Ace Buchan shares a word of advice on how to improve your pop-up and get you to your feet quicker and with more intention. Photo: Inspire Courses/Jacob Wooden
Editor’s Note: Check out Ace Buchan’s Guide to Precision Surfing and more courses designed by the best in surf and outdoors on Inspire Courses. The Inertia readers can enter code WELCOME10 to save 10 percent.
Some people make analyzing the nitty-gritty mechanics of a pop-up about as complicated as correcting my slice from the tee box. Foot placement, timing, hip movement…yeah, there are a lot of moving parts, but ultimately, we’re just trying to jumble it all into one fluid and balanced movement. That’s overwhelming for a beginner and frustrating for a more experienced surfer who finds a kink they need to work out. So why not simplify it as much as possible?
Championship Tour veteran Ace Buchan takes a little bit of that approach when analyzing footage of himself. For him, it all starts with the very first movement after he’s stopped paddling: hand placement.
“You can see that (the hands are) actually further back and they’re not in line with my shoulders,” he says in his new Guide to Precision Surfing with Inspire Courses. “You often see people with their hands too far forward. And it’s much harder to kind of carry the body weight.”
To test this out of the water, Buchan suggests just doing a push-up and trying different hand placements; hands at shoulder height, ribs, torso, etc. There is such a thing as too high or too low, but Ace advises something that is a bit unconventional in the instruction world: “Do what feels natural for you. Everyone moves differently.”
“If you try to do a push-up with your hands out in front of you, it requires a lot more strength than if you have them further back,” he adds.
You can also test hand placement that feels the most stable and secure by just standing in front of a wall, leaning into it, and then pushing yourself away. You should notice a clear difference in strength and leverage when the hands are at shoulder height as opposed to chest height. From there, you can pay attention to the subtle differences when the hands are lower at the ribs, mid chest, and so on. Like Ace says, everyone moves differently, and you’ll start to notice what feels the most stable.
Ace breaks down more of his pop-up movements and other mechanics in his Guide to Precision Surfing, but his focus on hand placement as a first step is a good foundational piece of advice for surfers at any level.
Check out Ace Buchan’s Guide to Precision Surfing now. The Inertia readers save 10 percent with code WELCOME10 and you can read about Ace’s insights on board selection here.
