Photo: @riseupsurfretreats//@salty_see
All turns aren’t created equal. Some are tiny little speed checks meant to keep us from flying too far out in front of the pocket. Some are massive, gouging maneuvers using every bit of juice a wave has to offer. Some link from one maneuver to the next. And the list goes on. If you ask Kassia Meador, no matter the turn, it’s a foundational part of your entire surfing repertoire.
“So many people get on a longboard and they immediately want to run to the nose. But what sets you up for noseriding best is actually turning. You’ve got to go back to go forward,” she says in Kassia Meador’s Definitive Guide to Longboarding 3.0. In her new course, Kassia offers some insight into how she approaches everything from stalling to keeping herself near the pocket — all with a mixed bag of turns.
It’s All About Leverage
“I physically could not muscle around a 9’5″ surfboard, but leverage helps me turn that board,” she says. The key here is in foot placement — finding that leverage point that sits right over her fin(s). You will learn proper compression and extension through turns as well, which will help you maintain speed and engage your rails, but the body-board connection will always start with the leverage offered by the proper foot positioning.
“This placement and adjustment can be as small as just an inch or two to either side. But those micro adjustments are really going to help you stay fluid with your surfing.”
Find That Pocket
“When you’re going too fast, you want to get back toward the pocket of the wave where all its energy is. You always want to be in that power pocket, or at least close to it,” Kassia says.
You won’t be sitting tight in the pocket of every single wave from start to finish, but knowing and feeling where it is will translate to your awareness of the entire wave. This will also lead you directly into the flow of a very gratifying pattern…
The Figure-Eight
“Everything in surfing is this really beautiful figure-eight pattern because those are the angles that fit in the wave,” Kassia explains.
And if you think about it, most turns are at least one curve of a figure-eight drawn into the face of a wave. Climb up the wave face and into a cutback. Make your way back to that pocket before bouncing off the whitewash and redirecting back into the wave face. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Linking all those turns together is the flow we all look for on most waves.
“The bigger the wave, the bigger the figure eight. The smaller the wave, the more subtle that figure eight.”
Kassia breaks down footage and elaborates more on these ideas in her new course, Kassia Meador’s Definitive Guide to Longboarding 3.0, where The Inertia readers can save 10 percent by using code WELCOME10 at checkout and gain access to her entire 45-video lesson course.
