[nycwipeout]

I'm shittin', not pukin'

right now i can put out 5-alarm fires, stay 200ft back   

[happy]

ok, only if you didn't brown trout on it. and don't come hobbling downstairs if you run out of tp. i'm on my last roll. i guess i'd spare a few squares if its an emergency.

on another tangent, i left the house this morning to surf and put my board down on the "grass" () in front of the door so i could lock up. when i went to pick the board up i noticed one of our neighbors had allowed his dog to poo on the grass. i thought ew. then i picked up my board and something in me said check the underside. i did.

dog brown trout!

EWWWWWWWWWWWW!

[skSURF]

That's good luck. Oh wait   no a bird shitting on your shoulder is good luck. That just sucks.

[happy]

well, i did get some fun ones, once i left the angry mob at the jetty and went to my favorite spot. but still.

[sir_schadenfreude]

I was with Justin PI once when he stepped on a dog turd barefoot while changing his wetsuit.  Fortunately it was March, and it was frozen solid.  He was all like "OUCH!" 

*LMMFAO*

[little_nasty]

okay, time for a new technique thread.
i'm definitely ready to start pumping my board so i can actually make it around sections and i've tried it a little but it doesn't feel right. i've been watching other people and i can't quite figure out what they're doing. do you weight and unweight your front foot? how? or i've also been told its a kind of side to side thing.
help.

I’ve got a few thoughts for you happy, since I was discussing how to get in the tube without getting left behind with berry.  We kinda brushed on this topic since it has to do with speed though I’m definitely still a kook on the matter.

First, let’s me make the basic geeky physics observation that the wave’s energy is mostly transferred to you through the buoyancy and/or planning force of your board as Potential Energy in the term of height.  As I am sure you know, all that one is doing by surfing (or snowboarding, etc) is translating Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy.  The delicate skill of tube-riding is managing those two interchangeable bundles of energy, like pouring water from one jug to another.  I gave B the example that a trained fighter pilot knows not only the spatial quality of altitude, but also the temporal translatable potential of altitude.  In other words, altitude = speed (“in your backpocket” as I’ve heard said).  (ie. PE = mgh, KE = 1/2mv^2, cancel things out and velocity increases with the root of the height).

Ramble, ramble… Sorry.  Anyway, so the wave is always adding to your store of potential energy while friction from the bottom of your board and from your slashing mid-face gouges is draining your speed.  You can be content taking what the wave is giving you and just manage it as most average or cruising longboarders do ie. the glide (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).  Or you can also add even more to your velocity or energy store by pumping.

Now here I would like to make a distinction to make mechanical point.  I would say that 98% of pumping that I see is not adding any kinetic energy in the form of forward velocity.  I am talking about the specific physical action of a single pump which is actually converting kinetic energy in the form of your muscles pushing up against gravity to lift your energy state to a higher plane on the wave.  Once you are higher on the face, you can ride down the face thereby converting that added height to forward speed.  This may or may not make sense, but from a biomechanical perspective, I believe this is what’s going on.  So what I’m trying to say is: don’t think about adding speed, think about adding height.

So maybe that “jumping” up the face and riding down for more speed is where you are getting/why you are hearing the side to side thing, or weighting/unweighting thing.  But I like to think of it more like shacky:

Think lite and on your toes.

A heel to toe thing..  Ok, maybe not so much heel, but definitely toes.  But it must be said that just making s-turns from rail to rail will not add anything to your speed without that pumping action up the face.

You’ll notice that some surfers really only pump the lower half of their body like a debutante walking down stairs, but really it’s just a modification using less mass and quicker upward action/velocity to add height and so forward velocity (good for a quick burst of speed on small waves).

When I have an open face I can make short moves up and down the face like a skateboard using my nees to pump. But I havent been able to figure out how to pump very well when your trying to get around a closed out section and there is no face to work with.

You’ll notice that pros can pump for speed over whitewater without a nice clean face.  You don’t need face.  Just pump to add height and ride down the wash.  This can often times look floaterish.  I am not too good at this; I think I am too fat.  But when it happens, it feels really good.

