Surfing and SUS - Some observations

[SUP Leave]

So I have a new (to me) longboard, and I have decided to intersperse more prone surfing with standup. I traded an 8'-6" mini-mal for it. No good reason, just challenge and entertainment. A good longboard ride gives some different sensations than I get on a SUP. One quick thing is that the LB is a pain in the arse to get outside at a short period beach break compared to the Min-Mal I just traded it for.

Here are some things/comparisons I have noticed, having just got back from a longboarding dawn patrol in mushy, relentless 5' at 7 seconds beach break.

1- It is much harder to get in surf shape than SUS shape. This morning I run down to the beach, jump in and start to paddle out through the breakers. 30 minutes (which seemed like 4 hours) later I am there, shoulders and back toasted, can barely lift my head of the board, breathing heavy, seeing stars, and choking back vomit. A supposedly fun thing. In those conditions I would have struggled to get my SUP outside, and would have ended up prone paddling a lot of the time. The biggest difference is that when I got a break in the swell on the longboard I couldn't make enough ground up to get past the last breaker, while on my sup I could have got moving a lot faster and been outside in less than half the time.

2- Popping up is a more athletic movement than moving your feet and paddling with a paddle. After all my work getting outside, I paddle for a couple and pop up off kilter and get no joy. First session after 5 months on the beach and SUS is pretty natural.

3- SUS with a wetsuit is much more enjoyable than prone surfing in a wetsuit. You can get by with a much lighter suit when you are out of the water 90% of the time. The heavier suit combined with paddling with your hands takes even more getting used to. This is one of the biggest reasons SUS is great for cold water spots. I'm surprised I don't see more out at Westport, but there are some.

4- The surfing (for me) is different. I feel like you can muscle a SUP with a paddle and your feet and hips, while you try to glide a longboard with smooth movements. I think that the longboard will help my SUS look better eventually.

5- Wave count even if I was in shape would be 4:1 at best SUS:LB. But that is not important to me, 5 good rides on my LB make me stoked for days. Today I got 2, and then had to settle for inside scraps because I got too far in, and the thought of going back out was off the table. Those don't count. Still stoked, but will have to go back Sunday.

So in summary, I am going to keep doing both trying to tailor my board choice for the conditions, and hopefully get in a lot better surf shape. They are both a lot of fun and a great way to exercise compared to any other activity (marital relations obviously excluded).

Be interested to hear some of your thoughts on going back and forth between the two, and your reasons for doing so, or stopping surfing altogether.

[TallDude]

I still do both. It's more who I'm going with. Usually when I'm prone surfing, I'm thinking I wish I had my SUS board.

[RATbeachrider]

I'm now 80/20 ... that's SUS'ing 80% of the time and proning only when the break(s) in front of the house are crowded or when going out only with the proner friends.

[abmatt]

I've been 100 percent SUP surfing for the last five years, apart from a few trips to places with better waves than Florida. And even then I wished I was SUPing. Just way more overall fun -- and certainly more waves.
Never really bought into the whole 'I've to keep my prone surfing up just because ...' reasoning.
But funny this topic popped up now: We've got a chunky windblown windswell settling in for a few days and I was just thinking about looking for the fins on my old 7-2 funshape surfboard and giving it a try, just for the hell of it. If it's too blown for the SUP to be fun, that is.
Will probably embarrass myself.

[1tuberider]

Prone paddling takes a while to burn in the neck and lower back joints and build stamina for longer sessions. When your
neck stops burning then you made it. Prone surfing will give you a different view of sup and help you develop better awareness in sharing with the others.
I much prefer sus today. It seems like my surfing skills got better after taking up sus. I prone surfed close to 45 years before taking up sus and already had good surfing skills. I don't have any interest in taking out a prone board now.
If you started surfing on stand ups then you really owe it to yourself to prone paddle surf for a while. It will make you better in the long run.
I think most of your observations are right on which is why sus is so fun. Its also better exercise. Yet to truly understand the lineup and surfing in general I believe you need a solid foundation of prone surfing experience. Most all here moved to sus from prone surfing.

[supdiscobay]

SUP 90% and surfing 10%.  Haven't touched my longboard in several years.  My boys all shortboard and I enjoy surfing with them at there usual spots.  My oldest lives in Ventura, so he likes beach breaks from harbor to silver strand, and my youngest is in Irvine, so mostly beach breaks from HB to SD.
I had Joe Blair make me a 7' big guy shortboard a couple years ago.  It has been fun, but as I got better, and started paddling out in bigger stuff with the boys, I wanted something I could duck dive.  Volume on the 7' was probably 60 ltrs.
I recently went from 203 to 177 lbs, so this last trip down to Irvine for my sons graduation, I bought a 6'2"Boardworks Mini-mod.  21.75" wide and about 42 ltrs.  I did well on it when conditions were clean, but had a harder time, in bumpy onshore stuff.  Nice to be able to duck under waves and white water though.

My sessions are much shorter than SUP, and I do pay for it for a day or two.  I am exercising more with the shortboard in mind now.  It turns without even thinking.  I definitely have to be aware of that.  It will be fun for awhile, but I am sure that  I will get to a point where the effort isn't worth it.  Its something that I can do with my boys at this stage of my life and still compete with them.  I do make them SUS with me and then its my turn to be top dog.  Although they are getting pretty good on my little kings board.

I agree with tall dude, as some of the days I was out in really clean Oxnard and Silver Strand conditions, I wish I had my sup. Easy barrels, but likely end up with a board in two pieces.

