Slipping off the back of the wave

[hcfkavh]

I’ve been getting more comfortable angling my board and going down the line. My home break usually only allows for down-the-line surfing because the sections are really fast especially on bigger days. However when I do take of on a wave with a defined shoulder I set my line too high and I end up slipping off the back when the wave flattens out. When I take off straight and I bottom turn the same thing happens. I also try to look down toward the beach and crouch to get me back down the wave when I feel like I’m too high but I still go off the back. How do I stay on the wave? Thanks

[oldmansurfer]

You need to keep your center of gravity below the top of the wave so try to crouch at the bottom when you are starting your bottom turn then extend but keep your center of gravity low so crouch back down and lean toward the beach while you start to turn and extend at the top of the wave. To sort of practice at home stand in your surfing stance and turn your extend your arms to the sides like you would for balance then turn your upper body and point to the area behind your opposite shoulder, then turn the other way and point the other way. Your forward arm should point to where you want to go before you turn. What kind of board are you riding and how high are the waves?

[dtc]

I suspect probably your problem, from the sounds of it, is that you are taking off without 'breaking the lip' - ie you stop paddling too early, or start too late. Either way you end up too close to the top of the wave when you are popping up (if you google 'breaking the lip' or similar you should be able to find videos showing as its kind of hard to describe). You will see surfersdont actually take off right at the top of the wave, but a few feet down the face.

Remember how water flows work in a wave. Wave energy is rotational, with the direction of the rotation going from the bottom of the wave to the top. So water is being sucked up from the bottom to the top (which is, in part, why waves curl when they break and, indeed, the rotational energy is why waves break).

If you are too close to the top of the wave, you get sucked up as well and spat over the back. After you have popped up, gravity should allow you to break that and head down the wave; but when you paddle you are only barely overcoming the force and during the short 'stop paddling/pop up' period, the water movement might be enough to send you upwards. Plus the lip of the wave doesnt have much power, so if you pop up too high you might just not have enough thrust behind you to push you down the wave. Finally, if you arent paddling fast enough, the wave just goes straight by you.

Steeper and esp steep and large waves are a real problem for this.

The only solution is to paddle faster and take an extra stroke after you think you have caught the wave and weight your board to go down the wave (not tilting back to stop it going down). The extra stroke and weighting can be scary, because you have already started down the face a little bit and your immediately response is to stop paddling and jump up. In small weak waves sometimes the weight of the surfer will break the lip, but in anything bigger or more powerful you need to position yourself down the face a little bit. Aiming across the wave slightly helps, because you arent heading straight down and panic-ing yourself, the angle is more subtle

This is a difficult thing to learn to do because it feels wrong and unsafe and you will sometimes get it wrong and disappear 'A over T'. But if you understand 'the physics', you can figure out what is happening a lot better. When it works, it feels so natural and unscarey that you wonder what your problem was - until the next wave doesnt work....

I'm not sure what you mean by saying you take off straight and bottom turn - if you are at the bottom of the wave, or nearly at the bottom, and you turn and end up going off the back of the wave, then you are just turning too sharply.

As you go across the wave, there is a need to aim slightly down the wave to overcome the water movement, but its not really a big thing - I guess dont aim straight across, aim down a little. You can always do a slight turn back up the wave if you get too low.

[hcfkavh]

oldman: I will keep those in mind. Do I have to get my back foot further back? Sometimes when I try to move back on my board to initiate turning I think I don't turn fast enough and I end up stalling the board instead. Then when I try and pop up further back on my board at the start of the wave I slip backwards while making the drop. In 2-4ft I'll use a 6'6 x 21-1/4 x 2-5/8 single fin, anything above that I'll use 7'2 x 22 x 2-3/4 egg 2+1. I've gone out in 6-8ft days according to surfline, wave size/height is all relative so it might not have actually been 8ft. It's a beach break.

dtc: I believe I am taking off as the lip breaks or a little before, I don't slip off the back at the beginning of the ride but further down the line. I would be riding a wave but the waves starts to flatten.

what I meant by "taking off straight and bottom turn" is I take off at less of an angle, bottom turn, set my line then glide on the face for a couple yards but then slip off the back.


thanks for the replies

[oldmansurfer]

I think it is hard for someone just learning to understand that riding a shortboard is more than just turning. You are moving your center of gravity and when you go off the wave it's because your center of gravity was too high....or the wave died out. It sounds like the wave went on but you went over the top of the wave. If you had a motorized surfboard that you could turn with a remote control it wouldn't be able to perform anywhere near as well a a surfer because it is about moving your weight up and down the wave. I am not sure about your foot position but the falling over backward thing is because you need to lean forward more when you take off. I think when you are just learning the drop is a scary thing and your normal reaction is to lean back but what you need to do is lean forward when you are dropping and change to pressure on your back foot when you get down and start turning. I can recall having that problem for a little while when I was learning. So ultimately the solution to keep from going off the top of the wave is to turn back down sooner so you keep your center of gravity in front of the wave.

[oldmansurfer]

If you watch the pro surfers they turn at the top of the wave but they are leaning toward the beach or down the wave. If you want to stay on the wave without leaning down the wave when you turn at the top you need to turn sooner so that you keep your center of gravity in front of the wave. the bigger the wave the higher you can go but still until you learn to lean into the turn at the top you need to turn sooner before you get to the top.

[hcfkavh]

thanks I'll try leaning more during my next session

[waikikikichan]

"My home break usually only allows for down-the-line surfing because the sections are really fast especially on bigger days." - So most of the time its a fast closeout. It doesn'ts curl and reform into sections for you to turn on. Thus you drive and then kick out. Nothing wrong.

"I set my line too high and I end up slipping off the back when the wave flattens out." - you not slipping, you just drive out of the course. but again if the race course "ends" or disappears ( flattens ) then your ride finishes.

