Creek, the conversation on the phone with you when we were talking about this stuff rattled something in my brain. And what better thing to do on a Friday night but add to your great video and instruction. My theories are much different than yours though. But your video in slow motion is a huge help for explaining what I am going to explain.
I am going to start with my big paint brush statement and follow with the explanation and a bunch of example videos. It is going to be long but please hang in there.
Here it goes.
All of our turns need to be initiated with the rotation of our shoulders in relation to our hips. Not with where our head or our eyes are facing. It all starts with the shoulders. Now when I proned surfed, I had big vertical backside lip hits and turns. When I started SUsurfing, they kinda, no they did, disappear. I have had a hard time putting it into words to be able to explain, but now I know how to explain it. This is where our paddles are a problem because by holding on to them, they are acting as a hinderance. With prone surfing, your leading hand is your direction and the trailing hand is your counter balance. We do not have that counter balance by holding on to the paddle. And being on bigger boards that do not react as fast as we can rotate our bodies causing a lag.
I am going to combine this with frontside turns also, but first let me explain (in my opinion) the body mechanics for shoulders vs heels and body weight, why we can control the board easier frontside vs backside. From the shoulder point of view, it is much easier to rotate your shoulder around the front of your body than around the back of your body. For example, take your right arm and point it out to your right side. Rotate it across the front of your body, then rotate it around the back of your body. You could say that rotating your right arm around the front is the same as rotating the left arm around the back. Not the same. But you are surfing/SUsurfing with only one arm forward. That is your lead arm. Your control arm.
Now the hips and legs. Where they come in is following the arm, which controls the shoulder, which then controls the hips, which finally control the legs. We can control frontside easier on our toes because we have more hinges in the body to control the force exerted on the toes. Because our hips bend forward, that allows us to apply more force to our toes just by bending forward at the hips. Now allow the flexing of the ankles and the compression of the knees allows us very fine control over the force on our toes. Try it. You stand up and bend over at the hips. You feel it on your toes pretty good. Now you can adjust that force real easy by flexing at the ankles and compressing the knees. It is very easy to do and there are endless ways to make those all work in unison to balance the forces on the front of our feet.
Now with going backside all these joints still play a part but differently. Now we have to balance everything on the point of our heels with our ankle and hip joints working against us. The knees still compress to help lower our center of gravity. The body does not bend the same. It is not easy to control the weight distribution on your heels. Try it. Stand up and put your weight on your heels. Try to lean back and put as much weight on your heels as possible. Try it standing or squatting down. It puts you in an awkward position and not well balanced.
Now let’s put it all together. Stand up and use your right straight out to your right side. Use your right arm to lead your right shoulder rotating around the front of your body. As your torso rotates, you should feel the tension in your right hip while wanting to pull your right knee forward, putting weight on you’re the front of your right foot along with some weight on your left foot. You can also adjust the pressure on the front of your feet by squatting down.
Now rotate the opposite direction around the back of your body. As your shoulders rotate around the back of your body, you again will feel the hips being pulled and pulling the right knee back. This time the weight is going on to the heel of your right foot and the heel and a little bit of inside of your left foot. If you squat down more rotating around the back of your body, you should feel the weight shift a little more to the side outside of your right foot and the inside of your left foot. But it gives some control to put that weight back on your heels more.
With prone surfing growing up, I naturally learned how to do this. When I learned how to snowboard, it was one of the first things my instructor taught us. Whatever hand is your downhill hand, that is your lead hand. Point it where you want you and your body will follow. After the snowboard school when I was progressing on my own, there were times where I was looking where I wanted to go but not going that direction. I remembered I was not moving my arm where I wanted to go. Once I did, I went where I wanted. Now it is second nature.
Another factor is the wave itself. Its force to go with it or against it also helps us. So on a front side cutback, the easier front side turn gets us up and against the wave. To make the turn down the wave, we point/rotate our forward hand back down the wave and our hips and legs follow with the board. With prone surfers this is naturally how it happens. With SUsurfing , the paddle kinda hangs us up. Examples to come. The wave pushing us backwards and down allows us to power through this turn with slight shoulder movement and more hip and leg drive. When we are going backside, the more awkward turn is now going against/up the wave. This is where the shoulder rotation commitment needs to come in to play along with some knee compression. Once up the wave, the easier frontside turn along with the help of the wave pushing forward and down makes this turn very easy.
I am going to start off using Creeks excellent slow motion video at the beginning of this thread to start with the examples. The slow motion makes this video excellent to see these slight movements VERY easy. But first. Skip to 1:26 in the video to see if you can see the shoulder movements. Stop reading and do it .
