DUCKDIVE BIG WAVES IN DEEP WATER VS SHALLOW WATER TECHNIQUE!

Lots of questions, people talk, we listen. The classic duck dive versus bailing your board, and several reasons. I'm going to give several reasons of why I did one or the other here in these clips. As you can see, big set, teams getting caught inside. Kieran bails, he chose a bail, I chose a duck dive, and several reasons for that, and why you would choose one or the other. And technique, I'll get into that as well. For duck diving, big waves in deep water, and duck diving, big waves, or semi big waves, in super shallow water. Different techniques on both of those. But, main reason I chose to duck dive in this situation, that you're watching, is because I'm on a borrowed board, and these are big waves, and I do not want that leash to break, that board to break. I don't want to lose that board and have to swim in and end the session. I don't have my boards, I don't have my backup boards, and I don't want to be left out there without my flotation device, which at this point is only my board attached to me. I don't trust my leash is gonna hold on sets this big, which obviously they're catching us by surprise, and they're bigger than we thought, right? So, I chose to duck dive, and that's just confidence in my duck dive. It's years of having duck dove, big sets, that giant second reef pipe, and watching many guys bail their boards, and break their leash, or break their board, or have to swim in, their session's over, their board flies and hits someone else in the head. Don't get me wrong, I have to clarify here, if the wave is literally pinnacle of the lip, landing directly on you, you're not in that secondary explosion escape mode, you're not in the barrel where you can poke through, the lip is literally detonating on you in the big wave, I'm probably gonna bail, like most likely, but 90% of the time, I will try to position myself away from the main impacting lip, get that secondary explosion, duck dive, pocket of safety, most times, or it's just a big white water like you see here, a duck dive, and I just death grip that board. I know I'm gonna do cartwheels underwater, I'm probably gonna do that regardless of bailing or duck diving, you're gonna get work, when it's just big white water, you're gonna get work, that's just what's gonna happen, but for me, most of the time, your board is gonna pop up far before you, and so, you wanna be attached to that still, and if possible, you want to have that in your hands, and I have to clarify again, because this question will probably be asked, yes, if I was on a gun, if I was on a 10-0, you're just not gonna push that underwater, and this wave is too big to turtle, it's gonna get ripped out of your hands, turtle is when you flip over and try to hold the board, that only works like up to a certain size, and so, now in this situation here, I'm on a smaller board, I know I can duck dive this board, I'm going to duck dive this board, I'm not in the main impacting lip, the board is not too high volume or too large that I can't push it underwater, for me personally, I can duck dive a board, I can duck dive my 7-0, my 7-5, I can probably push an 8-0 into a duck dive, and that's when it starts to get real funky, it really depends on the wave, I've duck dove an 8-0 at Porto, and it felt a little risky for sure, if it was a really thick mutant wave, I don't think I'm gonna try to duck dive it on that 8-0, at that point, the waves are big enough for me, and heavy enough that it's like, hey, just get your body through, you're not looking out for your board's safety at that point, and so that happens for me, around that 8-0 mark, unless it's like a really low volume 8-0, which mine are pretty beefed up, and yeah, so, that's gonna be different for you guys, what you can and can't duck dive, but working on your duck dives, and being in position, and not resorting to that bail every time, is gonna just help you so much in your all-around positioning from tiny wave to big waves, and how much you get worked, you're gonna get worked less more, the better you get at navigating through these situations, bailing less, those around you are gonna thank you, obviously there's a time and a place for it, but it's just something you guys gotta work on, and there is little tricks to it, deep water duck dive, I have both my rails in my hand, and I do a double, a scoop, main scoop, push down with my knee or my foot, pull my chest to my board, and as I'm pulling close to my board, I scoop the rail in again, and I get a double dip duck dive, get a pretty deep dive on that, and that's something you can like try in a pool if you want, you can just try your little beach break out in the water when you're waiting for a set, we used to be out the back when we were young, me, John, and Ivan, and our friends, and we'd be having duck dive contests, like who could duck dive the deepest, and while it was fun, and we were competitive, it was also just training our duck dive, rep, rep, rep, deep duck dive, double scoop, triple scoop, I remember seeing Jamie and John battling in duck dive, and they were like double scoop, triple scooping, got so good at where they could duck dive down to the reef on a small day at pipe, like not the big day where we're out, and it's like 15, 20 foot deep, but like it was like maybe like six foot deep to the reef, and they did like three or four scoops down to the bottom, and so just a, it's just something that you can work