"When I take off straight and I bottom turn the same thing happens." - you're doing a Squared bottom turn which usually sets you up for a vertical of the lip in closeout sections. But if you don't have the ability to cut/carve, you'll just keep going up and out.

" I also try to look down toward the beach and crouch to get me back down the wave when I feel like I’m too high but I still go off the back"
Like when they say in sports "if you drink water when you're thirsty, it's too late". By the time you think you should turn down, it's already too late.

1st ) watch videos. See how the surfers Take Off, Bottom Turn, Set your Rail, then Continue on that line, put more pressure on your inside rail and Fall Up the face, or release rail pressure and Slide Down the face. What you seem to be doing is too much rail pressure after the bottom turn. learn to ease off. By the way, are you a snow boarder ? Snow boarder get on rail to scrub off speed or slow down. Surfers get on rail to speed up.

2nd ) Surfboards turn like motorcycles. You need to set up your turn by rolling from inside rail, to the flat bottom of your board, to the outside rail ........ smoothly. Advance surfers can do that in a few inches. Novices take a few feet ( yards ) to do the same. Plus just like in motorcycle racing, you need to set up before your Braking Marker. You can't just get to the corner and say "Hmmm, I should turn now". You need to know when to down shift, look thru, lean over and throttle on. You are just in 5th gear going down the straight away the whole time .

[oldmansurfer]

Here is a video. Notice he rotates his shoulders and points his arm where he wants to go and leans back down the wave so that he is going back downhill once he finishes turning off the top.

[oldmansurfer]

In that video if he was to stand up straight at the top he would go off the back of the wave

[hcfkavh]

thanks for input

waikiki i think u hit the nail on the head, i'll just have to learn how to time my turns and rail transitioning.

oldman, i'll keep that technique in mind the next time i attempt turns.

[oldmansurfer]

Words....so hard to understand exactly what someone is saying. I have personally been having a problem where I turn off the top of the wave and then get hung up there. If the wave is steep then it's often very easy to just lean over and push the nose of the board down the wave but when it isn't very steep then the wave passes me by. I seem to have passed this problem recently and no longer have that issue (or at least not as much). Surfing is actually a very complex thing. It looks so simple. I am glad you found your answer. Let us know how it goes.

[hcfkavh]

oldman I appreciate the response, I agree, surfer is so complex compared to how it looks from the beach. what did you do to overcome that problem of getting hung up at the lip? Is it just pushing your nose down? I tried doing that by weighing the nose down the face but end up pearling bc I can't move back fast enough on a mid length. Are you riding a shortboard?

[oldmansurfer]

It's making a commited turn and lean back down keeping your center of gravity in front of the wave like I was explaining. I ride an 8 foot fun gun rounded pin quad. Really what helped was losening my hips to allow me to move my weight around better. I used to surf before so I knew what to do but my body wouldn't do it. I started doing exercises where I just move my hips around in a circle slowly and I just push my hips out as far as they will go around in a cirle then go the other direction. This improved my balance a lot too....I think, it all happened within a week of starting this exercise my balance suddenly improved and so did my surfing.

[drowningbitbybit]

I started doing exercises where I just move my hips around in a circle slowly and I just push my hips out as far as they will go around in a cirle then go the other direction.

As long as you never post a video of you doing that...

I do a similar thing on my indoboard - rather than doing big changes where my weight distribution completely changes, just move the indoboard back and forth with movements from the hip. I think OMS is spot on - this is much more like the movement that you'd do going down the line and up/down the face, and is also good for controlling drive (so you can slow it down a touch if you get too far in front of the curl).

[waikikikichan]

"what did you do to overcome that problem of getting hung up at the lip?" - Again, the best way to get out of a situation is to not get in it in the first place. You know what to do, just not getting the WHEN to do. Thats the difference in most sports.

"Is it just pushing your nose down?" - No , should be flowing thru the curve on the outside rail. You are being REACTIVE not PRO-ACTIVE. Pushing down the nose meant you too out of the wave already. If I paint myself into the corner, what would you recommend I do ?

" I tried doing that by weighing the nose down the face but end up pearling bc I can't move back fast enough on a mid length. " - You shouldn't need to move back faster, your back foot should be over the fins in a top turn.

[waikikikichan]

Since you want tips on techniques ( other than working on timing ). The best thing to help your front side turns, top turns, cutbacks is .......................... Back Side Bottom Turns.

If you focus on surfing to your backside during one of your sessions, on the next session your front side turns will improve. A backside bottom turn has similar body movements and rail pressures as a front side turn. If you can't surf Backside, then thats the answer to your hung up problem ( other than timing )

check out http://alohaki.jugem.jp/. The photos of the frontside 3rd and backside 4th surfers, show the turn in moment with correct eyes, feet and hands positions.

[oldmansurfer]

I agree with waikikichan to not get into the situation in the first place so try not to. If you do get into that place (too high on the wave) then there are several things you can do. One is push down on your front foot to force the board down the wave and if you are at the top of a steep face this works really well but on a not so steep wave it doesn't. In that case you can try stepping forward on your board especially if you have a fairly long board and the nose is allready over the edge of the wave. Or you can try to scoot your board forward by pushing your hips and legs forward (a forward hop). You can also try the Hunington hop where you bounce up and down on your board in an attempt to push it down the face. All of these techniques are useful to know in surfing but better yet to know how to avoid having to do these maneuvers since often by the time you know you are off the wave it's too late to do anything. It's always good to have pictures.... words...... are so difficult to describe exactly what a surfer does. Coming back to the power of the wave is a good description.

[hcfkavh]

I realize trying to compensate for being too high on the wave will only reinforce bad habits. I'll work on the turning techniques you guys suggested, thanks