APP semester 3 work _ Clément Blanchet _

Let’s study some surfing technical aspect: what is the perfect surf stance?

     Let’s imagine you’re going to surf with a friend. He lends you a wide, long, and thick surfboard that turns out to be quite stable, hence you could express your full potential. Then you rent a cozy and tight-fitting neoprene suit to make your biceps look good on photos. On the beach, he learns you how to pop up on the sand to succeed your take off when you’ll be in the water. Everything seemed perfect because your friend invites you at a perfect surfing weather day, however as there are tubular outstanding one-meter waves, he forgets you once in the water.
     For now, you can’t go behind where the waves break to catch up with your friend because you’re not able to read oceans and current efficiently yet. Even if you’re not in the biggest and most radical part of the waves, you take off on already broken ones, which is easier. Due to your exceptional motricity if you’re from Leicester, or a good STAPS one otherwise, you manage to do every take off perfectly. Nonetheless, once you stand on your feet you fall… That’s why I’m going to explain to you the perfect surf stance, that will later allow you to generate loads of speed and try radical and impressive maneuvers, as aerials or tube riding for instance.

     Let’s analyze the most functional stance – to be efficient and avoid injuries –, focusing on the lower body, that are the feet, the knees, and the hips. Let’s contextualize, when I talk about surf stance, I think at the position we might want to take in order to control our board, allowing us to perform maneuvers. I won’t approach esthetical but less efficient stances, used when we have occasion on a longboard, where we may close our feet up, to take more stylized poses aiming at looking as cool as possible (whereas we’re not in many cases).

     Therefore, you first need to have feet wider than your shoulders. Nonetheless, feet are naturally going to point outwards, thus when you bend your legs, your knees are going outwards as well: that’s just the biomechanics of it. This isn’t tragic as we use this nice and solid default stance in many sports, but your hips will be rather locked so it’s difficult to move your weight forwards and backward on the board in this position. As on a bike you go in the way you look, however in this way looking in front of you isn’t easy. Don’t look your feet or your board, you will fall or have a terrible form. In fact, rotating your hips is the key: in a movement starting from your head and what you look, with arms following, will make you turn easily and efficiently. That’s why you need to bring your back knee inward, hips will face forward.
     If you bring your knees inward with feet pointing out, you’re going to put a huge torsion on ligaments. A lot of pro surfers suffer from that kind of injury. To fix it, you only must put your feet at least parallel or coming inward slightly, hence knee can go inward with less torsion on joints.

     Finally place most of your weight on the front foot and slightly bend your knees. Be careful to place your backfoot above the board’s fins which are a pivot point that will help you become more advance. On the other hand, lateral control is due to balance from heels to toes (I’ll develop it with the “generating speed” chapter). Then if we approach technical aspects on maneuver, we will study arm positioning.


     I spend between nearly 50 minutes thinking and then writing, tell me if I wrote to much or not enough. Hope you enjoyed your first lesson.

     Let’s continue our story, your friend who took you surfing just died from drowning, what a shame! However, he bequeaths you his 26L volume & 5’11’’ feet long, high-performance surfboard, and that is cool. The problem is that you can’t surf it: it sinks when you’re on it, the water level is at your chest when you sit on it. Thus, you can’t even paddle efficiently, and moreover, you can’t take off because every time you’re pushing on your hands the board sinks above water level as you can’t generate enough speed before being in the perfect surf stance you master.

     Then you went to a surf shop and guess what: they tried to sell you the exact same board, which is one of the most expensive, what a coincidence… That’s why I’m giving you this short guide, as “there are so many boards, which one should I choose” being neophyte?
You understood it surfboard choice depends a lot on your surfing abilities, but ocean state is a determinant factor also. Pro surfers haven’t only one board for a special place, but many boards for this same place depending on wind speed and orientation but above all on swell size, period, and orientation. However, that isn’t our case.

     There are tons of shapes, sizes, and price points, however, don’t interest yourself in before being more confident in the water. The classic beginner surfboard is foam board, preferably an 8 or a 9-foot foam board looking your size and your estimated weight. “Don’t be afraid by the size you’re going to like the extra volume” (I’m quoting an English teacher talking to girl students). You’ll have to keep this foam board the time you learn how to paddle, timing, efficient pop-up, perfect surf stance, how to read waves, and then doing all of this in a fraction of a second. It can take a few sessions, or many years, depending on peoples around you and ocean conditions.

     This board will have a lot of volumes, hence you won’t sing, it represents the measurement of how buoyant the board is (length * width * thickness = volume, for instance, 5’10’’ * 19,5’’ * 2,5’’ = 28,5 litters in average, it depends on shapes). Therefore, that kind of board will make paddling and popping up into waves so easier. In fact, more waves equal more fun, motivation, and progression at once. Furthermore, foam is safe for a beginner.

     Finally, don’t worry surfing isn’t about how cool you are and how small is your board (mine is really short according to what all the girls are saying…) but more about getting waves.

     Let me introduce you to wave forecasting that is having chances to get out of your bed the right day. Yes, waking up at 4:30 am to enjoy the thermal breeze whereas waves aren’t there isn’t pleasant…
Between the time when the wind blows over a distant ocean to the moment you paddle into a wave, there have been an almost incalculable number of influences and interactions that have shaped your wave into the rising wall of water you are planning to ride. We’re going to be looking at three impactful factors describing an upcoming swell.

- The swell Height (in feet or meters) is the bottom to top height, out in open ocean.

