Today we're going to talk about where to apply pressure/weight while punching out through the surf for those beach start intervals.
First off, I hate to break it to you, but standing is actually easier than kneeling for 2 reasons when going out through the surf.
1) You're creating a larger surface area for water to push against when you burst through a wave while on your knees, and its likely that the wave will just wash you off your board (guy in pic to the right).
2) You can't control the pitch of your board (remember those 3 planes of rotation we control, Roll, Yaw, and Pitch) if you are kneeling, and you need to be able to lift the nose and then drop it back down again. (The guy in this >> pic is trying to lean back, but that's still a HUGE wedge of water coming over the front of his board and about to hit him right in the stomach. And because his paddle isn't in the water, he's probably going to wash away like a flea in a bathtub.)
Here is a sequence of a small wave, good to start out on:
The ideal stance for doing beach starts is the surfer stance. As you approach a wave you're going to paddle HARD and adjust your pitch. You should have a lot of momentum at the moment you are about to hit the wave, at that moment, you'll lean on that back foot to bring the nose up. At the same time you're starting to weight the back leg you'll be taking a very strong paddle stroke. The nose of the board will pop up and over the wash, you'll be holding strong with your paddle, and as soon as the wave is at the teetering point of your board, you take the paddle out and aggressively weight the front foot while reaching out and getting a solid catch with your paddle. This will pull you down the back of the wave and generate a little bit of speed if you're lucky. If you're about to hit a wave that hasn't broken yet, you want to attack it in the same way. Get a few really strong powerful strokes to hit it hard, and weight that back foot, you'll likely punch the nose through the wave - the higher up the wave you punch the board through the less resistance you'll get and the more likely you are to make it. If you try to punch the board through the thickest, fattest part of the wave, its going to stop the board dead in its tracks as you catapult off the front. Take the top off the wave, decapitate that sucker.
Remember: BE AGGRESSIVE (be-be-aggressive)
Aggressive is confident, and confident gets you through the surf zone.
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