Hello and welcome back to the XSWIM for Surfers blog. My name is Rob.
First off, thank you all again for the outstanding feedback on the last video about How to Paddle like World Champion Kelly Slater.
I really appreciate the feedback and definitely keep it coming.
Today I’m up in Northern California and I’m going to talk about another NorCal surfer.
What I’m going to go ahead and do is analyze Nat Young’s wave in Round 5 of the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach
contest that led him to his first World Tour finals appearance.
The wave happened in the dying minutes of the heat against Josh Kerr.
Kerr had priority and didn’t paddle for this wave that came through –
grant it, it didn’t look like much and he knew Nat needed a pretty big score.
Nat paddled like crazy to get the wave, scored an 8.5 and won the heat.
He took that momentum on through the next heats and made it to the finals.
Let’s take a look at 3 key techniques that Nat uses to catch that wave,
take a look at how they relate to swimming, and how you can use them to improve your paddling.
The first of the three key techniques is his kick.
You can see in the video, he begins kicking as hard as he can even before the wave looks like a rideable wave.
What kicking does for him is not so much to propel him forward but rather kicking raises the back half of his body higher in the water.
When the back half of your body is higher in the water, there is less resistance moving forward.
That is the key – lowering your resistance as you move through the water faster.
Take a look at this illustration from swimming.
Here you can easily see how when your body is lower in the water,
more resistance is pushing against you as you move forward especially as you move faster.
This is similar to air resistance – you want to minimize the resistance and “cut” through the water.
A good way to practice this feeling is next time you are in your car on the highway,
roll down your window and put your arm out.
You’ll feel a lot more resistance if your hand and forearm are perpendicular to the ground than when they are parallel to the ground.
When it is parallel to the ground, this is the same kind of feeling you should have as you swim or paddle through the water.
Another good drill is to take a kickboard and hold it perpendicular to the ground of the pool and try and kick or tread forward.
Then lower the angle of the kickboard so that it is parallel and on top of the water to feel the difference.
You can do this standing up in the shallow end as well.
In the previous video, How to Paddle like World Champion Kelly Slater, we talked about how surfing on a shortboard is a lot like head up
freestyle. More of your body is in the water.
So to compensate for that resistance, kicking helps raise the back half of your body up out of the water.
This is what Nat does here.
And whenever you feel that you are behind the wave or the wave is going faster than you are,
it is even more important to start getting your speed up early.
Because Nat started kicking and paddling early,
he had a better chance than if Kerr suddenly decided to paddle for that same wave.
The second key technique he uses is to put his head down.
You can see here that in addition to the kicking, he also drops his head during the time he needed the most acceleration.
Why do you this is helpful?
Same reason as the last technique –
dropping the head brings the body and board more parallel to the surface of the water thus reducing resistance.
In swimming, we think about this a lot but because there is no board as a floatation device,
we think more in terms of pushing your chest (and subsequently your lungs) down to the bottom of the pool –
think about your lungs and relate them to an inflated ball in the water.
What happens when you push the ball underwater?
It pops back up.
So your lungs are going to be bringing your chest up to the surface of the water.
The idea is then to push your chest down as you swim forward so that it feels like you are swimming downhill.
In swimming you want to keep your head neutral, not high and not too low.
If you raise your head, the lower body drops.
You drop your head, your lower body comes up, but if you drop your head too much, additional resistance occurs from your dropped head.
You can try this in the pool – kick off the wall on your stomach,
keep your arms to your side with your head neutral, in other words, look straight down at the bottom of the pool, and add a very light kick.
Then raise your head up forward and feel your lower body drop to the bottom of the pool.
It is also an affective drill to do on your back.
This concept is also why swimmers swim with their heads neutral and not up.
They go faster because, again, their lower bodies are closer to the surface of the water and there is less resistance.
In surfing, dropping your head down puts more pressure on the chest area which will lift the back half of your body and board.
There is a sprint swim set that I will list below this video on the blog that helps you feel the difference between head up and head down or
head neutral freestyle.
You can also try this set after you finish surfing a wave and are paddling back out to the surf.
The third technique isn’t really a technique but more of a state of mind.
You have to COMMIT.
I know it sounds hoakie, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before,
but I have seen time and time again how when a person really wants something, amazing things happen.
I have also seen a lot of great waves go by because the surfers paddling for them didn’t really want them –
maybe due to the fact that they were scared of the size or what was down below or whatever –
when you want it, you paddle like a crazy person to get it.
I’ve had some correspondence with Nick Carroll who was on the ground during the Rip Curl event and he said when he spoke to Nat,
Nat said that he has never paddled so hard in this life.
And Nat’s been surfing in contests, big contests for a long time even though he is relatively young.
That’s saying a lot about how important committing to catching a really wave is.
In summary, those are your three key takeaways.
The first one, especially if you are behind the wave,
make sure you kick hard and get that back half of your body and board up out of the water.
The second technique is the get your head down and again this is especially helpful if you are trying to catch up to the swell,
get that head down so that it lifts the back half of your body and board up and out of the water even more.
And the third thing is to make sure you commit and you catch that wave.
So those are your three takeaways.
I will post a few swim sets below this video in the blog so you can try them out and they will help out with the first two techniques.
I will also post some swim drills you can do in the pool or you can try some of these sets out in the water
while you’re on your board after catching a wave and paddling back out.
If you are interested in the xswim for surfers program we have a lot of these swim drills and sets that will help you with your paddling.
You can check it out at the xswim for surfers website.
I really appreciate you watching.
Thank you very much for watching.
I welcome comments and questions.
If you feel like this video was helpful, share it with your friends.
Until next time, I’ll see you in the water.