How to Surf: 7 Beginner Mistakes and How to Fix Them

I don't know really. Is this good? I think I prefer waxing skis. You smell of it when you melt it and stuff. Hi, I'm Jens at Stomp It Tutorials. I make free ski tutorials on how to do tricks on skis. Now we're making a couple of experimental episodes where we're gonna get taught. I have been surfing in the past. First time I went surfing was like in 2008 in Tunisia. Could do like left waves, turn a little bit. And to see how good I am at surfing. I have no one here to help me right now. They just said hey you can paddle out over there and surf down there. And hopefully I'm gonna hit that left wave. We're later on gonna go through the footage of me surfing. And the coaches here at Rise Up Surf Camps. They're gonna teach me how to surf better. Let's go down there. That's not going so well. I almost surfed. When I tried surfing for the first time. I just rented a board and went off to try it. Because of this approach I never learned how to surf properly. So it's now time to fix my surfing technique. Now we're gonna have a look at what I was doing wrong. And maybe I was doing something right as well. With my buddy Alejandro here. He's the head coach at Rise Up Surf. And I hope he can sort my surfing out. Do you see your happy face? That is really important when you go surfing. We can see you are moving your body. Keeping your shoulders very low. And you are not keeping the power and the efficiency of your strokes. It's not gonna be the best. You need to arch your back. Keep your shoulders high. And go with as long strokes as you can. But not as far as you put your chest over the board. Because you lose power when you are moving off the board all the time. So your board is slowing down with the body movement that you are doing. So how far should I go? As far as you can. But keeping your body in a comfortable position. If you go too far you don't have the control. You don't have much strength at this point. So a bit shorter hand. And doing this movement is gonna help you to control much more. Your board, your body and the stroke that you are giving in every moment. This is the board of my choosing. It's Alejandro's choice for many beginners. Slightly smaller than a long board. It's A2. First of all, the right position on the board. You should keep your feet around the tape and your chest in the middle of the board. Every single wave is gonna move the board this way. If the wave is very small, the movement will be very small. But if the wave is big, you will have the risk of nose diving. Depending also on which type of waves are you taking, you can go a little bit farther or closer to the tape. Now it's very important to see if your nose is lifting. So you should go a little bit closer to the nose to have a better balance and to be prepared to paddle. The position of my choice of board. You have to keep all the time, it doesn't matter the type of board that you are using, the board should be level with the water. These boards are gonna have less buoyancy, less stability and you will lose the reference of the tail for your feet. This is not bad, but we could improve it a little bit. As you can see, a smaller board is much more demanding. It's harder with the balance and everything. Always try to arch our back as much as we can. This is a very hard position in the very beginning. It takes quite a lot of effort. But arching your back, you bring higher your shoulders and then you have better control. Is this looking good now? This is good. Did you see how you are looking for a better balance opening your legs? Yeah. You should keep your legs. I really want to do that. That's true. How was that? That was not bad at all. Now try to keep your shoulders higher. This one was much better. You can see the power is coming from your back and not only from the board. That is really important. It's very typical at the beginner level to paddle moving only your arms and not using your back. It's super important to keep your shoulders high and use the strength and this group of muscles that you have on your back. It feels super exhausting though. So to summarize what I've just learned. Body position a bit further forward than I thought I would need to on a board like this. Keep the feet together. I find it not natural. I like to spread them out and really use the back muscles to come up and just go that far. Right? That's perfect. Because I used to go like that. But it's so exhausting to do this. I guess I will take maybe a few weeks to get used to it. Here I think Jan you are using your back knee. You are in a Romeo position and your shoulders are straight. All your body is facing to the nose of the board. So this doesn't allow you to land in the best position and to land with the best balance. So now I'm straight like that. Should I be more twisting myself up in rotation? And this will allow you to come with the back foot on top of the board and not the back knee. So you will be in this position and you will have the possibility to push the board and land with more speed and better balance. It's better to go in the very beginning try to build a body muscles memory and go step by step. We try to teach doing three steps. It's not the only way of standing up but if you go with three steps very far it will look like a jump. But it's not the same. To give one jump without control with landing in a wrong position try to go with a proper technique. First of all you lie on the board. You should be in the right position. In the very beginning we can use our elbows to make the position more comfortable. When the wave is coming and before popping up we should paddle. When we start to paddle we catch the wave and once we feel that the wave is pushing us we can do the three steps. One should be put our hands under our shoulders completely on the deck of the board. We call this chicken wings position and push our chest high. In this position then we bring our back foot. In my case it's the right foot. I'm regular. I bring my back foot and at the same time I twist my