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I've been seriously stuck at the intermediate intermediate level (e.g. below average surfer level) for so long and really want to push my level. I've talked to lots of surfers, even got Taj Burrows Book of Hot Surfing and have been trying incorporate a lot of new techniques into my surfing.
There are quite a few rippers on this forum (H_T, SH3, Heavyfooted, Lefthander,... etc.) and would love to get some of their input on how they mastered some of the most basic of surfing techniques. Hence, the title of this thread. If you wanna improve your ability, this will hopefully be the place to checkout.
Maybe the best place to start is with backside cutbacks since I just had an A-Ha moment recently. I've noticed that my best backside cutties happened when I started my turns higher on the wave into the cutback. However, I also noticed that power surfers like Taylor Knox starts a lot of his turns mid face and accelerates up the face during the turn.
So to kick off this thread, how do you keep your speed and projection in the cutback? Where are you guys applying the maximum power and in what stage of the turn?
Havoc
Edited by Havoc (06/24/09 01:46 AM)
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Havoc
Tom Curren status
Reged: 09/10/07
Posts: 10000
Loc: The OC Life
Get a 80' style skateboard 88d wheels and start carving up miniramps and eventually pools. Endless amounts of top/bottom turns! Can't think of anything that has improved my surfing/balance more. but no tricks or ollies just carves . Get a snowboard and youre stoked year round.
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easternbull
Legend (inyourownmind)
Reged: 08/26/05
Posts: 366
Loc: Northern Europe
Sorry, my last post did not answer your question, but I also think getting a stronger core and legs combined with added felexibilty(yoga) will improve your surfing. I'm no ripper but strong legs/core combined with "good" flexibilty will enable you to have a lower stance=lower center of gravity. This means better balance/power/recovery=better surfing. Just my two cents. All this and finding the right board will surely improve your surfing, maybe the rippers on this forum can answer your question.
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SharkBoy
Michael Peterson status
Reged: 10/22/04
Posts: 2560
Step one: watch a video of yourself, compare it to the pros and figure out yourself what looks wrong.
Step two: watch the waves before paddling out, figure out a strategy of how they should best be surfed (working on what you are doing wrong). Paddle out and stick to it.
- other tips: turn according to what the wave calls for (at least until you are good enough to cutback where most would race) Don't turn for the sake of it, turns look best when they are required by the wave
- open your shoulders, but drive through the turn with the hips. beginners tend to swing their shoulders to create power and turn, but the shoulder only opens to help you counterbalance, the power should be from the lower body.
- on fast waves- race by taking off at an angle - slow waves, delay your bottom turn and arc it at the last second.
-getting fit and losing weight does wonders too
-------------------- Like a blind man at an orgie, I was gonna have to feel my way around.
leading with your eyes is better. as long as your looking ahead at where your going/want to be chances are you'll get there. some boards just dont cut back worth a poop.i try (lately) to surf the same board for three sessions before dusting off another one. otherwise i find myself spending a lot of time figuring out the boards and not enough time progressing. doesn't always work out this way but i try. wave conditions sometime dictate that i just cant take out the same board.but every board i own has its own way of cutting back. some steer flat, some really get up on edge and carry a ton of speed anyway, some will be touchy and take a big speed killing bite out of the wave in midturn, some require getting waaaay back on the tail or you'll bury the foreward rail everytime.... .02 -Jas
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Hdip
Gerry Lopez status
Reged: 04/23/05
Posts: 1095
Loc: Malibu, CA
Want to know how little kids get good so fast? Video. Watch tons of video.
Seeing yourself is good to know what is wrong with your style.
Watching how to actually do it is better. Break down the video. When do they move their feet. How far back is their backfoot when pumping down the line. When do they move it back to hit the lip.
I'd be scared to watch a video of myself surfing, but I think trying to maintain a relatively low center of gravity during a cut back is key for momentum, leverage, and ability to react through a section that is less than perfect. If you're standing up a bit too upright, your cutback will suffer in all of these areas. Also, and you'll hear this ad naseum, the bottom turn is key. If you can't squarley set it off the bottom no amount of improved technique in the actual cutback is going to get you where you want to be.
Good luck - I've been surfing for almost 20 years and get huge stoke from pulling turns that are seriously state of the art '81.
