Category: Advanced Surfing

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.

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Surfing the Short 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

For surf camps, school, or series of lessons see the options 

See a great YouTube video on short board techniques and strategies

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.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see Home Page

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

This is a great tutorial on catching real waves https://youtu.be/N7KopjbzxjE

Good video on doing Bottom Turns

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.

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For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page

Learn How to Pop Up in my YouTube video

A good video on Catching Waves