Surfing Waves

Saw this great video of Devon Howard on a 7'2". What was fascinating was the amount of Bottom Turns he used. Can you name all the different bottom turns he did ?

That's my all-time favorite surfvid, I like the relaxed flow of the lines. It's how I want to surf one day.

I don't know the precise names of the Bottom Turns, but what I learned watching this clip over and over, is to move the backfoot. He never moves the frontfoot but repositions the backfoot before every maneuver.

I really love that flowing style. One of my long term goals is to be able to ride a shorter single fin egg semi-decently. Hope I have enough years left to go short! My uneducated eye says 6 or so???

Video said that board is a whopping 7.2 x 21.5 x 2.75......goes to show that you don't need a shortboard or even one the you can duck dive to "do turns".

Anyway....it isn't the board...

Hmm that is difficult. I would say the variety that exist are a bottom turn to speed up, one to slow down, one to stay at the same speed, and a midfaced bottom turn. Looks like he does them all, more than that if you want to include the transition to the next move

Could add to that a bottom turn to project out to the shoulder to set up a cut back vs sharper bottom turn to go more vertical with hitting the lip as the goal.

I liked his reach back on one of the cutbacks that he did.....sweet skills....

As far as the size of the board....googled just out of curiosity as he is ripping on this larger sized board; wanted to know more about him and came across the article below which was pretty good:

http://surfsimply.com/surf-coaching/vol ... ht-ratios/

I guess besides the transition to another maneuver there is the direction of the bottom turn too as in straight forward fading back and angled down the line

Salty - agreed, about 5-6 types
Oldman - I like how you notice the speed changes

One Bottom turn not mentioned was the FADE Bottom turn at 0:08. He did a Mid Face Bottom turn at 0:33 to set up the full wrap cutback. At 1:09 he does this Delayed Bottom turn, where he is already on but purposely waits for the wave to peak and break to drive down with the falling lip, then bottom turn.

The only ones I didn't see was a Double Pump Bottom turn and a Squared Off Bottom turn, of which him being on a Single fin, you don't really need to or want to anyways.

I can see two frontside:
what I call the "leaner" and the "stomper"

Yeah the delayed bottom turn for timing. There are also the extended bottom turn for getting around a section and the 2 stage bottom turn for a greater directional change. My theory on learning surfing is to learn to go fast then learn to slow down and the rest. I am still working on slowing down

I hate when they do slow motion surfing pictures for normal surfing sequences.