Visualise what it is you want to do. Picture it over and over, and get it into your subconscious. Then when you're on a wave, and things are happening too fast to think about how you wanted to do a certain turn or maneuver, the subconscious will kick in, and you just might do it how you pictured it.
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jettylocal
Michael Peterson status
Reged: 05/23/02
Posts: 2155
do some cross training...lots of twisting crunches, push-ups, soft sand runs and lunge jumps/explosions mixed in, swimming...having strong legs is good, but they can only transmit power coming through your core. the best carving, arcing turns come from your trunk...the more you wind up, the more you can unwind and whip through a turn.
unfortunately, in smaller waves, compressed fast hooky waves, i do a lot of turns where i just kind of 'jam' it off the tail without really winding up or carrying all the way through...these turns can throw good chunks, but they are always short and snappy, don't continue through longer or full arcs. still, even these turns benefit from strong core and strong legs.
-------------------- "...we woke up to perfect lefts, and that was our mission."
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Havoc
Tom Curren status
Reged: 09/10/07
Posts: 10000
Loc: The OC Life
Quote: make your favorite shortboard a 4 fin. thats a shortcut to faster and looser surfing
surf good waves with good surfers.
study the proper body mechanics of moves done by the best pros.
yeah, what he said...and lot's of video of pros and you...watching yourself on video has instant results...you can see just how horrible you are! (i almost puked when i saw myself the first time!)
p.s.: that's a nice turn, havoc...you got no worries!
-------------------- "...we woke up to perfect lefts, and that was our mission."
u know what id like to do, is go frontside and go up the lip like im doin a 3 but then like do a floater backwards then bring it around back like i went up, not doing a full 360, not sure it makes sense
havoc, good stuff those pics, glad you posted 'em, i was trying the same turns over and over last night at a mushy little left peak that was perfect for these types of backside cutbacks. i thought i was doing pretty well, actually, until I got out of the water and my girlfriend informed me that my style/approach resembled a monkey: "very ape like, your arms." it made me realize a super obvious but good point i have heard a million tiems from better surfers: what you do with your arms and hands and upper body makes a huge difference in terms of power/technique/style/etc. you seem to have the upper body/arms in the right spot, which is more than i can say. is that an HP fish or X Dialer?
obviously the right boards too, that cater to your strengths/style...recently found a 6'0 design by Heavyfooted that really fits for me (somewhat similar to a Flyer, but different), that I have been meaning to do a review on, cuz i think its been helping me a lot to feel more confident and go for my turns more, to try and push a little harder etc. any kind of percieved improvement whether from a board or yourself or whatever is really pretty stoking. hopefully more people chime in with other tips and other common improvement bottlenecks.
one thing for sure thats held me back for years, sadly, is not getting my back foot far enough back...seems so simple to just move my foot back 2-4 inches, yet when i'm over-amping and excited and taking off on a good one, its so hard to concentrate on this simple but crucial thing. tried various tricks to remedy this, but it seems the only solution is really relaxing and being deliberate about it as you take off. This seems to be a common "issue" holding back intermediates like myself.
most average surfers do not take off deep enough. watch or surf with a pro - They're doing their first turn where most surfers are looking to take off.
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SharkBoy
Michael Peterson status
Reged: 10/22/04
Posts: 2560
Quote: Thanks everyone! Some great suggestions here
a few pics from a mushy mushy day:
initiation:
turn:
OK, I know I pretty much suck, but wanna improve...
Havoc
nothing wrong with the turn itself but you are placed a little far out on the shoulder, if you find yourself out that far, just crouch, touch the water with your right hand and hold out on burning your speed until you see the lip again
-------------------- Like a blind man at an orgie, I was gonna have to feel my way around.
agree with evrything being said here. Especially video.
A thing i do, is breaking down a manouver into sequenzes, and understanding every part of it.
The turn you are doing in the pick is a mix between the cutback and the "normal backhand turn".
If u wanna do the turn, then your chest should almost touch your front knee, and your back foot should be fully extended in the "peak" of the turn. Your stance should be wider.
If you wanna do the cutback then you must search more towards the whitewater in your manouver. Now you are burning speed by being to much on the backfoot for a cutback, and i bet the rebound didnt work out. And you are not seeing towards the whitewater, so what happens when you get there?
most importantly, get another board. White, thruster, black tailpad.
