In my last blog entry (Oct 20th 2009) I brought you a dozen tips on how to become a better surfer.
Here is my follow-up on this: I’ve split the learning sequence list from that blog-entry into 7 skill levels and mapped each one to what I believe is the right surf spot for further improve your surfing, including some examples:
| Level |
Means you dominate: |
Practice here to reach this level |
Example peaks |
| 1 |
|
A smoothly falling sand bottom beach break, providing foam waves that drag for a considerable distance. Preferentially no or little currents, so a closed bay is preferably to an open beach Wave size: doesn’t really matter for this is foam waves. |
|
| 2 |
|
Mellow, smoothly breaking waves, on a sand bottom (beach break), ideally with an easy paddle out channel. Depending on the wave shape, on open beach break might be acceptable (provided there are no strong rip currents) Wave size: up to 3 feet (1 m) |
|
| 3 |
|
Mellow, peeling wave over sand bottom, preferentially with easy paddle out channel and very little crowd! Wave size: up to 3 feet (1 m) |
|
| 4 |
|
Long peeling mellow beach- or point break, preferentially breaking over a sandy bottom, or non-sharp rocks. Note 1: it is important at this point to look for a mellow wave breaking on non-shallow underground Note 2: if you opt for point breaks, make sure you vary the peaks, to be able to train lefts and rights. Otherwise you’ll miss half of the learning process! |
|
| 5 |
|
Any perfectly and long peeling rather mellow wave. This is most commonly found on Point breaks |
|
| 6 |
|
More powerful waves, preferentially sand bottom (because you will fall a lot to learn these!) |
|
| 7 |
|
Any powerful and tubing wave. For aerial training, sand bottom is preferably. | Any world class wave, because finally you are ready for them… |
By the way, I’d like to introduce a new feature at EasyDrop that has brought me to this categorizing thing: “Next Goals”. It’s a follow-up document sent to each student of ours after his/her surf course, providing personalized recommendations on:
- your individual goals for your next surfing sessions (based on what we observed during your surf course)
- techniques (from gym-workout over dry-practice to in-wave practice) to be ideally used to reach these goals
- details on the right surf board for your weight, height, shape, and surfing skills
- the right surf spot for you to practice and improve your skills so you can reach the recommended goals.
Step 4 above (peak recommendations) is so far limited to the generic peak description + some international examples.
Anyway, I believe it would be nice to be able to provide you with accurate information about where the appropriate peaks most close by to you are situated.
Therefore we just created an online form to collect such information for our database to be shared with you through the “Next Goals” program.
Therefore we just created an online form to collect such information for our database to be shared with you through the “Next Goals” program.
To get to the point: Can you help us to build this surf-peak-database?
If you have surfed any surf spot you believe is worth mapping, so other EasyDropers could use that information to further build their skills, please use the quick and dirty form at:
That would be very cool!
All the best from hot Itacaré.
Benjamin – Director at EasyDrop
The Surf School: http://www.easydrop.com
Thanks for the submissions so far, great to see the idea gets a feedback. For the moment, you can view the result table here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tPs1nm8wwzagFtnhlVjDeOQ&output=html
Not searchable nor possible to ordinate by column in this view.
We’ll be working on providing a more convenient view in a central place.
Aloha
Benjamin