Jup SUP is the way to go when your shoulders make it too hard to (prone) surf.
I was out of the water for 2 months due shoulder injury, and my bicycle wasn't a strong enough motivation to keep active. Then an interesting 8'6 shortboard shape sup showed up in the lokal adds, that got me thinking..
Long story short, I'm in the water again and stoked!
There's this spot where you've got to cross 1km+ lagoon of flat water before the surf starts.
The flat water paddling is easy, but balancing in the surf seemed impossible the first sessions. I only had to *see* a wave, to fall off...
On the 3rd sesh I catched the first few small, knee/thigh high waves and on the 4th I catched a bunch of hip/waist high. Balancing in the surf is still very difficult though..
Thanks to YouTube I found this popup trick, to get from sitting like prone to the feet in surfstance, in one quick move. I know where to sit and which wave to go for. That gives me just some stand up time to get in a few paddle strokes to aim the board before the wave reaches me.
What I like a lot is the standup view at the approaching wave, that helps a lot catching it. Just a good deep stroke when the wave starts lifting the tail, gets u in. After that it's business as usual..
Or is it? Then u suddenly notice something strange going on, there's a paddle in ur hand!
At first I tried getting the paddle out of the way, but the 2nd time I already started using it in the ride, to paddle through weak sections, to balance. I even started using it as a pivot point during cutbacks!
I surprised myself doing that, when I saw them doing it in videos it looked so complicated, but it's just the natural thing to do.
Ahh too many things to write in one post!
It's a complete different stress on the body, as I'm writing this I'm in full recovery mode. It's a great workout!
Thanks to Waikikichan for creating this Surfing Waves SUP section!

Edit: added an informative thread from Supmad forum, what led people to supping.
http://supmad.com.au/forums/Stand-Up-Paddle/SUP/What-led-people-to-SUP-surfing-