Question - "My longboard is too hard to turn, what shortboard size and volume do you recommend I get ?"
Answer - "Yes, Longboard are hard to turn so make you current longboard shorter. "
Bottom turn on a knee high wave. But notice she didn't angle in to the wave, but angle OUT, to do a fade turn.
Her board is about 9 feet long. How much of the board is out of the water ? Say half, so about 4 1/2 feet.
Coming out of the bottom turn, she steps forward to get the board to use more of it's lengthy rail line.
Now 2/3rd of the board is in the water.
Out on the shoulder, she cuts back ( comes back )
1/2 of the board is submerged.
She goes back to the breaking curl. Moves up to the middle of the deck.
Transition time from outside rail to flat bottom. She is stepping back.
Now back onto the inside rail ( notice spray now coming off the left rail, where before the white water rebound if was coming off the right rail ) She leans her body forward without taking a step forward. Again look how much of the nose is out of the water.
Wave starts to fatten up as it nears the beach. So she steps forward to move the balance point foward and increase glide.
Then she steps back on the tail to pop up the nose of the beach break lip.
Yes, it is harder to turn a 9 foot board, so don't try to turn the whole board. Make your longboard shorter by stepping back to the tail and bring up the nose. That will make a board half it's size. So like turning a 5 foot board !!
" So why don't I just get a 5 foot board ?". Because most beginners don't have the paddle strength or reactions time needed to take off on steeper area of a wave where shortboards NEED to take off at.
** Tip ** if you can't turn your current board, say a 7 footer, force yourself to surf a 8 footer for 2 weeks straight. After using the 8 footer for a while, your 7 footer will be super easy to turn.
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