OA Surf Guide: Prone Surfing

OA Surf Guide: Prone Surfing

One of the first skills beginner surfers should learn before attempting to stand up on a surfboard is prone surfing.

Prone surfing is a really great way to learn how to control the surfboard, as well as get comfortable catching and riding waves before you learn to pop up. Often when people struggle with the pop up, it's because they've not entered the wave 'cleanly'. This means the surfboard planing through the water, flat and controlled, rather than wobbling rail to rail.

First we need to paddle well to catch a wave cleanly, for tips on how to do this, see our surf guide on the paddle.

Once you've caught the wave, you want to bring your hands flat to the deck of the board, close to your chest. We want to avoid grabbing our rails, as this is the least stable part of the board and will cause it to wobble if pressure is applied.

Once our hands are nice and flat on the deck, we simply push up to unweight the nose, and now you're prone surfing.

Steering

We can learn to 'steer' the surfboard from lying down, to get a feel for how weight transfer directs the board.

We can keep our chest close to the board to accelerate forward, bring our chest up to slow down, lean left and right, and even bring the board to a dead stop by putting all our weight back onto the tail of the board.

It's important that while we steer, we keep our hands flat to the board and close to our chest, and our legs together. If we bring our legs apart and grab the rails when we try to steer, it will cause us to 'bog' our rails (apply too much weight) and we'll fall off the surfboard.

Once you've mastered controlling the board in prone position, you are ready to begin popping up!

For more information on the pop up, you can check out our how-to video on Instagram. Or, you can come and do a lesson with our experienced surf coaches!