Surfing Waves

I have a problem with my feet going too close together when popping up. I have a traction pad and my back foot always ends up going in front of it near my front foot (Im regular surfer not goofy). This causes me to not do big/ any tunrs, and causes me to loose my balance and fall. So my question is, is my pop up too powerful if that sounds right? Why is my back foot going so far forward?

Should I just focus on looking down the line, and just let the feet come through natrually and not really pay attention to it?

Hey surfing22 are you also surfer22,
one of probably both of you are in the same boat, you are very beginners and that is absolutely OK
Let's cover a bit of ground here; Pop ups yes focus on down the line and don't worry about the tail pad it is not necessary to stand on it in your pop up, in fact if you do you will probably be too far back on your board and you will bog down. practice practice and surf surf surf is the real way to get pop ups working.
Nothing in the posts of surfing22 or surfer22 makes me think you are doing anything too powerfully you need to get a good paddling speed and watch the forming of the wave and match and exceed the speed of that.
Learn to get your feet a little further apart,practice this on every pop up.
Just go simple in your approach to surfing at this stage, when you do get to turning work on little adjusting turns to ride the wave face and work on getting speed down the line.
Your pop up and first turn lay the foundation for the rest of your surfing, give yourself the time to practice these and everything else will unfold

Yes I am also surfer 22 sorry about the confusion. And awesome tips! I will definately try them out next time im in the lineup!

If you look up pop up's on youtube you will see a couple of slow motion ones. If you notice how a popup works, the back foot sets down before the front one, so fast that in real time you almost don't notice it. So try to consiously plant the back then the front, almost like a walk on stance.

Also, concentrate on landing sideways, most begginer land facing forward which forces the feet together.

Lastly, pop up to slightly bent knees, straight legs tend place your feet together.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the great tips! I never knew your supposed to plant your back foot first! I think this should help the issue, along with practice! Stoked!!!

***UPDATE: I went out surfing today and did amazing! I actually accomplished my first bottom turn!!!! Stoked!!!! But heres my issue- when I pop up and look down the line and not worry about my feet I have no problem with my feet close together and balance. But when I focus on getting my feet down, and my feet spread apart I end up either pearling or losing my balance. Why does this happen?

Great on your first bottom turn.
The answer to why does any of this happen is.......................................... you are a beginner nothing in the range of surfing comes naturally unless you are very young, a lot of what you need to do is counter intuitive to anything you do on land, your whole nervous system and balance techniques have not been trained to do this stuff yet.
Cure is slightly by listening to advice on these posts and then seeing how it works for you. Every success and every failure leads your proprioceptors and nervous system to new activity and recognition states, and gradually the things you need to do in surfing become more natural. Wrap this in having fun rather than getting stressed about failing and the process is faster!!!!

The ultimate cure is more and more water time!

To follow up on what Jaffa said - have you ever played golf? Sometimes you hit the ball badly and your coach/others say 'you are lifting your head'. So the next shot you concentrate on keeping your head down and you hook the ball terribly. Then your coach says 'you kept your head down but you forgot to rotate your hips'...

I suspect you are so focused on what you are about to do (pop up in a certain way) that you forget what else you need to do (paddle, arch back etc). As Jaffa said, because this sequence is not yet part of your muscle memory, you can't forget about part of it and expect it to still work.

You might be the type of person who will benefit from coming up with a type of 'mantra' - for example, 'paddle, catch, arch, look, hands, pop' (or whatever). Depends, of course, on what works for your kind of learning.