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a. cap. Photo: Jason Murray |
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Mate’s rates. Surfing and learning with a friend is the greatest thing you’ll ever do. It’ll mean you’ll have someone there to drag you out of bed and into a wet wetsuit, it’ll mean you’ve got someone to gauge your own performance against and they’ll be your partner in crime when hunting down play with the opposite sex. If you’re surfing wedging barrels and they’re paddling out, you’ll just swing and jump over the falls or something stupid just for fun. You hoot each other into waves, do punts near each other and try to flair so much more because they’re paddling back out. You’ll do things you’d never do on your own and there’s nothing better than that. | |
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The most memorable session I’ve had with backside floaters was right after Kelly Slater in Black and White came out.
I was with my parents at Exmouth, in the north-west of Australia, surfing this really shallow coral reef you can only get to by boat. There were these
psycho little lefts and I was just
racing down the line, getting up on the lip and hanging there for as long as I wanted then tail-dropping off. It was so sick, landing on almost dry reef, feeling like I was Kelly at Restaurants in Fiji. All I wanted to do was these floats. I was loving it so much it felt like I was never gonna try another turn for the rest of my life. Backside floats are still so fun.
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New backside moves are always daunting because your back’s to the wave. Now you’re trying to do something that seriously dares the lip to take you out. You don’t want to get up there if it’s gonna cough you back down, right? Fair bits. That’s why you’re gonna get on top of that sucker.
You can never be scared of the lip. The moment you’re intimidated, you’re gonna get smoked. You’ll see guys who get up there a little hesitantly and they usually just get horribly smoked, where the board flips under their feet and the fins nail them in the back. When in doubt, do what I did: think you’re Kelly at Restaurants.
You don’t want to do a stiff bottom turn. Bottom turns are the most important move in surfing, but if you throw down a full-blown bottom turn every time you’re at the bottom of a wave, you will butcher a lot of sections. Ease up the face. You know by now what your body must do for this to happen. Twist out your hips, point your head where you want to go and point your arms at the lip. Sometimes you’ll get on the lip too early. This isn’t such a big deal. Just hang there. Chances are, if the section looked floatable, it is. It’ll fold while you’re dancing up there.
Keep your weight centered over your board. If you look at this sequence, you’ll notice that in every frame I’m directly over my board.
If the wave’s peeling, as opposed to, say, a closeout, you should wait up there until the wave says you’ve had enough. You’ll know this from your forehand floaters. Turn from the lip by putting weight on your front foot and heading toward the beach. Lean into the abyss and twist with your body, keeping your arms down and legs bent to make the drop smoother.
If you hang up there too long, you’ll get sucked into the trough and the board will be taken from your feet.
To mix it up and blow people away, when you get on the lip, try to stand tall and really relaxed with your hands by your side.
You can practice floaters on land. Stand in front of a wall about waist high. Jump up on it, using your back foot for most of the jump and bending your knees to make the height. Land on it lightly, then lean back over the edge and get the feel of falling off it. This is so similar to a floater, the way you rise and fall without using much energy. Land with your weight evenly on both feet, and get used to twisting your body into the fall, taking the drop by straightening your legs and balancing with your arms. Easy, huh? Do it a few times, then paddle out and nail it.
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