Finally, I want to make another distinction that I think is a big deal.  To me, there are two kinds/styles of pumping.  One type is more fin based and the other is more rail based.

The fin based pump was born out of the thruster revolution and is often used out of a big bottom turn especially at point-like breaks.  The snappy lip attack that ostensibly grew out of this back-footed style of speed generation can’t be demonstrated more completely and eloquently than Tom Curren surfing a nice California point break.  The freak master of speed off the bottom turn.  Get a vid, slomo, and try to emulate.  I think that type of speed opens up the entire wave to your creativity (if you’ve got those kind of waves).

The rail-based pump is more old-school.  I see it more on bigger sectiony reef waves with bigger boards more often bigger surfers.  It’s probably easier and I would argue more useful for the non-competing surfer.  Ironically, the best example I can think of at the moment is not a big guy.  Kalani Robb.  Pick up a tape of him surfing G-land and watch how he creates sick sick speed to make the notorious sections.  He’s really a very good technical surfer and has great footwork.

Obviously these two types of styles have big implications for board selection especially trailing rails, fins, and tail shapes.  I draw the distinction because I think they are two different skills which becomes more apparent as you start working on it.  I’m sure others will have thoughts on this as well.

[The Lone Surfer]

my first thought when i read this was that the term "pumping" might be misleading. it is closer to subtle turning. As others have already pointed out you are really extending a bottom turn until you are at a higher point on the wave where you can now take advantage of the potential energy of gravity as you flow back down the face, repeat. especially on small waves this might take on a "pumping" look, where on larger waves you can get the same result with carving or even smaking top turns.

[three_fins_out]

The fin based pump was born out of the thruster revolution and is often used out of a big bottom turn especially at point-like breaks.  The snappy lip attack that ostensibly grew out of this back-footed style of speed generation can’t be demonstrated more completely and eloquently than Tom Curren surfing a nice California point break.  The freak master of speed off the bottom turn.  Get a vid, slomo, and try to emulate.  I think that type of speed opens up the entire wave to your creativity (if you’ve got those kind of waves).

this is a good point that actually would fit in well with a thread about bottom turning - not really all that far from the topic at hand. in fact what curren did was combine a bottom turn with a pump mid-way through. as far as i've seen he was the first to add this little move and it ended up giving him way more speed and also gave the surfer a much steeper angle to go at, and eventually above the lip.

i second LNs comment about watching some curren vid. where surfers before him were carving one fluid turn off the bottom and coming at the lip with much less speed, curren "skated" through the bottom turn with a small, but not insignificant unweighting of the board. the end result was tons more speed (think about less board in the water = more speed retained) and a great angle at that lip.

back to the pumping discussion, it think that a lot of what curren did translates to the mid face unweighting that happy is looking for. essentiallt the "pump" is really a mid face bottom turn. come off the bottom driving into the turn off the back foot, unweight that same foot into an upward glide, and then engage the rail again once you're as high on the wave as possible.

then repeat several times until you have gigantic amount of speed an unleash into the gouging cutback, huge aerial, or bucket spray off the lip of your choice 

[little_nasty]

back to the pumping discussion, it think that a lot of what curren did translates to the mid face unweighting that happy is looking for. essentiallt the "pump" is really a mid face bottom turn. come off the bottom driving into off the back foot, unweight that same foot into an upward glide, and then engage the rail again once your as high on the wave as possible.

this is a good point tfo and good description.

[happy]

thanks all. wow. this is a lot to consider and i will appreciate the loaner of appropriate surf DVDs. i have seen shacky do the abbreviated bottom turn into an immediate pump. it was pointed out to me by RD, to show how to get speed right off the bat. at times it seems shacky doesn't even do much of a bottom turn, so much as drops in almost sideways, pumps, and goes.

anyway, it is a journey from understanding to implementation. but i remember a session not too long ago when i asked TFO and Sir Grind how to get back down from the lip once i initiated a top turn. some suggestions were made and it took a few tries but i got it, if not that day then the next.

i think for me thinking about the kinetic energy of the drop and recreating that moment through a series of smaller movements will be very helpful.

and chizler. eat brown trout.

