For people who don’t surf, it’s easy to romanticise what it’s like out in the water. Conjuring up images of sitting out there in calm waters, only to turn around and easily paddle into a clean set wave when it arrives. But the reality is that there is a whole lot of in-between time. Even for good surfers, a very large proportion of a session is spent paddling around and getting into position, and for beginners that proportion is substantially higher.
Navigating the waves breaking further out to sea than you are is a huge part of surfing and will largely dictate how much time you spend getting thrown around like a ragdoll, and how much time you spend actually surfing. Exactly how you navigate those waves depends on the breaks – plenty of spots, in particular point breaks, have relatively obvious channels that you can access and paddle through to get out the back without having to take too many waves on the head. Many other spots, however, are a little less straightforward, and even in the simpler spots to navigate you’re invariably going to find yourself staring into the belly of a wave at some point.
It’s for that reason that duck diving is such a fundamental skill in surfing. If you watch the pros, they duck dive under swathes of white water bigger than their no doubt sizeable houses and pop back up the other side without appearing to have lost any ground whatsoever. Head down to your local break and watch someone with a little less nous in the water, and they’ll probably be getting thrown around by a foot of white water like they’re in the impact zone at Nazaré.
Clearly it’s a pretty important skill, and one which can hugely impact your enjoyment of surfing, your ability to get out the back and actually catch waves, and in turn your ability to improve. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the fundamental elements of a good duck dive, how to improve your duck diving and more.
How to duck dive
So you’re on your board, facing out to sea, and a mass of white water is headed your way. If you do nothing, you’ll be headed back towards shore pretty quickly, which we don’t want. Instead, you’re going to get the nose of that board deep under water, let the wave pass over you, and pop back up the other side ready to keep paddling – and probably do the same thing, and maybe again, and maybe one more time for good measure. In terms of technique, duck diving can take a bit of getting used to and isn’t quite as simple as just reading an explanation and then executing perfectly – practice does help a lot in this case – but these are some of the technical elements that you should try to implement.
So back to that wave. It’s charging towards you with every intention of hitting you in the head, which is the perfect time to enact Step One.
Step One: Paddle towards the wave
It might seem counterintuitive if you’re fresh to the surfing game given that the wave is exactly the thing that you’re trying to avoid, but if you want to get underneath it without getting swept too far out of position you need as much momentum as possible. So point your board towards that white water and get those arms pumping!
Step Two: Get your nose underwater
No, not your shnoz, the nose of your board. Just before the wave hits you, grab the rails of your board around where your chest is. Just as the wave hits you, push that nose into the water and follow that trajectory with your head and shoulders. The exact timing of this is one of the main things that will improve with practice – too late and the wave will still take you backwards, too early and you’ll find yourself popping back up before you want to and end up with the same result.
Step Three: Slide your knee upwards
This is another step that takes a lot of getting used to. It’s not enough to just push the nose of your board underneath the water and pop up on the other side – you need to really push through the wave in order to counter its power. To do that, while continuing to hold the rails of your board, slide your knee or foot up the board a little. This will both help to maintain stability, but will also help to push the board forward through the wave. It’s not a particularly easy thing to explain and is something that you really need to practice, but essentially imagine that you are literally pushing yourself and your board through the wave – because basically, that’s what you are doing.
These are the three main steps to a duck dive. Simple, right? But as mentioned, the three steps do require plenty of practice to even get close to perfecting, so you’ll need to get out there and do some surfing. There are, however, some things that you can practice at home to help out, and some specifics to focus on to improve your duck diving while you’re in the water, so let’s take a look at some of them.
How can I get better at duck diving?
As simple as the above three step process might seem, perfecting your duck dive can take years, and struggling with one isn’t something that only applies to beginners. It’s not uncommon for surfers to improve fairly significantly on their actual surfing while still being a pretty average duck diver – I was one example.
For years after starting out in my early 20s, even after regularly surfing for an extended period, I struggled with my duck dives. I knew what the process was and thought I was executing the technique reasonably well, but lo and behold, every time a wave passed I’d pop back up a long way behind the surfers who, just seconds earlier, were right alongside me – or alternatively, I’d come off my board completely and be left at the mercy of the wave. It certainly didn’t completely ruin my experience and I was still able to develop my actual surfing, but the reality was that I spent more time paddling, less time in the positions I wanted to be in, and subsequently got less waves than I could have with a better duck dive. And as obvious as it may be to say, getting less waves invariably means that your rate of improvement slows.
