Session 5158

This morning is more of a serious practice day. Though the same crew of yesterday is supposed to show up, they did not.

This is a good chance for me to test my own skills and also try to develop more for as long as I want to be in the water. Also I do enjoy the solitude of being in the water all by myself. This means that I just stay clear away from other surfers. There usually are other surfers.

If you are following my progress, this has been one of the periods taking the longest time to develop. That is, to really be able to take off on wider variety of waves and shapes. This is an essential skill to have because the beach breaks around here just throw all sorts of forms and shapes of the waves. So rather than expecting the nature to be consistent, I have to become the consistent element in surfing. And from this point, I am always a beginner because as soon as I am not a beginner then I become a beginner at the next level.

Getting into the waves is something that is continuing to be a challenge. First, I really have to read the waves much better and position better. Then next, once I am paddling into the waves, I have to take off. Sometimes wave's shapes are hollower than what I am used to, so I am practicing on getting that level up higher. Along this line, I am starting to get occasional success. I now have to make this occasional to every time.

One thing along this line that I am realizing is that I am now much more familiar and aware with how the board behaves in this critical moment. I now know when exactly I can bail, or kick out, if I am going to screw up the take off or the wave is closing out too fast (that's not reading the wave and positing correctly). Another thing is that if I the wave do close out, I can now ride straight in on top of the soup. I am hoping that this feel allows me to move onto roller coaster type move when every dot in my skill set connects.

When these occasions happen when I do take off though, now I am on a much steeper face than I have been on, so faster weight shifting is really important and at this point of time, I tend to stay too far back and going down the line, and that's really the next on my agenda of things to work on.

The next goal I am shooing for is management of the speed. This means that if I can take off consistently then I should work on to get a lot more speed in the ride. Without that there will not be next types of moves. I know it will be a while.

When you read all this, and I go out and try all these things you might think why I am so obsessed about getting better skills when I could just don't worry about any of this and enjoy. Well. These days, "off the lips" and "roundhouse" type moves are in the realm of almost any advanced intermediate surfers, and I think I want to test where my limit lies. Who knows in reality I can never get there, but I am not using that as a part of my assumptions.