In the last post, I talked about the most common mistake I see when noseriding – not positioning yourself close enough to the pocket (check tip 14 for a refresher or more info). But if you know you need to be closer to the pocket, how do you actually get there?

well, here’s 6 different ways:

1. stall

Stall your board by applying pressure on the tail. This is pretty much like stepping on the brakes of your board.

2. use the flats

The “flats” is at the bottom of the wave where the slope ends & the wave becomes...flat (not to be confused with the shoulder). Surfing into the flats slows you down because you won’t receive any push from the wave. The idea here is to slow down just enough before resetting your line & floating back up the wave face into position. A tricky one to time!

3. cut back

Cut back all the way to the pocket before setting your line again. Another tricky one to time!

4. fade your takeoff

Right from the start, fade your takeoff to put yourself in the prime position right from the get go.

5. takeoff behind the peak

A similar concept as fading, takeoff behind the peak. Both achieve the same thing & which one you use depends on where you are in relation to the peak at takeoff.

6. break trim

If you’ve set your line & all is going well, but you can feel you’re just a little ahead of the pocket you can do a quick little “check turn” to break trim & reset. Almost like a mini cutback.

In reality you may combine more than one of these at a time. For example, rather than just stalling, you might do a fade takeoff & then throw in a little stall at the end to slow down even more (check out the fade takeoff example where @jesslowcher does exactly this).

Which method(s) you use depends on what the wave is doing, but having a few of these options up your sleeve really helps put you in the right place in a variety of conditions.

💬 What techniques do you use to position yourself in the pocket?

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