Beginner surfers use soft top surf boards because they are excellent boards and facilitate learning. In Oceanside, surfers are often seen on 7′ waves on 8′ soft top boards.
Surfing Fundamentals are the First Priority
Learning the surfing fundamentals is a difficult task. There are many techniques that have to be initiated in the proper order. Having a surf board that makes it easy as possible makes the process more fun.
Many students who can not get the fundamentals right away still say it is so much fun. Soft top surfboards for beginners are usually 8′ or 9′. 8′ should be used for under 13 years old and 9′ for everyone else.
Progression with the Soft Top Surf Board
The objective would be to land pop ups squarely on the 9′ boards and ride straight to the beach so that the student could move down to an 8′ soft top surfboard. A new surfer could learn to ride real waves, accelerate in the pocket, do cut backs, bottom turns, and even rip the lip on soft tops.
The reason to move shorter is for more maneuverability, but prepared for more difficult paddling, greater timing needed for catching waves, and less stability in riding. The longer one stays on a soft top, the easier will be the transition.
When moving to a hard board, the transition should be slow so the frustration does not increase. A surfer needs to have good paddling muscles from gym work or lots of surfing or sessions will be shorter.
Catching Real Waves
A surfer has to be prepared to catch real waves as they arc. This creates timing problems soft top surfers are not used to. The surfer has to paddle in position and then move until the real wave rolls under them and then paddle hard for three strokes before popping up. Errors result in the wave crashing on the surfer or missing the wave.
An advantage of a soft top surf board over a hard board is it is pushed easier by a real wave and one can often pop up on smaller real waves that a hard board won’t catch. This is great for beginning on two to three foot high waves. Once waves are four to five foot high, the hard board becomes efficient.
For Surf Lessons in Oceanside, see the Home Page
For a video on Catching Real Waves