why do i catch my rail alot when i go to cutback or carve?
standing too far forward on the board…low nose rocker…too wide of a nose?
Too thin a rail for the type of waves surfed?
i hate it when that happens, makes me feel like a total kook.
when it happens to me, i find that i didn't shift my feet back from pumping down the line to on the tail for turning.
shorter boards are nice for this cause you can just stand on the tail and do everything...
assuming you are riding a thruster, your rear foot should be about as far back as you can get it.
i seem to surf my best when my rear foot is over the rear fin or close to it.
by the way, watch some videos and pay close attention to the pro's foot placement...
this has helped me a lot...
do you have a traction pad? these can help you know that your foot is where you want it.
gotta be the board! Heh.
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feet too close together
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foot placement too far forward
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center of gravity to high (bend your knees) and your body outleans the turn.
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not looking where you’re going and push water instead of turn.
There are lots of possibilities. Video is great at revealing how bad most of us look. But, go build a better board and show us how you fixed your problem.
Starting the turn from too low on the wave face. A good cutback starts from the lip.
well since we dont have video of you surfing well just have to guess...foot placement as stated above...make sure you have enough speed to do the move...and (going along with speed) make sure youre on a part of the wave that will allow such a move (not on a mushy shoulder for example)...its a good idea to have someone shoot some footage of you while you surf...i mean who doesnt have video on their cell phone nowadays...even if its grainy you can still compare what youre doing to what the pros are doing...good luck
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why do i catch my rail alot when i go to cutback or carve?
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In many instances, the ''dig a rail'' syndrom, is brought about by the fin/fins stalling (loseing lift) causing the board to settle deeper in the water, causing the rail to catch.
[quote="$1"]
why do i catch my rail alot when i go to cutback or carve?
[/quote] There are a bunch of good observations made here from Afoaf, Bill T. and Pompano (NJ is close to the mark) and yes, we don't have a video of you. Here's a suggestion I made to my acurpunturist when he said he was digging rails on his cutbacks, and after he practiced what I preached he was totally stoked at the change.
If you are hurtling along at Mach 4 you can probably squeak around a cutback just about any old time, but that really isn't possible so there is a very simple and consistent way to start making cutbacks. This involves changing the planing angle of the board before you make the direction change.
A quarter turn up the face BEFORE going into the cutback lifts the nose and releases the rail from digging, this is fundamental and also happens to be a prerequisite of any good roundhouse, but is also applicable to low and moderate speed cutbacks. Practicing this will increase your cutback speed and your overall surfing.
Try it, you'll like it.
Hey bill aka deadshaper, i have found that to work really well. Im an intermediate, but im starting to be able to do roundhouse cutbacks ( well, mostly the first half then wipeout haha, but have been starting to make a few recently ), and it always seems to go better if i do the little turn up the face first.
I also think doing a lot of ab work in the last few weeks has helped as well, and losing 12kg ( 25lb? ).
Cheers guys.
Doing a solid continuous roundhouse cutback is one of the most difficult turns to master.
If you could do them well before, and now the board you are using is catching, then it's the board.
Otherwise it's practice.
Why do people answer trolls on Swaylocks?
Seriously.... isn't this the same guy who posted this probing question (the first of two) the other day?
"do the smaller fins go in the front or back on a quad fish?"
Maybe Iko is new to this and has legitimate questions, or maybe he's an industry insider looking for the secret formula.
Or maybe he's a troll, or maybe no-one is a troll, or just maybe everyone is.
As someone else said, it's just the internet.
well, there is some great advice here. If you could wrap it around on your old board and not on your current board, then it is probably too little volume in the rail. I had to put a little more volume in the rail of my current board since I would bog quite often. I will say it is probably the archer not the arrow, watch yourself surf then watch Taylor Knox surf.
Heck...I like all these answers to the question, I might even give turning a try?
A lot of them have some validity....I mean turns and what not.
Sometime my problem is that i have hard rails too far up on the board. Like the Lopez boards of the 90's. I turn better when I have a softer eggy rail 2/3 up the board, but real hard out the last 1/3
For years this was a huge problem for me, learning to surf in Hawaii during the “old longboard” era with dead flat boards, I dreamed of putting them on a rail, but all I ever did was fall on my back when the rail made contact with the water.
I was leading the board, all my weight forward on my front foot, front shoulder ahead of the turn, then I discovered the “reverse shoulder turn”, weight on back foot, my shoulders squared up to the wave face, less rail in the water and set up to come back around.
The fact that I also was leaning way out over the water was a big contributor to why I fell off every time, you can only lay out as much as you can get the board safely back under you. You have to put power on the fin the whole way through
first lift your front foot off the board so that only your heal is barely touching
spread out yoru stance so that you square off the back foot perpendicular to your stringer as far back as you can reach
then drop your inside shoulder and rotate it downward as you initiate the turn driving your hand leading you into the curve you wish to follow
use your other hand to balance your inside driving hand like a tight rope walker
the lower you can keep it and more square you keep your shoulders to the stringer the better
the higher your body is over the board
the more rail will engage into the surface
also the heavier you are
the faster you need to be going
big noses are only good for hanging ten
you can cut back anywhere on a wave even on a bottom turn
troll on
“I might even give turning a try?”
If you have to turn you are in the wrong spot!!!