Surfing Waves

Hi guys,

So I'm new on here, so nice to meet you all! I am after a little advice...

I have been surfing on and off for the best part of 4 years or so now, although I have a full time job and I only get to go during the weekends. Sometimes I have had gaps of a few months off surfing due to working on the weekends (at one point it was 4 months... which sucked big time..). But every time I go I can't seem to pop up quick enough, I went over this weekend and I am literally screaming in my head to stand up and my body just won't process the message. I have read numerous articles about how to perfect your pop up, but I am short in height with short arms and I find it very difficult to tuck my legs underneath my chest let alone doing this at a fast pace.

I have also tried practising at home for a little while and that hasn't worked either. I'm at a loss as I love surfing, and the friends that I go with who started the same time as me are progressing so quickly. I know that not being able to surf on a regular basis hinders me but I'm begining to get to feel that I will never progress past the beginners level . I ride a 9"1' longboard and I have now bought a longboard skateboard to help with the days which I can't go surfing. Does anyone have any advice for me? What am I doing wrong?? Anything at all will be appreciated as I don't want to give up on one of my biggest passions!!

Thanks,
Steph

First of all don't worry too much this is a common problem that lots of new surfers have. If you search this forum you will find lots of posts about popup problems. At the top of this page there is a heading "Learn to surf" and there are instructions there about popping up. One little clue is that whatever foot you place forward when you surf place the other side hand a little further back this opens up more space for you to bring your legs up into. Having some flexibility helps too so stretch out and loosen up. One of the things I do in popping up is arch my back first so my arms are extended but my hips are still on the board then I throw my rear end upwards and use that to give me room to move my legs up. Here is a video for a longboard beginner I just found on the internet

give the 'aussie sprinter' pop up method a go - its perhaps not ideal for purists, but being on a long board its fine (its in the video below). Or, as old man says, put one hand low (right hand if you are a natural foot) - put it right down near your hips, which gives you extra height/push.

But, to be honest, if your mind is saying 'pop' and your body isn't, I'm not sure its a physical issue but rather a mental issue. For example, its much safer to stay laying on the board than to stand up and be hit with all the vagaries of the wave. It feels weird, you are heading down hill, the board is bouncing around, everything is happening really fast - your body just says 'stay here in the safe position'.

If you are popping up and falling off, that's one thing. If you are just not popping up at all, that's another cause.

Why not head back to the white water for a session or two and do 25 or 30 pop ups in a session. Get your confidence up, so you know you can do it when you are in the unbroken waves. See if you can find some nice fat slow waves (maybe around higher tide - although I know this isn't always possible) that give you some extra pop up time, rather than steep low tide waves.

I agree with DTC that your problem is more brain then brawn. If you really think it's physical then try this. Fall asleep on the living room floor, then have someone pop a balloon or yell " Fire !! " in your ear. I bet you'll pop up to your feet in a split second.

"but I am short in height with short arms and I find it very difficult to tuck my legs underneath my chest" - I am very short too. But are you heavy ? Does your gut/stomach stick soo far out your can see you toes ? No ? Then your compact body should be easier to spring up. You do not need to get your feet under your chest ( is that possible ? ). You do need to get your feet under your butt, so you can rise straight up.

If there is any advice I can give you is " explode off the deck ". Don't just let go of the deck, actually push off with force to slam your torso upright. Question are your hands wrapping the rail ? That could be why your loosing some length in your arms.

It's hard... really hard... to make progress when you're not going consistently. But keep at it.

One thing a lot of newbies do is have their hands too far forward during the pop up, so they're popping (or crawling) forward rather than up. Make sure your hands move down to around your ribcage (on the deck, not the rails) and then - as Waikikikichan says - explode up.
Do it like this and the first couple of times you'll stand straight up so fast that you'll just fall off. That's stage one. Then you'll quickly work out how to pop up superquick into the correct surfing crouch. That's stage two, and you're surfing

Then I agree with drowningbitbybit that it's more difficult to learn if you don't go often. I used to surf about 25 hours a year and recently increased it to 50 hours a year and my learning doubled It just takes longer to learn.

Wow thank you all so much for the advice! I will definitely give the aussie sprinter a go, it does make sense about it being a mental issue I do tend to struggle with stuff like that.

