher not only explains how you should do things, but also sees what you do wrong and can tell you how to fix it. The art will be in finding a good school. Many are focussed on somehow getting beginners standup in the white water, and you get 10 mins attention in a large group session, and that is it. A dedicated session is more pricey, but may be worth it with a good teacher (I once had a deciated session in HB and that was terrible despite good customer ratings). Half a day is super long, especially if you need to paddle - I would suggest 2h max per day for a few days in a row.