COMBINATION DRILL

It is very unusual, once past the beginner level of surfing instruction, that a coach would instruct a group of surfers around the same level of surfing ability.

A particular coach might for instance, have a surfer who is just starting to enter contests, another who is the club champion, and yet another who has ambitions of representing their country.

The question is, how does a coach make the training session of equal value to each surfer?

It is this author’s experience that the best method is to use “combination drills”for the more advanced surfers.

Combination drills are ones where the surfer is required to attempt to achieve more than one objective per drill.

This is in contrast to the majority of drills outlined in this publication, which have only one desired outcome per drill.

The novice trainer should be quite rightly allocated only one objective per drill, otherwise the challenge of the drill might be too much for a successful outcome.

The experienced surfer on the other hand, should be challenged by allocating a number of objectives per drill to increase the difficulty of the training.

Examples of combination drills include:

  • Perform 3 major manoeuvres per wave, one has to be a vertical manoeuvre (target manoeuvre)
  • “Run around” drill, perform 4 manoeuvres per wave, finish all your waves successfully
  • Catch only 3 waves in 20 minutes, each “Halo” manoeuvre should be different from the previous one, surf rail to rail through the flat sections (no bouncing)
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