Surfing Waves

Hi New here,

Story so far, I am a regular surfer, 3 times a week, live at the beach. I have/had numerous boards and I am a competent surfer. Started on a body board as a kid and went to standup around 19. I am 40 now.
One thing that has plagued my surfing is my take off/pop up. Bad habits formed as a booger drop kneeing has given me the wrong muscle memory for the pop up.

What I am after is stretches, exercises I can do to created proper muscle memory for the pop/up for short board. I am a gym junkie, so pretty tight which would does help. I really am over my drop knee to stand up take off and will do whatever it takes to get it right. I am comfortable is larger surf but my take off is hindering how deep I can take off.

Things I know that help.

Hands flat on deck
Practice with a board on a bed with the fin off the bed (I can’t do this/ i revert to drop knee to stand up take off)
Practice on floor (might sound weird, but me arms just don’t seem long enough)
Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks In advance

Found this, looks like what I am after. I will keep digging. I will try and update results.
Like the tittle I will create the definitive pop/up thread/ recourse



Cheers greg

If you are a gym junkie, I doubt strength is an issue. And unless you are a dedicated powerlifter or really muscle bound, just lifting or moving will usually keep you relatively mobile (ie muscle stretching is not an issue). Its mostly likely - as you say - muscle memory. Your muscles just do what they want, even though your mind says otherwise.

Think of golfers who want to change their swing - its not something that happens over night or that is easy to do. Takes a lot of practice to get the muscles to unconsciously do something new.

I suggest you break down the pop up into a few elements, figure out what you need to do for each element and figure out where it is going wrong. Then just practice the right way over and over. First in slow motion - this wont be exact because you need speed to do the pop up properly, but just to train your muscles as to where to go and the path they need to take. After a while, it will start to feel natural, then put it all together.

Thanks for the reply dtc

Can you break it down for me. As I believe, to do it properly you start in the yoga pose cobra and swing your legs, torso forward between your arms . Not so much a push up, like a flat plank.

I have noticed when I am in my stance that if I crouch down/ squat I can’t get my hands to the ground either side of my front foot, my chest is touching my front thy, with my hands about 3 inches form the ground. So I am guessing this makes it hard to swing my legs through my arms. Not sure what stretches would help create more space and lengthen my arms so my hands can be flat on the ground either side of my front foot.

I also found this video. My gym has this equipment so I will try this and report back.



Being in Australia, it is summer hear so not much swell. I will fix my dinged up 9 6 mal and start from scratch. I want to be fit and ready for the swells that will start here from march onwards into winter.

Cheers Greg

Another good one to digest.

gregbyday wrote:Another good one to digest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nl7_ONEjTQ

This is a good one, thanks. As an armchair critic I would say 'dont hold the board around the rails, keep your hands flat on the board', but otherwise its well done. I certainly can't add anything useful to it. And the TRX exercise looks worth trying.

Its a bit hard for me to visualise what your problem is - its possible that your knees are too straight and you are bending too much at the waist or leaning too far forward. Look at keeping your hips down - thighs about parallel to the ground (think of the starting position for a deadlift, then twist your hips so you are facing sideways and put a little bit more weight on your back foot), plus hands on either side of the body (not both on your front side). That is the position you want to be in immediately following the pop up - you dont need your hands on the board after you have popped up. So work backwards from there.

Also, when popping up make sure your hands are far enough back. My tendency was to paddle and then bring my hands straight in to about shoulder height. But if you bring your front hand (left hand if you are natural footed) to about ribcage and right hand almost down to your hip, it gives you more height in the push plus a natural twist (this is mentioned in the video). Just concentrating on hand placement really helped me.

To make things easier on a longboard, you can also push off your toes a little bit (notice in the video he talks about pushing/bouncing off the knees - on a longboard you can use your toes for this and its much easier)

If you are really struggling and its giving you the @$@@, try the 'aussie sprinter' method. Only works on longboards and is therefore not a useful method if you ever want to go shorter.

Thanks for getting back.
I won’t be doing the Aussie sprinter, I want to get it righ, take off deep and get pitted.
Just got a new board, and so don’t want the knee impressions on it like my others boards. I have vowed not to surf this board until I get my take off right.

That video with the dude on the various boards is very good. I have been having recent pop up issues and watched the black and white one a few weeks ago, I have also battered my board with my knees. I started to do 20 pop ups a day in my spare room with a line to visualise the centre of the board.

Went out yesterday and it really helped. Felt like I could pop up on anything and didnt use my knee (1 out of 10 maybe). Practise practise practise...

Another one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXkq9XE6sI
I was doing these push ups yesterday. I am strong but man these were tough.

Here is the rest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gmZLHnLWDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHEV0HnMbyM

I will film my own when I get a chance.

Greg

Well, there has been a tremendous amount of good info shared so far.

My bad habit is using the knee method in one of the videos posted by dtc. The problem with this method is it consumes a lot of time. Consumed time is directly proportional to missed riding opportunity or duration.

I've been working to break this bad habit. Two weeks ago, I started doing pop ups on the gym floor in reps of 15 in sets of 3. When prone on floor, my arms are outstretch 90 degrees to body. On count of 3, I pull arms in, place palms down as if on board, and jump up. Before I do this, I do 2 to 3 reps of squat thrusts 12 times per rep. Many guys in gym do not know what I am doing. The surfers know.

Unfortunately Surf Patrol has removed the vids, any way we can edit the posts to have the links in?

biilie,

I am getting weird looks at the gym as well. They are used to me do Squats, deadlifts etc.
The funniest thing though is seeing a guy doing the above exesizes the next day. not sure if he has seen this thread or coping what a did the day before.

gregbyday,
he's a copy cat!!

Dantastic1985 wrote:Unfortunately Surf Patrol has removed the vids, any way we can edit the posts to have the links in?

I didn't remove the links, I embedded the video in the post so they can play on the page. You should be able to see them.

I cant on my i-phone but ok on the laptop! Cheers.

No flash on IPhone, that explains it. Another thing to put on the to-do list.

Λ Should be fixed now Λ

if you practise pop ups do you use ur feet as well or just from your knees ? i ride a shortboard were you have to pop up from your knees so i guess its better to train it that way , cause if i use my feet i get much more momentum/swing/spark of course than if i just pop up from my knees !

what do you think ?

Oswaldolo, the ideal pop up is one movement to standing
Going to your knees as an intermediate step doesn't work all that well.
Have a read of all the pop up advice and do a lot of practicing whilst at home in Austria.

i think you got me wrong - i dont stand up over my knee ! i meant i lie down and just try to pop up without my toes - cause i cant use my feet anyway cause i have a shortboard !! you know what i mean ?
some video examples ...

i mean this has more sense to train right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW1nlrBIFO8

than this ( cause i cant use my feet to pop up on shortboard ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q02opbjUt8g

thanks four your suggestions...