by Big H » Sun Apr 10, 2016 11:46 am
I saw this yesterday browsing around the net.....was enough to catch my eye....reminescient of a golf "swing thought"....tried it this morning with really good results....I paddled further out than usual and continued to get into the waves that I would normally have said to myself not to waste the effort on.....compared to what I do it wasn't much of a tweak, but I did tweak a bit and caught a lot of waves, notably those that I was out of position for......
....check it out....
Horizontal Paddling Syndrome.
This syndrome, from which even very good surfers also suffer (it's just that they're not exposed until the waves are really sucky and drawing hard off coral or whatever a la adje), is kind of inbuilt in the whole process of paddling and takes a conscious effort to break down.
See, when you paddle around in the lineup most of the time, you're paddling in a horizontal line, across flat or more-or-less flat water. Only very rarely do you find yourself paddling uphill (maybe up a wave face every now and then though most of the time, people don't actually paddle up waves, they tend to float up or duckdive through). 70-80% of the waves you pursue involve a kick-start horizontal paddle in front of the approaching wave face. All your paddling energy is going in a flat line toward shore.
Almost never do you find yourself paddling deliberately downhill, angling down into the trough.
Thus you never get any real practice at the one thing that's most likely to assist you in the situation you've described.
There's a few tips in here about commitment etc but developing an effective downhill paddling stroke will allow you to follow up easily on the commitment. It's quite different to the horizontal paddle technique.
To paddle downhill:
Shift a fraction further forward on the board.
Lift your upper chest slightly off the board as well. (This way your hands start the paddle stroke from a better angle).
Drive your hands forward into the paddle stroke at a steepish angle, around 45 degrees, and get 'em out quick -- don't trail your hand in the water past the line of your waist. You want it back out and up around the bottom of your rib cage.
Look at where you want to go, ie the wave base.
On a steep wave this will cause your board and body to tip down the face and drive toward the wave base.
Guaranteed, the first few times you try this, it will cause you to wipe out. You will paddle all the way down the face and nosedive at the bottom and pitchpole over the falls.
But with time and practice, you will learn to minimise the strokes and time your pop-up better. And Horizontal Paddling Syndrome will be a thing of the past.
I've got to say I have learned and re-learned this technique numerous times through my surfing life and it takes a lot of the angst out of surfing sucky critical waves. Angle down!