Surfing Waves

Waves were not the best, small and closing, I felt that I had a really good session until I saw myself on the video. I'm not sure what wrong, but I look very rigid and slow. What's wrong with me?

Here we go, difficult waves to beat the close out, one drop,in , but the break is so typically Curl Curl, no runners on the bank!
You make some good bottom turns but don’t step forward to add the speed of the turn onto the face, and then trying to make turns from the tail when there is no power in the wave to support you. A number of times you tried lean turns an failed ( that is the usual result.)
A step forward after a bottom turn is necessary as I said previously and long boarding is a set of movements back foot front weighting and moving well forward, note that much of the time when you are going across the face your nose is high , that technically is a stall and most of your motion is in stall ,hence the waves speeding past.

Back hand your foot position is stuck and static but your line speed is a little better as there is some front foot pressure

The wind strength changed markedly as the video progressed, you need to adjust your timing to work with that.

Don’t give yourself a hard time about the video, believe me we have all passed through that stage.

Only one real criticism, did you take note of your full drop in on the shortboard rider?

I will,watch the video,again
Jaffa

Having watched again, I think on a better day with better waves you will,get a chance to do better.

Please be aware of the surfers around you, you competed for sereral,waves with the shortboarder inside of you, think about the etiquette of surfing, long boarders have the reputation of being wave hogs, . If however he has backpaddled you and is out of turn then fair enough!

You look ok. Wave selection could be better. You are learning. It takes time.

Could he also ride higher on the face (when the wave didn't totally close out) to generate more speed? He seemed to generally be on the bottom third of the wave face.

I think Jaffa's point about your nose being constantly in the air, and the back foot pressure, is the key to work on. Need to weight forward more, which will require a little shuffle. That will increase your speed and, of course, everything comes from speed

Really not bad. I would simply say you need to move those puppies. You never hit the gas. Walk the board. Practice cross steps , but definitely walk even if not smooth yet.

You aren’t far off at all homie.

Yeah, I've accidentally dropped another shortboard guy, I thought he was going right, but he decided to go left.

Thanks for the comments, I need to practice my cross-stepping, I still struggling to whip the board at the bottom turn so I can walk it, I feel, I'm turning gradually and also these kind of waves do not provide a good opportunity at all for walking.

Sorry, too busy to break down your surfing by screen grabs like I usually do. But I'll break it down play by play.
:05 you paddle the wave.
:07 you paddle the wave. Remember you make speed by your feet not your hand ( although hands do have a part but NOT patting the water
:20 Wrist turn. You are unconsciously pointing JUST from your wrist in the direction trying to turn. Your locked arm blocks the chest from turning, so your wrist tries.
:25 "Hi" wave to your fans on the beach. Your back hand unconsciously comes up to catch yourself falling back. Front foot is not pointed correctly and your not back enough on the board.
:35 You look Left and can see the shortboarder has stopped paddling and is priming for the push up, behind him you can see the curl coming at you. ( I don't see how you think he was going to go right )
:36 Nice bottom turn *
:41 You want to frontside cutback, but your shoulder is "closed" and pointed into the wave. It should be open and facing back to the curl.
:58 Great bottom turn *** sick slide butt to get the nose pointed down the line.
1:01 Locked front arm
1:13 Locked front arm Your front arm is "dead", it is not helping. Imagine throwing a baseball or football with your front arm in your pocket or down to the side ?
1:23 Nice bottom turn **
1:50 Karate X chop back ( and fall back )
1:58 Nice back side foam climb to floater
2:21 Okay bottom turn
2:30 Great bottom turn ***

Seriously, you have a great great bottom turn. So nice to watch. But right after that, there's sooooo many bad habits. Like most people have commented, you're doing great.
1) Work on movement on the board ( which doesn't necessarily mean walking ) to pop up the nose onto the closeouts
2) Work on your feet positioning ( strong for the front side but makes you stiff on the back side )
3) Put your elbows into the water on the paddle, deeper strokes.
4) Finish your wave under control, don't jump off your board.

Thanks Waikikikichan and others.

