Surfing Waves

I am just wondering if any of you have a catalog of surfing maneuvers. There is such a variety of things you can do on a wave, I wonder if anyone took the time to categorize and name them all. My 8 foot fun gun does a kind of cutback maneuver. I have been calling it a cutback but it is from a bottom turn then you hit by the lip and carve back around and generally the board ends up about midface on the wave facing the oncoming break (head high or higher waves) then depending on what the wave is doing I hit the whitewater and turn back or make a quick 180 degree turn back to face the board down the line again. I have been calling this a cutback but saw someone do that in the Fiji Pro contest and the comentator called it a top turn. Does anyone know of links to descriptions of the various maneuvers?

110% surfing techniques video series 1,2 &3....pretty comprehensive....

thanks I may give those a try. Not to learn new techniques but to figure out what to call the ones I do

I've got a really simple system of names; three words mostly.
1. getting across wave
2. desperately avoiding wipeout
3. did one yesterday
4.I made it!
5. WTF

#3, 4 & 5.....sometimes all in reference to the same moves......


OMS.....old dogs can't learn new tricks?

My rate of learning is so low due to less time in the water and not looking for good surf.....at least that is rate of learning specific new tricks, I am always learning how to read the waves and what to do on them and I am learning by doing but nothing specific more like oh wow that worked. I am still working on the basics. I am a pretty good paddler, not bad at reading waves, can take a mean steep drop like a pro and I have a powerful bottom turn that can project me well down the line, but the rest I am still learning (after several years of surfing). SO I don't fool myself that I can go out and learn some fancy maneuvers when it is taking me so long to just get the basics down but still I learn by doing stuff and seeing what works so I occasionally discover a new maneuver and want to know what to call it. I think I make junk waves look much better than they are but then that is what I surf every weekend. Put me on good waves and I will not do as well because I don't have the basics down.

From your description, I would call it a Round House cutback. The WSL commentators say Full wrap or wrap around cutback. If you need to go 180 , that's not a top turn.

Since starting surfing in 1958 I've noticed manoeuvres have changed names, extra manoeuvres have been added , different names in different countries, Paul,Strauch crouch ,,became a pig dog , became a front side rails grab.
Then you add skateboard turns and half pipe stuff!
Tubes, barrels kegs .bowls, Wipeout, taking gas, whitewater , soup, fins, skegs,.
Slash, gash, gouge. Rip tear and lacerated.
Pits, slabs , nailed gnarly , ledge.
Gremlin, femlin, Gidget, grommet,
Not at all comprehensive and very idiomatically English based.

Owen Wright did a 'man turn' in the final in Fiji according to the announcer.

Not quite sure what that involves, looked like a sharp bottom turn straight up the face. No idea why a 'man turn'.

OMS, your turn should be called a 'government bend' (one of the mountain roads leading down to the coast from my place is a 180 degree hairpin called .... 'government bend')

dtc wrote:Owen Wright did a 'man turn' in the final in Fiji according to the announcer.

Not quite sure what that involves, looked like a sharp bottom turn straight up the face. No idea why a 'man turn'.

I think us mere mortals would be straight lining for the shoulder. He turned and punished that lip when we would be running to not get drilled by the lip. Brings back memories of Tom Carrol doing "the Snap" at the Pipemasters. That was a "super" man turn.

What, you mean you never did a snap on 12 ft pipeline?

It looks normal almost the first time you see it, but once you look a few times it just gets more and more outrageous.

Notice his board-7’8” x 17 7/8” x 2 1/8”. totally different to how they surf today; also showing you can snap a 7ft8 board (in some circumstances...)

Yeah lots of changes. Those boards used to throw a heavier spray at a higher angle back in those days. Now the spray is smaller droplets and closer to parallel to the wave. I surf an 8 foot board and I can tell you that I can turn that thing 180 degrees with a two foot radius (four foot diameter) but back then I am sure even on my 6'10" back then I couldn't do that. But when I used to cutback before often I would run into my own spary trail getting a shower from it. Names all change....the younger surfers have all these names for every little peak and some are different from what we called them. Surf lingo is so imprecise. I don't surf with others often or if I do they often don't know what to call what I just did neither do I LOL maybe just got lucky is the best description.

I was thinking about the turning radius thing and maybe if I weigh what I weigh now and surfed my old boards I could turn 180 with a 2 foot radius. I am more than 40 pounds heavier now than I was then.