Question: When I try to turn my longboard, I always fall on my back or land on my face. Would buying a Mid-Length board help ?
Answer: Instead of wasting money, work on your TIME and PLACE.
Here is an example of falling on your back.
Problems:
#1 trying to turn from the middle of the board. ( place )
#2 No twist of the shoulders and waist.
#3 Turning too early or too late. ( time )
Here is an example of landing on your face.
Problems:
#1 Turning in the flats. ( place )
#2 Turning too late ( time )
#3 Hinging at the waist. Bodyline broken.
Most of the time that beginners get "Stuck" in a turn is because they initiate their turn too late and too far out on the shoulder.
By the time the brain tells the body to turn the board, it is too late and not enough speed or wave angle to turn off on.
You maybe looking ahead to the place you think is best to turn on. But remember, the energy is rolling up the face of the wave.
So in a few feet, that energy sends you up too high on the lip to come back down, and you get stuck at the top.
( sounds familiar ? )
Another problem is "tracking", like your board was riding on a train track.
Here the rider did a little cut or turn down. ( you can see the spray off the inside rail going forward )
His upperbody, shoulders and hands are counter-balancing to keep in from fall off the board.
But the board "tracks", and squirts out going straight. His body can't compensate, upper body and head goes pass the rail and he gets bucked off.
He turned too hard, compensated to hard ( then not enought ) and didn't get back on rail early enough to control the board.
In the previous photo, there was too much wave for the rider to handle.
Here there is not enough wave to keep the rider upright, so he falls over.
He turned to far out in the "flats". He should have initiated his turn way earlier on the shoulder.
To turn a surfboard, you need to turn off the fins, which is at the tail of the board. ( fine, you know that already )
But you also need to turn at the proper place and the proper time.
Here you can see the boy initiated his turn between the curl and the shoulder.
Look under his butt, and you can see the engagement of the inside rail by the spray going down and too the right.
Then in the cutback, you can see the spray going up and to the left.
If he turned too early, it would be too tight to fit in the space provided and the energy of the curl would have too much angle.
If he turned too late, he would be too far out on the shoulder. There would be no edges to push off of. Plus he would lose too much momentum and speed to keep the rail/board from sinking.
( Yes, I know he's not on a longboard. It is just such a good photo of basic turning technique )
Are you falling back in your turns ?
Are you landing on your face when you try to cutback ?
Then you need to work on WHEN you turn ( TIME ) and WHERE you turn ( PLACE ).
"But How will I learn those ?" ............... uh well, ....... it takes TIME.
Please check out Hope Cheng photos, Jeremy Aireal photography on FB and http://starb.on.coocan.jp/daily/daily0.html to see more.