How To Catch Unbroken Waves, Part 1

Learning to surf the unbroken waves is an amazing experience. It's going to be up there with your wedding day or passing your driving test, first kisses, the birth of your first child. It's totally up there on that level. It's going to become a cherished memory. It is a big transition though to go from the white water to the unbroken waves. It is a whole different ball game. There is a little bit more potential for errors. Just a quick bit of terminology. I generally call it unbroken waves, but you'll also hear people say the outside or the line up or the outback, green waves or even the real waves. So starting with positioning, because I think this is the biggest challenge that students are going to have when they first tackle the unbroken waves, because in the white water you can kind of just stroll out with your board, turn your board around wherever, hop on and catch the wave. Unfortunately in the unbroken waves it is not that straightforward because now you've got to try to catch the wave just before it breaks. So if you look at my diagram here, I've divided the waves up into four zones. So we've got the white water, we've got the impact or the breaking wave zone, this is the magic zone and this is the bump zone. And what a lot of beginners tend to do is they will sit either in the impact zone or way out in the bump zone. This is probably the worst case scenario because if you try to catch a wave here it's too steep and it'll probably feel like an avalanche breaking on your shoulders. The board will go downhill really steeply and it's really difficult to pop up when it does that. The nose will probably go underwater and you'll have a spectacular wipe out. Or the other end of the spectrum is trying to catch waves in the bump zone. Now you could have the paddling ability of Michael Phelps but if you're trying to catch waves right out here it's really really difficult. You're not going to catch very many when you sit out there. You'll sort of paddle for the wave, you'll feel it coming underneath you but you won't quite get into the wave. So you've got to be a little bit like Goldilocks. These waves are too steep, these waves are not steep enough and these ones here in the magic zone are just right. So in the magic zone waves are about five or six seconds away from breaking and when you're learning these green waves, unbroken waves, you're aiming to catch the wave when the wave face is at a 45 degree angle. 45 is the magic number. When you pop up on a wave with a wave face at a 45 degree angle you're going to be, you'll sort of look along the wave, it'll look really nice and smooth and kind of glidey and you'll see where your board can fit in the wave. You won't feel rushed. When you try to catch a wave in the impact zone it'll feel like you're sort of looking over the edge of a cliff. You won't see where your board can fit in the wave or you know because the waves they're about sort of 80 or they break at 90 degrees or if you're trying to catch the wave when the wave faces at a 25 degree angle it's just not enough lift on the tail to get you into that wave. So you've got to surf with like an imaginary protractor in your head, always looking out for that 45 degree angle or think of yourself like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator. When you saw the movie from the point of view of the Terminator he was always kind of assessing angles or assessing speeds that someone or something was approaching him at. He was absorbing all this information and statistics about what was going on around him and that is what you've got to be like when you're learning to surf as well. So watch lots and lots of waves and when you see a wave that you think is a potential wave ask yourself three questions. First of all is it a right, a left or a close out? A close out is when it breaks all across its length all at the same time so it's not a good wave to go for. Question two is where is the best point for me to catch that wave? And question three is can I reach that spot before the wave does? Because on the outside you have to have good agility, you have to be proactive to what's going on. So that might mean paddling five meters to the right or to the left in order to catch that wave or even paddling 10 meters deeper, sitting up on your board, turning around and paddling five meters towards the beach again in order to catch the wave. If you paddle out and just sit on your board and wait for the perfect wave to come to you, well you might catch one wave an hour if you're lucky. So you've really got to have good agility. So if you can answer yes to questions two and questions three and you know if it's a right or a left then that means it's going to be a good wave for you to go for. Also watch other surfers, especially the good surfers, and when you see someone paddling to catch a wave ask yourself do I think that he or she's going to catch that wave based on a the way they've positioned themselves and b the way that they're paddling and then check, look over your shoulder, see if your prediction was correct and you're really going to learn a lot from observing those situations. So think of your brain as being like a computer and it's collecting this memory bank of waves and you want to have thousands and thousands of waves in your memory bank and then you're really going to start to understand the unbroken waves and I think especially as female surfers we have to be a little bit more intuitive, a little bit more observant of what's going on because there's always going to be some 20 year old dude and he's amazing and he's catching all the waves and he never ever gets tired he doesn't seem to need to ever sit on his board and take a rest and sometimes it's a bit tempting I'd like to surf with a jousting lance or something and just gently poke him but I think it would be a little bit cumbersome for me to carry that but we have to use what is up here maybe more than he does. Another thing that's going to help you with your positioning is using landmarks so so far we've been looking at this diagram just from a basis of front to back but of course we also have this axis here of north to south and a lot of beginners you'll see them they sort of paddle out they just sort of lively surf up and down the beach anywhere and you'll spot them when they get out as well because they're looking around they don't know where their car is they don't know which way their hotel is that is not a good strategy to have when you find a good spot to surf at you really want to line it up with something on the beach so whether that's a funny shaped palm tree or a mobile phone tower or here at Playa Carmen the edge of the pizzeria something like that and try and stay in that spot the exception of course though is you know 25 other surfers they see that you're killing it at that spot and like doing really well then they may join you and then you may need to to reassess okay i hope that was useful to you check out part two of catching the unbroken waves when we're going to look at angling and paddling really hard fun stuff like that also if you want to find out more about the surfing and yoga retreats here in costa rica check out the website puravidaadventures.com don't forget if you like this video you could always subscribe to the and it means you stay up to date with the latest stuff on this channel sometimes there's good stuff all right thanks very much for watching ciao bye