Hello everybody and welcome back to another video. And in today's video we are going to
be discussing how to choose waves and the best waves to choose in the situations that you are in.
I 've seen a few comments come through on how to choose waves and the best waves to go on in
different situations. I thought I would just do this video and help you guys a little bit on
choosing waves and exactly which waves you should be going on, and which waves you shouldn't be going
on. Now in saying this again and i must stress how important this is but experience holds a lot in
this decision that you are going to make. I think that you guys need to understand exactly
when and where the best situations are to go out and to get waves. Especially if it becomes a reef
break or heavier situations that you're going to put yourself into. So when we talk about choosing
waves and especially when these waves are going to be all different. I mean none of us are going
to ever ride the same wave twice, unless we're in a wave pool. And you really need to figure
out exactly how the waves break at your local spot and exactly which waves are the ones to take.
For me, I've been doing this for a very long time and i can sort of see how waves are going to turn,
I know the different places that I go and surf and which waves are going to be best in certain
situations. None of these waves that I surf are the most readable waves because they're all on sand
bottoms. When it comes to a reef bottom where you kind of know which angle works best for that reef,
this becomes a much easier situation. You can start to see the waves bending at the end
and you know which ones are going to hold open or which ones are going to close out. When I was
in the water yesterday this was something that really kind of came to me and i was like, "Okay, wow!"
Different waves break in different situations and I don't think a lot of people really understand
exactly the dynamics of sand bottom brakes and which waves are going to be best for me.
I choose a way that looks good and that has good angles on it and a good look down the line. Now in
saying this this is experience where I don't really have to think about this too much and
it just comes to me. I look down the line see which kind of section is going to pop up
and know exactly at the start of the wave what my options are. Either to get a barrel or to do
a backflip out of the barrel or what situation is going to arise when I see it. None of this stuff is
much thinking for me. It is more a muscle memory as I can just kind of take off look down the line
see different sections and know what to do on those sections. This is from a lot of surfing.
It's not just something that you can pick up and just kind of think repetitively on, okay
well now the section's coming up. Let me try do a roll or look at this section it looks perfect
for an air reverse. Let me try an air reverse. Those thoughts that keep going through your
mind actually slow you down in the way that you are going to want to be hitting these sections
or the thought process that you're going to go through before hitting this section.
Now that I've explained a little bit on what today's video is going to be about.
I want to take you guys through a little bit of a video analysis on some of my waves and my thought
process going into each of these waves. These waves are not the best waves in the world and
they are not the most perfect waves in the world but this will give you an idea of where my mind
is at and what i am actually looking for. Before I start to actually even engage on the rail and look
down the line and just see exactly what this wave is going to do and how it's going to change. And
what moves you can possibly do of certain sections. So let's get into me just explaining a little
bit more on my thought process when i'm paddling for a bunch of different waves. So right from the
start we're gonna just freeze frame here and I'm gonna show you a couple things that I'm looking at
before I was paddling onto the wave. First off you can kind of see this foam ball pushing across here .
This is a wedge so a little bit different to kind of explain to you guys. But you can see the foam
ball starting to push across which means i'm on the corner of the wedge in the perfect position.
As I start to paddle here you can see when I look down the line and we'll freeze it again here.
There's not really that much going on. Looking down the line there's no real wave coming. What I
could see out of this wave was a triangle starting to form exactly where I was wanting to go. Now
when you look again you can see that starting to build up and I was just kind of sitting and
slowing myself down. Then you can see I engage the rail here and really push forward and see this
bowl and back flip off that section and I actually landed on the foam there kind of lost my board a
little bit. This was the wave that really made me want to make this video for you guys.
So here's another wave if we freeze frame again here, you can actually see, although there is that
thing on the screen I think it's a little water droplet on the lens, but you can see another very
big corner that I am on. I have got a lot of speed coming into this one and you can actually see that
whole corner building up there. As I keep going on this I look down the line and there's
two things that I notice here. There's a lump that is kind of forming a little bit further down the
screen where you can see there. And then further along it's really starting to turn towards me.
I keep going on this and actually slow myself down by dragging my legs a bit to get into this barrel.
That second section that we could see a little bit further down you can see it just
starting to feather a little bit underneath that little water droplet. But that was the
point where I knew this wave was going to kind of close on me. So what I did was I straightened out
straight after the barrel and then looked up again to see if I could find any more sections to go on.
