When I teach Surf Lessons in Oceanside USA, we begin on 8′ and 9′ soft top boards. 8′ is considered a mini long and 9′ is a long board. After surfers spend a few months learning, they may decide to go long board or short board. Going the short board route is the more challenging.
The long board is easier to paddle so you don’t have to be in as great of condition.
The long board catches waves easier than shorter boards. You can start on a wave before it gets too steep.
Once the wave catches the board, it is easier to pop up and stay on a long board. You can catch small waves easier.
The Techniques to Learn Surfing the Long Board
Surfers like the long board
The beauty of surfing is that it offers so many opportunities to do what you want.
Surfers like the long board because you can have fun driving it down the pocket. It is easier to ride because unlike a short board, you don’t have to pump for speed.
Turning the long board is accomplished by putting weight on the back foot and swinging the nose in the direction you want to travel. You can also walk back or forward.
The most power is in the top one third of the wave so you like to begin at the top and eventually drop lower on the wave.
Finding the Right Beach Breaks for Surfing the Long Board
You can surf most beach breaks with a long board, but one reason surfers like the long board is that the long ride is the most fun.
Short boards like steep waves so they can maneuver with rips. Long boarders want to ride forever so they like breaks like reefs that have long rights and lefts.
In San Diego, beaches like Terra Mar in Carlsbad and Swamis in Encinitas are long board havens because waves build slowly and stay well shaped for a long time.
Learn surfing on vacation in Oceanside to create a recreation that can be enjoyed on many vacations. Along with sitting in the sun, walking for coffee in the morning, fishing, and boogie boarding, surfing is a great destination recreation.
When I teach Surf Lessons in Oceanside USA, my students are from all over the world.
Once you learn how to practice, you can take that knowledge to Hawaii, Mexico, Portugal, and so many other great surf destinations.
You Don’t Need Anything But a Wet suit to Learn
In the summer, you don’t even need a wet suit. Water temperatures are over 70 degrees. In the winter, the water temperatures don’t drop below 60 degrees most to of the time and a wet suit is adequate for staying warm.
Instructors bring the surf boards. If you want to practice after your instruction, there are surf board rentals you can access all week.
Get in Shape for Your Surfing Vacation
You can be surfing on your vacation with just a little physical preparation. Stretching is good for any activity. For surfing, you want to loosen up your hamstrings, buttocks, and lower back. Some side to side twisting is also good. You want to be flexible for executing the pop up and not getting hurt with strange falls.
Upper body strength is important so start doing push ups. If you belong to a gym you are probably already doing upper body weights. Add cables for paddling strength.
Aerobics are also important for any vigorous sport. They help with sudden exertions and recovery.
Surfing on Vacation is a Spiritual Experience
Surfers often go into the water just to “get wet” as they say. There is something special about being in the water, feeling the sun and ocean breezes that makes you feel at one with the earth.
Surfing on vacations can help you make that connection with every place you visit.
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See a dry land and water beginner demonstration
When I teach Surf Lessons in Oceanside USA, students learn how to progress from riding straight to the beach to carves in surfing. The ability to ride balanced on the board sets up the ability to carve right or left on demand. When students develop technique that isn’t correct, they can often only turn in one direction or not at all.
Three Carves in Surfing
The first turn one learns after riding the face of real waves is to make bottom turns into the pocket. A regular footed (left foot forward) rider places pressure on his toes and rotates his upper body to the right for a face side carve (turn). He places pressure on his heels and rotates left for a back side carve.
Once the surfer is driving the pocket on a long or short board, he will want to reverse his direction for both practicality and style. When the power of the wave in the pocket starts to die, you want to reverse toward the falling lip to regain the power. A cut back is executed by a reverse rotation of the upper body beginning with the eyes, head, shoulders, arms and hands in a solid move torquing the hips, legs, feet, and finally the board. Speed facilitates the turn which is why all short boards accelerate (unweight) in the pocket.