Hey Kitesurfer,

Looks like you had a fun session. Waikiki covered all the bases, but I have just have two points:

1. You seem to be surfing a pretty long board, but are getting into waves quite late thus shortening your ride. I noticed you are doing what I like to call a "panic paddle" when you are trying to get into a wave. What i mean is, you are taking really short strokes and paddling out to the side, splashing a lot, which is really inefficient.

Here's what I would try. First, really relax. Paddle with long, full strokes, beginning in front of the nose of your board, slightly going under your board, and exiting at your lower hip. Really feel the resistance of the water against your hand.

When your hand exits the water by your lower hip, bend your elbow and think of reaching over a barrel when you bring your arm from your lower hip to the nose of the board to start your stroke. Your angle of attack into the water will be more efficient, and your arms won't go out to the side. If you master this, then you won't ever need more than 4 or 5 strokes to get into a wave.`If you are doing more than 5 you are most likely paddling incorrectly.

2. When you go backside you back is completely facing the wave. To rotate your torso you need to be square to the wave, and your chest open. Two things need to happen to facilitate this. Firstly, your back foot should be angled in (about 45 degrees) rather than at 90 degrees. Secondly, your right arm should be over the inside rail and your left arm over the outside rail If you do these two things your chest will be open to the wave.

Are you sure about back foot to 45 degrees? May be you are talking about front foot?

Nuh, kookE is right - rotate the back foot around to open up your chest. It really makes a difference when going backside. During big turns you might twist it back to 3 o’clock if you want for some extra power, but when going along the wave or not doing hard turns, give it a go

Another session. This time on a shorter board but more crowded. Again this video shows a huge difference between real life and my dreams of being a descent surfer



[YouTube]https://youtu.be/i7-6AME-27g[/YouTube]

ALL BACK HAND ONLY MOVEMENT. You need to include/involve the front arm all the time. Point the front palm up, not down when going back side. Palm down, makes you lead with the elbow and stiff.

BUT........ congratulations on the 3 second barrel ride at :55. ( too bad, the person walking with the longboard blocked the camera )

Thanks Waikikikichan, I feel that I'm stiff everywhere, not only the front arm.

Unfortunately, I can't count as a barrel ride, no cover

Apart from the front arm thing, the nose of the board still seems a bit high at times. I suspect it’s not foot placement but weighting- you have a lot of weight on the back foot almost all the time and rarely are leaning into the front leg. Esp when going down the face, you want to ‘lean into the hill’, not try to keep your board as horizontal as possible (which is what most people’s automatic response is).

This may actually be related to your arms - back arm is out causing rearward weighting but no front arm as a counterbalance. Plus you lean back subconsciously because the back arm is providing balance but there is nothing in front that will help balance if you lean forward. So you don’t lean forward

Throw the frisbee as wkk says.

Well, that may be the length of my board. It's pretty long (7.2) and I'm trying to keep my back leg over fins area. I still think that I'm standing too close to front rather than back of the board.

KitesurferAU wrote:Well, that may be the length of my board. It's pretty long (7.2) and I'm trying to keep my back leg over fins area. I still think that I'm standing too close to front rather than back of the board.

Then in that case, you need to be even more upfront. The longer the board, the more you'll need to move around. You probably think that you need to be on the traction pad the whole time. Yes, when you are turning but when you are not, you need to move up.
1) You got a dead front arm, yet you're flailing and ripping the back arm too hard and too quickly at the wrong moments.
2) You got a glue foot stance that's heavily biases too far back.

This is my advice for your 2nd video. You think you are improving, but you are now just MOVING. You 1st video was smoother and natural. The 2nd video is too rushed and forced. You are not surfing, flowing with the wave and working with it. You are just Cut here, Cut there, Snap, Slash, Cut. There's no flow. It's just "I want to carve !!" As DTC pointed out, the nose is always way up in the air, because you are always trying to turn. ( your stance is always in turn mode )
Where is the set up ? ( before the turn ) ( :40 was the best set up and flow )
Where is the smooth transition from rail to rail ? ( 2:10 was nice though )
When you take your mind off of just "snaps and cut backs" and go in with the mindset of surfing with the wave, you'll actually surf better. You should have never got on a shorter board until you solved that front arm problem.

Interesting. I agree I have that take-off rush and I'm trying to do something on a wave and that's not working at all.