Surfing With Grant

Look at the lip, hold the gaze and then look straight down! Monster Chong 🫶🏻💖 what a talent! That Dylan Longbottom looking lethal!

Read for 3 more carving tips

1- Its about timing not brut force - We all see the best in the business laying super hard into the rail, but what the know is that this is a time to push hard and that time is once the rail is engaged. Focus first on reading the section and getting your board into the turn at the right line and getting your board on rail then perhaps you can push super hard.

2- You probably need to rotate more - Watch his bottom turn again and notice how far his chest faces toward the right (the whitewash) as he finishes his bottom turn. He does a bit of a layback carve here but regardless of what turn he does, he will always achieve similar rotation before the turn.

3- He finishes so compressed - See how after the turn he he is super low, so low his hands touching his board. This helps him drive out of the turn with speed and accelerate into the next section.

Shoutout and credit James Sarandis 🎥

Most common mistake on backhand is students rotating out of bottom turn too early. The best cue word to focus on is telling yourself “HOLD” and trying to hold that bottom turn and get higher up on the wave. Nick capturing the G train recently.

If your popup isn’t perfect and your jot practicing on land, your crazy! I also had to fix mine a few years ago as I had hard wired in a weird popup. Comment ‘pop up’ and I’ll send send you a message to see if I can help you with yours!

Be the person who is kind to others in and out of the water, not a greedy little piggy. Your either the problem or the solution RANT OVER

I always coach chronically. This is because any improvement we get early on when trying to catch a wave and surf it, helps us downstream. The opposite is also true, any early kink we pay for 10-fold as we surf the wave.

On every retreat now I always look at students paddling becuase if I can improve that at all, everything after it feels easier. They will catch waves easier and pop-up feels unbelievably easy. This then leads to them feeling not just composed once they are up, but time to actually think and feel about what is going on.

In just a few weeks I’ll be in Crescent Head working with some surfers and we will be doing similar paddling technique the first day. If you want to know more, see link in bio to upcoming retreats.

You want to surf with more flow?

Here’s 3 tips

1- Speed = more creative freedom - With speed you have the ability to draw many different lines. Gaining more speed isn’t easy but im confident you can unlock more if you do the work.

2- Speed is only good if you can control it - Whilst point 1 is about more speed, this one is just as important… If your surfing a board eg twinny that is super fast, it may be making it hard for you of think and instead your surfing reactively.

3- Surf at 70% - stop focusing on trying to belt the lip as hard as you can or to the craziest turn you’ve ever done and instead aim for graceful movements. Flow is about being in the right place at the right time.. Focus on that not trying to be the most radical surfer.

4- Learn different manoeuvres- some surfers are just a 1 trick pony. In my opinion this isn’t just far less fun, but costs you alot because it will always draw you the same line. The smoothest surfers know all the different varieties of every turn and can by feel decide which is the most fitting for the wave and moment. This is the secret to that flow you dream about.