There were a few things I was doing wrong before, one day that I distinctly remember, it all clicked. A large part of the process of getting to that point is simply practice, but there were also some tangible areas which I needed to sort out – mistakes which are relatively common among beginners and intermediates.
The first of these was the speed with which I was paddling towards the wave. I’d go at it kind of half-arsed and often, slow right down just before I began my dive – the exact opposite of what you should be doing. To negate the momentum of the wave as much as possible you want to hit it with as much speed as you can, so paddle hard and don’t slow down until the moment that you begin your duck dive.
The next thing which I realised I’d been doing wrong once I finally started doing things right was not pushing my board down deep enough. For whatever reason, in my head I only needed to get it just below the surface, and then that would make it easier to pop back up on the other side. It doesn’t. Instead, it makes it easier for the wave to grab you and drag you away from where you want to go. Make sure that you push that nose aggressively towards the sea floor to get yourself as far away from the power of the wave that you’re trying to avoid as possible.
I also struggled with the placement of my knee on the board to drive through the wave. For a long time I just sort of skipped this step, because it didn’t seem to do much when I did it. That’s because I was doing it wrong. This needs to be a really conscious part of your duck dive – you literally need to bring your knee or foot onto the back half of your board and push down and forward. This will ensure that you get through the wave without being slowed down as much as possible, and also that you pop up on the other side.
The final, somewhat counterintuitive aspect of your duck dive that you can rectify to improve it is to avoid trying to come to the surface! Humans are buoyant, surfboards are buoyant, so there’s no need for you to force the issue. Push your board down and stay down, and you’ll naturally come back up – ideally when the wave has well and truly passed.
What volume surfboard can you duck dive?
It’s one of the more annoying catch 22s in surfing that in general, the less experience you have the bigger the board you’ll need, which in turn makes it a lot more difficult to duck dive. With a shortboard it’s a hell of a lot easier to get your board under the wave and comfortably resurface on the other side, but unfortunately if you don’t have much experience, you’ll also find yourself unable to stand up on a wave.
If you’re a full-blown beginner and are on a really big board, the reality is you won’t be able to duck dive it because it will just be too buoyant. There are some other techniques to navigate white water like the turtle roll, or abandoning ship entirely, though particularly with a big board you need to make sure that you’re certain there is no one else near you if you want to do this.
Once you start working your way down the size scale though, duck diving will become easier. There is no hard and fast rule for what size board you can duck dive, and a lot of it is dependent on both your weight and your strength. Obviously if you’re a lot smaller, a big board will be even more difficult to push down into the water. If you’ve got a bit more body and/or muscle mass, then you’ll probably be able to get away with duck diving boards in excess of 7’0”.
It is worth noting, however, that there isn’t a pass or fail system with duck diving. There are certainly some boards which you absolutely won’t be able to duck dive with, but if you’re on a mini mal or a step-up of some kind, you’ll probably be able to sort of duck dive – it just might not be as effective as it would be with a smaller board. As long as you can get the nose of your board under the water then you can always try a duck dive, but with a bigger board you just won’t get as deep and will likely get dragged back a little further by the wave than you would otherwise.
Also worth remembering is that if your board is a little bigger, the techniques to improve your duck dive in the above section are even more pivotal. Of particular importance is pushing down as hard as you can on the nose – if you just give it a soft push there’s every chance the wave will get underneath the nose and flip both you and your board ignominiously backwards through the air. If you’re trying to duck dive a bigger board, make sure that you put all the weight you can through the nose.
Duck diving is a tricky art to master, and isn’t something that you can perfect by simply reading about it, or practicing it once. Learning the technique is key, but you then need to go out and practice it, and the more you do the better. Obviously improvement will come naturally as you surf – you don’t need to go out and paddle around just to practice your duck diving, but invariably as you surf you’ll duck dive plenty of waves, and the more you do that, the better you’ll get.
