Surfing Waves

Part1:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=25810

Part 2:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=25861

Today was small but clean and not crowded. A few bigger sets that broke outside. You can see me starting in the lower right corner. Video is at 1/4 speed.
Though the wave was broken, at the time I thought I was doing a good job staying ahead of the white water, going left.
Then I saw my video which looks like I'm flailing around. Also, my stance is still bad and I am not using my arms as well as I thought I was.

I don't know that this wave will tell us much, since it is really just white water and things are a bit different there eg you need to spend a lot more time trying to balance because you are going slower. However you do seem to have a 'poo stance' tendency that infects/causes your arm waving and head bobbing. This may be due to the white water but it's nonetheless worth a quick watch (or rewatch) of this



Maybe too much weighting on your toes because you are bending at the waist rather than the knees? Then your arms and butt go backwards to balance your head/torso. Then the centre of balance is not over the board and you need to constantly adjust.

So stay much lower after your pop up. That prevents a lot of this

In terms of the wave you needed to be 10ft to your left (downscreen); but if there are shifty peaks then sometimes you just end up in the wrong place and it can't be helped

I don't know why but it looks like you are going straight in the white water. The wave built a small going right and a weaker going left towards the camera..
The wave is very weak and so the poo stance and the arm flailing happen.
You need to catch the wave not let it catch you so a little further outside might have given you the chance to angle take off and be on that weak open face. Poor condition shifty peaks and weak wave difficult but doable (just).
BTW just to ensure we know your left hand wave from your right!
Sit out the back on your board facing the beach, then left is left and right is right and sort of straight is how you are riding.

Really and I don't know your options, you need a better beach, most beginners would struggle in what you've shown us!

Please see if you can get someone to video you closer at the beach so we can really see the workings of how you surf!

dtc wrote:So stay much lower after your pop up. That prevents a lot of this

Thanks, I will practice that on land.

jaffa1949 wrote: Sit out the back on your board facing the beach, then left is left and right is right and sort of straight is how you are riding.

Definitely was going to the left
I think it's the camera. It somehow flattens perspective. You can see how people who are at different distances from the camera appear the same size. But I also don't think I was angled very much either. White water straightened me somewhat.
The peaks were shifting and also I didn't want to wait for just the sets.

pmcaero wrote:Definitely was going to the left.

You are NOT going Left ( like turning left from your driveway onto the road ) . VEERING ( like changing lanes on a highway ) or slightly angled to the left but you are NOT going Left. You also did not catch the wave. The wave caught you and after awhile you escaped out of the foam. If you were going left, you would have been chased by the white water to the open shoulder.

If you set up 10 feet to the left and had a roll over rate twice as fast ( and a bigger board ), that would help your situation greatly.

Bending your back and bobbing your head is NOT pumping or increasing your speed . Better to keep the body quiet and the board smooth to not upset the flow.

waikikikichan wrote: You also did not catch the wave. The wave caught you and after awhile you escaped out of the foam. If you were going left, you would have been chased by the white water to the open shoulder.

Harsh but true. I also caught some clean waves today and tried to stay up on the face but I ended up overdoing it and falling on the back side. That has happened to me before with a bigger board as well. I guess it's a matter of practice finding the right line.

Your forum photo to the left shows you riding to the left, so you can. It's just getting the Position, Timing and Power down. But you are not a newbie, so I'm confused if it's just winter mush waves and thick wetsuits.

As others have said, there wasn't much of a wave to get and you were nowhere near close enough to the shoulder (either the right or the left)... but... I've been known to catch the crumbling whitewater once in a while, but the difference is all in getting back to the face.

So, assuming you've taken everyone's advice and you're a bit closer to the shoulder and you've paddled harder. You're still going to be caught by the whitewater, but you want to make more of it.

First of all, there's that long pause while you get bounced around by the whitewater and then finally you stand up. My way of catching a broken wave, and this works from 1ft to well overhead, is to be an inch or two further back on my board than usual. But then when the whitewater hits you, immediately arch your back, bring your feet up above your bum, put all your weight on your hands, and drive the board down in front of the whitewater... and pop up as soon as the nose is breaking into the clean area in front of the wave.

You'll have quite a lot of speed at this point. Use it. Turn towards the open face. Turn hard, drag your hand in the water, then all the weight back onto the front foot, stay low, and drive forward... get out in front of the whitewater and onto the face, or at the very least the edge of the whitewater and basically repeat until you're on the face. Then you can pump for speed.