Ripping the Lip
The third carve in surfing is up the face of the wave either front side or back side. One purpose is to perform a trick and the other is to escape a closing wave. Riding up the face is a bottom turn. Most surfers like to get a low center of gravity by dragging the inside hand in the water and then arcing just as you would coming down the face of the wave.
If you are ripping the lip, you will reverse your rotation just like a cut back.
Download my 17 page Surf Guide It covers your basic fundamentals and techniques. $1.
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Surfing is not exclusive to the young. Seniors can learn to surf as well as any adults. My oldest student is 77 years old and he got up on the board the first time and most times after that.
Seniors surfing
How to Prepare Yourself for the First Surfing Day
Children, teens, adults, and seniors could all have trouble surfing if they have not led active lives. Surfing is a full body sport. Some of the best prepared adults and kids are those who do gymnastics, yoga, weights, pilates, tri-athlons, biking, running, swimming, soccer, dancing, and so on. I think you get the idea.
In my Oceanside Surf Lessons, many seniors have surfing on their bucket list, but age being functional, not just chronological, many have not stayed active with the right activities.
Surfing has specific muscle groups that are supported with some specific practices. First is flexibility. I often ask my students if they can put their palms on the ground without bending their knees. The pop up loves flexible hamstrings, buttocks, and lower back. There is a motion of getting on the board where you bring your front foot under your chest and place it in the middle of the board.
Upper body strength is important for pushing up with a spring to move the front foot forward to the middle of the surf board. It is one thing to push your body up in the living room or on the beach and quite different in the water. Some instruction videos say practice on your bed if you want to understand how water fails to support you.
Stamina extends your learning time. If students could practice full strength all day, they could almost be pros at the end. Most adults are tired in an hour, kids and teens in an hour and a half, and seniors often in twenty minutes. Iron man work outs are a good model. Participants practice each phase of the contest building stamina and then work with weights for when the body gets tired.
This is not to scare you, but many students who think they are in good shape when they arrive find they have not prepared for the specific demands of surfing. Seniors can learn to surf and make their lives better in the process.
High Volume Surf Boards Make Learning Easier
New adult students should start on 9′ soft top surf boards. Seniors can learn to surf on bigger boards, but when they get too big they allow students to cheat on the proper techniques. The 9′ surf board will support students weighing up to 250 pounds. If weight is not an issue, then this soft top board allows new students to practice the right techniques and learn the fundamentals.
Ideally, after students have learned the fundamentals on a 9′ board, it is fun to step down to an 8′ board. The smaller board is easier to handle, more maneuverable, and more fun once students have learned the basics.
The First Three Things a Student Learns
Adults and seniors can learn to surf learning the first three fundamentals and have a lot of fun.
Paddling on the surf board maintaining balance seems easy, but is trickier than one would think in the water. Students have to maintain the balance of the surf board by lying across the middle stringer with equal weight on both sides of the board. Surfers keep their body pencil straight with both feet together, their head in the middle of the board and then balance the level by moving their butt.
Paddling is accomplished by dropping the arm in the water up to the elbows and pulling straight back along the sides of the board. Paddlers want to keep their chin and chest up to prevent the nose from going under water and to make the pop up easier.
Catching waves is the second important fundamental and many feel the most fun part. When the foam wave is twenty feet from the board, the student rolls onto the board arriving in the middle of the board and starts paddling easy. When the wave is 5′ away the student starts paddling hard. After the wave starts pushing the board, the student continues paddling hard for three or four strokes or until the board is moving without paddling being necessary.
The final fundamental is the most athletic part. Seniors can learn to surf when they accomplish this task and should practice in their living rooms at home before they take their first lesson. Videos below give an idea of how the pop up is executed.
The main four steps begin with paddling for a wave until the board is being pushed on its own. Then the student puts their hands on the board in a man’s push up position under their chest. On the third count, they are pushing off the board with power and bringing the front foot under their chest to arrive in the middle of the board. The right spot on the board is between where their hands were positioned.
