Surfing & How to Catch a Wave

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Schell Michael. I'm here with Expert Village and today we're going to be doing a series on how to surf. So, let's talk about how you're going to catch the perfect wave. Positioning has a lot to do with it, let's just go right into that. When you paddle out there in the lineup, the lineup is where everybody usually waits on the outside of the waves, before the waves break, so that's waiting in the lineup. If you paddle out, like we've talked about, through the channels, you'll get out there and you'll wait. You can lay on your board, you can sit on your board. The best thing is to be sitting, it gives you a little more height advantage, you can kind of see what's going on out there in the ocean, you can see when the ripples are coming. Most people start to get a little restless when the waves start coming, so you'll know what's going to happen. You can just probably sit out there for a few minutes and just see what people do. So you'll see the wave coming at you, you'll want to turn yourself in the position where you're facing shore and you'll just start paddling and you want to paddle hard, it's not something where the wave is just going to push you unless it's a big day, sometimes the waves can just give you that push that you need, but most likely, you want to just cup your hands, you don't want your fingers open because the water will just go right through your fingers. Keep your hands cupped like this and one at a time, you just want to paddle, paddle, paddle as hard as you can. As soon as you almost feel like a surge coming behind you, that's when you'll know that you're on the wave, you'll just feel it. It's almost just like somebody just gave you that extra push. You never want and try and start getting up and all those things when you're not on the wave because you'll find yourself kind of falling off the back of the wave and you're kind of in this funny half position and you're not really going anywhere. So, just make sure you paddle hard and wait until you feel that extra push behind you and then you're ready to get up."