Surfing Waves

As suggested on this forum, I went back to my older board, a BIC 7'9". Today it was pretty messy so I stayed inside. Later on I found a nice reform left but I didn't get any footage of that.
I am trying to reset my surfing and undo the bad habits accrued over the past 4 years. I worked on turns today and made some progress on turning without stalling. I had some long rides even in these broken waves. I feel like I made some progress today that is not shown in this video, such as using my head to lead turns. But it looks like my legs are still too far apart. How can I improve on that?
Maybe it's the white water short ride, not having time to adjust.
http://i.imgur.com/inbYI9h.gifv

That wasn't a wave... you can't judge your stance on crumbly rubbish like that because the board is bouncing about on the whitewater, you need your front foot forward just to keep moving and - crucially - the board is not accelerating as you pop up (which leaves you in the wrong position).

The point about going back to the BIC was not so that you could practise on junk like that, but so that you can catch clean waves early. I'd forget about that session and wait until you can film yourself on clean waves again.

It seems like you are unstable so not standing up straight. I think a bigger board would fix that, make you feel more stable so you can stand up normally

Its probably the waves as DBB says; can you remember which way your front foot was facing (looks like 3oclock from your stance)? You are balance through your head (or, putting it another way, your head is going out from your body) rather than balancing through your knees. Bend at the knees, not the waist!

(obviously you bend at the waist a bit, but its like 30 deg bend, not 45 deg bend)

dtc wrote:Bend at the knees, not the waist!

I have been working on a stance with knees bent on the skateboard and balance board, I guess it will be the next thing to focus on now that I improved my turns. I'm really looking forward to that aha moment when it all comes together...

The reason why you're in POO Stance is you're trying to paddle the wave, to gain speed. You are just bouncing up and down to your board.

You NEED to forget about Turns. ( and Pumping ). If you truly want to reset, you need to go back to the basics. Turning and Pumping are not basic. You need to just RIDE the wave. And by that I mean the Glide and Trim. Just like the simple pure joy you had rolling on the sidewalk on your first skateboard, doing nothing but moving along. After you get the glide and trim, you can then break trim to fall up the face or drive down the face to turn, stall, speed up, etc.

When you have the stance right then you just feel stable, like its all solid. No bobbing around trying to keep balance.

However, as DBB said, at low speeds you just will be always trying to keep your balance, the board just isn't stable enough. (note: this isn't a 'scientific' explanation but good enough for my purposes I think): when the board gets speed it gets 'sucked into' the wave through the rails and the bottom concaves (think about nose riding, which involves a particular kind of 'suckiness' to the tail of the board). Anyway, the board holds the wave, the issue is getting the board to release from the wave (which is why lots of boards have hard rails ie square at the tail, which release more than soft or rounded rails).

But when you are going slow, the board is just bobbing on the surface, not sucked into the surface. So everyone is unstable at low speeds - as soon as you lose balance you spend all of your time trying to get the balance back.

I'm not saying that your stance will magically fix itself in faster waves, you will automatically go and do in fast waves what you do in slow water. But the slowness actually makes the instability more obvious and emphasises the problem. So you probably aren't 'as bad' as it looks - but you still need to fix the stance. Even try a drop knee stance for a ride or two - you cant poo stance doing drop knee! Then you just need to stand up a bit

Here is how I have been learning. I ride white water when it's too big outside or too windy or the surfing conditions are just junk. When I do ride white water I've got a few rules I follow: 1. My fiberglass shortboard (7'2") is crap in white water and a waste of time. White water is too flat for my shortboard. I ride my super floatable foamie so I can actually catch the white water. 2. The white water I look for has a concaved trough. In other words, the more curve I see in front of the froth of the white water the better. I can sometimes trim my board along that little concaved incline in front of the white water. Also that concave tells me that there's a chance the white water will reform into a clean wave face. 3. Trimming and carving require two things in my experience: speed and an incline (I need to start flying down the face of the wave if I really want to trim my board. I see it as kind of like this

