Backside surfing

[surf904]

Recently Ive been surfing really good and progressing a lot on my frontside surfing (regular stance) I can perform cutbacks, off the lips and almost some more progressive maneuvers but... my backside surfing is terrible. I can go down the line just fine but have a problem with bottom turns top turns and speed. Everytime I go left I try not to but I always end up just completeley standing up, no compression at all and it just feels akward. ANY tips would be much apreciated thanks!

[oldmansurfer]

Do mental imaging training at home. Pretend you are surfing go into your stance and crouch down and imagine you are cranking a backside turn. Watch videos of other surfers doing backside surfing and try to emulate them in your mind. A backside bottom turn is similar to a cutback etc..... the turns are similar but weight transfers are different due to gravity. I think lots of surfers have difficulty learning backside because they like fronstside so they rarely surf backside. Surf backside more often.

[drowningbitbybit]

I can perform cutbacks, off the lips and almost some more progressive maneuvers but... my backside surfing is terrible.

If you can do a proper cutback or off the lip, then you can already surf backhand, and it's just linking the moves.

I prefer backhand, but I get that a big bottom turn or whatever is trickier. On a frontside turn, you tend to lead with your head and straight down into your toes and knees (giving you good drive and compression), but on your backhand, you might find it helps to think about leading with your shoulders (i.e. more turning from the upper body), combined with your foot being a touch more forward-pointing.

[oldmansurfer]

I learned to surf backside because I would drop down a wave out of control and accidentally turn the wrong way and by then it was too late to change back. But after a while it beomes quite similar to frontside, you just need to go surf more backside. If you learned to surf going only backside then you would have trouble going frontside. I quit surfing a number of years and restarted about 5 years ago. Oddly I found that I could do a backside bottom turn right away but it took me nearly 3 years (at 26 hours a year) to get my frontside bottom turn down. I increased my time surfing to 52 hours a year and my learning doubled (go figure). I think you just have to go backside and practice it. I don't alter my stance for backside or frontside or I would have to alter my stance before I do a frontside cutback or turn off the top but I do alter my stance for steep waves.