Surfing Waves

Hi would appreciate some advice. I'm a near 30 year old woman. I've been surfing for about 6 months now about twice a week in 1-2 foot waves surfing green waves. My biggest road block is my pop up. When I first started surfing I couldn't pop up at all for the first 3 months. A lot of it was arm strength as I couldn't even do one push up (proper push up that is). So I ended up developing a habit of jumping up to my back knee and then bringing my front foot around the side and in between my hands. Now that I've been practicing the pop up at home for the past few months I can do it easily on dry land. I've taken several go pro videos of my pop up and analysed it to the detail. I know where I'm going wrong but breaking the habit is really hard. Now one of the key things I noticed is that a second before I go to pop up my legs pop up in the air. I.e I bend at my knees and feet point up to the sky. This makes it impossible to swing my legs around as I don't have the strength to do the pop up from my knees yet (working on that). Thus I end up on my back knee. I can do the pop up on dry ground but there my feet are together and not shooting up like they do in the water. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can go about fixing this?

I assume you are on a longboard - try either of those

- just before you pop up, being your toes onto the board, like a push up position (ie make your feet vertical) This is just a way of keeping your feet on the board and not up in the air.

- Aussie sprinter pop up method

I am on a 7 foot softop and I'm 5'5 height

It doesn't make sense to me. How is it that you are able to ride green waves but can't popup? Perhaps you could explain more what happens when you popup? Or you have videos?

I can pop up but it's staggered to knee . Here is a video
https://instagram.com/p/BUqzpfaAx6a/

shwetaknulla wrote:I can pop up but it's staggered to knee .

I think dry land popups would help. Watch Rob Machado or some other surfer and emulate them when you pop up on the floor. Visualize the same popup when you get out into the surf. Your instagram popup is essentially the same way you would pull yourself up off the floor if you were prone in front of a television. That's great muscle memory for getting yourself off your living room floor, but it's inefficient for surfing. You need to train the way you see yourself getting up on a board and stop conflating it with getting off the floor. Good luck.

Your popup is like a bodyboarders drop knee popup. I am not certain but it looks like you need to get your hands further back by your waist more on the popup

Do you think getting a shorter or narrower or even longer board would force me out of the habit? I practice dry land pop ups at least 20 per day and I can do it fine

I think - putting on my 'trainer psychologist' hat [warning: no actual psychology lessons attended] is that while you can do it on dry land, you are doing it on dry land while concentrating really hard on the pop up. But out in the water, you have so many things going on - catching the waves, timing, watching other people, thinking about what you are going to do - as a beginner its still all a bit of a blur, rushed and unsettling. So what happens is that your body just goes back to the way that feels more comfortable (minimising stress) ie to one knee. Its just automatic. And dry land practice isnt changing it because dry land practice is a bit unrealistic

My suggestion is that the next session you go back to the white water and catch 25 or 30 waves and just do your pop up. White water will reduce the stress of wave catching (you have extra time, its flat, there are no distractions); but its more realistic than on land because you are on the board and on water. Maybe you need 2 sessions - whatever it takes - until you can pop up on your board the way you want to pop up. Then, when you go out the back, that is what your body does automatically. Pop ups are odd - people struggle with them until they can do them, then you really never have a problem ever again.

As old man mentioned, you may have some minor technical flaws - if you stop your pop up video after a couple of seconds, you will see that your shoulders are up and your head is up, but your hips are still down (see below). When this happens your legs just dont have any room to come underneath. You need to get your hips up level more or less with your shoulders (horizontal back). The issue of high shoulders is usually caused by one or both of: hands too far forward and you are just pushing up your shoulders and not your torso (so move them right back - lower rib cage) or not explosive enough (so explode!). another possibility is that you just arent swinging your legs through hard enough. Still, if you can do them on dry land you have a good enough technique to be able to do them on the water - so I think its back to my first point. When things are rushing, your body is reverting!

you


should be

shwetaknulla wrote:Do you think getting a shorter or narrower or even longer board would force me out of the habit?

No, it's not the board. it's the Indian not the arrows fault. However long it took you to "make" the habit, is about how long ( or more ) it will take to "break" it.

shwetaknulla wrote: I practice dry land pop ups at least 20 per day and I can do it fine

Practice doesn't make "perfect", practice makes "permanent", if you practice wrong, you'll just get better at wrong. The problem is in your mind. The body is willing, but your mind freezes up or you're getting "paralysis by analysis" ( thinking too much ). You said you can do it on dry land, so it's not your body mechanics. Try getting something sturdy to lay on and pop up ( A picnic table or your softop with the fin(s) off would do ) , but PROP UP the tail with a pillow or couch cushion to simulate the angled drop. I think you are slamming your butt down to counter the flying forward feeling.

Perhaps a video of what you are practicing will help.

This is me practicing it at home
https://instagram.com/p/BUv_nC1gD0i/

oldmansurfer wrote:It doesn't make sense to me. How is it that you are able to ride green waves but can't popup? Perhaps you could explain more what happens when you popup? Or you have videos?