On the fourth count, the student is standing on the board with shoulders and hips squared to the front, hands in front of the body, and eyes looking over the nose of the board toward the beach.
Practice Makes Perfect
Students can practice all the requirements before and after they visit the water, just like the pros. Seniors can learn to surf by practicing the physical exercises to get fit and the techniques by doing pop ups in their living room. Getting to the water often helps, but daily fitness and daily pop ups can make the whole process much easier.
If there is a long term commitment to scratch this sport off the bucket list and to continue having fun, the daily routines should become part of the student’s life.
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This is a YouTube pop up video that demonstrates the body motion necessary on a high volume board
Learn surfing the short board by honing the basics into greater precision. The short board is an advancement that necessitates more physical skills, better techniques, and more experience.
Lower volume surf boards create three new physical demands. Paddling them is more work and longer sessions require more stamina that paddling high volume boards. The body has to be in advanced surfing physical condition to execute the pop up. This will include flexibility, upper body strength and core strength.
Surfing the short board requires that the pop up is smooth, swift, and accurate. Gone are the days when you can crawl up on the board like on a soft top. The lower volume won’t tolerate any imbalance.
Short Board Experience
Surfing the short board requires the experience of reading waves. Foam waves give a wide window in time to paddle and receive the impact. A short board needs the arc of a real wave and the window is a few seconds. The secret is paddling in front of the wave and allowing it to come under the board. Then a few powerful strokes will usually propel the board down the face.
Riding the short board requires a new understanding of weight placement between the middle of the board and over the fins. In accelerating, and carving, the weight on the board changes from middle to rear. Watching how to videos is one way to get the idea and as techniques are practiced, videos keep delivering more meaning.
The size of the short boards can vary tremendously. They can retain the high volume width and thickness to make them easier to ride. They can get thin and narrow to change the performance dynamics. They can be shaped to ride small waves or big steeper waves. You can find your level and enjoyment and then get the right board.
Learning surfing the short board only begins the adventure.
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For Oceanside Surf Lessons USA, see the landing page
Surf board speed is important in surfing because it can help catch waves and makes maneuvering easier.
In an article about surf board shaping, Hayden Shapes claims they have designed the holy grail. In fact, that is the name of their board. One of their customers wanted a board he could use on giant waves like Mavericks to catch waves under the lip at the deepest point. These surfers use long boards that are wide, thick, and pointed to handle the power and speed the wave generates.
The board Hayden Shapes created also helped this customer carve a turn on the face of giant waves. Most of us don’t need that kind of technology, but in tackling bigger waves, the lesson is not lost. The bigger waves move faster. Surf board speed becomes more important to catch and maneuver on all size waves, however.
The first trick advanced surfers use is accelerating as soon as they are up on a wave. This is using the front foot to move the nose of the board up and down the face of the wave. Observing videos of surfers, you will see they combine a wide variety of hand and body movements to accomplish this task. The first objective is to move faster than the falling lip.
The second objective is speed and driving the rail into the face of the wave to rise up the lip or reverse on the face. After a trick or maneuver is performed, the speed has to be gained again. We learn on soft top boards which favor stability and ease of wave catching over speed. Long boards favor ease of wave catching and the ability to drive a wave in the pocket. Where to place your feet relative to the fins creates long board maneuvers.
The short board is also conscious of the back foot to fin pressure and surfers can ride the front of the board for more speed or place pressure on the fins to make sharp carves. Boards with cut outs, convex and concave bottoms, and cut off tails can create more speed and maneuverability at speed.
Three steps for catching surfing waves can apply to beginners and advanced surfers. Advanced surfers already know, but the important steps work for all three surfer levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
Surfers want to be moving before the wave impacts the surf board. This is key to catching surfing waves whether foam or green waves. Beginner surfers want to paddle easy before the foam arrives and paddle hard when the wave is five feet from impacting the board.
