Last week we talked about not being able to turn because the front arm is locked down to the hip.
"So all I need to do is swing my arms wide to turn the board ?"
Nope, it helps, but there's more to it.
Here the rider is swinging her front arm to the right, good.
But she is not looking in the direction where she wants to go, bad.
Also the twist is of the upper body is stopping at the waist.
Here she is going right but sees the closeout and want to turn back left.
She does swing her front arm to the left, but it is ineffective. She is too upright and there is no transfer from one rail to the other. Her arms swings, but nothing gets transferred down to the feet.
Remember playing with rubberband balsa airplanes ? If you held the body of the airplane and spun the propeller, it would wind up the rubberband. But what if you didn't let go of the propeller, and just let go the body of the plane, what would happen ? The twisting energy would get transferred from the propeller all the way down down down to the tail of the plane. Same goes for the reason we swing are arms, to send the twisting energy down to the feet to twist/turn the board.
Here while looking left, she swings her arm to the left. You can see there's some twisting at the waist, but the front knee isn't "showing" left. ( board is running flat and there's isn't any much of a wave to turn on anyways, so why turn ? )
Here she sets up to turn down backside. Eyes up is good. Leading front hand is good.
But when she goes to turn, she leads with her front shoulder. ( and cocks back with her left elbow ).
The turn is ineffective because she hindge at the stomach while her legs stayed relatively straight.
But the main reason she can not turn properly is because her stance is in the middle of the board.
Eyes looking right. Front arm swinging right. Back arm coming across the front. All look good.
But she doesn't believe, looks down and "stands" up in the turn. Knees lock out. Inside rail catches. Back hand goes up involuntarilly.
Rider wanting to go Left, so she correctly swing her front arm out wide. ( not locked down to the hip )
But what's happening at the top doesn't translate to the bottom where the board is.
The board going left she be turning/edging off the left rail.
But notice the right rail is dropping and catching. She needs to put pressure on the HEELS of her foot, not on the TOES of her foot.
So the answer to turning a surfboard is not to "just swing your arms back and forth", like some instructors tell their students to do. ( but that's better than having them doing nothing and locked down to the waist )
Next week we'll talk more about how to turn a surfboard in part 3.
Until then please check out http://starb.on.coocan.jp/daily/daily0.html to see more.