shoulders. My toes are pointing to the rail of the board and then I bring my front foot as far as I can between my hands. Then as you can see the board is moving forward and pushing the board to the front. In this position I give a push and better balance keeping one hand more or less on my right side and the other hand on the left side. You do arms first putting your body weight on your shoulders and your hands pushing the board to the front. Just add a lift. And then back foot. Very good. Now the front foot as far as you can. Very good. It feels like I have a lot of weight on the front foot. You have gone a little bit too much forward. Relax your body. Bring your knee a little bit and try to keep your front knee level at the same level as your front foot or a little bit shorter. So all your body weight is between your feet. Let's try again. I will put 45 degrees more or less the front foot. All right. Going so fast. And for a moment all your weight is on the back. All right. If you do it, if you improve this a little bit you will be with all your weight going to the front instead of on this position holding your body on the back. In this moment your nose is lifting, your weight is on your back foot and you are slowing down. And you don't want this. When we are in the second step we bring all our weight and strength to the front to our hands and shoulders arching our back. So when we land we push the board to the front. Here again you have your feet two separate and also your hips. You are not turning to the front your hips. You can see how you are forcing the position of your body because your shoulders want to go to the front but your hips are not following them. You mean that I am like that? Yes, you should move your hips a little bit. Not too much. And in this position you will feel much more comfortable. Do you like drop the knee in? Yes. Bring the knee a little bit to the front will allow you to maneuver. I feel so natural for me to be that. But yes, I guess it makes sense. Hold your body. You are only turning your shoulders. You can't make a maneuver. That's how I would do it. Good. Do you see your arms? Does it look sick? Yes. This is perfect for a huge wave but now we are running smaller waves so we should control more our arms. Our hips should be pointing to the front. Our chest a bit lower. And we should be controlling our arms in this position. Bringing your back knee a little bit. And this position is going to be much better. It's going to allow you to keep the balance and to speed up moving your arms and to turn your body if you want to do any maneuver. If it's straight and after we can see your front foot you are losing the contact with the board. You are pressing and you are kind of jumping on the board instead of pushing your body with your weight. You compress when you want to go to the front and you extend your body. You compress and you extend. You don't separate your front foot. In this moment you are losing the balance so your board is lifting in this moment even if it's just one second. But I did it because I wanted to speed up. Yes, but as in any sport it's more important the technique than the strength. Of course if you have technique and strength it's going to be amazing. But the technique is much more important than all this energy that you don't use properly. As we showed before in the video instead of moving your front foot use your body weight. Like that. My foot won't do something. How? Bent or straight? Bring your chest to the front. Not too far. In this position it looks like you are looking for something. Just bring your chest to the front over your front thigh. Over your front knee. In this position not too much. Not too straight. In this position you have better balance better control of the board. If we look at that. Twist the hip. And with the twisting of the hip it would feel weird to bend as much as I'm bending here. I really thought I was a better surfer than this video shows. The videos are charming. How do you like my riding skills? Pay attention to your arms. Do you see? Your front hand, your right hand is moving from one side to the other and without control. This makes you lose the balance and lose the control of the board. It's not the same. In this position bending on your knees and moving all your body to one side and to the other but giving this freedom to your shoulder and not keeping the control. You should keep the control of your arms. Pushing, of course you can move your arms but always in a controlled position in a controlled way. Not leaving your hand to go from one side to the other. I guess your arms help you to turn. Of course. But maybe not if you do this like I'm doing. The arms are key in surfing. They are super important. The arms and your shoulders. But always with control and not moving from one side to the other without any... In this case you are just running the wave so you should run the wave from top to bottom going up and going down keeping the position. So if I understand you right if I'm just riding with the wave like that it's just up and down to keep the balance? Yeah, it's like a little dance. But if I want to do one of these cool looking bottom turns then it would be more like turn with the hips and shoulders and arms. Yeah. But in a strict controlled fashion. Exactly. Not just... You said it perfectly. Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah, cool. I can't wait to try that. Alejandro, I feel like you found a lot of mistakes. Of course. We are working on it. Yeah, we're gonna get better. Until we arrive to Kelly's later level we have a lot to improve. I hope you enjoyed this summer surfing experiment. And if you did so a second part is coming out soon where we're gonna have a look at some exercises and the journey I've been going through since my first day of surfing here in Nicaragua. And if you enjoyed this video please let me know and maybe next summer we'll make more videos like this but in another sport. But just so you know, the channel's focus will always be skiing. I'm out of here. Thanks.