I am a little on the heavy side, mastering the pop is just extra motivation for me now . In a way it's good to know that I'm not the only one who has problems with it, I just got to keep pracing.

Thank you all so much again and I hope some time soon I can tell you all that your advice has paid off!!

Steph x

Good luck Steph. I will add that don't forget some out of water strength/mobility exercises if you are finding the pop up isn't that easy from a physical/co-ordination sense. If you have a gym nearby, look for circuit training classes, they give a good full body strength/cardio workout that is perfect for building a foundation - you can't always solve every issue just through surfing.

dtc wrote:you can't always solve every issue just through surfing.

We all try though

" I just got to keep practicing ". - Practice does not make perfect, practice makes Permanent. If you practice your pop ups wrong, you will just be very good at wrong. As some others have commented, you hand need to be further down your body on the push up, lower than your underarms.



Another thing I fear is that you are looking down at the deck and your feet. Where you look is where you go. So if you keep staring at the deck, it's almost like a invisible force keeping you down. Look up and out. And as the Disney's Frozen song goes ......" Let it go "

One of the things I have done recently is to change my weight program a little. I normally have done a variety of dumbbell exercises to strengthen my shoulders. One of them I lay on my back and push up from my shoulders and back down something like a press but I am laying on the floor. Recently I started pushing really hard and fast so that the momentum of me stopping the dumbbells as they reach the extent of my arm length lifts my shoulders and chest off the ground. I think this has helped the speed of my popup a bit. But I guess you should get the mechanics down first.

Yes practice makes perfect ..for me it really helped to do 20 pop ups a day at home in my living room..
its muscle memory and helped for me ..

Hi when you position your hands under your chest ready to pop up are they both in the same position , I ask because I put my left hand slightly forward from my right and when popping up it seems easier , try it and let me know

Jamiemead wrote:Hi when you position your hands under your chest ready to pop up are they both in the same position , I ask because I put my left hand slightly forward from my right and when popping up it seems easier , try it and let me know

Are you a natural footer (left foot forward)? If yes, then having hands like you say is totally fine. I actually have my left hand up near my rib cage and my right hand almost at my hip

Waikikichan gets a medal for mentioning frozen in his reply

I have something to add that might help, I'm still learning and have been somewhat confounded by the pop up, I can do it and do it quite quickly but it seems to take a stoopid amount of effort and I've watched a few others do it easier.

I was always using my toes and or knees to push up in conjunction with my hands (placed back down by my ribcage which really works) and trying to think about it, how on earth can you lift your entire body weight vertically off the board without using your foot or knee?? You'd have to be strong enough to push your body up into the air from a lying position, not gonna happen!! I was always using three points of contact with the board as I was getting up, it worked but wasn't ideal.

So I had a little eureka moment recently, and that is that you're not trying to force your body up like pistoning a plank of meat straight off a plank of board, with both of them parallel to each other until you've made enough room to tuck your legs under ( I've tried this many a time on the rug, its absolutely impossible unless you can bench press your own weight from your hips)

The physical move I've discovered is more akin to holding the front part of your body up, including the weight of your head and shoulders in that cobra position you've read about so many times, then comes a tilt forward, pivot off your planted arms, so they act as the fulcrum, your lower body gets pulled up towards your waist with a quick snap but your more balancing on your straightened arms than trying to extend them to push your body vertical, it still requires an explosive snap and don't over do it and lean too far forward but it's helped me not rely on my knees and toes so much (they still seem to get used a bit but it's a bad habit I need to break)

One thing that'll help is the shape of the wave, when you catch a nice one it'll be tipping you forward anyway so you'll fall forward into a hole between your hands instead of feeling all your weight dead heavy and horizontal on the board.

Please take my comments with a dose of scepticism as is only learning too so if the powers that be say this is wrong, listen to them. But it's helping me so far!

Jester, your comments sound like they could be written by me. Actually I am not really sure what I do when I popup but sometimes I do a two stage popup when I am paddling for a wave and think maybe I have caught it or maybe it's too late to get down.... I push myself up like the cobra yoga position and the front of the board pushes down and it starts to go over the edge of the wave then I finish the popup and if not then I lay back down and paddle out for another wave. But on most waves I just popup and no idea what I do. If the wave is small then I may drag my legs a bit but on steep or big waves it's quick with no dragging because the board is falling away from me as I popup. And Waikikichan has lots of experince with newbie surfers so he knows the troubles they most often have.

