[marty's comment today , while I rode a right in front of him on my 6'6 quad [yes , the swell picked up in 5 hours , yewwww !!]
so ...
does anyone else get this comment ?
you [us] older guys , if you [we] ride single fins and mals a lot , and then jump on shortboards for a while ...as I have been doing for the last two months now ...
[ perhaps my style is "set in stone" , and maybe that relates a bit to my opening sentence , plus the recent "front foot and retro back foot surfers" thread ...]
....DO you adapt your style / stance , when you switch back and forth between , say , a 9' single fin longboard , and a 6-6'6 thruster / quad ?
I would say not really but I do notice when I change from my 9’ pintail noserider to one of my short baords it feels like I am really killing it when I go to hit the lip. Maybe a illusion but it sure feels good but regardless of board I try to stay in pocket as much as possible regardless of baord and if I am gliding or going top to bottom. I change it up w/ my quiver a lot but don’t understand surfers who claim longboarding or hull rding kills short baording for them.
would you say you surf off the tail / standing with your feet closer together [ and back nearer the tail more ], on your longboard , than you would on your shortboard ?
and ....would your stance be slightly wider on say your 5'6" bumblebee , than on your 9' singlefin ?
on a daily bassis I ride a 4’11 to a 9’6 and love switching boards but I think it hurts my shortboarding a bit. I have so much better style when on a single fin or a log though…
Sometimes I have to stop myself from dancing up towards the nose when I switch back to the shortboards, but after a couple of waves my muscle memory kicks in and I recalibrate.
If anything, I’ve found that riding the longboard improves my shortboarding. I’m no longer so focussed on extracting a million turns out of a wave, but am instead far more in tune with what the wave’s doing and rolling with it. Also, because I have to put so much more effort into turning the mal (well, not effort really, more a deeper concentration on technique), that this carries over into my shortboard style, and my turns are far more powerful (by my own humble standards).
Same goes for switching between a more HPSB (to use the accepted acronym) and an older 70s single fin. Different technique again, but same principle at play. I think the wider the range of boards you surf, the better an all-round surfer you’ll end up. And hell, they’re all fun, and that’s why we’re in this, isn’t it?
I think (not 100% sure) I keep my stance about shoulder wide no matter what I ride and to some would be called a back foot surfer but to me I use both. I think my skateboarding back ground when I was a kid helped w/ stance and trying to do the Larry Bertlemann
Sorry!! Duuuh…
