Surfing Waves

heyhey
I'm a beginner surfer, have been surfing for about a year and a half (maybe about 5 hours a month). I started off on an 8ft foamie, riding 2-3ft waves, and really got the hang of it, so I upgraded to a 6'6 hardboard with a decent amount of volume

I've done about 8 surf sessions on the new board but have not caught a single green wave. I can feel myself get on top of the wave, but cannot get any further than that no matter what. When I tried going on my foamie again, I kept nose-diving and couldn't get the hang of that either.

If you would share any advice that you might have, I'd really appreciate it

An 8'0" foamie ( like a Costco Wavestorm ) floats as much as a 9'0" hard board. Usually I would not recommend jumping down in size more than 1 foot. So you virtually jumped down 2 1/2 feet in size. That's way too much. A 7'6" funboard would even have been difficult at your stage.

You should not have gone down in size until you could trim along the face both front and back side. Once you were starting to do simple turns down and turn ups, then you could start thinking about going to a 8'0" hard board.

But save that 6'6" in the closet for a few years until your skills get up to that level.

Being able to catch waves requires effective paddling. In order to paddle effectively you need to be laying in the correct position on the board. The position varies from board to board. It seems very likely to me that you aren’t in the correct position on both boards. You want to lay so that the nose of the board is about 1 inch or less out of the water. The reason you are nosediving is you are too far back and can’t paddle effectively so the wave pushes the tail of your board up driving the nose down

Build a foundation of success. Return to the foamie, the smaller waves and how you surfed before switching to the smaller board. Tell us more about what you did when you "got the hang of it."

Another way to avoid nose diving is to angle your takeoff.

thanks everyone