YOU CAN ONLY LEARN TO SURF AT THE SEA!

This is the sequence of movements you perform to get on the board when you paddle towards a wave. Many people practice the pop-up in their first few days of surfing and eventually it "works" - sometimes better, sometimes worse. Many people stop working on their pop-up here because they think that now it's just about surfing. But there is huge potential here for the landlocked surfer. There are two important aspects of the pop-up: Firstly, the pop-up has to be intuitive. This means that you shouldn't have to think about everything you have to do - positioning your hands, pushing off, pushing up, leg position, direction of gaze, etc. To internalize the pop-up subconsciously, repetition is the key. The more, the better. And this is easy to practice at home.

A small calculation example:
Let's say you go on a surf trip and surf every day. How many waves do you surf? Let's say you catch 10 waves in a 2-hour session, which is pretty good. So on a perfect 7-day surfing holiday, you'll do about 70 pop-ups. If you surf even four weeks a year, that's 280 pop-ups. If you practice 10 pop-ups every day at home, you'll get 3,650 a year - more than ten times that! And you could easily do more.

The point is, you can practice so many more pop-ups in a year than you might not be able to do in 10 years of surfing. The other advantage of practicing pop-ups at home is that you are constantly training the muscles you need for a fast and powerful pop-up. This way you memorize the movement sequence intuitively. And this helps you enormously when surfing, because in the water you can then concentrate on the essentials: surfing itself. You no longer have to work on the pop-up technique because you have it down. The second important element when practicing the pop-up is the correctness of the movement and the position on the board. Because practice makes perfect only when you practice correctly. Incorrect practice leads to memorizing the pop-up incorrectly, which is more detrimental than helpful to surfing. I have included a video here that I think is the perfect training method for the landlocked surfer because it allows you to check your technique and see what needs to be improved. I've been using this method for years: I took a yoga mat, stuck a new surf pad on it and marked the position of my hands. This way I can always check how "clean" and consistent my pop-ups are. Watch the video and start practicing your pop-up at home. The next time you surf you'll feel how much it helps.

Now that we've mastered the pop-up, which "only" needs to be practiced in the water, we're moving on to the next big obstacle to surfing progress for landlocked surfers: paddling. To get into the lineup and catch waves, you need to be able to paddle powerfully and effectively. But it's not just about strength and efficiency, it's also about how long you can keep going. Shoulder strength is often the limiting factor, and I'll explain why.

If you can paddle well, you'll be in the lineup faster, so you'll have more time to surf, you'll be able to position yourself faster and catch more waves. You'll have the stamina to paddle back into the lineup after a wave, you'll surf longer, you'll do better duck dives and thus save more energy fighting the white water. You'll paddle more effectively into waves because you don't have to pause. All of these "little things" ultimately determine whether you surf 5 or 25 waves. The more time you spend on the water and the more take-offs you do, the better you'll get. Of course, paddling doesn't just depend on your shoulders, it's a challenge for your whole body. But the more you integrate your shoulders and "dry paddling" into your daily routine, the more you'll benefit from surfing. I'm emphasizing these points so precisely because the effort is relatively small compared to the benefit. I have a video here with exercises that you can easily integrate into your everyday life.

I have picked out two videos for you from which you can learn a lot.

Of course, there is always room for improvement and learning new things. For example, you can work on increasing your overall flexibility or improving your balance. Grab a Costaboard and try different tricks instead of just wiggling back and forth. Surfing involves moving in all directions, up and down, with different inclines and constant changes. Keeping your balance on a surfboard is really a challenge for balance and strength. The more different tricks you practice on the Costaboard, the larger your so-called "balance range" will become, which will benefit you when surfing. You don't necessarily have to use a Costaboard; you could also just fill a plastic bottle with water and put it on a piece of wood to practice with. But if you want to do it with a bit more style and a community, I'm of course the last person to stop you from buying a Costaboard ;)