Surfing Waves

Here's a video of a smaller girl on a longer board doing some nice Off the Lips ( and white water rebounds )


Fast forward to 0:15 and 1:04.

See how her back ( drive ) arm comes across her chest as she comes out of the bottom turn, and then rips back to force the nose down BEFORE the top.

Will never forget the time I saw a friend that is a pro doing a 12 o'clock snap with a longboard. Had seen it in pictures but it's crazy seeing it in person. The things you can do with a longboard when you know how to, still struggling to get my snaps more vertical with a shortboard

Longboards help with off the lips because of the large amount of push back they get from whacking the lip so it's the bottom turn that is more difficult. Lots of tail rocker helps in either a longboard or a shortboard

IanCaio wrote: still struggling to get my snaps more vertical with a shortboard

This ones for you IanCaio:

It's not in English, but full of slow motion and great easy to understand graphics.

waikikikichan wrote:

IanCaio wrote: still struggling to get my snaps more vertical with a shortboard

This ones for you IanCaio:

It's not in English, but full of slow motion and great easy to understand graphics.

Nice, think I could understand most of it from the video! Just wondering, what does it say it's different between the back hands being up or down in the bottom turn? I noticed it highlights Kelly and another surfer with their back hands raised and then highlights the other two.

When people say the bottom turn is the key to everything they are not exaggerating. I think I might be lacking that sharp powerful bottom turn to drive me up more vertically, maybe trying to be conservative so I don't lose the wave. Here's a wave from yesterday, never mind the music



I did throw some spray on the carve because I was really fast there, but I lost the opportunity to hit higher on the wave and more vertically. I guess I'll have to sacrifice some waves trying to get that sharp bottom turn..

On that wave a hard bottom to top turn would have been great as the first maneuver. Wave looks choppy so maybe not the thing to do

It would take some skill to go straight from that drop in to a bottom turn and snap, I went down kind of fast. Working on getting there but I don't think I'd pull it off that time if I tried

Work on your bottom turn. If the bottom of the wave has no chop then you can do a hard turn there and going through the chop between the turns is easier than during the turn. Hitting a chop in the middle of a turn can make you redirect your board or make you fall.. I surf choppy conditions all the time so try to keep track of where the chops are and be ready for them but even between the turns a chop might make you miss the turn and do a smaller turn or end up turning high on the wave and getting stalled there. Fast drops are the ones to do hard turns because you have the speed needed. On a slower drop a hard turn will stall the board more.

The best tube ride I had in the last 20 years was riding my 9'6' longboard, doing a bottom turn and hitting a chop. I bounced and redirected straight back up the steep 12 foot face I had just navigated down and whacked the lip but was slightly off balance so stalled there for a moment and then leaned forward and dropped back down. All of this extra few seconds gave the wave time to wall up more and I got tubed properly in that big barrel. It was all a mistake but hard bottom turn from the steep drop to what I wanted to do is a projection bottom turn but the chop redirected it straight up the wave a maneuver I don't think I would have done ever on purpose these days but only because I am not too familiar with waves that size. You never know if you don't try. Maybe I am one of the luckiest surfers ever but this was frontside and backside seems much easier to do vertical off the lips probably because my upper body is already rotated for the turn