Have you been struggling with your pop-up? Your frustration ends from here on out. This week and the following weeks, we will be discussing this surfing skill.
To start, let’s tackle the lie that all of us have been fed up. Pop-ups or what you may know as a pop-up aren’t actually a thing. It’s a myth. Why? It’s simple, ever since I started coaching learner surfers, I always tell my students that you can’t separate yourself from your board completely. You were told to believe that a pop-up is your transition from a lying down position to a standing position while being separated from the board. Hence the different “techniques” you can do to do a “proper pop-up.”
If you are totally separated from your board it allows the water to take control over your board, which could cause a lot of problems. Which means, when you are transitioning or preparing to do a pop-up it’s actually okay to have one or two parts of your body that are touching your board at all time. To put it simply, popping up is not the exact action that we make, and until recently, we haven't been able to see how true this is.
Check out the video down below which was made and shot by Kelly Slater Wave Pool. This footage shows how professional surfers move from lying down to standing up position. WATCH THE CLIP!
If you watch carefully, during the slow-motion clip upon analyzing the video you can clearly see that the placement of the back foot landing first, and then, you see the placement of the front foot that follows.
To put it simply, surfers don't actually separate their bodies from their board, in the process of standing up. This is why calling the action a pop-up is wrong and creates confusion among people who are starting with surfing.
As a beginner, when you hear a pop-up you imagine having to lift your whole body at the same time and landing simultaneously with both feet on the board. Sounds crazy, right?
But this is what creates so much confusion when you're trying to learn to surf, and this is where all the mistakes start happening. When you have the incorrect information, how are you supposed to learn the correct way?
Here’s an IGTV video from the live that me and Kanoa Greene (@kanoagreene on Instagram) made about improving your pop-ups from everyBODY.
Come back here next week to learn improve about developing your pop-up skills!