Hello, avatar! The largest barrier to entry in surfing sometimes is… waves! Sometimes its a flat spell, other times your landlocked or maybe you just don’t have the time!
In today’s post, we will go over how you can improve your surfing without waves or water.
(Also shoutout @bowtiedheifer for editing this amazing graphic to look like me from the angsty @emocat on IG)
The secret is skateboarding. Although wave pools are becoming more common around the globe, skateboarding is the most cost-effective route to practice surfing.
It’s quite sinple.
Buy a skateboard
Find a hill
Set up some obstacles to carve through
Ride down the course
Repeat! (except you probably don’t need to buy a new skateboard again)
Let me preface this first, I’m not a huge skater. I know enough but I can’t turbo and drill down into all the facets of a skateboard like I can a surfboard.
Finding The Right Skateboard
For step one, I would recommend going into a local skate shop so someone can help you out. You can make some mistakes online like just buying the deck by itself without trucks or wheels. Most shopkeepers will be happy to help you find spots to practice around your area.
Plus in the store you have the advantage of feeling the board and demoing it before spending any money. Just be mindful, the store rat may try to upsell you on something expensive.
If you want to go online and save some money, I recommend anything on this list at Evo. Personally, I have a little Powell Peralta mini cruiser that does the trick for me.
If you don’t mind buying spending an extra couple of bucks, check out Carver surf skates. I don’t own one but I’ve ridden them and they’re a blast.
It’s cool because they also collab with Channel island, Lost, and other surfboard makers.
Final note on skateboards, you can get a hamboard that mimics longboarding. Again, I don’t own one and they’re expensive as fuck.
However, I’ve ridden one a few times and it’s super fun. You can actually trim and walk up and down the board like you were surfing in the water.
So if you’re a big logger this is something you may want to consider
Autist note: Picking your board is all about your skill level and how much money you’re willing to drop. This is but a tool to improve your surfing.
Locate a Safe Spot to Practice
Next, find a hill in your area. Preferably where there’s no cars to worry about. I would advise you to wear a helmet and other protective gear as well so you can proceed with confidence, not medical advice.
You don’t need a crazy incline. Hell you can even start on your driveway and practice in the street.
If you’re a beginner focus on generating CONTROLLED speed.
Carving back and forth and slowing down back down to a halt then generating speed again.
Remember: your eyes are going to determine where you go. Look where you want to go.
Engage your hips and lean with your shoulders and arms in the direction you are carving toward. The rest of your body will follow.
Compress into the carve by bending the knees pseudo crouching while maintaining good posture (shoulders stacked on your knees) and extending out of the carve when you go to the other direction.
Also shoutout to Noel Salas, I cribbed these screenshots from his tutorial on Youtube. He has a great channel for anyone trying to advance their surfing and pick out boards.
Keep going back in forth until you find a good rhythm. Then you can play around with turns.
Setup an Obstacle Course
Now that you have some experience under your belt we can build on top of this. This is assuming you can safely generate speed and stop without hurting or shitting yourself in the process.
Set up a course to carve turns though to help visualize the turns you want to make. This will help generate speed and you mimic bottom turns on the actual wave.
Follow this course chopping back and forth both up and down so you practice carving frontside and backside.
For longer, drawn out turns move the cones further away. For shorter, tighter turns bring them closer together.
Feel free to play around with the cones, boxes, your children, pets, whatever you use as an obstacle. I will be providing more drills as we advance but I figured this would be a nice place to begin. But remember above all else, have fun with it!
Thanks for reading!