RealSurf Surfers' Forum

Nick
I get what you mean about being out of the water and not being able to rotate
At the end of the stroke and while returning the arm forward is where I am still missing the image.

As the stroke has ended and I draw my hand out of the water at about my waist
Then my upper arm raises with high elbows and my forearm rotates perpendicular to the water with finger tips almost dragging the water?

I am probably over thinking it but I usually have to visualize something to have it make sense.
Maybe someone will find a good video of the return portion of the stroke

On another note I spent so much time looking on you tube at paddling technique and it's always just some young chick in a bikini laying in the sand saying reach all the way forward and pull all the way back. It's funny how people don't analyze their movements. Maybe it's just an American way of doing everything "quick and dirty"(as they say).

Nick don't forget to look into publishing an ebook I bet you can make some sales in other countries to help fund a nice surf trip.

Aaronarizonasurfer wrote: Nick don't forget to look into publishing an ebook I bet you can make some sales in other countries to help fund a nice surf trip.

Yeah NC. In fact, I nominate myself as your e-book manager. 70-30 split, of course.

Aaronarizonasurfer wrote:As the stroke has ended and I draw my hand out of the water at about my waist
Then my upper arm raises with high elbows and my forearm rotates perpendicular to the water with finger tips almost dragging the water?

Keep It Simple mate.

Rather than lifting the hand, think of the elbow drawing the hand straight up out of the water at the recovery end of the stroke.

The elbow doing the lifting transfers the recovery effort into the big middle back muscles and away from the shoulder and trapezius/neck, allowing the shoulder and arm to relax. It's amazing how relaxed the arm can feel during a correct paddle stroke (just as it does in a correct swim stroke).

Elbow tilts a little forward so the hand follows it up the line of the board. Then back to the catch.

Thanks for the ebook tip, I have thought about various forms of it.

Just something I want to add to this, and this is just personal experience so take with plenty of salt - I've been suffering from impingement/bursitis in the shoulder and after (mainly trial and err) I realized that I was bring my elbow up high too much on the way back to the catch - this compresses the subacromial space and (can in my case) lead to bursitis. So now I still lift the hand out with the shoulder, but keep the elbow low as possible on the way back to the catch.

my brain hurts
i should paddle with my elbows ?
just tell me which guy i should paddle like,
kolohe andino or slater ?

aaronn wrote:my brain hurts
i should paddle with my elbows ?
just tell me which guy i should paddle like,
kolohe andino or slater ?

No, you should paddle from the small of your back, like a dis-articulated windmill out to your fingertips.

video,video, show me video

Nic's got it right - learn to swim (properly) - head up freestyle transfers directly to paddling. While you are swimming, remember to do lots of backstroke to balance your musculature and loosen your shoulders.

Stretch.

As for paddling technique lifting both feet out of the water and crossing your ankles looks really cool

aaronn wrote:video,video, show me video

to make a real difference, you'd need to have someone shoot video of you, then have someone critique and compare it with a corrected stroke.

In the meantime...probably the technically best paddler on tour is Parko. KS is pretty good too specially in sprint wave catching form.

Here is a good tutorial I found when looking at accomodation for Bali.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3cf8OiRnKg

Nick, is the "deep catch" your idea of what you are describing in your posts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRkZTcla ... r_embedded

Yeah kinda.

The sculling thing's been out of favour for a long time in swimming circles.

Great thinking man, I also prefer his book must be on sale so that we can get detail about important stuff easily and within low cost.

Just had a cortisone injection due to severe inflamed shoulder joint, due to round arm technique and trauma.The strength lost was pretty significant, feels good now and surfing so much better but dont let it get to that the tip.

Okay, its maybe not the correct paddling technique ....But I was surprised when I saw a girl on her softboard. How she comes to the line up. Okay, a softboard is a diffrent board or whatever it is. But seriously, this girl stroking the water this her hands. I was not sure, why she did this. I think, she was under shock. She looked like a shark followed her and she forgot to paddle. Or she had no idea, what she did. I forgot to asked her, how she stroking in the Line up. She not less energy and it looked very elegant. The end of this story, she stroking after maybe 3 minutes back to the beach.

Yeah can't do it that way unfortunately.

You can't hope to learn anything in surfing if you approach it piecemeal. Paddling feeds back into wave-catching decisions and takeoff angles, which feeds straight into turn timing, which feeds into underlying posture and balance issues, which arise from the number of waves you've caught, which arises from how effective you are in the paddle stroke. etc etc etc. Everything flows off everything else.

The customer might think he or she knows what he or she wants to learn, but that's almost never the case. Often the fault lies elsewhere and you only discover it in an oblique sort of way while you're out surfing and trying to figure out something else entirely. This process of discovery and self-instruction can't happen in neatly packaged little segments and I'd feel a fraud if I constructed something along those lines.

In my opinion these are the best videos in learning paddling technique in terms of understanding what you are doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvAMq9rSzyU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO27SsVRyUk

The best tip for paddle surfing for me comes from Mark Visser.
I've been using since I watched this video and it really works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrGlON7y ... OEy3zjWEQw