Looking good! Really nice kissed knees and compression on the drop in. I have nothing to add from other people’s comments on pushing the turns less, but your flow and speed generation look great!

Haha Coryn Daniel I haven’t seen the 🍆 idea before but this is a funny and useful tip 😂

The four lines series might be a good place to start. Then, you can figure out where you are at and the skills you want to work on!

If you have a particular skill you want to work on (cut backs, bottom turn, reading the ocean, pop up ect you can choose to dive right into those too. Alternatively, if you have footage of you skating or surfing, I’m sure you’ll get some good feedback and tips for where you could find videos with the content on that area. Have fun learning! I know I did 😃

I’d be interested if Clayton has an input on this, if you’ve observed any 2stroke paddlers, or if anyone else has an idea.

Personally, I’m not a stickler for the 2 strokes, as on many breaks, the bus stop changes a little each wave or set (esp beach breaks) so at least a little bit of paddling around is needed (out / in ect) to be in position. I’m also not great at following rules, and 2 strokes seems a bit arbitrary to me- to me it’s tells me some speed generation is needed, but not too much- I’m taking the concept rather than the number 😂 .

As such, I can’t vouch for the 2 paddle part but would be curious if anyone else can has experience in this!

I wonder if Bethany Hamilton with a one arm paddle and good positioning is the inspiration for 2 strokes- she seems to get into anything with limited paddle power!

Firstly, sounds amazing!

secondly, interesting question!

I may be mistaken, but there’s an equation demonstrating that is mathmatically impossible to paddle fast enough to catch a wave over a certain size on a shortboard, so other physical forces (ie gravity) from dropping in must be used. The bigger and more powerful the wave, the faster you’d need to go to match the speed and catch it (unless you use other forces, such as gravity- and there’s more of this for grabs on a big steep wave) However, as riding guns and tow surfing demonstrates, there’s a limit to using this for bigger, more powerful, sucking waves! I’m guessing the gun enables more plaining from it’s increases surface area, but also provides more paddle speed- I imagine paddling faster is one factor that influences the equation- but if it’d be enough to make a difference, I don’t know.

Another question is, is hard paddling going to be faster (or would there just be more resistance from splashing?), or is it fast just to do some smooth strokes?

The OREO was a game changer form me too and quadrupled my wave count- esp on heavy, steeper waves. I did have this question too however, but mine was more for using the OREO for flat waves with a shortboard when gravity can’t help me much. I noticed for some of the longboard waves in Hawaii, paddling earlier or even continuing to paddle when I’d usually arch my back, glide and look down the line helped as the wave wasn’t steep enough for gravity to help me in - the glide never came and the wave never broke (it got deep again and reformed)- but maybe I was also too far back. While the steeper waves, the OREO worked a treat.

However, these werent overhead head sucking barrels by any means (more head high, steep, punchy and fun!)

I’d curious if there’s any other input!

This is gold! The explanation of how the head and body allignement leads to pop up successes vs fails makes so much sense.

I wouldn’t say pop ups are a big challenge for me, but I do get days where I mess up a fair few, and I seemed in position so don’t know what went wrong. This really explains the times I fail- as I revert to sideways stance (and old habit I’m breaking) and get off balance straightening- esp if the wave is flatter. The explanation of using gravity to put the board under you also makes so much sense and explains the times the pop up can feel easy and smooth on steeper waves

This is great! I was actually just reflecting on lines surfing in Hawaii- some breaks made it easy to go top to botton, cut back and maintain speed - these were the high performance shortboard waves. For the longobarder heavy waves, that same manouver wasn’t working for me as the waves don’t truely break or they werent steep enough (they hit deeper water soon after breaking and reform to a soft, flat wave face) -so Id loose the wave if I cut back too far and hit the wave reform accidently- it was not what the wave was giving me (likely a speed issue too and wrong board!) and I figured I needed to be more creative (and read the wave better!) to surf it well!

South east England is no surfing hot spot! I’m sure when I was looking into places to live in the UK, I recall that there were surf clubs in London taking weekend trips to share costs and transit prices.

It’s only 3 hours by train from London to Swansea, wales (my home), from there it’s a 20min drive to numerous different breaks in the gower. Trouble is you need a car once there (or it’s 1-3 more hours by public bus), and driving from London to the gower takes more like 5 hours. It’s often messy too! If they don’t have a car, there’s a train to Newquay, corwall that drops you right at the beach but from London it’s 5-7 hours and so expensive!

If I was in London, given the cheap flights from there and proximity to airports, I might go for a weekend in morroco or Portugal, warmer and likely cheaper than Uk travel and better waves! 😉

Nothing to add to Clayton ans Graham’s points (I was wondering about a more angled line, so happy to see I was on the right track!)

Walk up is looking good though! 😊

Dean Vrecko apologies, I realized you might just mean tight Achilles in general!! If so, I’d only suggest standing straighter may also make it easier to get the back foot down (I’m thinking of pros in small barrels- back heal is often up), and it also looks like you are stacking the front foot (which is good!) as if you stacked the back, the heal would lower more. I’m a fan of yoga for flexibitly if you still want to work on it! But if you ever Achilles tendinitis, you have some advice 😂🤣😂

I like you are looking where you are going- ever seen the research on mental imagery- apparently activates the same part of your brain as actually doing the activity so- pretty cool!