Now here are the points of recognition. At 0:27 mark he shifts his feet to the heelside of the board and leans the board into a nice backside bottom turn. Right at about the 0:29-0:30 mark you see him rotate his forward shoulder (his left shoulder) around behind his hips and the board takes a more drastic backside cut. At the 0:33 second mark, he pulls the shoulder back straight and the board straightens out. Then 2 second later, that leading shoulder comes around the front and the board completes the turn down the wave. He straightens out and then gets a leaning backside turn. The second turn is a little harder to see. But it looks like the 0:41 second mark, you see the shoulder turn again with the turn initiation. The third turn is much easier to see with the shoulder rotation at the 0:51 second mark. He does lean into the backside turn, but watch how that turn becomes much sharper as his lead shoulder rotates back. I love this slow motion video. And then at 0:53 seconds he brings that shoulder back around the front making the turn. He straightens out down the wave and then watch at 1:01. He makes a heelside (backside) slight turn just by rotating that shoulder a hair while looking about 90 degrees to the direction he is going. And then follows it with the big frontside turn by pulling that left shoulder way around which pulls the hips and legs making it look sooooo fluid. I think he has done this before. And the dismount at about 1:13 after just riding straight for a few seconds. Not setting his heels or his weight. He just rotated that left shoulder around the back of his body and the board just went that way. Watch the slow motion sections at the times I have indicated several times so that you make sure you see everything I am talking about. Now watch it at regular speed again.
Now let’s look at prone surfing to see how they use their shoulders.
First, take a look at the video of Bobby Martinez at Rincon the SUPsports posted. Each time he goes to initiate that backside turn, his right arm (his lead arm) gets throw way behind him getting him vertical. His left arm is 180 degrees opposite counterbalancing him. As SUsurfers we get put it a little bit more of an awkward position from holding a paddle most likely not twisting back around far enough with our lead hand. Looking more that direction will definitely help to bring the shoulders around as well as bend the knees and compressing more.
The other movie about Larry Bertlemann has several great examples. At 1:24 mark, he drags his lead arm in the water and that really pulls his lead shoulder back. Look how hard that resulting backside cut is. Then watch the next wave. He is going backside again and looking back over his shoulder at 1:35 and seeing where he is going to cut without cutting up the wave. Not until he rotates that shoulder back at 1:36-1:37 area is where the back side initiation starts.
This is a great still from Creek of that shoulder back initiating the turn back down.
https://www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=e3b7137867de49d99c46e2f570558a27&action=dlattach;topic=33227.0;attach=92721;imageHere are some frontside examples of prone surfing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakIREctuskat the 0:56 mark there are some good examples of finishing the frontside cutback with the backside turn as the second part of the turn. That lead arm gets swung back behind and the turn just happens with the wave also helping out. The more vertical the wave and/or the faster that lead arm get swung back, the more powerful the cutback is.
Here is Occy at chicama in Peru
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZgGK15g4H0More frontside stuff but watch his lead arm at 1:15 to 1:30. A mellower wave but still. A sharp jerk with the lead shoulder in the first turn and it is a harder turn. Then a longer drawn out turn where he keeps that lead shoulder way back. Another example in this video are 3:00 and 3:45.
Now for some SUsurfing comparison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaLuVp5Rh-oThis video is Kai Lenny and someone else.
At the 0:24 second mark watch it a few times and try and pause it right at the 0:24 second mark. Look how rotated to his left he is It looks like his shoulders are rotated 90 degrees to his hips.
At the 0:50 second mark he does it again to just pull out of the wave. Like Creek was talking about practicing.
At the 0:58 mark, watch the blonde guy initiate his backside turn. Again, his shoulders rotate what looks like about 90 degrees back around compared to his hips.
At 1:15 watch kai. I just kept hitting the pause/play button as fast as I could from his take off. He is riding backside just slightly rotated to his left (his backside). When he wants to hip the lip, then rotates that left shoulder right around behind him and the body follows. Once he gets the board up the wave, the easier part is getting back down. It is easier turning across the front of his body, and he has the downward angle and push of the wave helping him.
Progression project
https://www.supthemag.com/videos/sup-surfing-film-the-progression-project/starting at 1:29, there are 2 backside turns watch the rearward rotation to get up the wave for the cutback.
Now watch Gorgio at 1:45 do the frontside hit. He can do it with really rotating down the wave because to the wave helping him. I think the bigger board compared to a surfboard, on the sharp fast frontside cuts like that the counterbalance keeps a susurfer from rotating farther down the wave.
And same with Fisher doing a big frontside off the lip at 2:01.
At 3:02 watch how far he can pull the board around on the front side when he rotates his shoulders back down the wave. And he makes it look effortless.
At 3:15, again hitting the play/pause as fast as you can. You can see the initiation of the backside turn to get up the by the rotation of the shoulders behind the hips.
This is just a great movie to watch hitting play/pause over and over. I wish it had a slow motion feature.
Here is a video of Zane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ULzUBb_Qc8At 0:26 he has a good front side cutback and the paddle then has to drag as a counter balance because his shoulder did not rotate through. Then watch his next turn where he rotates the shoulders through and see how much more the board comes around. At the 1:30 there is a good backside turn filmed from in front of him and you can see him really rotate the shoulders.