How Surfers Carve
The snowboarders and skateboarders that learn to surf want to know How Surfers Carve. Carving is an advanced technique that can be started as a beginner in foam waves.
In my surf lessons when students have easily mastered the fundamentals of catching foam waves, popping up and riding to the beach without falling off the board, I teach them how to carve. The beginning carve is the same as the advanced carve.
How it Starts
Riding balanced on the board to the beach in a foam wave, the surfer first looks in the direction he wants to travel with his eyes and then moves his head and upper torso in a slight twist in that direction. This action torques down to his feet. He places a little pressure on his toes or heels in the direction of the carve and he will change the direction of the board.
In foam waves on a soft top, the board has thick rails and is moving slow, so the movement has to be subtle. If the surfer is regular footed (left foot forward) and wants to carve face side, he goes right. If he wants to go backside, he carves left. Carving backside means you place pressure on your heels.
In a foam wave, the surfer can pump on the foam wave by just compressing up and down to get the board ahead of the wave. Then he executes a carve and could run down the foam line of the wave as though he were in a pocket of a wave.
Advancing to Real Waves
As surfers advance to real waves where they are moving faster, they can carve with more emphasis because the rails won’t dig in as much. One reason surfers advance to short boards with low volume is they can dig the rails deep in the water and make very sharp carves.
The carve is first used to make a bottom turn. The bottom turn takes the surfer off the face of the wave into the pocket. He then makes another bottom turn to ride up the face to escape a falling lip or initiate a maneuver or trick. For ripping the lip, the surfer does a cutback at the top spraying the lip with the tail.
The cutback is a carve to reverse directions. Riding in the pocket, the surfer will execute a cutback to return to the power of the wave. In a cutback, he is carving down the face of the wave to go back to where he came from.
Accelerating for Tricks and Maneuvers
The other important carve is accelerating. Accelerating for speed is necessary for maneuvers on short boards. The surfer accelerates after the bottom turn for a few pumps and then accelerates after each maneuver before executing the next trick.
Surfers should have the bottom turn, the cutback, and accelerating in their arsenal. These all can be learned on a soft top in real waves. An 8′ soft top executes them well. If the surfer wants to advance to a hard board, he begins by stepping to a 7’6″ board maintaining the width and thickness of the soft tops. The surfer should only step shorter 6″ at a time.
More Posts
Oceanside Surf Lessons for Beginners
Beginner Surfers Learn the Pop Up
How to Progress to Surfing the Short Board
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