Intermediate and advanced surfers often paddle into the wave as it is arcing to build momentum and choose their final angle for riding. When real waves are rolling and have soft arcs, getting in front of them moving fast helps get in front. Long boards can catch waves that are seemingly flat to short boarders.
Paddle hard and even kick when the wave starts pushing the board. On a foam wave, surfers paddle until they are in front of the wave and before they put their hands on the board to do a pop up. On real waves, surfers usually need about three strong paddles until they feel the nose of the board heading down and the momentum of the wave carrying the board without paddling.
Speed of the wave, steepness, and your board type determine when to pop up on the wave. Catching surfing waves requires experience and practice. A soft top for beginners in foam waves is easy to time. Paddle before the wave arrives, keep paddling for four strokes until the board is in front of the wave, and then pop up.
A long board on a real wave can begin to paddle early as the wave forms and offer the pop up opportunity before a short boarder is even paddling. A long board might need to paddle for the pocket on steep waves to prevent pearling unless waves are big.
A short boarder wants to be in front of the arc and let the wave come under the board before he starts paddling down the face. If the short board is in the right position in the wave, it should only take a few strokes. Most short boarders turn the board toward the pocket after the momentum catches the board and before they do a pop up.
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For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Landing Page
The real fun new aspirants to surfing think is what they see in films where experts ride the shorter surf boards.
Getting Started on Soft Top Surf Boards
Surfing is more difficult and tiring than experts make it appear. My new students always say the same things: this is more difficult and more tiring than I expected. And this is regardless of their fitness level or age.
Students learn to surf in a lesson
One thing that makes surfing easier and less tiring is a high volume surf board. Shorter surf boards are harder to paddle, more difficult for catching waves, and more difficult to ride. The easiest wave to ride is the foam or broken wave that is close to shore. So new students need to learn the techniques on high volume boards near shore.
The techniques they learn are not amateurish. The same techniques used for beginners is what are used by experts. Because they are difficult on a short board, beginners need to learn them on a high volume board. This might be why snowboarders learn flips on a trampoline before they go off a 50′ jump.
The Process of Moving from High Volume to Low Volume Surf Boards
I start new students of all ages on a 9′ soft top board. When they have mastered balance, catching waves, and popping up on the board, I move them to an 8′ board. Unless they are skilled in the beginner techniques, the 8′ board will be too challenging to keep the sport fun. Fun is why we are in it, no?
On an 8′ board, new students can start to paddle out to ride bigger foam waves and start riding small real waves that break near shore. The real wave as it arcs provides the necessary power for a low volume shorter surf board to move. Catching an arcing wave requires timing, judgment, technique, and courage. The new surfer needs each of these facets to move forward.
Experts will say that waves are not measured in feet, but increments of fear. Once students feel how much power a wave contains, they are immediately respectful of their vulnerability. The way to move through vulnerability to confidence is mastering the techniques. Progressing slowly gives students the time to build skills and confidence.
Moving to lower volume boards should include shortening the length 6″ at a time and maintaining the volume of width and thickness. The shorter surf board should still be 21″ wide and 2.75″ thick to allow reasonable progress and confidence development.
The surfing pop up is one technique in a series of moves from catching a wave to riding the wave. What most beginners miss is the timing.
Timing the Surfing Pop Up
When I teach beginner surfers, we start with a dry land instruction. On the beach, everything seems pretty simple and few have a problem learning the pop up technique.
Paddle in front of the wave
Entering the water creates a new dynamic as students have to learn paddle the board as it gyrates in the wave, discern when the surf board is stable and in front of the wave, and then move to a smooth stance. Students have an image in their head of what they have to accomplish, but it may not be in the timing required by the circumstances.
I give students a four count to repeat out loud in the water and times their body movement. Count one is paddling until the board is out in front of the wave. This often causes the biggest problem. If you watch beginners without instructors, they often jump up before the wave arrives. I have to get most students to have patience and paddle until the board is in front of the wave.
