Surfing Waves

I can manage 2-3ft surf pretty well in the sense that I can comfortably going down the line at 45 degree (front side).

My board is the 8ft Wavestorm.

Big problem for me though, is that I get good speed immediately after pop up, and maybe for 1-2 seconds that follows. Afterwards I seem to slow down -- well in my beach break each surf is about 5 seconds anyway.

My question is: how do I keep speed, or even increase speed, in situations like this?

Its hard to tell without seeing you but there are 2 common causes

1. (most common for beginners) you pop up, go down the face and then you are 'in the flats' (bottom of the wave). There is no power here. Nothing to push you along. You get power from gravity down the face (so speed) and then no power and you stop. This happens because you are heading straight to the beach

to fix: you need to be in the top 1/2 to 1/3 of the wave face. Yes, quite near the top.

how: either turn on the face really early after pop up, or do a hard bottom turn to turn up the face. Either way, get yourself back to the top half of the wave face

2. (in addition or instead of 1): you are weighting the tail too much (too much weight on back foot/feet are too far back). It can be due to many reasons - if you are looking down at the board, you might be weighting your back foot to balance, you might be trying to keep the board on horizontal (your brain likes horizontal, that is normal).

to fix: you need to weight the front of the board and keep the board flat. Make sure your feet are in the right place.

how: Next time pop up, and lean forward and put a lot of weight on the front foot. Like 80%. See what happens. If its too much, yes, the nose will go under and you will fall off, but thats fine. Adjust and see if it helps. If your feet are too far back, are you laying on the board (when paddling) in the right place?

https://surfing-waves.com/surfing-speed.htm

ConcreteVitamin wrote: Afterwards I seem to slow down -------
My question is: how do I keep speed, or even increase speed, in situations like this?

1) How do you know you seem to be slowing down ? No, serious question. What are you seeing, what are you feeling, what is actually happening that tells you that ? By letting us know that, we can give better advice.

2) What goes up must come down, and when it hits the ground it goes up again ( a little bit ). You wavestorm's sponge construction has the positive of being safer for bumps and collisions for you ( and for us ). It's flexy nature helps absorb wave irregularities that would other wise buck you off if you aren't positioned correctly on the board ( as most newbies/beginners tend to do ). The down side is the flex might cause the board to BOG down in certain situations. The bottom rocker goes from concave to convex to concave again. So what can you do ? NOTHING, learn to work with it's limitations. Learn to work with the wave. Bouncing up and down might make things worse. Wavestorms are not slow. It's when people try to Zig when the board is Zagging, that people have a hard time with it.

3) How can you pick up speed between 3 and 5 seconds before the wave closes out ? I don't think any of us good do more than just straighten out or kick out up and over.

4) Are you a snowboarder ?

you're probably not going down the line, otherwise you wouldn't be in the flats.

This is what I would do frontside on my crappy board that is very hard to turn, before I mastered the bottom turn. I was where you are, frustratingly, after three years of surfing!!!

Bottom turn is a misnomer for you at this stage, you should not wait to get to the bottom of the wave to turn.

First, obviously , you should angle your takeoff.

Then, start your turn while paddling for the wave, by putting a bit of weigh on the rail.

Start turning your body and leaning into the wave as you pop up, then you will be slightly higher on the wave and better oriented after pop-up.

After that you can do your bottom turn to take an even higher line. Keep looking down the line, not at the nose of the board.

waikikikichan wrote:

ConcreteVitamin wrote: Afterwards I seem to slow down -------
My question is: how do I keep speed, or even increase speed, in situations like this?

1) How do you know you seem to be slowing down ? No, serious question. What are you seeing, what are you feeling, what is actually happening that tells you that ? By letting us know that, we can give better advice.

2) What goes up must come down, and when it hits the ground it goes up again ( a little bit ). You wavestorm's sponge construction has the positive of being safer for bumps and collisions for you ( and for us ). It's flexy nature helps absorb wave irregularities that would other wise buck you off if you aren't positioned correctly on the board ( as most newbies/beginners tend to do ). The down side is the flex might cause the board to BOG down in certain situations. The bottom rocker goes from concave to convex to concave again. So what can you do ? NOTHING, learn to work with it's limitations. Learn to work with the wave. Bouncing up and down might make things worse. Wavestorms are not slow. It's when people try to Zig when the board is Zagging, that people have a hard time with it.

3) How can you pick up speed between 3 and 5 seconds before the wave closes out ? I don't think any of us good do more than just straighten out or kick out up and over.

4) Are you a snowboarder ?

Re: 1) They way I know I'm slowing down is that after pop up, I immediately sense acceleration, and I keep myself looking down the line (specifically, looking at about 45 degrees in front of my inside rail) to follow the acceleration. After 2-3 seconds, I guess I might have hit the flats. Then the wave breaks and I see whitewaters catching up with me.

Re: 3) I guess you're right I just picked this recent wave as an example since I VERY recently started being able to do this.

Re: 4) yes.

dtc wrote:Its hard to tell without seeing you but there are 2 common causes

1. (most common for beginners) you pop up, go down the face and then you are 'in the flats' (bottom of the wave). There is no power here. Nothing to push you along. You get power from gravity down the face (so speed) and then no power and you stop. This happens because you are heading straight to the beach

to fix: you need to be in the top 1/2 to 1/3 of the wave face. Yes, quite near the top.

how: either turn on the face really early after pop up, or do a hard bottom turn to turn up the face. Either way, get yourself back to the top half of the wave face

2. (in addition or instead of 1): you are weighting the tail too much (too much weight on back foot/feet are too far back). It can be due to many reasons - if you are looking down at the board, you might be weighting your back foot to balance, you might be trying to keep the board on horizontal (your brain likes horizontal, that is normal).

to fix: you need to weight the front of the board and keep the board flat. Make sure your feet are in the right place.

how: Next time pop up, and lean forward and put a lot of weight on the front foot. Like 80%. See what happens. If its too much, yes, the nose will go under and you will fall off, but thats fine. Adjust and see if it helps. If your feet are too far back, are you laying on the board (when paddling) in the right place?

https://surfing-waves.com/surfing-speed.htm

Great advice! Will try next time.

