Surfing Waves

Hello, longtime lurker, first post. Nice to be here. Have a specific question about improving my popup.

When practicing on land, my popup form is passable. I'm able to keep my front knee centered inside my arms as I'm pulling it towards my chest, which helps me plant my front foot in the right position and angle.

In the water, however, I have some bad form I'd like to fix. My left knee often goes outside my left arm when I'm popping up, requiring me to rotate my left knee and foot inwards after planting. This doesn't seem to impact my surfing too much on mushier waves or on a longboard, but when surfing anything steeper on a short board, that instability and extra movement makes it tough for me to get my front foot in the right spot and turn down the line.

Would love some advice and tips on what I can practice or focus on to resolve this issue. Thanks in advance for your help!

(Apologies for the low-res images and GIFs from the surf cam, it's the best video I have available)

Here's me popping up at normal speed:



And here's me popping up at .5x speed. You can see the knee outside more clearly on this one.



And a sequence of stills to highlight the issue:

I don't see anything wrong with the finished product, so nothing to fix. I do see you rotate your front knee in but that could be aiding in helping to bring the nose around coming out of the bottom turn.

If anything, you could plant down your front foot at 1-2 o'clock, not so much at 12 o'clock, if that is what's happening.

Thanks for the reply and for taking a look. Encouraging feedback. By finished product I'm guessing you're referring to stance after popup?

I'll see if I can get some photos on a shortboard to compare.

Kale Brock is a guy who does pretty good surfing tutorials on Youtube, and he seems to pop up the same way sometimes:


I think finished product is basically the end result (landing in a solid stance reasonably quickly so you get a good start on the wave.) If you can do that, then the exact technique doesn't matter too much. If the end result is good, then tweaking it may end up causing you more trouble than it's worth.

That being said, if you are struggling popping up on a shortboard it would be good to post a clip here and people might point out certain tweaks you can make to improve- it may have to do with your knee/outside arm or may not.

I’m a beginner, relatively tall with long legs and I had this exact same problem, knee always going outside my arm. I found this video by iSurfTribe in which they discuss this and highlighted that focusing on arching back more and keeping head up just before the popup helps you to create more space between the chest and the board, making it easier to get the knee between your arms.

I did flat water popup training focusing on this tip for a few sessions and I was able to fix the issue. Now the popup feels much smoother and my stance is better after a popup.

https://youtu.be/7ndG1079k3g