Left or right?

[goldenbarrel]

I'm a regular footer but I prefer surfing lefts. It just doesn't feel natural to me to go right. I know this goes against most of what I've read so I just wanted to know if there are any others that are like this?

[IanCaio]

I'm a goofy footer and my best waves were right ones (backside). I don't know why, maybe coincidentaly the waves were forming better for the right, or maybe my surfing just improved better backside. Who knows?

The top turns are frontside on a backside wave, so maybe it has something to do with it? Like skateboarding on a bowl usually feels easier when you approach it backside since you are facing forward on the top turn.

[oldmansurfer]

When I used to surf long ago it made no difference to me if I went left or right but at first when I was learning I prefered right (regular foot). Now that I am relearning I probably look much better going left because for some reason I could do a backside bottom turn from the get go second time around but it took me nearly 3 years to learn to do a frontside bottom turn. However I prefer rights unless the lefts are better.

[drowningbitbybit]

I'm natural and I prefer lefts, at least for long clean walls. Straight from the pop-up, it sets my shoulders and heels better to ride nice and high on the face, while on rights I tend to drop down the face and climb back up it.

...but since moving to the Gold Coast (all right-hand points, and even the beachies tend to break right) the number of lefts I've had I could count on one hand

[oldmansurfer]

When I frist got my 8 foot fungun, I surfed a bit on the left reef break called Horners. I was able to make the steep drop and jam a bottom turn backside. Then I would shoot straight up the face to the lip partially because I was a little scared but very commited to making the wave, I was going all out, then I would hit the lip and either go over the back and off the wave or smack it real good and come back down in a rain of spray and whitewater then make another bottom turn and hit the lip again with the same variable results or I would hit the lip and it would hit me back and launch me off the board. If it was on a good run where I did the second option a couple times in a row then I probably looked like I was a much better surfer than I actually was. So while I couldn't do that spectacular of a frontside off the lip, I looked like I could backside but it was because I couldn't do anything else. Now I can project forward quite a bit off a bottom turn or do a cutback or a speed turn so I don't look so radical but it feels better to me.

[oldmansurfer]

I surfed for a while but never thought I was very good because all my friends had been surfing for a long time and I had started recently and I was still learning. However one day we went to a break we called Brassieres (because it had 2 shifty peaks). It was a left breaking over a shallow reef and could only be surfed safely if it was overhead at least so it broke a little out from the shallows. The wave had 2 peaks that hit the reef outside and stood up then shifted across along the reef to where we lined up for it. I was trying to get tubed so I was taking off on the deep peak. I was getting some great rides and some not so spectacular but making almost every wave. After a while they all wanted to go in and I was like "Why? I am having fun." They were like " Yeah we noticed but none of us are." I responded "What do you mean?" They said "we are getting pounded and not making the waves and mostly not having any worthwhile rides" There were 3 of them and 2 of them were goofy foot so surfing frontside and I was backside. I said "did you try to catch the deep peak?" I figured maybe that was the difference but they told me if they tried it was only worse for them. That was the point that I knew I had improved at a more rapid rate then them.

[Big H]

I'm goofy and like lefts....good thing too, a lot of them here.

[oldmansurfer]

Why are there so many great lefts? Probably has to do with the way the world spins or something