At the beginning, I push the students into the wave so I have them going straight and its easy to get in front. Once students get on the board themselves without me pushing, they have to aim the board straight to the beach, paddle until they are in front of the wave and the board is level, and then move into a smooth pop up.
The Rhythm of Surfing
When surfers can quiet their mind and get into the rhythm, the whole process is easier. There are three steps to be accomplished. The surfer has to time the wave and be moving before it arrives. Then when the wave is close and as it begins to push the board (real or foam) the surfer paddles hard for a few strokes. Once the board is moving on wave power, the surfer pops up smoothly into a stance that is balanced on the board.
When the surfer has the right stance riding a foam wave, the board will go straight and few movements are needed. If the board carves wildly to the right or left or the surfer falls off over one of the rails, it indicates the surfer’s weight is incorrect. One of the ways to slow down and get into the right stance is to pause for a second after catching the wave.
I give my students four counts and number two is placing the hands on the surf board in a man’s push up position and waiting for a second. In this second, the surfer assesses if the board is moving straight and level, and then readies his body to make a stand up move. This second prevents the surfer from launching himself onto the board while still paddling in the foam of the wave or before the board is stable.
The surfing pop up is executed at the time the board is in front of the wave and the board is stable. This requires technique and patience.
There are 4 things progressing surfers master on their road from beginners to experts.
Fitness
There are three important parts of fitness for surfers. First is flexibility. When professional surfers visit my beach, I often see them warming up with yoga postures that look like live pretzels. Flexibility helps with techniques and reduces the likelihood of tweaks when you get twisted up on falls.
Surfers work on strength through cross training. Most professionals surf for a few hours and work in the gym for a few hours a day. Upper body, core, and leg strength are all important in technique advancement. Strength also creates stamina. Iron man coaches suggest lots of gym work because when the body is tired, strength will pull you through.
Finally, you cannot minimize the value of nutrition. Body builders say you must eat to build muscle. Runners emphasize a good balance of carbs and protein and fat. Surfing can include fuel before entering the water and recovery food after burning muscle while in the water. Surfing is more demanding than beginners realize and I find that cross training and nutrition are important for longer sessions.
Wave Catching
Beginners learn to catch foam waves. It is easy to let the foam wave hit the board from behind, but it takes timing to paddle hard before the wave arrives and while the wave is pushing the board. After the board is in front of the foam wave, the surfer can begin the pop up. This is discipline and patience.
As surfers learn to catch real waves, they have to intersect the forming wave at the right time depending often on volume of the board they are riding. A high volume long board moves before a low volume short board. A steep wave needs different timing than slow rolling waves. Waves that are too steep at the apex or closing out can be caught at the corners.
Recognizing the type of waves on a sand bar beach is more difficult than surfing reefs where wave usually break in the same spot and form more uniformly. Timing becomes the important variable and one never gets too good at timing.
Riding the Surf Boards
Riding certainly distinguishes the beginners from the experts. What progressing surfers have to learn is patience and the need to continuously practice. As progressing surfers start advancing in their wave catching, they will want to start adding techniques to their wave riding.
Riding varies from riding straight down the face, to carving into the pocket and driving a wave, to making lots of maneuvers. Long boards drive pockets and make swiveling turns from moving back and forth on the boards. Short boards make sharp cuts from moving your weight on the board.
Surfers learn waves and when to gain speed, when to carve, to perform tricks, when to bail out over the lip, and when to turn to shore. Each time you go into the water, you should have some idea of what you want to practice.
Courage
Surfing is not for the faint of heart. Beginners learn immediately that the water is far more powerful than their ability to ride if their technique is not right. Nature offers up the power, but like judo, you have to learn how to use it or the results can be hurtful.
Most pros will say they were intimidated each time they ventured to bigger waves. Pros riding Mavericks or Pipe Line will say they have fear when they go out. The secret is to learn to manage it not make it disappear.
Managing fear is assisted with the right habits of fitness and techniques. Preparing in all aspects mentioned above makes us more skillful and more brave.
