February 2019 - Page 4 of 5 - Surf Lessons in Oceanside

Best Beginner Surf Boards

The right Beginner surf boards can make a big difference in the speed of progress for new surfers and the enjoyment they experience.

The Right Size is First

The films make surfing look easy and if you watch surfers at the beach, a lot of boys are tempted to just rent a wet suit and surfboard and head for the water. What all beginners learn, is it is not easy. The surfboard is designed to be streamlined and perform well in waves. It is very sensitive to where you place your weight. This is the issue beginners don’t know how to address.

The beginner surfer should start in foam waves and ride straight to the beach. The board needs to be balanced by the surfer to catch a wave, then wait until the board is in front of the wave, and then place hands on the board and pop up to perfect position.

The problem is, beginners aren’t perfect about anything at the beginning. They have a lot of bad inclinations that the surfboard won’t support. I used to train beginners on an 8′ foam board and then moved to 9′ foot with more success. Even on a 9′ foam surfboard, most surfers struggle at the beginning.

If the board is not big enough, then they don’t have the opportunity to progress from catching a wave to trying to stand up. I can coach new students through their errors until they are perfecting the techniques and riding the board to the beach. A 10′ board would be easier, but too big allows students to be sloppy and not really learn the techniques correctly.

Once students have learned the techniques and can land on the board correctly, I move my students to the 8′ foam surf board.

Progressing from Being a Beginner

Beginner surf boards should start with the foam board and then progress shorter 6″ at a time. The first good hardboard would be the fun board at 7’6″ in length, 21+” in width and at least 2 3/4 inches thick. Students could decide to stay with the long boards if they don’t surf often, if they are not real fit, or if they are older. Nothing wrong with surfing on 9′ hard boards. The line ups are full of them.

The shorter boards are harder to paddle, harder to catch waves, and harder to ride. Surfing progresses slowly. Improved surfing requires great flexibility (yes stretching), upper body strength (gym is good), stamina (aerobic cross training) and lots of courage. Shorter boards have to catch waves as they arc and therefore crashes are like being in a washing machine. As waves get bigger, crashes get your attention.

Have patience in your learning and stay on high volume boards to ensure that it is always fun. Too many crashes and the fun seeps out.

For surf lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page

My pop up video

Good video for Catching Waves

Kids Learn to Surf

Kids learn to surf and enjoy it just as much as adults. Their size and strength are major considerations in how much risk they can take and how fast they advance.

Basics for Kids

Kids love surfing but have to be given special consideration for their size, strength, and courage.

I often start kids on 9′ soft top boards and push them into waves. Depending on their size, their arms may not reach far enough into the water to give them control of the surfboard as the foam wave pushes. I teach them the same count to pop up as I do for teens and adults, but kids get up differently most of the time.

The main thing is to get up smoothly and get the right posture on the board. The front foot has to be in the middle of the board and they have to have their shoulders and hips pointed forward so their balance is equal on both sides of the middle stringer.

Most kids can get to a standing position and ride the board to the beach on small foam waves. I like to try them paddling for their own small foam waves, but sometimes they do not have the arm length or strength to control the surf board.

Once I have them assuming the right techniques I move them to an 8′ board and then a 7′ or 6′. If they have the right technique, they have more fun with a smaller board.

I had one 9 year old girl that with a few lessons progressed to a short hard board and was catching real waves. This is exceptional. I try to help kids progress subject to their level of fear or courage. Waves are intimidating and kids must learn to feel comfort. If they are scared, they won’t learn.

I have had 5 year olds that wouldn’t’ go into the water and 5 year olds that wanted to go out too far. You never know. 7 and 8 seem to be the more adaptable ages where they don’t have unreasonable fears and listen well to instructions.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see my Landing Page

For my video on Pop Ups to help all age groups

A good video on Catching Waves

3 Physical Surfing Requirement

There are three physical surfing requirements that make learning and progressing in surfing easier. You can get in shape before lessons or while learning.

3 Physical Surfing Requirements

Each of these three requirements are challenges for people who are not active in full body sports or who lead sedentary lives, like sitting behind desks or screens all day.

Flexibility– Very few of my surf students are able to touch the ground with their fingers without bending their knees. I suggest putting your palms on the ground. Stiffness occurs in three places: hamstrings, buttocks, and lower back. Stretching until you can place your palms on the ground might take a few weeks if you can’t do it. I also like sitting on the floor with legs spread and leaning forward touching elbows to the floor. The buttocks can be stretched by lifting one leg in the air and holding onto the toes with one hand while straightening the leg.

