Trouble with turning and speed maintenance

[ShawnHarvey]

Hello all! First post here!

I started surfing back in March, been body boarding my whole life and finally made the step up to surfing. My main break that I surf is Castle's Beach on Oahu, if anyone knows that beach. My main issue right at this moment is that when I'm transitioning to a shorter board (I have a Point Classic Longboard, 9'2" is my main board), I'm having trouble maintaining speed on the wave to get a longer ride. My longboard is fine (it struggles to turn because of its massively thick rails, and has almost no rocker so larger waves can be tricky) for most days but I've been transitioning to a mid size 7'8" mini tanker and a 6'6" Ben Gravy tri fin Fish. According to all the videos I see, my back foot should be back on the tail end, however when I do this even if I keep my weight forward I'm finding that my speed drops immediately and the wave continues on without me as if I'm pressing down a skateboard tail onto pavement to stop. This is making practicing maneuvers rather tricky, and it's not an issue I can find covered on Youtube.

Also any advice for bottom turning on the backhand would be appreciated as well. Thanks all!

-Shawn

[wilkerd1]

I have a similar issue Shawn. I surf Florida east coast. Mainly Cocoa and Flagler Pier. Cocoa for the mellow and Flagler for the steep and punchy. Wish we had surf available in Florida like Oahu! Jealous

As long as I stay forward I can speed along. As soon as I try to get my foot over the tail to turn tighter it all falls apart. I’m also make sure I’m leaning/hips forward while doing it and it doesn’t seem to fix. Happens on all my boards from 6’2 all the way to 9’4.

The only thing that has helped slightly is doing a “cardboard slide” like the guys at OMBE surf teach right at takeoff. It gets that little jolt of speed at takeoff into a quick mid face bottom turn, but I still have trouble when I want/need to foam climb to stay with the wave. I surf my 8’2 Ricky Carroll performance midlength the most. Can’t seem to get that big guy whipped around at all without losing speed and the wave. But same happens when I ride my 6’2 Beanbag. Then there’s me looking like a spazzy kook with my arms flailing trying to pump but that’s a whole other issue

Would also appreciate some advice on this myself. Like Shawn I’ve scoured the internet and found very little. Or very little that seemed to click for me anyway.

[609venezia]

For some general theory on speed generation, check out this video (no affiliation): "Generating Speed and Grip" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIX8PF9OfOk

Maintaining speed on a smaller board, all other things being equal, is going to take more work--pumping, driving, and surfing rail to rail. So there might be a loss of speed in the maneuvers--if you see people throwing spray, that's bleeding energy--and then you have to be able to rapidly accelerate again

If I were you all I would deny the Big Lie (see: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38775) and keep surfing those bigger boards and having more fun. You can still step to the back and do maneuvers

[oldmansurfer]

drawn out bottom turns or sharp angled turns take speed off but then if it quickly gets you back up a steep faced wave then you have opportunity to gain speed back. On a longer board if you aren't on steep waves then making turns from more forward on the board which means less sharp angled turns are the thing to do for speed however only useful if it's a slack section of the wave which will become steeper down the line