Surfing Waves

I see a lot of good surfers really pushing hard/pumping down the line on waves to make sections.
Ive looked around and found some advice on youtube but it is vague and leaves me with more questions than answers.
How can i learn and perfect this technique on a shortboard?

How is your bottom turn?

The better your bottom turn gets, the more clear how to do this is.

saflyfish wrote:How can i learn and perfect this technique on a shortboard?

Answer A: By having already learned the technique to drive/pump for speed on larger board.

Your jump from a 9'0" to a 6'4" was too much, especially if you can't currently figure out foot placement and board control/maneuverability. The skills you learn and the muscle memory turning a 8'0", then 7'2, then 6'6" would've have you ripping on that 6'4". You have to create more of your own speed on a shorter board, while on a longboard it could glide and make sections easier-ly.

Answer B: get a Carver skateboard to practice the body movements necessary to push the tail and disperse water off the rails.

just watch the first 13 seconds and notice the micro pumps to pick up speed

Answer C: learn the WAVE. Where and When to RESIST and When to RELAX. That's so you can coil to fall UP the wave and extend to go DOWN to do another rollercoaster. ( and like OMS said, it all starts with a good Bottom Turn )

Yeah a bottom turn sets everything else up. Work at getting a good driving bottom turn to start with and you will already have speed. I think speed is a lot about being in the right place on the wave as well as doing the right thing so positioning for the takeoff is important in fast breaking waves

Imagine a quarter pipe skateboard ramp that is a mile long. You're on a skateboard on flat ground next to this mile long ramp. The ground the ramp sits on is perfectly flat for the entire mile. A strange figure appears and challenges you to go the mile distance as fast as you can without allowing your feet to ever touch the ground. What's the fastest way to complete the mile, on your skateboard, without your feet ever touching the ground? You can use the ramp to help you. How would you use the ramp to gain speed?

Skate up and down the pipe gathering speed.I guess it would be like keeping the rail in the top 2/3rds of the wave face which is where the power is.

what parts of the wave you should use to generate speed depend on the wave speed and shape. On really steep waves you only use the bottom half of the wave. On most waves you want to use the maximum drop in height to get maximum speed (help from gravity) to some degree. You don't want to drop so low that you lose speed but almost top to bottom will generate the most speed if you can get there depending on the shape of the wave. For instance sometimes the face is concave and you can't use the top part of the wave and if you go high enough you will get hit by the lip so you have to stay lower. So you want to go as high as you can and turn back up as soon as you can.

saflyfish wrote:I guess it would be like keeping the rail in the top 2/3rds of the wave face which is where the power is.

My understanding of the general qualities of waves is incomplete. I do think that the top two thirds of the wave will allow a surfer to gain more speed because the slope of the wave is more pronounced there. I also think that the top part of the wave is going to have water actually sucking up the wave face. When the lip plunges I think it probably creates a kind of suction like that that occurs in a siphon. At the bottom part of the wave I think the water is often just stationary--it bobs up and down as the wave passes through it. Another aspect of the wave is that the whole thing is moving foward toward the shore and that movement helps surfers get up the face of the wave. My analogy of the half pipe is off. I think a better way to think about my imaginary ramp is to think of it as having a conveyor belt on its face that moves up the top 1/3 of the wave. Meanwhile, the entire ramp is also being moved forward toward the skateboarder. That's just how I try to analogize the parts of a wave into a skateboard ramp, but I haven't surfed enough waves or experienced enough of them to really be able to describe their general qualities very well.

The pro's have it down, the rest of of kid of do. I would not waste too much internet time on the subject, you have the basic principle down, now it is just up to muscle memory, wave sense and overall practice, it will all come together. I tend to cutback mid wave instead of pumping for my speed, and only pump when trying to get around whitewash, probably not the best advice to give but it works for my style of surfing. Go have some fun

Pretend you are trying to "scrape" the face off the wave, slightly compressing then extending, that'll do it