Surfing the Short Board
When to Start Surfing a Short Board
New students often want to surf the short board, but in Oceanside Surf Lessons they start with 8′ or 9′ soft tops. These have high volume in length, width, and thickness. Many new surfers dream of the day they can start riding shorter boards.
Short Boards are Difficult
One should be careful what you wish for. The only thing that is promised with shorter boards is more difficulty paddling, catching waves, and standing up. It is best to move slowly. This begins with mastering techniques on the soft top.
You can ride certainly up to a 7′ wave on a soft top as I see it every year in Oceanside. The advanced surfers also rip the lip, do aerials, and 360s.
So what is the advantage of surfing the short board? The first two are duck diving if you are on a sand bar beach and less pearling on steeper waves. Oceanside is a sand bar beach and has lots of steep waves. A reef would have less of both issues. In order to minimize the disadvantages of a short board, it is smart to drop 6″ inches of length at a time and maintain width and thickness.
If you are in the water a few times a week, you should be able to hit the technical short board size of 6’10” within six months to a year. Now, surfers are riding high volume short boards (big width and thickness) in the form of the fish and many other shapes. I see older surfers that have been surfing all their lives keep the short boards but add width and thickness because of the age factor and also because they may be week end warriors or just a few times a month warriors.
The idea is to maintain the fun, not just to reach the status that goes with owning a short board.
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Learn to surf with Oceanside Surf Lessons
This is a great tutorial on catching real waves https://youtu.be/N7KopjbzxjE