Who’s learning to surf this summer?

starting lessons in 2 days,, cant wait

Yep going to have a go with year and hopefully I catch the surf bug.

going for my first surf tomorrow for the day hopefully ill be able to stand up after 1 day of surfing haha

Got a second hand board and new wetsuit. Gave it a go on Monday so much fun even though the water was like a washing machine.

Yew good on you man. I’m a rookie surfer myself. Little frustrating sometimes, but the more I do it, the more fun it is.

And it’s always good to just be in the ocean

Yeah, the ocean’s like the snow!!!!!

Even if ya have a shit day, ya somehow still come out feelin great!!!!!

Just went for my first surf of the year. MAN it felt good to be in the water today.

I still suck, but I didn’t suck any more than last time I surfed which was a year ago, so I’m happy with that.
I can still get up and ride all the way in, I’m just working on getting the board moving across the wave. I do turn, but when I do that’s usually the end of my ride because I think I turn and put my weight on the back foot too much when I do. Snowboarding habits I guess.

I was going to Hawaii on the way to Canada and had plans to get lesson etc. but sadly I can’t afford it   but hey, I’m going to Canada so I’m not complaining.

There’s no surf schools that I know of around here so I guess I’ll just keep practicing and pick it up however I can. Think I’ll go tomorrow too if it’s not too flat

Feet need to wider apart than snowboarding.

Snowboarding usually requires front foot weighted so your statement confuses me? Surfers learning to snowboard have to overcome their instinct to be back foot heavy…

Wider stance while surfing Andy!

I’m also a little lost about too much backfoot, what i think you may mean is that you put a lot of pressure on but then don’t return to front foot and thus fall off the back of the wave?  I can’t say anything more than this but just go out everyday as long as you can.  I imagine that surfing must be so fcuken frustrating to try and learn when you’re older, I really should thank my old man for teaching me when I was really young.

Andy howse your paddling coming along mate?  If you can’t paddle well you can’t catch waves so it really all begins there.  Even now getting into a wave as quickly and as early as you can has a massive bearing on how the rest of the wave turns out.  Many times it’s the difference between making a wave and getting stuck behind a section.  Everything counts from your positioning in the line up before a set even appears to the paddling positioning you do when the set appears to be in the optimum spot.  Then when you turn to paddle in there’s other things you can do, sometimes when you move from a sitting to a paddling position you can shove the board back into the wave and let the buoyancy of the board pushing back out give you a little extra kick.  Other times when you paddle something as small as putting your head closer and more forward can drag your weight slightly forward on the board at the right time which can help propel you into the wave faster.

There’s a lot of little things that go into a good wave and so much of it has to do with timing and most of the timing comes with experience and most of the time, especially with something as basic as paddling it happens very subconciously and its hard to break it down and explain whats going on.  Taj Burrow had a little saying a while back, “what separates you and me is time in the water.”  Overly simplistic but in some respects true.

In snowboarding the stance is a static one, usually centered or slightly over the front foot. True for most snowboarders. However, when you get to riding aggressively in advanced/expert terrain, we have to have a mobile stance.
So when I snowboard, I move my body very fore and aft (nose to tail) through the turns. So the end of my turn is all on the back foot and snapping off it back to the front. Almost like ollie-ing out of turns. Not working so well in surfing though lol. Maybe it will have it’s place when I get better at surfing, I don’t know.

But the stance thing is interesting. I will try that. When I think about it now, yes, surfers definitely do have a wider stance. But I have never noticed it until you said that.

As far as my paddling goes, well, it was my first day surfing again lol.
But I was taking the time to catch a few waves laying down, and just focusing on getting on them properly without standing up.
There is so much knowledge to surfing, it’s crazy. One wave can be so different from the next. But like you said, it’s just time in the water. And YES it’s frustrating to learn as an adult but so was skating, and now I love it.
One thing I did find which relates to that saying was, after an hour or two I felt more confident in what I was doing, and I found myself instinctively choosing to be further forward on the board when I paddled for waves, and that helped a lot.

What I’m sort of gettin from ya original post above, is that you’re ridin the White Water in?????

If this is the case, the board will behave very differently compared to when it is on smooth unbroken face of the water surface!!!!!

The turbulence of the white water, mixed with lots of air, can drag your board downward, and hence probably why it “feels” like you’re using a lot of Back Foot?????

Like NBG said, get out further and get up onto the wave a lot sooner, try and stay/point toward the smooth unbroken section of the wave as soon as you can!!!!!

Keep your stance width as natural as possible (What feels comfortable for you), bend at the back knee to help shift your weight so as to make the board as close to flat as possible!!!!! This will make the board plane through the water more efficiently!!!!! Once the board is “up to speed”, then you can shift your weight accordingly to slow/speed the board in order to stay in the best part of the waves face!!!!! (Kinda like keepin the right momentum in Powder)

If that all makes sense????? O even any of it!!!!!

Yeah it does make sense.
I’m not just riding the white wash. I’m catching the wave before it breaks and trying to ride across it as best I can, but end up in the white wash cause I’m not very good at going across the wave yet.
I’m yet to ride a wave all the way across it and over the back like I see surfers do. That’s probably my next goal I guess. I see other surfers around me doing it and I think it would feel so good just to be able to do that.

Interesting what you said about the white wash feeling different though. Sometimes I will just ride a wave dead straight to practice balance or just to have fun, but I usually feel like I’m in a weird stance when I do that. Makes sense to me now.

I would suggest focusing on a bottom turn.
After you stand up and drop straight down to near the bottom of the wave face, putting in an ‘aggressive back foot snowboard style powder turn’ with legs bent. Remember how often you tell learner skiers and snowboarders to Bend Z Knees.

Bottom Turns generate speed and is the most important turn in surfing, every other maneuver utilizes the bottom turn. It will put you in green water on the wave face. Imagine riding a quarter pipe and continually turning where the wall flattens out so you can get back up the wall.

It would be a better thing to conquer than what I think you’re trying by attempting to ride over the back of the wave on green water.

Remind me what board your on Andy?
NBG gave some good tips on paddling. When I ride my mini-mal I use my feet in a kicking motion while paddling to get more momentum.
When I was teaching my daughter to paddle for waves, the biggest leap forward was telling her she had to get 10 hard strokes while looking at the beach, before she was allowed to look back at the wave. Looking back at the wave is the worst thing you can do but I was “rolling-with-the-punches” because she couldn’t stop herself. By the time she committed to the 10 strokes, the wave would catch her. The next 5 waves she paddled for picked her up and she attempted standing at the ideal place, she fell on 3 and copped some gnarly wipeouts - BUT it didn’t phase her because she didn’t get a chance to see the size or shape of the waves bearing down on her.

I learned not to look back at waves while surfing in 10 foot and over surf on reef breaks - I had some horrid near death wipeouts but they didn’t worry me. I now apply it to all surf and I get many more free fall take offs out of the lip on waves I wouldn’t possible to catch.
In surfing don’t trust your eyes.