Hi Steph,
Ive been surfing a while now and still have trouble getting that front foot right through on small waves. As the waves get bigger and the board points down them it is far easier. However if you watch art of longboarding 3 with joel tudor on there you may notice rather than push of flat hands he turns hands so back of them faces forward and then pushes off what is nearly like a knuckle push up, not always but on quite a few occasions , it does give more room as you are slightly higher off the board. Anyway if its good enough for him it certainly is for me. There is great advice on previous posts but i thought this may help, keep smiling. Should mention you can watch it on youtube its at about 3.45. Its a great video.

Hi Guys, been sat at work being naughty looking through lots of the threads on the site. Very helpful friendly people on here!

Bit of background, im 28yrs old and always been on skateboards and snowboards all my life. Always wanted to get into surfing because i absoutely love being in water and the at the beach. I live inland UK in Manchester and have absolutely no friends to surf with. 2 years ago i had my first lesson, just got up in the morning drove 2 hours on my own and went for it. Last year i purchased a camper van so i can go more. The van has been converted and is near enough fininshed by myself so will be going alot more.

Onto the problem, when im at scarborough in the UK i was starting to stand up, id say i can catch 7 out of 10 waves and ride them in from paddling and just bodyboarding back in. When it comes to standing i get up either ages after the wave has broke or i fall over every time. I can get to my feet but fall. I just use brute strength to get up. 2 weeks ago i went to San Diego with my GF who has family there and rode waves at Pacific Beach and i literally got drowned and beat up for over an hour then called it a day. Americans watching must of had a great time watching. I pearl more than come off the back but the biggest two problems i have are Sitting on the board and also getting up and actually staying up for more than a split second? In the morning when i know there are waves i cant find myself wanting to bother with the 2 hour drive to just fall off all the time. Yet i know once im there ill love it. Any advice peeps? Maybe go back to a long board? Im 5.6 and 89kg/196llb. I work in a gym so i wouldnt say im fat but im not thin, just heavy.

At your size I think a longboard would be a must. The popup is a problem for lots of newbies. It isn't a brute strength thing, it's more a snappy quick thing done with technique. The bigger the board the more stable the platform to stand on. If you get an SUP board, you can stand on it without catching a wave because it is huge and stable. A long board would be stable enough while it is moving but shorter boards are very unstable comparatively. Shortboards require very little force to make them turn so you have to be more careful about accidentally applying force to them. So anyway you want a longboard I am guessing maybe 10 feet 10.5 feet but others on this forum are more qualified to tell you what size and hopefully they will chime in. One other thing is when you popup you want to have a wide based stance. This makes you more stable. You can practice popping up on the floor. You want it to be one swift movement into this wide based stance. At first it won't be but practice will improve on that. As far as the problem of sitting on the board that will be easier with a longboard too.

Thanks oldmansurfer. Appreciate the quick response. Well 2 years ago i made the vow to keep surfing and thats what led me to sell my car and buy a campervan. Now the vow is to get back to San Diego to have fun surfing while enjoying that gorgeous view and water setting . It was like a dream come true being there looking around just unfortunate i spent every 3/4 mins underwater being spun around.

I have my own NSP 7,2. Im guessing im making life harder for myself trying to learn on that??

In the gym i work in i have a large pool, is it worth me dragging my 7,2 NSP in and just sitting on it, i feel im not utilising having a pool in the UK yet im not sure if its worth it.

With my stancei dont think i get wide enough and that could be due to my skating/snowboarding background, my feet are engrained about shoudler width apart, snowboarding was holidays / rarely at local dry slope but i used to skateboard as much as humanely possible till early 20s, so i would of thought if i can get up and into a decent stance ill stand a good chance of progressing quicker.

As the gentleman has said above, i have the same problem that when i try to pop and stay low with fingertips on the board i dont get my front foot under my chest, im leaning forward in that stance. If i try to pop higher to land with feet futher apart i tend to be more upright and lose balance. Any sneaky tricks to help/try next time im out?