Bro you don't even know what completely flat is LOL. I moved from NJ to SC (myrtle beach). I swear we have the smallest swell window in the world, it's always flat here. The waves are the ONLY thing i miss about NJ, well maybe that and the legal mary jane.

So no, unfortunately, I have not surfed recently. This is one of the main reasons I skate the bowl so much, it's all I have :(

NJ was firing around Christmas and I sat down here watching it and crying. My only saving grace is we are "supposed" to get a wave garden in 2 years 10 mins from my house.

Looks like you are trying to do your cardboard slide and extension at the bottom when you're in the flats.

You do your first turn, go up the wave down the wave, then it looks like your standing flat on your board and not at the up part of the wave when you try to do your first cardboard slide and extension and you don't get anywhere cause there is no curve in that part of the wave to help draw you back up the face.

You also seem to never really extend on the ups, your knees stay bent almost the whole time and you appear to be hinged more at the waist rather than standing up straight back and kissing the back knee to the front knee.

I mean you can honestly surf skate anywhere. Smooth street, car park, parking garage with some downhill slopes, skate parks, pump tracks, drain your neighbors pool and skate that.

You just have to be careful if your skating flat ground to not start bad habits like the dreaded wiggle. Like Clayton says take a few good pushes and practice that one good turn, not a bunch of bad habits (wiggle) than 1 good turn.

I mean depending where you filming your gonna need a long distance lens.

My wife who is a photography buff says if she were attempting to video me surfing using her Sony A7iii camera she would need either a 70 to 200 or a 200 to 400 lens. Both that camera and the lens are super expensive.

If you were to try to use your cellphone to record I know they make lens that clip/slide over your stock phone lens to allow you to zoom in further.

This is not really my area of expertise but again my wife is really into photography and those are her recommendations for if she was trying to shoot surf video from shore at the distance most waves break from her safe shooting distance.

Graham Marsden I'll try it tomorrow if I skate. I do like the hand down thumb roll technique though. I always picture grabbing and swinging around a pole and it seems to help me get more inverted over going around the bend

That move doesn't work so well for me. Partially torn rotator cuff on the left, from falling in the bowl, hard to raise my arm up and back. It's so bad I have to usually ask someone else to help peel me out of my wetsuit. I don't even have the strength to pull my arm up and out of the sleeve, can't scratch my own back anymore either. Old age sucks!

So when I saw the video of Ant learning this turn Clayton told him to act like he was tossing a ball to a toddler and just roll the thumb over. I've been using that method ever since.

Scott Wagenblast yea I get mad at myself for jumping off on a lot of these cause once I do I realize "oh, could have made that one." But in the moment the fear takes over. Couple more days of practice and I think I'll have it dialed in.

Scott Wagenblast it does. The blue paint is actually the end of it but when you're approaching it the dirt run off kinda tricks my eye sometimes and unnerves me a little. Took a screen shot to show you.

Bottom line is I just gotta stop being afraid of it. And practice my backside turns more, for some reason I learned frontside first and am just way more relaxed with that one.

Yea I noticed that watching the clips after. That little ledge is deceiving cause it has a little line of dirt or something that comes straight down from it and makes it hard to judge if I'm gonna hit it or not.

Definitely gotta get my head around though and not fear it so much.

I hate airs In competitions. Watching John john do a huge hack on a wave if so much better. I know my comment is years late but this year's WSL finals italo did the same air every wave for 4 rounds. Thankfully John won with huge hacks.