Hello everybody and welcome back to another video
and today we are going to be talking about how to fall
into barrels and just the best way of getting out of the chaotic
impacts that happen inside of barrels.
So today I wanted to touch on just
how to fall in the barrel the best way to get out of a wave
and reduce the amount of actual beatings that you're going to get,
either onto the sand or onto the reef while you are surfing
these pretty heavy or just fun waves that you are on.
The idea behind this still stems from another video that i've done
way back and that was how to duck dive. I used a diagram from Mike Stewart that
he drew up years ago just to illustrate exactly how
waves break and what there is inside of the wave
that really kind of helps you to understand where to fall
and where you want to be falling on these waves.
Please do not get this confused with ducking out, out of the foam
area, although i will be doing a video about that.
I do that pretty often in the GoPro clips and a few of you
have come to me and said, "Can you explain exactly how that works,
where's the best place to do it etc." I will be doing that video in
the next few weeks for you guys. I looked at the analytics
and it turns out that 72 percent of you guys are not
subscribed to my channel so please go on and subscribe to the channel before we
get going in this video. As well as going onto my instagram page
where i post content daily there for you guys
and this will just help you to answer questions
and ask any questions that you need to. I am also available to answer any of your
guys questions if you just hit me up in the DM's.
Otherwise leave a comment on any of the posts and I will get to
you guys as soon as possible. The idea behind this video is just to
kind of help you guys just explain exactly
how and where are the best places to duck out of waves.
If you're caught in a closeout or if you're in a barrel and something has to
happen, these are the best ways and kind of
instincts that you can have in order to get out of the way of
probably the heaviest impact. When we are talking about
waves, first of all you do not want to fall
underneath the lip. This is one place where the lip will
actually drive you straight into the sand or into the reef
and you are going to hit the bottom. There's no two ways about it. Regardless
of where you're surfing the chances of getting out of the way there are very
slim. It'll probably be a miracle if you get
out of the way of the lip. First off i just want to explain a
little bit more on the Mike Stewart diagram and just explain to you guys
exactly what I mean by shock waves and different impact areas
on the wave and will help you better understand the rest of this video.
So when we look at the Mike Stewart diagram you're going to see
the sea level as well as the lip of the wave coming down.
And that most impact that you're going to have and the most apparent impact
is going to be that first piece. This is really where the wave is going to hit
and it's going to send that shock wave up and that's what bounces back
inside the barrel. A lot of the time when you're watching barrels you see this
massive explosion on the inside and that is
actually where the lip is landing it's forcing
water back up and into the barrel. This motion is
known as the shock wave and this is the piece that comes back at
you and majority of the time this is where the foam ball starts to roll
inside of the barrel and will either push you up or keep you
held inside of the barrel. The idea when you are falling in the
barrel is that you actually want to fall in front of the shock wave in order for
that shock wave to push you out and out the back of the wave. I'm
going to put up a couple video clips just to show you guys exactly how I fall
and where exactly you want to fall. You don't want to fall where the lip is
landing. As i've said before this is a very very
dangerous area. This will drive you straight down into
the reef because that's where that energy is going. The energy is going
straight down. That means if you land underneath
that you're going straight down with it. What you will see in a lot of my
clips that i'm about to play is that a lot of the time I am turning
onto my back and actually falling into the barrel back first.
Now i've done this for a long time and it's almost become instinctual
for me to fall into that area and then get swept out of
the back without actually landing in the turbulence of
the wave. The idea is that you're actually falling into
the foam of the wave or what you would now refer to as the foam ball
inside of the barrel and that's actually forcing you
up the wave and out the back. Don't get this confused with falling mid face
inside the barrel. Falling mid face you're actually going
to land in the wave and get sucked over the falls and push down
again. This will result in possibly hitting the reef or
hitting the sand, but at the same time knowing where to
fall on the waves is probably your best bet for getting
out of trouble. So let's get into a couple videos just to show you exactly
where I land and where the best and safest places to
land inside the barrel are going to be.
So I just want to take you through a couple of these waves
and this first one is a very good example of
exactly where the shock wave is and then where the trough will be located.
As you can see here when we freeze the frame, this
is the shock wave coming up the wave from the lip.
That is the part where it's going to push your board up the face. As we
continue a little further, that is where the trough is and that's
kind of where my eyes are focused i'm going to be landing inside that trough
and as i go forward here I land on my back
in the trough get washed around a little bit
and then come up for air. This next wave is
another really good example but this time I want to show you
exactly where the lip is going to land and where you don't want to be.
So that is where the lip is going to be landing and you need to avoid that.
But again you can see my board gets pushed up the side of the wave and kind
of out the way a little bit and then I am able to kind of land in
that trough and actually get worked not so bad and
pop up quite quickly after the wave.
This next one we are going to be looking
at just the standard wave, the whole thing
all together. Just avoiding that lip and then trying
to fall into the shock wave. You can see how the
shock wave has pushed my board up and I've actually landed in that
shock wave and been pushed underwater and then all of a
sudden i pop up with not much foam around me and not
much turbulence and get back on the board and paddle out.
This last wave is from hawaii and you can see I
actually got dropped in on here but for the most part I wanted to talk about
falling even on the reef and you can see i fell into the trough
and was automatically ejected straight out of the back. There's no real
turbulence of foam around me and I just wait for my board to get
released and then pushed out of the back. As you
can see landing at the bottom of the wave or
inside the barrel in that trough is going to force you out the back of
the wave and this is probably the best place to do it.
Although we talk about this a lot it's really understanding how waves
break and how the energy is transferred from
one direction to the other. Understanding this movement and exactly
how this goes, as well as getting a lot of experience by surfing as often as
possible, will help you to get out of these
situations that you might not have understood before.
Reading waves and just understanding how they break and where the energy is
transferred is going to get you the best idea as to
how to get out of these waves and out of those situations that you're
going to be putting yourself into. There are a few times where you are
going to fall and you are maybe going to hit the reef
but don't let this discourage you from trying again
and again. These are things that you learn
from failure and unfortunately going through this process
and understanding waves and actually getting into those situations
are going to better you as a waterman and as a person
who just loves the ocean and wants to stay in the ocean.
I hope you have really understood these videos and
exactly what i'm trying to portray for you guys.
I will talk about the alternative to this ducking out in front of waves in a
future video. If you guys want to see more of that
please leave a comment down below and if you have any more questions feel
free to hit me up either on here or hit me up on my
instagram and I hope you guys really enjoyed this
video. If you have enjoyed this video please
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and we will see you in the next one!