[SUPcheat]

Never proned before SUS, been stand up surfing about 18 months so far, a year with a hardboard.

I do like to try to pop from prone a couple of times a session just for the experience.  It is mostly when I am in the water, a big one is coming, and I don't have time to jump up to my knees or feet to catch it.  I'll just jump flat on the board and if it catches me, I will pop up from prone and ride from there.  Catching the paddle on the way up is the main glitch, which causes a moment of increased imbalance.  I am successful maybe 50 or 60 percent of the attempts lately.

My impression is that proning/popping up from a SUP must be a lot easier than popping up from a regular, smaller surfboard, mainly because I can do it. I don't know if I would have ever learned to surf at all if I had started from prone, so the haters are probably right, SUS does allow demented older crips to surf who otherwise wouldn't.

I only prone paddle when I want to get out of a shore break or a messy, shallow reef.  I need to prone paddle more and get my shoulders in better shape, but I am usually so busy with other things I never get around to it.

[Subber]

I used to longboard and switched to mostly longboard SUP surfing about 5 years ago.

I think the main difference in the difficulty/required stamina between the two is
the difference in volume.  The volume of my SUP longboard is almost 2x the volume of
my prone longboards.  More volume, more float - easier paddling.

I do prone surf my SUP longboard occasionally.  One thing of note - I do believe it is actually
easier to get more speed prone paddling the SUP than Stand Up Paddling it.  And, it is definitely
easier to prone paddle the SUP than the prone boards. 

What I do if I want to prone surf, and I haven't in a while, is to prone surf my sup to build up
the different muscles and then after a few sessions switch to a regular prone longboard.

Still, I like SUP surfing the best, because the water is cold up here - burr - and I don't have
to wear a wetsuit if I SUP surf!! but I do if I prone surf.   If I was in warmer water maybe I'd
prone surf more often.

[balance_fit]

Been on both sides of the coin, longboard wise. Definitely, on a standup longboard, the wave count is noticeably higher than on a prone longboard. As stated above, a matter of volume, among other considerations. So, mostly, i surf longboard style, on my 10' sup, specially, on outer reef sessions.

That said, i like prone paddling and have paddled prone paddleboards on downwind, flats, and lately, waves. For waves, which is the original thread theme, i got an SLSA (Surf Livesaving) racing board. It's paddled prone and on knees, so i guess it applies for this thread.

Specifically, for knee sized waves, and under, where my bigger sup is quite boring, the SLSA racing board affords the pleasure of catching the tiny waves besides or even before the sup die hards on my closer to shore reef break. How? Volume and shape. The board has 170+ liters of volume, is 20" wide and flat rockered on a semi displacement hull configuration. The thing is a missile, catches anything that moves, and can be easily surfed prone or on knees.

Wave count stays up and so does stoke and workout quality. This SLSA board complements sup surfing quite nicely for those very small days.

[Sup-up]

As someone who's less than a year into the evolution from prone to stand up surfing, this is on my mind allot.
Agree with allot of the points made.

I now find if I paddle out on my 5'6" fish, which is a rare choice these days, it takes a few waves to tune back into the different muscle patterning e.t.c.
But it feels like Im stuck grovelling around in the water, can't paddle to shifting peaks fast enough or see whats going on.  Much more like swimming.  Wave count way down, noticed how much of a session is just sitting around.  I'm probably as good as I'm ever going to be.  I always now think I wish I was on my SUP.
Main pluses are the board's manoeuvrability on the wave and being able to duck dive, which wouldn't be the case with a longboard.
 
On the SUP i'm now having way more fun on the interesting bit of the learning curve.  I love being able to go out and have a blast in more marginal conditions, surf the outside and out of the way peaks, spend most of the session getting a work out paddling / balancing / riding, combines the best bits of having a bigger board, but its still manoeuvrable enough on the wave to feel fun. 
Downsides:  Big board means I don't like being in a busy line up, and getting out back when its head high or above is a proper mission at my local beachy.  Looking forward to being able to ride a smaller more manoeuvrable board on bigger clean days, then I won't miss my prone board at all.

[standuped]

SUS and Boogie board when it's super hot.  Prone, wasted to much time with that.

[jumpfrom13k]

I go back and forth between a shortboard 6'2" x19 x 2 3/8 and my stand up board 8'4" x 30 1/2 x 4 1/2.

They ride significantly different. I ride my shortboard if the wave is bigger than 3 foot, and I'll be on my SUP when it is smaller than 3 foot.

To me shortboards are easier, and I can get into waves when there are ton of people in the line up, I can ride certain breaks where SUP is kinda not allowed. I try to ride my shortboard as often as possible. Nothing beats the feeling of super thin board on a glassy face.

[JimK]

I started surfing in 1968 and although I SUS most of the time When I do prone (while devout surfers are trying to SUS because it is so easy ha ha) It feels like an old friend easy fun enough (I'd still be proning if there weren't SUS) but more work than SUS So I'm happy to get my SUP back, although most of the time surfers give it back reluctantly because they can easily see the upped Fun Factor in our waves here in NJ

JimK
www.extremewindsurfing.com

[SlatchJim]

SUP Leave, good post with good insight.
If you don't mind, may I ask your age.  I look at all your observations and fondness for prone and think to myself I'd have made all the same statements at 45.  Now at 52, SUP just offers too much pain free fun to really want to go back to prone.

[SUP Leave]

I'm 36 years old 6-2 and carrying 10 or 15 more pounds than is optimal, just ask the seams on my wetsuit.

Like most of you I enjoy every ocean sport, but the time to get better at them is what I can't seem to find.