In reality, on that wave, for the left at least, you'll get one good turn from the bottom/whitewater, up to the top and then turn back down again, and that will be it, but if you can manage that, I imagine you'll be secretly quite pleased with yourself.

pmcaero wrote:Part1:
Then I saw my video which looks like I'm flailing around.

I don't think you are paddling efficiently. Try an S stroke paddle where your hand enters the water smoothly above your head, your arm extends deeply in an arc along your rail, and as you draw your arm up toward your thigh make a bit of an S turn so that your hand is underneath the plank of your board and pushing water toward your fins. Exit your hand next to the rail of your board again. Get a rhythm going in your paddling. You also might want to try paddling at an angle to the white water so you can see the line of the wave better and then straighten out as the white water reaches you. This might also help you start angling into clean waves. You don't have to take off perpendicular to the line of a smooth wave face.

pmcaero wrote:

dtc wrote:So stay much lower after your pop up. That prevents a lot of this

Thanks, I will practice that on land.

Just to be clear, keeping low means keeping your hips low, not your head. Also, although these photos don't show it, front hand should be over back rail for a natural footer (ie: when you pop up, your hands stay above the rail they were on when you were laying down). This prevents you doing the first photo thingy (of course, your hands move around as you start turning and so forth)



Also, on smaller waves your turning movements need to be bigger - you can't just lean and turn. You need to really whip that upper body around. Check out waikikichan's blog http://alohaki.jugem.jp/?search=turn

Definitely, I have been using my homemade balance board and surf skateboard to simulate the correct position, but it all goes out the window in the heat of the moment when I pop up in the water

Correct. That is why I tell people not to worry about trying to get the same stance distance on their surfboard when buying a Carver. They want to mimic their stance, but it really doesn't translate over.

waikikikichan wrote: They want to mimic their stance, but it really doesn't translate over.

So what would be a good dry training routine to eliminate my bad habit of popping up in the poo stance? I do pop-ups on a surfboard outline on the floor, will that help?

Remember / repeat the phrase - "Surf your Height"

( and stop looking down at your feet )

I took my 7'2" fiberglass board out the other day to work on popups in white water and get myself accustomed to paddling the board. The waves were mushy and weak and I couldn't even ride white water with the board. The only way I could actually get up on the board was to put it into steep closeouts that were breaking in 16 inches of water. I proved to myself that the board is ride able by getting a bent-on-single knee-hold-onto-the-rail-for-stability ride on one of those closeout shore-break waves, but I didn't want to risk breaking the board so I called it a day. What did I learn from that? I figured out that my fiberglass board is not worth riding unless the waves have power and an incline that helps the board gather speed. In other words, if the board is flat on the water, it really needs a huge push to actually move. Anyway, my point is that I think you should consider getting another board that is suited for practicing in weak, mushy conditions. My foam board allows me to practice in just about anything while my fiberglass board needs a slope to travel down.

RinkyDink wrote:I took my 7'2" fiberglass board out the other day to work on popups in white water and get myself accustomed to paddling the board. The waves were mushy and weak and I couldn't even ride white water with the board. The only way I could actually get up on the board was to put it into steep closeouts that were breaking in 16 inches of water. I proved to myself that the board is ride able by getting a bent-on-single knee-hold-onto-the-rail-for-stability ride on one of those closeout shore-break waves, but I didn't want to risk breaking the board so I called it a day. What did I learn from that? I figured out that my fiberglass board is not worth riding unless the waves have power and an incline that helps the board gather speed. In other words, if the board is flat on the water, it really needs a huge push to actually move. Anyway, my point is that I think you should consider getting another board that is suited for practicing in weak, mushy conditions. My foam board allows me to practice in just about anything while my fiberglass board needs a slope to travel down.

.....or just learn to paddle better.

Big H wrote:.....or just learn to paddle better.

Yeah, that will definitely help.

I went in a close-out today and caught some short white water rides. One was so shallow my fins got in the sand and I flew off the board
Trying from further out, the waves I'd catch would die so I would stall.

I was working on pop-ups so the length of the rides didn't matter much.

I tried some pop-ups where I stayed super low but it didn't seem to improve my turns. So when should I stay really low, and when should I lift myself to the standard athletic stance? I'm confused.

pmcaero wrote:I tried some pop-ups where I stayed super low but it didn't seem to improve my turns.

Popping Up and Turning are two different things. You are too tied to forms and theories. Imagine I tried to draw a baseball player in action. Someone might say " why isn't he diving near the ground, why is he throwing the ball when he should be catching, why is he running and not standing at the ready ? " Different times/events require different actions. You don't always stay low and you always don't stand tall.