Watch THIS To Read ANY Wave With 1 Glance - Beginner Surfer Tips

How to read waves. And really, this video is about knowing which waves to go for and which waves to let go. I don't know how many times I've done it, but I'm sure you've done it too, where you go for a wave that is too weak, you spend all this energy, don't end up catching it, then you're out of position, you're tired, you missed the good waves. Or on the flip side, you're too patient and you let the good waves go and you watch it break and you're like, damn, I should have been on that. This is gonna help prevent that. If you're at the very beginning of your surfing journey, this is great because you're gonna be able to leap forward years of frustration. Or you've been surfing for a while and you find this is an issue, it's gonna end it. So it doesn't matter where you're at, this is a great thing to learn. So a three-step process. It's very, very reliable. Works on any wave in any ocean. You'll use it for every single session, every wave that you catch. It's really gonna progress your surfing because when you're on the best waves, you can do your best surfing. So starting with step number one, you need to identify the taller waves. So number one is wave height. And the cool thing about reading waves is they are made out of liquid, so they reflect. They reflect light. So we're also outdoors, even if there's cloudy, there's still light. So what a taller wave looks like is a dark line on the horizon. So you're staring at the horizon, what you're looking for is a distinct dark line. So you wanna identify this as quickly as possible. The closer it gets to you, the bigger and darker the line will get. So what it is, because the tall waves are casting a shadow on themselves. Where a flat wave has light reflecting off them, right? So it's very, very distinct. So the darker the line, the bigger, taller the wave. And it really, really stands out against the small waves or the flat ones, so you can see the sets coming. You wanna identify this as early as possible. So that's wave height, looking for that distinct black line. Number two, you need to identify the peak. So that's the tallest part of the wave. And again, because it's reflective, this becomes fairly simple. You see a distinct black line or the tallest part of the wave, and it starts to fade off into more light because it's getting less and less steep, then that would be the peak. So that's, sometimes it's very obvious, but often, quite often, it won't be obvious and it'll look like the black line is carried out over a long part of the waves. There's no obvious part, so it's really steep, it's really dark, it's really black, it's really flat. Those waves are gonna be closed out. So meaning, the entire wave is gonna fold over at once and it won't be going down the line like a nice ride. So if you take off on that wave, the entire wave will fold over and land on you or you'll just get caught out in front of it and you'll be caught inside and the rest of the waves are gonna come and land on you. So you wanna avoid those waves. Once you've identified the peak, the third part, and this is a very important one that lots of people miss because they'll just go for any peak, is the shoulder. And really, what the shoulder is, how much water is in that wave. So what you wanna look for is a shoulder that is long and very gradual. This is where it gets tricky because a close out is tall all the way and a gradual shoulder that you want is slight, right? So it's very, very slight. What you're looking for is that change of color with an obvious peak. The flip of that is a short shoulder. So it's very steep and very short and it tapers off into nothing. So that'll be a fast wave but a short ride because there's not much water in it. There's nothing left for it to break. It'll break down to nothing and be gone. So you'll spend that energy for a very short ride, very often not worth it. So you wanna find the tallest waves, the dark line. You wanna find the obvious peak and you wanna find the ones with the very long shoulders. When you combine those three things, you'll have a long, smooth ride and you won't waste energy on those waves that you shouldn't be catching. So what I've given you is a three-step process but really it's one step. As you get good at this, you should be able to determine if it's a good wave or a bad wave with one glance and the real skill comes with identifying this as early as possible because when you're looking out on the horizon, you start to see things like is that a wave, is it a big one, is it not? The sooner you can tell, the farther away that it is where you can determine this, the better off you are and you can make a decision of like, okay, the peak's over there, I gotta move this way. The peak's over here, I gotta move this way. It's not worth it, I'm not gonna waste energy. It's got a great shoulder. Okay, I'm gonna attempt this wave. So the quicker you can make that decision, the better position you can be in and the less energy you can waste and you can save that energy, those bursts for the best waves because each session, you have a limited amount of energy like a battery and if you're spending that on missed waves, that means more frustration, less wave, less progression. So proper wave selection means you're spending your energy in a good way that's moving your surfing forward and making sure you're having a better, more fun time and that's how you reliably do it. The coolest thing about this skill is it can be done from the beach. You don't have to be surfing. You can be out there testing yourself. So you can see a wave, go through this process of reading it, determine in your mind whether you would go for it or not and you can watch it play out in real time. Be like, yeah, I would've went on that one. Oh, wait, it was a closeout. What did I miss? And be like, oh, that is a closeout and you watch it, how it folds over, right? So you know exactly how it works. You can do it at every spot before you paddle out and when you get in the water and you're up close and personal you have a way better understanding of what this wave's gonna do, how it reacts at certain spots, where you should sit, where you shouldn't sit and all that great stuff. Again, this is a universal skill. It applies to the laws of physics so it works on every single beach and it'll last you for the entire rest of your lifetime and it will never change. I use this every single day for every single wave, every single session and now you can too. If you like these kind of videos, the easiest way for you to support me is to hit that like button, subscribe and leave a comment and I'd really appreciate it. My name is Kyle Russ, this is Hydro Mind.