Upper Body Strength- A push up is a good test of your upper body strength. This is a handicap for women, kids, and adults who have put on weight and stopped exercising. Before a surfer can snap their foot to the front of the board in a pop up, they have to lift their body on the board while in the water. The fastest way to get appropriate upper body surfing strength is to practice pop ups 20 times a day.

Stamina-Surfing requires an exertion that most athletes don’t train for because it is paddling. Paddling is like swimming but not the same. The most direct cross training technique I use is cables in the gym pulling from a high, middle, and low point. There are also exercise bands you can wrap around a post and get the similar treatment. The second aspect is aerobics. When you jump in a pool and swim, you don’t go very far before tiring. Paddling is similar. The first thing that goes in surfing is the paddling stamina and then you can’t do a pop up either. I bike ride for cross training, but any number of exercises such as running or stair climbing would help.

For surf lessons in Oceanside see the Home Page

See my Dry Land Surfing Video with pop ups and a short water demonstration

See a YouTube demo on Short Board Pop Ups

How to Surf Bigger Waves

Surfers usually begin by dreaming of carving up the waves and want to surf bigger waves. Three things are essential.

The Three Basics of Surfing Bigger Waves

Learning to surf bigger waves requires:

Mastering the basics
Practice
Courage

Learning to master the basics often requires making the right first steps. In my surf lessons, I often get people who have tried on their own, attended surf camps, or haven’t surfed for a while. All three lend themselves to developing bad habits. Bad habits are detrimental as surfers get into waves with more speed and weight.

Beginners have to learn to paddle balanced, catch waves with good timing, and pop up in a perfect posture that would allow them to ride straight to the beach without falling off the board. This seems simple, but there is no advancing until this is mastered.

Secondly, it requires consistent practice to get the timing of breaking waves and maintain stamina. Surfing is all about paddling and when the paddling muscles are gone, so is the pop up. Catching real waves requires spit second timing and the timing gets lost with lack of practice.

Dave Kalama, a side kick of Laird Hamilton, said waves don’t increase in size but increments of fear. Every professional says that each time they stepped up a few feet in wave size they had fear. Waves get faster and heavier as they get bigger. Most advanced surfers know which waves to take, which waves to pass, and when to bail out. This requires practice and instinct that comes from practice.

Getting thrashed by big waves creates memories. You don’t want too many, but you can’t fear the experience. A program of stretching, weights, and aerobics prepares your body for the necessary strength and the unavoidable falls.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page

Learn How to Pop Up in my YouTube video

A good video on Catching Waves

5 Essentials of the Surfing Pop Up

There are certainly 5 essential parts of the surfing pop up. It looks simple, but new students find that each step has to be included in the right order to be successful.

5 Essentials of the Surfing Pop UP

I will list them and then explain each:

Flexibility
Upper Body Strength
Coordination
Timing
Posture

Flexibility- People from kids to seniors don’t stretch, even athletes. I find most people can’t put their fingers to the ground without bending their knees. I stress putting palms to the ground. We get tight in our hamstrings, buttocks, and lower back. If we are not stretched, we have difficulty getting our feet into the proper position on the surf board. For the buttocks, try standing on one foot and lifting the other leg in the air and holding onto the toes. Straighten the leg. Good for the buttocks and balance.

Upper Body Strength- The advanced surfing pop up requires pushing off the surfboard and bringing both feet under the body to the right posture on the board. In the water it is difficult without upper body strength. I teach beginners to put the back foot on the board and start standing on it while lifting the arms and bringing the front foot to the middle of the board. This doesn’t require upper body strength.

Coordination- For a lack of a better term, I am calling the process of balancing, paddling, timing, and moving to the right posture coordination. A high percentage of new students can’t translate what they hear and see to their body. In general, I find boys don’t listen and only take in half of what is said and girls generally take in 100%. Those who can hear and get their body to follow all the instructions progress much faster. Continuous learning of new body movements through dancing, sports, yoga etc help people learn each new sport faster.

Timing- There are at least 5 parts to riding a wave that have to be put in order. First students have to paddle balanced on the board which is more difficult than you would think. Secondly, the surfer must paddle until they are in front of the wave which most beginners rush and put hands on the board too soon. Thirdly, the pop up motion begins after the board is in front of the wave and has to be executed smoothly and perfectly to keep the board going straight and balanced. At the beginning students put knees on the board or hold on too long and fall quickly.

Posture – Beginners need to be in the right posture on the board to ride straight to the beach in foam waves. Advanced surfers develop how they like to ride the board, but beginners have to get their body weight distributed right. The feet need to be shoulder width apart to create a nice platform. The front foot has to be in the middle of the board at a 45 degree angle facing forward. The hips and shoulders need to be facing forward with the hands up in front to be sure weight is equal on both sides of the board’s center line. A trailing shoulder or hand is the primary reason beginners fall. I use a four count for the surfing pop up to get quick smooth rhythm.