on, and if you, it's a, it's a learnable skill, it's what I'm trying to get to, and so I do when I like these videos go up, and some of these clips are showing of these duck dive events, I say how are you duck diving, like why are you duck diving such big waves, like I don't get it, what, how's that, how, and it's just repetition, worked on it, confidence, and sometimes I get my board ripped out of my hands, that does happen, but then I'm in the same place I would have been had I bailed, oftentimes I pop up board in my hands, and while someone else is fighting to get to that board, I'm paddling away already, like you can kind of see in this clip, I'm already paddling for that next wave, and duck diving again, and there is other little things you can do in clear water duck dive, you know, you search through the plumes, you allow your board to be guided, these big plumes of energy are coming down, and you can kind of feel them before, before they hit you, you can let yourself be guided to the sides of them, because oftentimes they're in big rows, if it's clean water duck dive, which to clarify is a duck dive in blue water, your first wave of the set catching you, once all that turbulence is there, you're not really going to find those, but in that turbulence, I often look for the boils popping up, they're boiling up, and then the water is like going like that, and I go right on the side of that big boil where the water is like being forced back down underwater, and I duck dive on the edge of that boil, and you can feel it kind of pulls you down, and you get like a good depth in white water off the sides of those bigger boils, so a couple little tips, tricks, something if you just keep in the back of your mind, you can think about the next time you're caught inside or duck diving some big waves, obviously keeping an eye on where's the current pulling me, I want to get to a position if I am at a wave that's like this, a reef break, it's probably a channel on either side, ideally there is a channel on either side, that current's going to be pulling out there, you want to get out into that reef, if you're somewhere at Porto, sometimes you want to stay away from those reefs, because they could just rip you right back into another set, and so you want to use that white water to carry you in, and then that means when you're duck diving, you're allowing yourself to get pulled right up into that white water, you want to be on that main momentum getting carried in, here at a reef break like you're seeing here, last thing I want to do is get closer to those rocks, which you're going to see next, I do exactly that, so that was some deep water duck diving, and some bigger surf, I could probably go more detailed on that, but I felt like there was a good couple little nuggets of information you guys could take, so in this clip it's kind of the opposite, it's a situation where I was forced into, by this point in the session, I knew where these waves were pushing into, and it was like this dry lava rock, real sharp lava rock, not the kind of like slate stuff that you can scramble up, the kind you really just want to stay away from, and these birds they kept hanging out by me, and then they ended up putting themselves in the position that when the set came, they like were just in the impact zone, and like they got as much smoke as the bird, actually went on the same adventure, just before I went on it, and I didn't even know, go good ones I've gotten on this session, like any other session, gotta have some payment before you get a good one, most of the time, sometimes you have these magic sessions, this session, like you just saw, wow, I got some good waves, we moved into the inside ledge, looking for something more meaty on the slab part, but it was just like really shallow, really stretched out, finally a wave came that I was like, dude, it's on the outside ledge again, and as soon as I took off, I just like realized, I looked back door to the right, and I'm like, oh, way too late, I look back left, and I was like, the left's a closeout, I'm between two closeouts, I've put myself here, I'm gonna deal with it now, this is not good, because I knew right away that I couldn't jump where I was, because it would put me in like the main power of the first ledge of the slab, and I'm like, shoot, like I don't want to get pulled over into that, like I want to be a little bit away from where that next wave is probably going to be impacting, and so I rode down, and the step formed, and I like did this weird hop over the step, because I really didn't want to nose out there, and if it's stepping out like that, you know it's shallow, there's a rock right there, and so as soon as I went over that, I did this, I kind of like jumped off my board to get up out the back, and when I jump, I always jump light, like imagine jumping off something high into the shallow end of the pool, like that's how I jump when I jump in this situation, like I don't know if there's a rock right below me, I know it's shallow, and I'm gonna jump with that in mind, like okay, it's shallow, if my feet impact something, I'm gonna be real light, and I'm gonna like jump just like I said, as if I'm jumping into the shallow end of a pool, so like ready to absorb that impact, and I remember when I jumped off, I like immediately contacted the bottom, maybe was a few feet down, and I had booties on, which is good, because that bottom was like sharp, I could feel it through my