except on a wave I can only handle a gentle slope. If it's too steep I know I won't make the drop because my skills aren't there. If I get a nice big rolling wave and a gentle incline, though, I can ride it and turn on it. When I go to the beach I look at the conditions and think about what's possible for me to work on. Sometimes conditions allow me to work on things and sometimes they don't. It's not a one size fits all skills thing for me. If the waves are good, I can work on my turns. Today I got a head high roller where I was able to surf right in the pocket of the wave. I even saw the lip coming down in front of me and I deftly, if I do say so myself, trimmed out of its way and got past that closed out section. It was the best ride I've had so far this year (lasted about 8 seconds). With the conditions in the vid you posted, I would have worked on catching those smooth wave faces and worked on trimming or angled takeoffs. Your popups look fine to me so I think you should have worked on the 2 foot waves further outside. There will be plenty of time to work in white water when the conditions are crap or you're just too tired to paddle outside again.

RinkyDink wrote: There will be plenty of time to work in white water when the conditions are crap or you're just too tired to paddle outside again.

Hehe I was too tired already after trying to get outside at first. Going back to the floaty but heavy Bic which I can't duckdive is a pain after getting used to the shortboard.
But I see your point about finding better broken waves. For a while before it closed out completely I had nice little wave breaking left all for myself, a lot more speed and some longer rides, just not on tape.

waikikikichan wrote: And by that I mean the Glide and Trim. .

Definitely. Using hips to trim the board by shifting forward and backward, which is something that requires a proper close-knee stance, is on my list of improvements. I just need that good day, or a point break

Strangely enough I noticed at the top of the video near the rocks a better shaped wave!
Any reason why there appeared to be no one on it!
Really that dribble you were riding did you no favours! Anybody trying to push a ride in that sludge is going to look like a poo stance spastic duck!

jaffa1949 wrote:Strangely enough I noticed at the top of the video near the rocks a better shaped wave!

The few people that were surfing were further out and on shortboards. I tried to get the Bic through the impact zone but I just couldn't.

RinkyDink wrote:Today I got a head high roller where I was able to surf right in the pocket of the wave. I even saw the lip coming down in front of me and I deftly, if I do say so myself, trimmed out of its way and got past that closed out section. It was the best ride I've had so far this year.

Way to go!

pmcaero wrote:Using hips to trim the board by shifting forward and backward, which is something that requires a proper close-knee stance, is on my list of improvements.

Shifting your hips is NOT the answer. It will just shift the "triangle" that is formed between your legs, back and forth. You need to transfer weight by actually picking up your feet or putting pressure through the leg down.

http://alohaki.jugem.jp/?eid=559 these photos show when you move you Hips and not picking up your legs.

so shift front foot?

Jaffa asked what I was about to when I saw the video. The waves further back seems better for practice: They have a rideable wall, are slow and not so hollow.

I've no idea what it is like to paddle out on a bigger board though, but I thought turtle rolls could replace the duck dive and get you there!

I got used to the shortboard and duckdiving and just couldn't get the Bic out. Everyone who made it out had a shortboard but it was really sketchy and there were no consistent channels or peaks.

If you can't get out you can't get out......now, that being said, you should be able to get that barge out back there....I'd work on that before worrying about the poo stance....can't surf if you can't get to the waves....whether guile, technique or just some grit and bulling you way thru to get out there, you NEED to get out there.

BoMan wrote:
Way to go!

Thanks! Yeah, I was stoked. It felt like my first official day of surfing. I paddled out to a peak I had been watching for a long time and this time I just waited for the wave I knew would show up there. On previous occasions I would take off on other, lesser waves that would come through there on the inside because I was too lazy to paddle all the way out to the spot where I saw a nice right breaking on certain sets. The other day though I got in the spot and I just rested there. I was determined not to blow my takeoff and then have to paddle back out. So, I let a few great waves pass because I was still tired. Once I got rested and my wave came through though, I hobbled up on my board and angled into the pocket. I made my takeoff and rode the wave exactly where I knew it would give me a great ride.

Big H wrote:can't surf if you can't get to the waves...

Well, I did manage to meet some objectives such as a better feel for turns, even in the whitewater rides. Having a finite amount of stamina, I figured I'd get as many rides . I doubt I would have been able to catch any of the waves outside, not clean at all. As for the intermediate waves, there were few of those, with cleanup sets in between. Really a challenging day, as evidenced by how few people were out.