Climb and drop

Yesterday morning, I had my first private lesson with Alex Wilkinson. Alex was my first surf instructor ever, so I already knew that he's an excellent teacher, and in the genre parlance I was "massively stoked" when I heard that he'd returned from a stint in the Maldives to set up Pureline Surf, his own private coaching business here in Nosara. The universe was working for me.

One of our first goals is to transition me from the 8'2" board I've been riding to a slightly shorter 7'10" that I bought last week. Alex quickly diagnosed some issues with my paddle technique that were working against me on the shorter board and showed me how to correct them. Then we worked on angled takeoffs and catching lots of waves. The waves were pretty small and mellow, but I did manage to catch a few, and Alex had a lot of good recommendations for improving my form.

My homework for the week is a climb and drop drill. This involves taking off across the wave, then repeatedly climbing up the face, turning and dropping down, turning and climbing back up, etc. This is all accomplished by shifts in body weight. Or it will be, once I manage to get the hang of it.