Learning to Ride the Surfing Shortboard
Learning to Ride the Surfing Shortboard is a challenge. It requires improved physical conditioning, learned techniques, courage, and consistency. It also takes a few years if you are not in the water every day.
The process should begin by learning the basics of wave catching and popping up on a soft top board in foam waves. The natural progression is to start paddling out for bigger foam waves and small real waves.
Making the Jump to Real Waves and Shortboards
Real waves are a challenge. Surfers spend their whole lives learning to catch and ride them better. The superior surfers may go on to riding the biggest waves they can. Others want to ride them the best they can and maybe compete.
Some surfers want to ride long boards. The long board likes different kinds of waves and is a different style. It may not be as adrenaline filled as the short board rides which require quicker actions and allow for more technical tricks.
The shortboard requires greater strength to paddle the low volume boards. They sink into the water and create more paddling resistance. The shortboard needs to catch waves as they peak and the board is facing straight down. The long board can catch the right waves as they form and the surfer is riding before the wave peaks.
The main difference with this point is that learning the shortboard is going to involve lots of pearling (nose underwater). It takes a courage jump to go from riding flat riding foam waves to real waves that lift the surfboard tail in the air.
Timing is drastically different. The foam wave can be seen at a distance. The real wave only breaks for a few seconds and must be intercepted at that exact point. Misjudgment results in the wave crashing on the surfer or crashing the surfer.
The pop up on a smaller board must be exact and often quick. The landing stance must be perfect. There is no room for error. The long board has high volume and tolerates mistakes. Mistakes are more easily corrected on the fly. The shortboard must be bottom turned into the pocket and accelerated to perform maneuvers. The long board can just be driven in the pocket where it rides easily and nothing else is required.
Catching Waves
The surfer can catch real waves with three different techniques. First ,the surfer can just drop down the face. On real steep waves and closeouts, this may be the only option. Secondly, he can point the board towards the pocket before the pop up so that when he is up, he is already in the pocket.
Third, the surfer can catch the wave at the corner when it is smaller and not so steep. This is a good technique to learn to catch real waves. The surfer paddles toward the pocket after it has already broken at the lip and is unfurling down the line. The surfer points his board at a 45 degree angle towards the beach and lets the wave come under the board. He then maintains that 45 degree angle. No steep drops or bottom turns.
Learning Techniques
There are three main maneuvers. The surfer bottom turns to get into the pocket, to get out of a collapsing wave, and to run the board up the face for tricks. The surfer does a cut-back to reverse direction back to the power, for style, and often to stall for a barrel.
The shortboard surfer accelerates after catching a wave and after each maneuver. Usually two or three pumps or running the nose up the face with the front foot are adequate to perform the next maneuver or trick.
Read a good book to be a better surfer and more fit.
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