Please welcome to The Essence of Longboard, our online program where I share several advanced longboard surfing techniques’ best-kept secrets.
The hang five, one of the queen longboard maneuvers, was discussed in the previous chapter, and I mentioned there that having your board in the proper area of the ambiguous is one of the most crucial elements to mastering it.
To help you improve your surfing, I’ll show you today how to maneuver your longboard for the best grip.
- Preparation of the tables
- How to improve your longboard surf by changing position
- The cross step on the longboard
- The tread and the inclination
It should be understood that the entire board’s surface (the longboard’s top) must be utilized when riding one.
Longboards are typically made with the lower part (bottom) in the belly due to the shape and weight of the board, which makes it easier for the board to move from edge to edge.
This lessens the weight of heavy longboards, making it simpler to switch from edge to edge by utilizing important footholds.
Preparation of the tables
It is important to spread paraffin on the entire surface of the board to broaden our horizons in our surfing habits and to think that it will surely serve you in some longboard maneuvers.
My recommendation, as advice, is to extend the paraffin to the edges of the nose and also behind the plug, bridge, or hole of the invention.
How to improve your longboard surf by changing position
The fact of surfing by changing the support points while walking on the board represents the postural difference compared to other types of surfing on smaller boards.
The basic position that will make it easier for you to move on the longboard will be obtained by remaining in the longitudinal axis of your body.
Because of the roughness of longboards, when making any of the surf turns you need to lean close to the edge and not always keep your feet on the centerline or “soul” of the longboard.
There are times when we find ourselves in a part of the wave where simply by moving our support points to the inside edge, the longboard will take advantage of the hydrodynamics of the edges to enter the water and create a fast and stable trajectory. However, for turns like the bottom turn, it will take more pressure inside the tail of the board to abruptly change direction and get the board into the wave.
The key to properly surfing a longboard is not only to relax our stance but to release it causes our longitudinal axis to drop onto our back foot by increasing the pressure where we step.
One of the keys to understanding how to improve your longboard surfing is not to try to use a longboard with the same basic stance as a shortboard, because you will never get the same effect.
To perform a proper basic stance on longboards, you need to know the following keys:
The cross step on the longboard
It is very common that to execute the strongest surf turns we have to move towards the tail using the cross-step technique, leaving the feet far back on the board with an opening similar to the distance of our shoulders, obtaining that the board is very sensitive to the rotation.
To regain control of our longboard, we must step forward again, using the cross step, to re-occupy the center of the board, where it has more stability and glide. Moving to the rear of the longboard like this will help you with many of your surfing maneuvers.
The tread and the inclination
Another key to an advanced navigation technique is the use of foils. Think that to turn a longboard quickly you have to step on the keel, which is far from the center of the board, so you will have to maintain a position that allows you to press on this area of the board and at the same time recover the position after the turn.
The inclination of our body is essential to sink the edge and be able to move it, if we don’t change our inclination it will be very difficult to make a complete turn.
A clear example is the “against the peak” bottom turn where the longboarder drastically changes the direction of the wave by pivoting on the tail of the board. In this way, he manages to position himself at the top of the wave where he is repositioned in the center of the board to gain speed.