Yes, that is a lot. It is the reason most surfers will say it is the most difficult sport to learn. In the movies it looks easy. If you are serious, you will practice popups in your living room every day and cross train for strength, stamina and flexibility, just like the pros.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page

See my YouTube pop up video for good instructions

A good video of Catching Waves

Beginner Surfers Master 3 Fundamentals

Beginner surfers enter a world like they have never experienced. Surfing is more complex than it appears, but the beginner learns 3 fundamentals.

The Basics for a Beginner Surfer

The dry land lesson explains what a beginner has to accomplish to ride a surf board in the shore break foam waves. Then the student has to learn the lessons all over in the water because the dynamics cause lots of uncertainty. Not as easy as it would seem, balancing on the board and paddling level towards the beach are not easy with a tumultuous foam wave pushing from behind.

The most important aspect is the beginner needs patience to paddle until the surfboard is in front of the wave. So many beginners jump up before the wave has even hit the board or too soon while the tail is still in the froth. Kids and sometimes women don’t have the power to paddle until the board is ahead of the wave and to keep it going straight.

Catching the wave is timing. Catching a foam wave requires little skill compared to catching a real wave, but the fundamentals are the same. Start paddling before the wave arrives at an easy pace to get the board moving and level. Paddle hard for 3-5 strokes when the wave starts to push the board. Many beginners don’t change their pace from easy to fast paddling and the wave spins and flips the board.

The pop up is the athletic part of getting to a standing position. The body has to move smoothly and the feet have to land in the right spots and the posture needs to be exact. If the student swings into the wrong posture with the butt over a rail instead of in the middle of the board, the surfer falls in the water immediately. The difficult part of instructing beginners is they want to put a knee on the board first because they are fearful. (watch the pop up video below.)

The surfer has to go from the lying down position to having both feet on the board. The front foot has to be in the middle of the board far enough forward to keep the nose down. The hips and shoulders have to be square to the front with both hands in front. Snow boarders and skater boarders like to ride with a shoulder back and a hand trailing which doesn’t work for beginner surfers.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside see the Home Page

My Pop Up video

A good video for Catching Waves

Surfers Cross-Train to Improve

Surfers cross train to enjoy more time in the water and support each technique. The most tiring part of surfing is the paddling. When you can’t paddle any longer, the session is finished.

Surfer Cross Training Exercises

There are three physical demands for excellent surfing: Flexibility, Stamina, and Strength.

Flexibility is important for two reasons. Surfing has a wide range of body movements from the ankles to the upper torso. In catching waves the body is moving down the face and then might need to carve right or left. During the run in pocket, riding up the face and ripping require balance, flexibility, and strength in all the muscles. Secondly, when surfers fall, they don’t want to get tweaked from tight muscles or weak joints.

Stamina is needed first for all the paddling. Paddling out to waves, catching waves, and returning to the waves is about paddling. There is aerobics and recovery. Some of the paddling might be anaerobic in which the effort consumes all your oxygen and you go into deficit. Paddling is the best preparation but out of the water running, biking, or treadmills help build endurance, peak load, and recovery.

Strength is needed in most every muscle. The feet must exert pressure on the board and the ankles have to support various rotation. The knees and quads exert pressure and must be supported by the hips, lower back, and abs which are the core muscles. The upper body often drives the tricks plus provide paddling power.

The 5 basic movement patterns of fitness are squats, lunges, pushes, pulls, and rotations. They can all be exercised in the gym and contribute to the strength needed for surfing. Building the core is served with dead lifts, squats, and military presses. The entire mid-section, posterior and anterior is the core. Pushing and pulling can be executed with cables, bench presses, pull downs, and seated rowing pulls.

Why not use surfing as a motivation to get very fit with surf cross training or take your fitness to the water and use it to help your surfing. Once you are fit for surfing, you should be able to enjoy most sports.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page

Beginners Learn to Surf Real Waves

Beginners learn to ride real waves after mastering foam wave riding. The essentials of riding foam waves are a first step for the more intricate timing of real waves.

The timing for riding foam and real waves first involves positioning. On a foam wave, you get in front of the wave and start paddling easy. When it is close, you paddle hard three or four times until you are in front of the wave before putting your hands on the board

On a real wave, you can paddle parallel to where you know the waves are breaking to help momentum. When you see it begin to form, you paddle out a little bit, in a little bit, or just parallel. When it starts to arc, you have to let the wave come under the board. Then three hard paddles and you should be in the wave.

