So I’m sitting here watching my old Pacific Vibrations VHS and reminding myself that I really find much of the surfing of that era to be quite unattractive (same goes for the surfing in cosmic children and to some extent even morning of the earth). What is with that whole wide stance squat, ass below knees, back straight, trailing arm bent at elbow with hand point up, front arm out straight ahead (are these guys surfing or fencing)?
Was this just a practical necessity with boards that although getting shorter and more pointy were still heavy and thick and harder to get on rail and required turns to still be done much like the earlier longboard pivot turns (but required weight up front to trim, thus the need for the wide stance)? Or was this stance just considered graceful at the time and so people just copied it?
Yeah, I guess so. It’s just weird when you’ve heard all these famous names over the years and then you watch the old footage and they look awkward. I was kind of hoping it might not be their fault, but the boards they were surfing back then.
I didn’t see any of those movies so I’m not sure of the degree of stink coming from those jacked up rear ends. But I do have a little story: My first time surfing with my buddy Eddie B at Sunset (HI) I just start surfing like I was back at the ol home break Bird Rock. Now if you’ve surfed places like that or Sunset Cliffs (ca) in the 80’s you know a lot of guys surf Frye type surf craft or at least 8ft plus boards, all the while trying to be as smooth and fluid as possible…al la Frye, real smooth, real upright. So I’m (trying) to surf Sunset (HI) and my buddy paddles over and says that I need to loose the narrow foot stance, and bend my knees more, and spread the arms out, were not surfing Bird Rock anymore. He turned my stance in to Bigwave Bugman. But you know what, you don’t loose it during the drop, and thats the important thing…just make it to the bottomm no matter what.
What was the guys name? Trying to remember it. He had a stinkbug stance and it worked really well for him in huge surf. Striped board shorts. Greg Somebody. Hmmmm. Mike
Was this just a practical necessity with boards that although getting shorter and more pointy were still heavy and thick and harder to get on rail and required turns to still be done much like the earlier longboard pivot turns (but required weight up front to trim, thus the need for the wide stance)?
Sounds correct to me. I dumped all my full-railed thrusters years ago for this reason- the forward rails did not engage well, requiring a wider stance to push the forward half of the board down or had to ride them fully off the tail, surfing along the stringer instead of with the rails, and I’ll tell you such a back-footed approach does not work so well in our typical east-coast windswell. I switched to more foiled, thinner railed boards and have been much happier since. Even my small-wave boards, while thicker along the stringer, still have thinned-down rails for quick engagement/disengagement and speed generation.
I kinda remember that era that you’re referring to but my recollections might be a little smokey…
Anyway, I think that one of the really good examples was the surfing of PT at Rocky Point. This was not a stinkbug stance where the chest is parallel to the wave but a result of the boards of the time and the steep hollow waves of the north shore where the “A” rails of those old boards would catch the water running up the face and pull the board up the wave. That stance put pressure forward to keep the board projecting down the face. The forward arm projected our direction out of the bowl towards the shoulder. Because of the narrow tails these boards couldn’t cut back at all so the direction was to surf as close to the “curl” as possible.
We really didn’t start to stand up in the tube until the advent of twinnies. Here in Cali we saw all the pics in the mags (we rarely saw footage until way after a season was way over) and tried to imitate those guys and figure out what they were doing and adapt it to our style/waves. Not the best thing today! Most of the young dudes today don’t even know how lucky they are to get a streaming video from the north shore as a contest goes on!