Surf - Paddling on the Board

Hi I'm Owen with Billabongs OC ground surf camp headquartered at K-Coast Surf Shop 35th street in Ocean City, Maryland. Today, we are learning how to surf and step three is paddling. The method of paddling is just like a simple swim stroke, we have to keep in mind that we are in a good position as we just talked about. Another important point is we have our chest and head up, in that way we can look all around us. We want to see what's in front of us and to the right and left, and also we want to able to look behind us to see where the wave is in relation to our board. Once we are in a good position, we are able to paddle using a simple swim stroke, we want to reach out our hands one in front of the other and dig in the water as deep as we possibly can, and lift the water back behind us. Make sure we keep our hand cupped that way we get the most power out of our stroke. It is important that we don't throw our arms and slap at the surface of the water that only detracts from catching the waves, and slows us down. So, reach in deep and pull the water back. Now that we are able to paddle, we can try and get out to line-up. The line-up is the spot where the waves are breaking. We want to paddle out about ten yards past that point. As we look out in the ocean it's important that we don't try and fight through the waves, but let the waves work for us, the waves come in sets. After the set rolls through there will be a long end of waves and then we can easily paddle out past the point, where they are breaking into what we call the line-up. Now that we are in the line-up we can begin talking about popping up and our first method is the quick path.