 

[happy]

but i am somewhat disappointed that this thread has turned away from dog brown trout and back to the original topic

[Shacky]

Happy... remind me to bring you an old classic vid I have entitle "Progressive Surfing Techniques".  It is narrated by Ian Cairns and features Tom Curren displaying his competitive techniques.  He's surfing in small surfing surf and it will show you everything you need to know about getting speed or "pumping".

[sir_schadenfreude]

I think Nasty is right about going higher then riding down again, but I think the back-foot pressure on the downstroke is where the speed is at.  It's the same way you can pump a skateboard up a large halfpipe by pushing your body up through the transitions.  It's like you're squeezing the ramp/wave out behind your board by pressing with your feet, then recoiling to do it again.  My whole thing right now is trying to concentrate on getting a bigger burst of speed this way as I pop up to set up for a better ride.

Any of the "airshow" clips you see on surfline will show you guys who can generate massive amounts of speed on crummy, crumbly little waves.  There was one clip on Surfline from the California state high school championships--held in waist high white water--and those groms could rip that stuff like crazy.

[luke25]

I'm just learning to pump for real myself and I'm thinking it has a big connection to pumping a skateboard down a flat street. you have to be moving first on the skateboard and then you crouch down a bit and then simultaneously swing your hips into a tiny little turn and straighten your legs a bit.  with all four wheels on the ground and loose trucks it feels like the result is a centrifigul reaction force on the board causing the board to move sideways away from the center of gravity of your action, which is somewhere up in your hips.  but the board can't move sideways because the wheels grip the street ... so that energy gets channeled into the direction of least resistance which is forward, the direction you are already moving, and you get a miraculous little burst of speed.  You can pump like this for blocks if you get your timing right and the street is flat, never lifting any wheels off the ground. it's feels like it's about pushing against the street and letting the energy move you forward because it has nowhere else to go.

Now on a surfboard it looks to me like there are a couple kinds of pumping.  The one I understand feels a lot like what I just described.  you're pretty much in trim on the face of a wave but you want more speed so you crouch down a bit, let the board drop down the wave just a tiny bit and simultaneously swing into a tiny turn back up the wave and straighten your legs a bit, .  The effect is that your action pushes the board down and out against the water, and the thing that keeps it from sliding centrifugally out is a combination of the fins holding and the rail being slotted in the wave.  so that energy of your push gets channeled in the direction of least resistance, which is forward, the direction you are already moving.  I can definitely feel it.  Then at the top of your pump the effect little nasty described kicks in and you get to drop back down the face a bit in the setup for the next pump, so you are gaining more speed from graviity and the push of the wave.

I recently saw in some surfshop a video (stylemasters, perhaps) with a classic shortboard barrel rider (maybe buttons?) pumping the rail through a series of frontside hawaiian barrels in slo mo where your could really see all this in action.  I learned a lot from watching that and was excited to find that I could successfully get my 8'4" to gain speed like that on little waist high walls (even with my clumsy application of the technique) so that I was easily overtaking guys on logs who had dropped in on me several yards away and were gliding in trim further down the line (i actually really like surfing behind a drop in because it's a neat view of someone riding a wave and I can learn a lot from it).  This kind of pump isn't really about turning it's more about pushing down and rising up in short little rythmic bursts, where you only move a foot or so up and down the wave.

I have no idea how the pump works when it looks like shortboarders are kickturning across the flats.  maybe it's just an exaggeration of the same thing. sorry this is so long.  but i'm very interested in learning this too!

[surfdawg]

I contend that watching Curren take apart JBay in 92 is enormously inspirational and makes surfing look almost easy, but in fact may be developmentally beyond what Happy need to know at this point in her surfing.

Perhaps watching a few vids of people riding longboards or retro fishes might be better. I do think that the footage should be on long sectiony waves, to illustrate the dynamics of reading wave faces, chasing and racing sections, and subtle foot placement/adjustment.

Pumping the entire wave could be exhausting; scooting up on the board when the wave allows it can give you speed without all the effort and the thigh burn of constantly pumping off the back foot.