Unfortunately this wave didn't quite go where I wanted it to go and it didn't throw enough and
I ended up trying to do a reverse off the top here but very unsuccessful wave landing on the
top and kind of getting sucked back down. So this wave here is a wave from hawaii and
although this is pipeline and the reef is obviously underneath me, this actually went onto a sandbar.
So that's why i wanted to really explain this and just show something to you guys. So on this
wave you can see I'm not in the position for a barrel and my eyes are set down the line. You can
see there's a little lump starting there and that was something that I was really keen to go and hit.
As you can see we're drawing the line down towards the section now and you can actually see that part
of the wave starting to build up as we freeze that frame again. You can see that build up of
foam and the wave really starting to pitch. As I start to engage the rail here that section that
I thought I was going to hit was a little bit further down. I actually had to adjust my line
to hit the section that was a little bit closer you can see this one starting to build up a
little bit more. As I run into it you can actually see the foam starting to foam over here
and this gives you options for two separate moves either: An invert or a reverse. And again you can do
backflips you can do different things but going through my mind right now was an invert. And as I
went up to it you can see the projection was there. It was out into the flats and then just landing
on the on the explosion coming up and actually allowed for quite a clean landing and coming
out of the foam straight after that which i was super stoked about. This wave here is from Dunes
in Cape Town and you can see me, I'm paddling for this wave. I'm going to freeze the frame here again
and we're just going to look at something. Where the sunlight is hitting, you can kind of see this
is where you want to be. This is where the the point of the wave is where it's got its most
power and you are going to get your most speed from. So looking at that section, that's kind of
where I wanted to get to before I started going on this wave. You can see these two surfers both
looking at me if I'm going or not but as I pushed onto this wave I've got a hell of
a lot of speed. I'm kicking as hard as I possibly can and trying to get as much speed
because I actually wanted to get down to this end section here. You can see the foam ball,
that's a perfect ramp for a reverse and that's exactly where my mind was at. Yes, there is a barrel
incoming but my mind was really at the end of this wave. And you see I went quite low on the bottom
turn here I didn't hug the top of the wave because then you need to slow down. So I actually
got all the way to the bottom and you can see the lip is really close to me when it lands next to me.
Getting so much speed through that section and now my eyes are on this end part. My eyes are
really on this end section to see which part of the wave is going to come up and this is a real
quick movement that you've got to have when you're looking at this part of the wave. You really got to
focus on where that little section is going to push out and where you can actually hit the wave.
As you can see here I go down and that little part sits up there and allows me to hit the
reverse and land in the foam and I kind of get a little bit gobbled up here but get spat out at the
end. A really really sick wave that I was super stoked on getting. So this last wave here we're
going to freeze the frame on the start of the wave and just show you guys exactly what i'm looking at
here. So this is actually at caves again. It is a wedging wave. That means that you want to get
to the highest point of the wave in order to get the most speed pushing through the bottom turn.
So I actually paddle more towards the section and then as you can see I turn to look back to see
what the wave is going to do. I can see that there's a couple things happening here. The barrel
isn't really coming there's not much happening. So I just go into a forward spin here
and then I stall. I hold a lot of my speed and I wait for that end section if we freeze the frame
here. This is the section I am looking at. That part of the wave is really where I'm focused on
because that's where I want to hit. That is where the reverse is going to come from. Where you can
dissipate a lot of your your speed into the wave and allow you to actually get pushed off and do a
reverse. So now on my mind is a reverse and as we get closer and closer you can see it's starting
to foam. That allows for a perfect launch pad to throw a reverse off and as I go up to it here.
I hit the that perfect section and go into reverse and then come around for a nice clean wave
and a completed wave. So guys that brings us to the end of today's video and I hope you guys have
understood and kind of followed on with exactly what I am trying to explain about choosing waves
and what moves to do on these waves. Again I cannot stress this enough, that this is very much down
to experience and consistently riding waves and seeing what these waves do. So after this video get
out there try these different things and see what works for you. Even if you pick up a small thing
like looking down the line and kind of seeing the section that you want to hit and where you want
to go, is probably the key to getting these moves done more and more frequently. I have a really cool
project coming up this week and I will hopefully be putting a lot more stuff out on the community
page. If you guys aren't on that community page already please go and check it out it is on
my channel and there is a bunch of cool stuff on there. If you guys want to join onto the membership
program, that program is still available and you guys can go and check it out whenever you feel
the need. If you like today's video please give it a thumbs up, as well as subscribing to the channel
and hitting that notification bell to get notified first. And I will see you in the next video.
you