Sorry to hi-jack the thread, but what you've written above hints at the answer to a question I have. I'm a beginner (I've just had one 2 hour lesson and one 2 hour practise session) with a question that doesn't seem clear from the You Tube videos I've watched and the lesson I've had: is there something about popping up and/or standing up that helps you to catch the wave, or is it just more fun to stand up and it helps later on when you learn to turn etc? This relates to another question: if popping up does help, then do I pop up once I'm paddling with the wave to help to catch it further, or if popping up doesn't help to catch a wave, do I wait until I've caught the wave completely on my belly before deciding it's time to stand up? Thanks.

If you don't stand you aren't surfing - you are body boarding

You have to catch the wave before you pop up.

You have to catch the wave - it doesn't catch you. Ie you need to paddle. You then stand and use the wave (and gravity) to have fun. If you stand before you catch the wave, then you will go nowhere - the wave will go on without you

Thank you to everyone for all your advice
https://instagram.com/p/BUv_nC1gD0i/
This is a video of me practicing the pop up at home as suggested in the above thread .please let me know if I'm practicing it correctly

dtc wrote:If you don't stand you aren't surfing - you are body boarding

You have to catch the wave before you pop up.

You have to catch the wave - it doesn't catch you. Ie you need to paddle. You then stand and use the wave (and gravity) to have fun. If you stand before you catch the wave, then you will go nowhere - the wave will go on without you

Thanks - so I catch the wave and then stand up once the wave has been caught?

I have to ask though: why does the above poster that I quoted seem surprised that the OP can catch certain waves (what's a 'green wave'?) without popping up? Their post seems to suggest that without popping up you won't catch certain waves.

shwetaknulla wrote:Thank you to everyone for all your advice
https://instagram.com/p/BUv_nC1gD0i/
This is a video of me practicing the pop up at home as suggested in the above thread .please let me know if I'm practicing it correctly

That looks pretty good to me. Doing it "right" at home never feels the same as doing it "right " on the wave. The wave gives you a shove, and the board falls below you, and those are your cues to get to your feet. Timing is huge.

Bad habits are really hard to break, and it's easy to pick them up while learning in whitewater. That's because there is no drop, so you find other ways to make room for your feet, like the chicken wing, or using a knee. Once you get out back, you have to unlearn, and then relearn your mechanics.

Try to surf 2 footers but make sure they are green. Angle your foamy a bit to the wave when you are padding to avoid pearling, and just concentrate on one thing at a time when learning. Focus on: head up, hands back, explode your bum straight up, drive the front foot forward. Be patient, you can do it.

Really push up with your arms, focus your power into them when you feel the board accelerate and about to drop. If you have them nice and low (by your ribs), it will act as a fulcrum and your legs will swing forward much easier as the board drops. Surfers who chicken wing or use a knee don't need to incorporate the arms as much, because the lift is coming from the legs. Too slow IMO. The fastest way to your feet is to swing your legs through as the board drops. This gets you to your feet at the top of the wave, and that gives you speed to make a bottom turn or take a high line. A good take off sets you up to learn maneuvers.

I will wait for some of the others who are surf instructors to comment on your form but it doesn't look too bad. When I surf I sometimes fail to popup initially and will stay laying down or only get to my knees or one knee up and one down on the board. The reason for this is I often take off in the wrong spot on the wave or too far in for how the wave is breaking and the wave breaks and hits my board and this creates a wobble and makes me lose balance and stop popping up. I sometime however just go ahead and ride the wave in that position maybe because I used to ride waves in all those positions before I started surfing. But sometimes if the board feels stable enough I will stand. So perhaps why this happens is your board is getting hit by the wave and it's wobbly and less stable and you feel a need to have more contact with the board. The reason I take off in the wrong place is because I am time limited and want to catch as many waves as I can in the time I have (30 minutes) so I take a chance quite often taking off in the wrong place on a wave. But also I am much more often successful than not so it is an effective way for me to up my wave count. The reason why you are getting hit by the wave (if that is the problem) might have to do with arm strength and paddle power and that only resolves by more surfing and better judgement of where to be for your current state of fitness.

Beginner 77 you have to catch a wave, popping up doesn't help much but it possibly might depending on exactly what you do. For a beginner just forget about that though and just treat it like popping up doesn't help. For many beginners popping up with the wrong form makes them lose the wave. If you are really fresh beginner then riding a few waves laying down might be good just to learn about turning the board and the effect of having your weight more forward or more backward and to get the feel of when you actually caught the wave. Somewhere there are video instructions advising this. In reality you can popup more forward on the board which will assist you in getting down the face of the wave which could be interpreted as helping to catch the wave but don't worry about that till you aren't a beginner anymore.

You home pop up video looks great. Much better than most beginners. You got nice form other than:
1) Back foot might be too angle back. I think you're more at 7-8 o'clock, try land/plant at 9 o'clock. Currently looks more to be like a duck stance in snowboarding
2) On the 2nd attempt, you are leading / leaning hard with your front shoulder. Lead with your front hand. Also your front left hip leads, not your belly button ( but you're fine there ).
3) Fingers pointed straight forward. Try rotate the finger tips a bit towards the rail. So more muscles come into use.
4) Can't see in this video but you are "stiff" once riding, since you get knocked back once the whitewater catches up to you.

But eyes look okay, speed quickness is awesome. Do you do Yoga ? Practice the Crow pose to get the legs to rotate under the body.