Barefoot Surf

Your head is your steering wheel. Where you look, you will go. Surfers need to look up and toward where they want to go since the rest of the body follows the head. Therefore if you bounce it around or if you look downwards when surfing, your shoulders and chest will follow, putting too much weight on that side and making you lose your balance.

Therefore if you bounce it around or if you look downwards when surfing, your shoulders and chest will follow, putting too much weight on that side and making you lose your balance.

An average adult head weighs about 5kg or 11 pounds, so keeping this weight centred over the surfboard is better. Surfers also need to keep their heads up to monitor what the wave is doing, how fast it’s peeling, and what type of manoeuvre they should make.

Apart from some rare occasions, surfers ride with their hands over each rail. This means they keep the left hand over the left rail and the right hand over the right rail to have maximum stability. When standing on a balance beam, keeping your balance with your hands on both sides is easier. The same goes for surfing. Hands and arms weigh a considerable amount, so it makes sense to use them on each side of the surfboard to gain stability.

Most of the time, the problem is the leading hand. As mentioned, an arm is heavy. If both hands & arms are over one side of the surfboard, there’s a good chance that the surfer will stick out the bum to stay balanced.

Your hands and arms help to give direction to your surfboard. Usually, where your arms go, your surfboard should follow.

The distance between a surfer’s feet depends on their body and personal preference. A too narrow stance will limit your ability to bend your knees properly while compressing the lower body down and forward. It will also limit your ability to properly distribute weight over the surfboard to accelerate or carve by pressing the right buttons.

A stance too wide will make it more difficult to quickly shift weight forward and backwards by moving the hips up and down.

Surfers often feel like they need to swing their whole upper body forward and backwards to apply the weight on either foot instead of a quick hip movement.

The common saying in surf schools is that your stance should be in relation to your shoulder width. From what we’ve noticed, the most common distance between a surfer’s feet is 10 to 30 centimetres wider than their shoulder width.

Standing up with your feet very off-centred will most likely make you fall on the side on which you put more weight. Both your feet should be centred on the width of the surfboard. Many surfboards have a stringer running through the board’s middle. Your feet should be equally distributed on each side of the stringer. Having your feet slightly off-centred might not make you fall, especially on bigger surfboards. You might still be up, but you will have limited control on your surfboard over your surfboard since your feet won’t cover enough width on both sides of the surfboard.

One of the keys to learning to surf and progressing efficiently is identifying bad habits and correcting them as soon as possible. The stance is the foundation of practically anything done when surfing a wave. Without fixing bad stance habits, surfers will always be limited in their ability to accelerate, slow down, turn, ride barrels, do floaters, cutbacks and more. We strongly suggest getting footage of your surfing to make sure you correct these mistakes if needed. Stance mistakes are not for beginners only. Most surfers have elements to fix in their stance even after a few years of practice.

Imagine standing up in this position. You might still feel balanced on the board since both uncentered feet equalize themselves. But when trying to trim left or carve right, you won’t be able to press the right buttons; there won’t be enough weight
over the crucial parts of the surfboard.