THE SWIVEL

Being excellent at catching waves is all about making multiple micro adjustments in your positioning to place yourself in exactly the right place when catching a wave.

Just like a tennis player will bounce on their toes in anticipation of a serve, making multiple small steps before hitting the ball, in surfing we want to do the same.

However, many of these micro adjustments just aren't possible if you're not able to manoeuvre your equipment quickly.

And one of the most important movements to speed up and refine is the swivelling of your board to catch waves.

THE SWIVEL, AND WHY IT MATTERS

Sure, you can likely swivel your board and catch waves to a degree already, and that's great.

But, there's a big difference between being able to turn your board 180 degrees in under half a second vs five seconds.

Here's why.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

POSITIONING: Being able to swivel quickly gives you the ability to paddle out, left or right to get yourself into position for waves, and still give you the time to turn and catch the wave.

ONSHORE WAVES: Surfing onshore waves is very different to surfing offshore waves. The waves are less uniform and much closer together, and as such, make them much more difficult to catch. Surfing waves like this requires much quicker reflexes giving you much less time to prepare for each wave you catch. The ability to swivel fast really helps in these scenarios.

COMPETING FOR WAVES: Lots of waves that people paddle for they fail to catch, and if you're not able to swivel quickly and react in these situations you'll miss waves that could've been yours.

HOW TO SWIVEL ON A DIME IN UNDER 1 SECOND

So you probably know how to swivel your board around already: A bit of a wiggle of the legs, and a few paddles of the arms.

We want to now take that technique and rev up the whole process, so that you can turn your board in a split second

The swivel - when done correctly - is more of a controlled fall than a steady pivot.

Done right, it's one fluid motion from sitting on your board looking out to sea, to full 180 swivel into paddle in one motion.

It'll take a lot of practice to get it right, but it's well worth the investment that's for sure.

Here's how it's done.

Sit on your board with it facing out to the horizon.
Depending on which direction you prefer to swivel in - around to your left, or to your right - hold your outside rail with one hand.
Lean back over the shoulder of your opposite arm, to the point whereby your almost falling backwards.
Allow yourself to fall back, swivelling your board as you do so, turning the whole 180 degrees in one complete movement - almost in a controlled fall.
And that's it, you've done it!

WRAPPING IT UP

There are a few techniques in surfing that aren't taught too often, and aren't that obvious to newcomers to the sport - and the swivel is definitely one of them.

But it's techniques like these that'll leap frog your progression way more than you think.

Why?

Well if you think about it, any technique that helps you to catch more waves is going to give you more time to practice riding waves and more reference experiences as a result.

So my advice would be to you to not overlook this technique, work at it until you've mastered it, as this one little manoeuvre alone, will do your surfing wonders.

THE SWIVEL

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LEVEL 1 BEGINNER

GOTTA HAVE POP!

SPEED

TURNING

THE SUBTLE ART OF NEGOTIATING WAVES

PADDLING

NEXT STEPS...

LEVEL 2 PROGRESSOR

IT'S TIME TO PROGRESS...

POP-UP LIKE THE PRO'S

READING WAVES

CATCHING UNBROKEN WAVES

TURN BABY TURN

TRIMMING

NEXT STEPS...

LEVEL 3 IMPROVER

THE QUICKENING

ANGLED TAKE OFF

SPEED

BOTTOM TURNS

CARVING

CUTBACKS

NEXT STEPS...