- The swell period is the gap in time between two waves measured in seconds, which is a much better indication of how much power is contained within the wave itself. In fact, wave energy travels in an orbital path like a rolling ball, thus measuring period allows measuring the diameter of that ball.

- The swell direction is given in degrees or cardinal and intercardinal directions. It affects waves depending on the geography of the coastline, for instance, the west swell won’t be slow down as much as the south swell at Lacanau.

     Finally, the steepness of an individual beach will determine the final height of the wave when it breaks at the shore. Remember to assume that actual wave heights will range to be both shorter and taller than the predicted ones, it’s an average, significantly impacted by both swell period and direction. Let’s imagine a strong storm, big tidal coefficient allowing a WNW swell to pass sandbank, and you could have interesting waves in Soulac.

     On the other hand, an offshore east wind will always work, hence you should get up early to enjoy the thermic breeze.

     In conclusion, you can apply this knowledge in lifesaving also. If you know your marine tray perfectly, you can predict exactly how waves, and above all currents, will behave quite precisely a week in advance leaning on the three swell factors and wind direction and strength.

Surfing isn’t a beach spare time but a physical, codified, and competitive sport. Indeed, when you’re catching waves, you use your bones, tendons, and many muscle groups, that’s why we can observe quickly developing flexibility and endurance. Nevertheless, as a regular, motivated, and committed STAPS student you might be asking yourselves: what are the main muscles involved in surfing? Answering should lean us to preventing injuries while taking risks performing high risks maneuvers or take off.

     On the first hand when you paddle and duck dive to catch up with the pic where the nicest waves roll out, your triceps, biceps, deltoids; the trapezius, rectus abdominis, latissimus dorsi, and obliques are working a lot. Knowing that paddling is an only concentric action, which means that the force you produce is more important than the external forces applied to you by your environment, I advise you using the Bulgarian training method and stato – dynamic efforts to grow up strength and speed component that define power.

     That’s why I suggest you mixing strength and speed exercise in the same set, or otherwise in the workout: for instance 6 push-ups with a resistance band (you must choose it to have some real troubles making 10 reps with) with successively 6 explosives jumped push-ups without any resistance as fast as possible; or 30 seconds in a squat position with weight, locking out the joints + 6 high jump lifting knees.
That’s how you become explosive to catch waves. Associate these efforts with resistance work to be efficient for a long while (running, biking, or swimming in a pool and ocean with fins for instance isn’t time wasted). Finally, if you lack motivation remember how it’s challenging to duck dive challenging winter closeouts, that are twice your size tall.

     On the other hand, when catching the firsts waves and surfing, that’s pectoralis major, deltoids, triceps will lift your upper body before your legs start working (hence you’ll need hips, knee, and ankle mobility) to press your board down and take off. Then as your feet touch the surfboard, you’ll bring quadriceps, gluteals, and gastrocnemius into action. Finally, while completing bottom turns, carves, cutbacks, or more radical maneuvers you use torso rotation, hence core and hips strength is necessary.

     Hence you may warm up your abs, knees, ankles, and hips. Remember that stretching won’t be useful (before or after surfing), you only need to focus on mobility and especially squat mobility. In addition, conditioning with the material can be super-efficient when you create instability and close your eyes to erase visual feedbacks. Indeed, that’s how you work proprioception (Schmidt, motor learning and performance, 1993) and therefore balance.

     I also need to prevent you that working takes off on the ground doesn’t have any interesting aspect as catching up a wave and going down following the line only depends on information treatment, ocean reading, and timing. Once you learn the movement and you’re not putting your knee on your board or losing hand contact while performing a jump looking like a burpee (certainly seeing as your lack of flexibility), you’ll have to repeat it in many different contexts each time more challenging.

     Finally training ventilation exercises, as pilates or yoga, could be a great idea for many reasons as well – being, serenity, anti-stress effect. However, don’t worry if you’re not charging at huge swells, quit smoking, and eat well will already be super fantastic.

Mechanicals principles allowing us to explain surfing activity


Do you know any staps student who enjoys biomechanics analysis? That's quite normal, me neither I do not. That's why I'll try to be brief.


At first, for an efficient analyze you need to define pertinent systems to study, written in this way: {system}.
- {Surfer + Board} will be useful to study movement and its causes.
- {Surfer} can also be pertinent to study how you could improve athletes' balance and how you could create pertinent ergometers.

Then you have to do an assessment of external forces that apply to the system {Surfer + Board}.
- weight
- buoyant force
- thrust
- drag
Therefore using the fundamental principle of the dynamics of rotation and of translation (Newton, 1687, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica) allows us to explain movements, calculating accelerations, and deducting speeds, then positions for each body segments. Indeed using calculators as Excel provides strong tools to calculate impulsions, power, distances, and angles between each body segment,  ... and making average for the system.

Finally, let's observe 3 disbalances that make you struggle to stand proudly on your feet but that are used a lot by experts in radical manoeuvers :
- Rotation around the front-to-back axis is called roll.
- Rotation around the side-to-side axis is called pitch.
- Rotation around the vertical axis is called yaw.

I won't develop more this vocabulary for the reason that nobody will understand (except John).

For those who followed this topic, I hope you all became real surfers. Indeed showing off the summer is quite important, however, it's necessary to start working on your surfing abilities as of now. Finally, perhaps you'll discover the real surf spirit and surpass prejudgements about surfing, and looking for something even more important than showing off. I'm not telling this because it's way too late for John's hair to grow long and blond, of course. Finally, my last advice will be that there aren't any decent waves in France in the summer, so enjoy the best season (October November + March April according to me).

That's it, that's the end of my topic, see you on beachbreaks!