Angling for the wave is an important technique. Rather than just riding straight down the wave which can increase pearling on steep waves, you can push the board to the direction the wave is breaking before putting hands on the board to angle for the pocket.

The pop up needs to be smooth, efficient, and quick on real waves. The body should wind up just as in a foam wave with weight distributed evenly over the center line of the board with hips and shoulders facing the front of the board.

Beginners should learn to ride real waves that are only a few feet high. They can often be interspersed with foam waves or you can go to the outside on smaller days where all the surfers are lined up. Getting a wave in the line up is another topic.

Learn the basics and how to ride small foam waves in this video

5 Beginner Surfer Fundamentals

There are 5 beginner surfer fundamentals that launch a new surfer and allow them to practice on their own. My goal in surf lessons is to teach beginners how they can go anywhere and practice without an instructor.

Water safety is important. Beginners are vulnerable to getting hurt because they are not aware of what happens with a board and the waves. Most beginners start with an 8′ or 9′ soft top. They are excellent because they have high volume for easy use and don’t hurt as bad if they hit you. Best to keep the board behind you by dragging it backward by the leash or pointing it straight into waves.

NEVER let the board get between your body and the wave because you will get knocked down. When you fall off the board, always know where it is. If you go under water, come up with your hands over your scalp protecting your head from fins in case the board is right above you.

The next beginner surfer fundamental is getting on the board properly. I like students to hold the board with one hand on top and one underneath and in the spot when they roll over their feet are at the very back of the board. Then students put the balls of their feet on the board.

Your nose should be on the middle strip and your feet together in the back. You balance the board with your butt. The board has to be pointing straight at the beach. If you take off at an angle on foam waves, they will turn the board over.

Paddling to catch waves is about timing. Drive your arm into the water up to the elbow and pull in very short abbreviated strokes. You do not want to stretch the arm out like you are swimming; it is too slow and causes the board to change direction with each stroke. Paddle easy before the wave arrives and then at least three hard paddles until the board takes off in front of the wave.

Standing up on the board is about timing, steps, and smoothness. After the board has taken off and the foam is behind the board, put your hands on the board in a man’s push up position under the chest. I call this the rest position as you are laying on your hands. From this position, you push up evenly until your arms are fully extended like in a full push up.

It is important not to stall in this position and be thinking about what you are going to do. Lying down and standing up are the only stable positions and everything in between is unstable. As soon as you have pushed up, place one foot on the board a foot or so from the back of the board, flat on the board and perpendicular to the two rails of the board.

Then you stand up on this foot raising your hands up in the air and keeping your shoulders and hips facing forward toward the beach. Now your front leg has no weight on it and you can drive it to the middle of the board and set it across the center line.

You want your weight equal on your front and back legs. You do not want your nose to be over your front foot in a leaning forward posture. Your feet create a nice platform and are shoulder width or a few feet apart. Your knees are flexed so that you can ride the board once you are up.

The beginner surfer’s first objective is to ride the board straight to the beach on a foam wave without falling off. If the posture on the board is right, the board will go straight and the surfer doesn’t have to do any work.

See this video which is my dry land and in water demonstration for beginners.

For surf lessons, see the Home Page

Adults Learn to Surf

Adults learn to surf almost as easily as teens. Adults seem to have one advantage is they understand and translates instructions to their bodies better than young adults, but have the disadvantage of flexibility.

Learning to surf has great parallels with how you are able to learn any new body movements, for example dance or yoga. The more new challenges you introduce to your body, the easier it is to learn.

The second aspect is the body’s ability to move. Adults fall into the trap of prioritizing careers over exercise (which may be necessary) and then lose the opportunity for many recreational outlets. Flexibility should be the first consideration, followed by movement and aerobics such as walking, biking, swimming, yoga, running, and hiking.

Strength training is important not only for new recreation activities, but to maintain lean muscle mass for health and daily activities. There are so many opportunities to develop strength that can occur with isometric and isotonic exercises (resistance without moving muscles and moving resistance by pushing, pulling, lifting, and raising.)

Surfing requires certain muscle groups. Paddling is the most energy demanding and the exercise that tires surfers and students first. I like pulleys to develop upper body strength. Pushing off the surf board for a pop up is developed by practicing pop ups and push ups or burpies are great.

Weight can become a detriment for adults that want to learn to surf. As we get more sedentary, we stop exercising, and therefore lose the power to weight battle that allows us to get our body off the board. Usually a big midriff increase is accompanied by a loss of strength in the upper body.

Surfing is a full body and mind/body coordination sport. It is great for conditioning or as a target for conditioning. Most adults are successful in their first lesson even if they realize they could use more body training.

For surf lessons in Oceanside, See the Home Page