How to get to your feet in the optimal position
, by PTY LTDCroch AU, 4 min reading time
In this article, we’ll analyze how intermediate surfers can refine their take off technique. In order to land on their feet with optional body position to surf down the line, this tutorial is not about the take off technique itself or how to practice it, it’s about the surfer’s body position at the precise moment they get to their feet. Once surfers fix the technical issues with their take off, their feet land in the optimal position to ride the wave, helping them go down the line faster.
In this article, we’ll analyze how intermediate surfers can refine their take off technique. In order to land on their feet with optional body position to surf down the line, this tutorial is not about the take off technique itself or how to practice it, it’s about the surfer’s body position at the precise moment they get to their feet. Once surfers fix the technical issues with their take off, their feet land in the optimal position to ride the wave, helping them go down the line faster.How experienced surfers land on their feet
First, let’s learn how experienced surfers are positioned right at the moment when they get to their feet. There are few key elements to notice. If you look at a backside take off, you can notice that, the surfer is looking where he wants to go, his shoulder is squared towards that direction, his front foot is landed in between his hands, his front knee in between his arms and pointing in the direction he wants to go and he is compressed down.
Many different experienced surfers, even though they have their own individual style and slightly different take off technique, their position is quite similar at the moment they land on their feet.
Common variations & mistakes
Now let’s learn the different variations from optimal body position caused by technical mistakes or bad habits. Lots of surfers keep their hands on the surfboard for too long instead of releasing them as soon as their front foot is correctly placed on the surfboard’s deck. The consequence of this is often that, the surfer rides the wave too low instead of starting to generate speed right away. If you look at experience surfers take off, you will notice that their hands are released from the surfboard as soon as their front foot lands on the board. Another way how a lot of intermediates end up dropping down the entire wave is by looking down. Where surfers look is where they’re going to end up going as the rest of their body will follow. Most likely, if a surfer is looking down, their shoulders will be parallel to the wave instead of them being square. When surfers look at their surfboard or directly down the wave instead of looking to the right or to the left. They will most likely drop too low, the landing of the front foot and the position of the front knee right when the feet get onto the deck can be a great indicator of the quality of the surfer’s take off technique. If the front knee doesn't land in between the surfer’s arms or if the front foot doesn’t land centered on the width of the surfboard near the hands, then the surfer will need to readjust their feet once they’re up. These adjustments can make surfers lose precious time or put them off balance. Most experienced surfers keep their knees bent and pointing in the direction they’re heading to with their back knee lower than their front one. They only decompress once they’re balanced and they’re in the optimal position. This doesn’t take them much time as they have the experience required to get their feet in the perfect position quickly. To help them twist their body towards where they want to go. Some surfers like to keep one of their hands lower on the surfboard when they push up. For example, if they wanted to go left, their left hand would be lower and their right hand would be lower to go right. Without this twist, surfers take off with the hips aiming straight to the beach. Without landing in the correct position with the knees pointing towards their target on the wave, something to notice is that while advanced surfers pop up, their hips also twist slightly in the direction that they want to go. On the other hand, some intermediate surfers don’t always land with their feet in the optimal spots and by decompressing too fast they can lose their balance. The challenge for a lot of these intermediates is that these small technical mistakes usually have become bad habits and those are sometimes really hard to get rid of. After months or years of taking off in a certain way, it’s hard to suddenly unlearn it and force yourself to pop up in a different way. For this reason, we highly suggest getting yourself filmed for at least one session. You might be doing some of the mistakes in the tutorial without knowing it and videos can expose those to you.
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