Morgan Just: I am Morgan Just with Victoria Skimboards, teaching you how to skimboard and right now we are going to go into basic skimboarding. First thing we want to do is learning to drop. I hold the board like this, so I am a goofy footed rider. That means I ride with my right foot in front. So when you hold the board like this, you ride with the right foot in front, drop the board, you have to do a full 180 to get onto the board. I'll teach out first and so it's the way I stand.

So what you want to do, when you are running down the beach, you want to get as much speed as you can, and then drop the board, let it fall from your hands, put your back foot and then your front foot on, and that's your left foot and the right foot if you are goofy foot, or right foot and left foot if you are regular foot. So a couple of ways to practice this, leave the board in the sand like this and get back, get a little running start, and practice. Do your regular foot one, back foot, and front foot; do a goofy foot one, left foot, right foot.

If you are doing both feet at the same time, what is going to happen is you are going to jump on it. All your weight is going to land there all at once. If you are a little bit off balance, you are going to fall over, or if you are unbalanced, you are just going to slow down completely and not even move to catch the wave. So back foot, front foot, got to get that down. It is the most important thing with starting off skimboarding.

Another thing you want to do when you are learning to skim is running down the beach, you want to drop the board like that. You don't want to throw the board out in front of you, you don't have to chase after it, you lose a lot of speed, you lose a lot of time, it's a lot of waste of energy. So when you are running down the beach, you want to run, run, run, drop the board. Let it fall from your hands, then back foot, front foot, knees bent, keep your weight centered over your board. Always remember to do that.

If your weight is a little bit too far forward, you are going to lose a lot of speed that way. If your weight is too far back, and you lose a lot of speed, there is always possibility of falling. So you want to be centered over your board. If you are bending out the knees instead of the waist, if you bend at the waist, you just lose a lot of energy, your style looks wack, you just don't want to do that.

So knees bent, keep your weight centered over the board and that's basic skimboarding. Now that we have done basic skimboarding, we are going to go into a couple of skimboarding drills.