Then the board wont fool you to going "retro" as an excuse for incompetence.
Today i was outsurfed by a foreigner, and the point he got me on was DRIVE. -So that will be my summer project. Just getting and maintaining speed in crappy waves(half the size and half the interval of your waves)
-------------------- "the quad setup hinders performance." - Havoc
Quote: Sorry, my last post did not answer your question, but I also think getting a stronger core and legs combined with added felexibilty(yoga) will improve your surfing. I'm no ripper but strong legs/core combined with "good" flexibilty will enable you to have a lower stance=lower center of gravity. This means better balance/power/recovery=better surfing. Just my two cents. All this and finding the right board will surely improve your surfing, maybe the rippers on this forum can answer your question.
Great post easternbull ,thats exactly what helped my surfing improve
Havoc my surfing was the same as what your asking here ,I found yoga building up leg/core strength and flexibility was a great help. OK so Im talking the late eighties here but I used to listen to shapers telling me what I should be riding because thats what everyone else was riding big mistake. I tried a Mccoy lazor zap and discovered and found I really liked Wide thick boards ,really suited my surfing style.Could it be your boards are holding you back,NO offence to your shaper ,just a thought????? Having said that Im no ripper ,but board experimenting and the yoga thing greatly improved my enjoyment/fun with surfing ,Well thats what worked for me ,maybe it helps good luck
Quote: I've been seriously stuck at the intermediate intermediate level (e.g. below average surfer level) for so long and really want to push my level. I've talked to lots of surfers, even got Taj Burrows Book of Hot Surfing and have been trying incorporate a lot of new techniques into my surfing.
There are quite a few rippers on this forum (H_T, SH3, Heavyfooted, Lefthander,... etc.) and would love to get some of their input on how they mastered some of the most basic of surfing techniques. Hence, the title of this thread. If you wanna improve your ability, this will hopefully be the place to checkout.
Maybe the best place to start is with backside cutbacks since I just had an A-Ha moment recently. I've noticed that my best backside cutties happened when I started my turns higher on the wave into the cutback. However, I also noticed that power surfers like Taylor Knox starts a lot of his turns mid face and accelerates up the face during the turn.
So to kick off this thread, how do you keep your speed and projection in the cutback? Where are you guys applying the maximum power and in what stage of the turn?
Havoc
Havoc,
thanks for da props, BUT my friend here in SD who used to ride for AL Merrick when he was into the nssa comps and who happened to be on AL's hard copy, RIPS and would be considered a RIPPER at any spot anywhere in the world. I would concede that I think I've earned the "R" "I" in RIPPER, but not that title.
glad i cleared that up
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goldenarmes
Michael Peterson status
Reged: 03/31/05
Posts: 3035
Hey Andes, that board's a zamora hp-dialer. Lots and lots of foam + single concave. Fast, but really gotta lean over in the turns. Works super well in the small stuff.
Hear you on the back foot thing, I drive so much w/ my front foot that I noticed that my back foot is way forward off the tail. It shifts back some during cutties, bit still forward. I've gotta work on that too. You can see it here:
Great suggestions on this thread. I'm gonna work on them one at a time until I internalize them all. Oh yeah, equipment is paramount as well!
Havoc
-------------------- "motions of rippage is initated by the hind leg"-Northern_Shores
"Lemme know. I got endson gas"-20W
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Havoc
Tom Curren status
Reged: 09/10/07
Posts: 10000
Loc: The OC Life
Quote: Agreed. That was the first thing I thought when I saw your first pics havoc. Better surfing needs better waves.
so true; the left in your pic. looks fairly gutless (maybe worthy of a drawn out round house to the foam at best) . . . got any pics of you surfing something with vertical face?
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afoaf
Rabbitt Bartholomew status
Reged: 06/25/08
Posts: 9848
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Can't think of anything that has improved my surfing/balance more. but no tricks or ollies just carves 
. Get a snowboard and youre stoked year round. 
big mistake. I tried a Mccoy lazor zap and discovered and found I really liked Wide thick boards ,really suited my surfing style.Could it be your boards are holding you back,NO offence to your shaper ,just a thought?????