Going rail to rail will generate speed, but in your case, I think you just need to find the pocket/sweet spot and get your board positioning right... The rail 2 rail thing is a technique you can use once you’re in the right spot and need another way to speed up. This learning may overlap, I know it did for me, and still is.

Tom

Question:
1) are the other locals "making" the section/closeout ?

2) are you sure you are slowing DOWN or is it the wave is speeding UP when it starts to closeout ?

3) after you pop up, then what are you physically doing with your hands, knees, feet, etc. ? When know you are looking down the line ( sort of ), which is good. But are you being static and not moving ?

4) do you know what TRIM is ? That is very important to learn how to build speed and scrub off speed.

I've spent most of the summer trying to build speed up as I ended up the wave overtaking me, what I do is

Angle the take off (if it's smaller then angle it even more)
Sometimes I drop down and do a bottom turn back up to the top of the wave then top turn. Sometimes I turn immediately so I might angle it 45deg then turn immediately to 70deg then lift the front of the board up the wave then back down. (That pribably makes no sense but watch the video below) the problem I have is doing the right turns at the right time but it will come.

there are many maneuvers that are used to generate speed. The simplest is to stay high on the wave so you angle your board across the face of the wave so it stays in the top part of the wave. The other simple maneuver is to go forward on your board. Your board has a sweet spot that when your weight is over that spot you will go as fast as the board can go. work on those

Basically you're asking "how do I surf well". It's a big question, one that addresses proper positioning, clean and well timed top, bottom and cutback turns that keeps you near the foam and not out too far on the face. It's a long road, but you can practice going to the bottom of the wave then turning to go back to the top....even if you're just trimming up and down the face and not making harder turns off the tail you'll do better than a frozen statue aimed down the wave as pretty much all of us were when we were starting out (except OMS). Once you finish one turn start on the next and on and on....going forward you can practice stalling the board to let the wave catch up, harder and sharper bottom and top turns more off the tail and cutbacks or comebacks (? I think that's what WKK calls them) which are used to "come back" to the breaking part of the wave where the power is.

waikikikichan wrote:Question:
1) are the other locals "making" the section/closeout ?

2) are you sure you are slowing DOWN or is it the wave is speeding UP when it starts to closeout ?

3) after you pop up, then what are you physically doing with your hands, knees, feet, etc. ? When know you are looking down the line ( sort of ), which is good. But are you being static and not moving ?

4) do you know what TRIM is ? That is very important to learn how to build speed and scrub off speed.

Is trimming basically (1) slide across the face (2) adjust feet forward / backward as needed?

Thanks everyone btw! I will try all your advice tomorrow

have a watch of this

ConcreteVitamin wrote:Is trimming basically (1) slide across the face (2) adjust feet forward / backward as needed?

Kinda sort of. TRIM is the essence of surfing. Yes it is sliding across the face of the wave, and yes you moved your feet before hand to get into TRIM. When you are TRIMMING, you are going no Faster or no Slower than the wave is at a given moment and place. You are basically doing nothing but gliding. Pumping is not TRIM, Turning is not TRIM, but you do those things to get into TRIM.

Here is a pretty good article on why you go faster when you're higher up on the wave face-
https://surfsimply.com/surf-coaching/ho ... ard-works/

Even on a 2-3 foot wave it can make a significant difference.

I took everyone's advice and tried to apply it in a recent session.

Video 1: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mWL254A17T9LR74A6
- reasonable speed (I did this by shifting weight to front foot)
- a couple seconds in the wave face; but then whitewater caught up
- I think I did do a couple mini turns, as you can see there's some splashes of waters
- What can I do better? My guess is (1) either the wave is too short (so whitewater catching up is kind of unavoidable), OR (2) I misjudged the break direction (I was looking/going left, but perhaps the wave was actually breaking right...)

Video 2: https://photos.app.goo.gl/pXDksxpo7FoP7mb38
- LESS speed than Video 1, but traversing down the line at a greater angle & for longer
- I think the mistake I made here is not turning straight toward the beach at the end -- is that right?

Any advice / analysis / help is much appreciated.

Speed is out of the question.
1) The wave has no face to trim on, it's just foamy turbulent whitewater where the wave has already given up it's energy. ( is there a further outside break where waves are cleaner and has open faces ? )
2) You are looking down at your board and feet.

ConcreteVitamin wrote:What can I do better? My guess is (1) either the wave is too short (so whitewater catching up is kind of unavoidable), OR (2) I misjudged the break direction (I was looking/going left, but perhaps the wave was actually breaking right.

This was helpful for me.

waikikikichan wrote:2) You are looking down at your board and feet.

I was trying to figure out if this is a mouth mount, and if so was it pointed in the wrong direction (loose hinge?) If it's actually pointed in the direction that you're looking, then OP you're really making it hard for yourself because you (and by extension we) can barely see what's going on with the actual wave. You really need to be able to see the wave to figure out how to surf it.

How are other surfers doing out there? Are they finding open faces/lines to ride?

ConcreteVitamin wrote:- I think I did do a couple mini turns, as you can see there's some splashes of waters.

Is that a good thing ? Are you turning for a reason/purpose or turning just to turn ?
Driving your car through a gradual bend in the road, should you crank the steering wheel back and forth from right to left vigorously ? Speed ( which you ask for ) happens by being smooth. Good turns are not only the How but more importantly the Where and When you do it.