Hi my name is Rob. The Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast just wrapped up and had some spectacular surfing performances,
eventually leading to watching Kelly Slater win the contest at a rarely contested Kirra.
While the surfing was incredible, I would like to take a look at a paddle battle that occurred in round 4 between Slater and Bede Durbidge.
Now, both athletes are in great shape, but Bede is taller, with longer arms, and was paddling on a longer surfboard.
Yet, there are a few key stroke techniques that Kelly had used in racing Bede back out to the lineup to win priority over him
and I want to show you how they relate to swimming technique and how you can use them and practice them for your own surfing.
As we watch this clip, there are three things that stand out to me.
Head, Elbow, and Roll
Starting with the first one – Head.
Notice the differences between the movement of Kelly’s head and Bede’s head.
Kelly keeps his head stationary while Bede is rotating his head side to side, trying hard to reach and dig.
So a quick lesson from swimming is this –
swimmers imagine that there is a straight line axis from the tip of their heads down to their tailbones.
They rotate their body on this axis and try to reduce any yawing or right/left motion of the body.
One of the key aspects of this is to keep the head still unless you are breathing,
in which you roll your head when your body rolls, keeping that axis in alignment.
Back to Slater – you can see, his head stays still.
Its up, which is different from swimming regular freestyle but the head stays looking forward and is still.
Bede’s head is all over the place, causing him and his board to “yaw” or move left to right,
ever so subtly and lose forward momentum in the water.
Hence he has to work harder to cover the same distance.
We want to optimize stroke length, or the number of feet or meters you move forward per stroke you take.
Second key – Elbow.
Watch Slater’s elbow stay high as he begins his catch.
Bede’s is okay for some strokes, but you can see it drop on quite a few.
Lesson #2: maintain a high elbow.
In swimming, once the arm is extended, without breaking the wrist, and keeping the elbow high, you begin the catch phase.
However, the power of the stroke, when swimming head down freestyle, is on the second half of the stroke.
So you keep the elbow high as your catch begins, and about a little before halfway through the catch phase,
the power part of the stroke begins and holds to the recovery.
In surfing paddling however, the power portion of the catch phase is in a different place.
If you are on a prone paddleboard, or even on a thicker longboard, or on any craft in which your body is out of the water,
the power portion of the stroke is in the first half of the catch.
On a shortboard, the power portion of the catch phase is a combination of the power portion of paddling a paddleboard
(mostly first half of the catch) and the power portion in swimming regular freestyle (mostly middle and second half of the catch) –
this is because on a shortboard, you are not completely in the water, but you’re not completely out of the water.
Watching Slater’s stroke, his elbow stays high from the beginning which helps him retain more of the first half of the power range than
Bede whose elbow is low in the beginning, even though he brings it up halfway through the stroke.
It would be okay if Bede was swimming regular freestyle though his stoke would not be optimized completely.
However, because he is on a shortboard, he misses out on most of that first part of the power in the catch by not having his elbow high.
When the elbow is high, the forearm and the hand act together perpendicular to the ocean floor,
giving the surfer the highest power in the stroke.
The longer you have your arm in the power portion of the catch phase, the faster you will go.
Third – Roll.
As with the first point (keeping the head still) the roll has to do with that imaginary line from your head to your tailbone.
Just as in swimming, you want to roll your body along this axis, reducing the yawing motion or right/left motion as much as possible.
However, when surfing, you don’t want to roll as much as in swimming.
Why? Because if you do, you will fall off your board.
The roll from rail to rail is subtle.
What it is doing is providing you the greatest reach forward without causing that yawing motion,
the left/right motion of the body and board.
So there are three key techniques that you should also use when paddling your shortboard –
head, elbow, roll – head still, elbow high, subtle roll rail to rail on axis.
How can I practice this when I am not surfing?
The best training technique in the pool is head up freestyle.
Head up freestyle incorporates all of these aspects
and mimics a shortboard’s resistance in the water (more on that issue of water resistance in a later post).
Take a look at the positioning of head up freestyle.
Look familiar?
Looks like paddling on a shortboard without the board.
Head still, up and looking forward.
High elbows throughout the power portion of the stroke –
note that in head up freestyle swimming, the power portion of the stroke is the same as on a shortboard –
the power portion is more the front half of the stroke all the way through to almost the end portion of the catch phase.
The reason – your body is submerged lower in the water than with head down freestyle where there is much more glide to the stroke in the
first half of the catch.
The keys to head up freestyle –
head still, looking forward.
High elbows. High stroke rate.
Kicking to keep the rest of your body closer to the surface of the water.
And that is why in the XSWIM for Surfers training program,
after you finish the building the base week and the interval training and get into the surf specific training week,
there is a lot more head up freestyle – it is more surf specific.
There you have it.
Next time on your shortboard, try it out – keep you head still, looking forward, elbows high in the catch phase,
and a subtle roll from rail to rail.
Practice in the pool with head up freestyle,
either on your own or learn more about the XSWIM for SURFERS training program at www.xswimforsurfers.com
Hope you enjoyed this analysis.
I welcome comments, questions, ideas, anything that drives the enjoyment of surfing and of fitness more.
My name is Rob and I look forward to hearing from you
See you in the water.