booties, just all lava rock, so landed on it, and as soon as I landed on it, I felt the main power of the white water go over me, and I jumped up, and so when I jumped straight back up to the surface, first thing, my GoPro was like pointed back at my head, my GoPro was like pointed back at my head, which is just hilarious, and I'm like, thanks to GoPro, take into the account the surroundings, I'm like okay, there's the rock ledge, like and it looked like strong current and power still like going into that ledge, and I was like, I don't want to be anywhere near that, because that's just real sharp, and the current was pulling like side to side off the reef, and I just knew like, okay, like not a good situation, potential here for it to go pretty bad, but I feel like if I play it right, I might be able to be okay, and so I just turn around, look how far I am for the rocks, and look out at the next wave coming, like I said, jumped real light on my feet, I'm not trying to jump butt first, like I see some of these guys, like they jump, some of the kids, and people that don't know better, they jump butt first, like I don't know what goes through their head that they wouldn't jump feet first, to absorb any kind of impact with their feet, like you jump hips first, you're gonna, if you hit something underwater on your tailbone like that, I don't know if any of you guys ever struck your tailbone, but it's extremely painful, and you're probably going to compress your back, probably going to hurt your back, if you land on something hard, I've known people who broke their back, I went over the falls at the box earlier this year, and I thought my feet were in front of me, and I missed this pinnacle, my feet missed the pinnacle, and I landed on my ass, right on my tailbone, like on this piece of reef, and just the pain was extreme, and so I see you guys jump over the falls with their feet up, butt first, and I'm like what are you doing, jump feet first, you can at least absorb it a little bit, so yeah that's my jump tips, don't jump butt first, anyway, next wave comes, I'm like oh shoot, I'm standing on the reef at this point, and there's like a pretty big white water, so a lot of power, enough power to like smush me, and like scratch me up along this reef, and so at this point I'm not duck diving, because I would just duck dive the board straight into reef, like it's that shallow, and so there's no option but to do what I call the starfish, which is this next wave comes, I just do a little flop, it looks like I kind of like dive in the clip, but I just went like maybe like, I just did a little six inches under the water, and then I'm like right away like going like this, with my hands and legs, so I'm not going down at all, I'm just like starfishing back to the surface, splay out, create area, so the water doesn't like pinnacle you down in any way, and I'm just like probably similar how like maybe a skydiver would create surface area, and slow his fall down, and as soon as that wave goes over me, do the same thing, one big push, boom, up, I want to get up quick, get on my board, check in my surroundings, see my exit plan, and so as soon as I'm up after that one, I'm kind of like looking around, looking for my board, I see my board, looking for the next wave, and looking where this current's now pulling me, and it was pulling me where the exit was, but the problem was it was pulling off the shelf, so the water's starting to drain off shelf, and this is at the point I'm like, okay there's no help, and I get on my board, I start jetting before all the water drains off the shelf, and I see like rocks literally popping up, I'm trying to get between these rocks on either side of me, and then do the classic like I was gonna duck dive, thinking I was off the shelf for a second, and then I just see all these steps, and I'm like I'm not gonna sacrifice this board, and just like let the board slide out the back of the duck dive, and just did the starfish again, and there's a little more water than I thought, and so wave goes over, I shoot myself to the surface, a couple strokes, don't let myself get tumbled deep, and grab my board, and I'm just blown out into the channel, made it out, all was well, no scrapes, scratches, no dings on the board, got pretty lucky, but it's also due to just being very aware, and proactive to the situation, right, you want to be like on your game, there's like people, people are always saying stay calm, stay calm, I don't know if that's the right term for it, I don't know if staying calm, I would just more put it like, you want to be hyper aware, you want to be not necessarily calm, but ready, real ready, and uh taking in a lot of your surroundings, in those situations your awareness is super heightened, and so you have enhanced abilities, I like to think about it like that, and so this was a relatively minor situation, but this kind of stuff can happen, like we saw it happen to Billy at Jaws last winter, he got pushed into these rocks, and I've been in by those rocks on the right at Jaws, and like it can happen in bigger situations, and so keep in mind these little tips, and tricks, and next time you find yourself in a pickle, and a rip current, in a shallow duck dive zone, in a deep water duck dive zone, hopefully these little things pop into your head, and save a leash from breaking, or save a board from breaking, or dings, or get you out of that situation quicker, that's all I got for you, so I'm out.