Surfing Waves

Hey guys.

The title says it all.
I can surf along a face quite well
i can do late take offs, steep drops
i can finish a wave, and bounce on my board
But i cant do any kind of maneuver, at all.

I'm riding a very high performance board so thats not the problem.

Iv'e read the first turn I should learn is a bottom turn.
But when I try i always fall of my board or not turn at all.

I surf basically every day thus iv'e progressed from beginner to intermediate quite quickly.
But I've had this problem for a little while now and i really want to get out of it.
I've read so many tutorials on maneuvers and i just cant seem to get it

I'll put up a pic of me attempting a bottom turn
But i don't end up turning... Maybe it will help you to help me.

Thanks in advance guys

Peakysurf wrote:But i cant do any kind of maneuver, at all.

I'm riding a very high performance board so thats not the problem.

Well, I imagine its a big part of it...
If you can't turn, what on earth are you doing on a high performance board? That'll only make things much harder.

Sorry to be brutal but you haven't progressed to intermediate if you can't even do a bottom turn - all you've done is handicap yourself by surfing a board that's too small to learn the basics on.

So learn how to do a decent bottom turn (and a top turn, and a cutback, at the very least) on a board that you can progress on and dial in the basics before trying to ride a high performance shortboard.

I agree with DBBB, but you have the board already, and you can stand on it and go down the line....you ought to be able to make it work...

Watch the hands/arms....hard not to bottom turn if you mimic the "drop wallet" movement (touch the water with your hand like you are picking up your wallet)....

https://surfing-waves.com/bottom-turns.htm

I also own a 6'4 fish.
Do you think that would be a suitable board to learn turns?
I havent really used it because I was looking at it as if i want to learn to do bottom turns and other maneurvers I would need to ride a high preformance board.

Peakysurf wrote:I also own a 6'4 fish.
Do you think that would be a suitable board to learn turns?
I havent really used it because I was looking at it as if i want to learn to do bottom turns and other maneurvers I would need to ride a high preformance board.

I'm not the person who should be giving you advice since I'm still regaining my meager surfing skills. Nevertheless, I'd go on Craigslist and get a cheap longboard and play on it. You don't have to surf a longboard exclusively. Just learn how to carve on it and how to shift your weight on it. I suspect you can probably learn to do a decent bottom turn on a single fin longboard in a about 1/4 of the time it would take you to figure it out on a short board. Once you have it wired on a longboard, I suspect you'll transfer the skill to a short board fairly fast.

Brutal assessment here, bottom turns , top turns cutbacks are basic skills without them you are nowhere near
" intermediate" level. Those skills are what you need to progress and they have nothing to do with a high performance board . They are the basic vocabulary of surfing, forget Shakespeare just walk the talk of surfing!

I think you might be confused with a cutting back turn and a bottom turn. The bottom turn is just your line going from pointing to the beach to angling down line across the face. It doesn't have to be a full 90 degree turn. You seem to be fine going along the face, so you must've bottom turn to get there.
High-Performance boards have no potential on their own. High-performance boards are for high-performing riders. Just like a high-performance 1000cc GSX-R motorcycle is built to go fast and turn hard. But for a novice rider grabbing a hand full of throttle, it's just bad news.

The board doesn't turn itself...ie it's the surfer, not the board.

Edit: what waikikichan said!

In terms of skills needed check out the surf simply surf camp 'tree of knowledge' - how they determine skills to put surfers in the right level of coaching

http://surfsimply.com/surf-coaching/the ... knowledge/

The surf simply guys say something like it will take you weeks to go from level 1 to level 2; months to get to level 3 and years to get to level 4...that's with regular surfing.

Anyway, be honest with yourself; level 2 is still a beginner; level 3 is low intermediate and level 4 is really just intermediate.

A high performance board is a low performance board with a beginner on it.

It's funny how I'm a complete weirdo in this tree of knowledge..

Wider tailed boards such as a fish are a little more difficult to turn than narrower boards however not so much as to make them impossible to turn. If you want an easier time get a narrower tailed board with lots of tail rocker. But you could just stick with it and keep working at turning. It might help to get your back foot a little more back.

Ok so I've went out today, on my hp board. With a bit more knoledge about why i should be trying to do.

I used big H's advice saying I should touch the wave as i come in to turn and I just focused on that and now I can do it really well.
But the reason I only focused on touching the wave is I couldn’t do the next motion I wanted to.
Which is getting my board more vertical.

After i done the bottom turn when i touched the water i just faded over the wave cause they were weak today.
But I coldnt get anywhere close to vertical, no matter how hard the turn.

Am i missing something??
Thanks for all the help by the way

You need to match your surfing to the wave, weak waves are very diifcult to get drive for continuity of turns.
That is why your new bottom turn put you over the back of the wave.
Softening your bottom to put you mid face would have been the better option!
It is easy to overpower in small waves. The pros can generate speed to link turns but that is down the track, for you surfing needs to be linking smaller turns to ride the wave to completion. As you get better increase the power and speed of what you do!

Oh thanks.
That makes sense.

But say I am in some stronger swell surf.
How would i get more vertical?

If the wave is powerful enough you can sort of pause in the middle of your bottom turn and aim for the lip making a two stage bottom turn. So you lay down and turn and wait for the right section to appear and aim for it by turning again in the middle or end of your bottom turn. Then you also need to work at turning back at the top of the wave or you will just go over the top. Seriously this stuff takes time to learn. You got to pay your dues.

Check the video from 110% surfing techniques which teaches two different angles coming out of bottom turns and more importantly teaches when and on what shape wave to use each on.

Here's something on what OMS was talking about, "pausing" or holding form in the bottom turn, building power, letting the wave develop and picking your spot...

I think you probably need to get your arms working more effectively.

Peakysurf wrote:
But say I am in some stronger swell surf.
How would i get more vertical?

More power first off , work on linking one turn to another ( at your stage forget vertical) put a little more power into each turn but ensuring you have enough control to speed onto the next turn , carrying more speed from a turn into the next turn adds to the ability to go vertical. Unless you can generate speed from your first bottom turn all you are doing is point you board upwards and drift over the back or get smacked down.

Get your basic skills working, everything will come from time in the surf !

Ok.
Im going to go out tomorrow, its only ment to be 1-2 foot, so I'll take out my fish.
It's more then likely I'll be back with more questions haha.

Enjoy your surf! Bring on the questions