Surf Tips - How to get Barreled

Hi, this is Chris Bond here for Ticket to Ride Worldwide Surfing Adventures and Wavelength Magazine. I'm an ISA level 2 surf coach and here to take you through this webisode of surf tips to help improve your surfing. The barrel, the pit, the green room, the tube, getting shacked, getting slotted, call it what you may, the barrel is the holy grail of surfing and I'm here to talk you through how to get shacked. I'm going to break the barrel down to three parts, the entry, the barrel itself, and then the exit. For the entry to the barrel there are three different ways you can get into the barrel. You can either backdoor the barrel, you can slow down and stall into it, or you can drop straight into the pit. When you backdoor the barrel, you're either backdooring from the takeoff, positioning yourself to get into the barrel from behind, or you're already riding along and you can see a section that's going to throw in front of you. The main part with the backdooring of barrels is the positioning before you go into the barrel and then you can ride straight through it. Starting for the barrel, you can stall either with one hand, two hands, or you can do a kick, stall, snap to get into the barrel. This really slows you down so you're in exactly the right place as the wave starts to barrel. The third way of dropping straight into the barrel takes the most commitment. You paddle hard, really lean on your toes and just go through it. Now that you're inside the barrel, enjoy the view. You want to maximize your barrel time by riding at the same speed as the barrel's moving along. So if you move your feet up your board a little bit further forward, that will give you a good line. You can either slow down by putting one arm or two arms in the face, or speed up by letting go and even pumping your board down the line to get out. You want your front arm to be pointing ahead of you towards the exit of the barrel and your eyes open looking up to the top corner so you can see what the lip's going to do, what the wave's going to do ahead of you. For your stance, you want your legs nice and bent, your back straighter up and your head upright looking out of the barrel. If you bend over from the waist, your head's going to end up touching the face or the lip and you end up going over the falls backwards. Never fun, but don't worry, it's happened to all of us. There are several different ways to come out the barrel. The most easy way is just to get shot straight out onto the shoulder, but that's not always the case. Often you need to take a high line to get out the barrel, especially if the wave starts to pinch, or if you want to set up for a turn, you drop quite a low line down so that you can bottom turn and burn off the speed straight into your next turn. More commonly though, a wave starts to close out and you have to go out the doggy door. This means riding straight towards the beach, getting a lip on the back. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't. The three most common mistakes with barrel riding are firstly, not committing to the actual barrel and bailing before the wave has knocked you off. Secondly, you've got to make sure that you don't bend from the waist and get sucked high and high up the face so that you get sucked over the falls backwards. Thirdly, you have to keep those eyes open. I mean, that's what you're there for, to enjoy the view, right? That'll help you make the barrel. Now that you know the theory of getting barreled, I want you to get off your chair, stop looking at your screen, grab your board, go down to the beach and spend some time in the green room. To see more of our how-to videos, subscribe here, or please write your comments and questions below. See you next time.