Front Footed vs Back Footed Surfing: What Every Surfer Needs to Know About Stance and Weight Distribution

Ever watch a surf contest and hear commentators talk about "front footed" vs "back footed" surfers and wonder what they're talking about? Or maybe you've always considered yourself one or the other. What, exactly, does it mean to be a front footed or back footed surfer? How do you know which you are? Is one better than the other? Is there an alternative or an ideal stance for most surfers? Let's clear this up for good!

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Why Every Surfer is Both Front Footed and Back Footed by Nature

We all surf on two feet, so essentially everyone is by nature both a front footed and back footed surfer. The real question isn't which foot you use, but when and how you use each one effectively.

All Proper Surfing Starts with Your Back Foot

All adequate and mechanically sound surfing is initiated with the back foot. This goes for shortboarding as well as midlength and longboard surfing. Surfboards are designed to pivot around the tail, so if you can't set up a turn or a line with your back foot, then you need to learn that first. In this way every competent surfer is at least partially "back footed".

The Neutral Stance: The Sweet Spot for Most Surfers

There is a third option and that's a "neutral stance". This stance equally distributes weight through each foot. Sometimes the back foot is weighted a little harder, and sometimes the back foot is unweighted in order to achieve a different line or to create speed. In the video I argue that, for most people, the stance you ought to strive after is the neutral stance.

When Front Footed vs Back Footed Labels Actually Matter

The true distinction between front and back footed surfing only matters at an expert or elite level. "Front footed" surfers transfer weight from their back to their front foot for faster pumping and for radical blow tail and aerial maneuvers. They do this so often that it's the sheer frequency at which they place pressure on their front foot that earns them the label.

Dane Reynolds, the quintessential front footed progressive surfer transfers weight onto his front foot to de-weight the tail for an epic fin throwing maneuver.

"Back footed" surfers are less inclined to transfer weight onto the front foot for pumping and for recovery through gnarly carving maneuvers. They are said to have a "lead foot" and are also called "power surfers". I don't think I can be more clear than I am in the video portion where I examine the classic back footed surfing of Sunny Garcia.

Sunny Garcia, quintessential back footed surfer, pushes his back through his turns with extra power and extra spray.

Why Beginners and Intermediates Should Focus on Back Foot Fundamentals

If you're an advancing beginner or intermediate and you're leaning too much on your front foot for speed, thinking that will make the board go faster, that does not make you a front footed surfer. That means that your form is wrong and you need to learn how to initiate turns with your back foot.

Sure, you may end up a front footed surfer at the end of the day, but you're better off learning first to achieve a neutral stance. I think the examples in the video make it clear enough that, technically speaking, a truly front footed surfer is someone who can easily do an air 360, not a beginner who is incorrectly pressing down on their front foot. This actually causes the board to go slower, not faster, because you've not pushed sufficient air and water out the back with your back foot first.

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Proper Foot Placement for All Surfboard Types

In terms of foot placement in general, the back foot must reach back over the fins to initiate turns. The front foot is usually in the center of the board, perpendicular to the stringer, with toes slightly pointed forward. This is the case on almost every kind of surfboard known to man. We make one exception for finless boards and boards called "hulls". I suppose I can cover those in another post. Suffice it to say here that this principle doesn't apply to them.

How to Improve Your Foot Placement Without Looking Down

It's good practice not to look down at your feet to determine where you're placing them. For this you want to go by feel and by video review feedback. You fix improper foot placement in two main ways: One, by refining your pop up at home and in the water. Two, by practicing moving your back foot forward off the tail block and back over the tail block both at home and in the water.

My Personal Surfing Stance and Why It Matters

What about me? I'm a neutral stance surfer who has a tendency towards my back foot. I can sometimes de-weight the back foot to get my fins out of the back of the wave, but it takes extreme conscious effort on my part. Putting any pressure on my right foot (that's my front foot) feels extremely unnatural and weird to me. That's why I look like such a kook when I'm trying to surf frontside in a regular foot stance! When doing that, I inevitably lean forward over my left foot because that is what feels most comfortable. Ok, I hope this is clear to you now! It might be a good challenge and good fun to watch surf videos and pro contests and try to determine which surfers are front footed, back footed, or neutral stanced!

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Dropknee Surfing

Surfing is a very fluid and balanced sport but it is not symmetrical. We all have a stance preference -- either goofy or regular -- and therefore we all surf with only one of our feet forward. This is our front or guiding foot and it helps us go where we want to go but the truth of the matter is that your back foot is your workhorse and is what keeps you stable and directs your energy on the wave. A common error of beginning and intermediate (and some advanced) surfers is to lean too far forward/hard on the front foot (I myself am guilty at times and have worked hard to balance this out). It's natural to want to do this -- surfing is exciting and you want to get to the end of that wave or race towards that next section -- but like most things surf, the better thing to do is not that which is most intuitive (another example is taking off in the most critical part of the wave). I want to stress that it is not altogether bad to be a front footed surfer, but that all self professed "front footed surfers" still know how to drop their back knee and put weight on their back edge (I say edge, because this is true for both finless and finned surf craft) when crouching to get barreled or when sinking into a delicious (frontside or backside) roundhouse cutback. Dropping the back knee allows you to square your shoulders to the wave and opens up your range of movement and vision. And most of all it hides your rear end from the rest of our eyes! When the back knee bows out or when you bend forward at your waist you are exhibiting "poo stance", which beyond being aesthetically unpleasing is highly nonfunctional for everything except hanging on (which is also why it's knowns as "danger stance" or "cockroach stance"). Below I've posted more images sourced from the web of men and women who demonstrate perfect low back knee technique. As I always say at the end of every coaching session or lesson, it's really important to look at examples of great surfers and to try to visualize yourself applying their techniques. 

Perennial style master Rob Machado demonstrates a correct back knee drop while riding an alaia.

Carissa Moore is famous for her low back knee -- it's what gives her turns so much power and spray. 

Joel Parkinson is another master of the low back knee. You can see here in this backside tube that his knee is practically on his surfboard. You can see how this allows him to easily grab his rail to stabilize himself and look towards the exit of the tube. 

Learn to Forecast Like A Pro

Do you want to score the best waves of your life more often than not? Do you ever get frustrated when you check a surf forecasting site like Surfline.com and plan your weekly surfs around it, only to find that the conditions end up nothing like they were forecasted?! Have you overheard surfers in the water talking about “the buoys” and not known what they meant or how that related to the conditions? Then you need to take my forecasting class and learn to forecast for yourself!

Here is how the course is structured: 

1. Introduction to climate science — get a grasp on basic scientific concepts that help us understand what creates good and bad conditions for surfing 

2. How to read wind charts for swell generation — this is really important both for forecasting surfing for your local region and for planning surf trips and surgical strikes 

3. How to read buoys and understand swells — this is the heart of the course — once you learn how to read buoys and understand swell direction, you will unlock your ability to score waves everywhere in the world 

4. Bathymetry, coastal contours, waves, & tides — in this module you will learn about how the sea floor and other geographic features affect breaking waves 

5. How to forecast local winds and why they matter — this module is all about figuring out how to dial in those local conditions 

6. Putting it all together — here you learn how to forecast for your level so that you can always score the best possible conditions and improve your surfing 

7. Bonus module — the various forecasting models for winds and swells 

The whole course takes 6-10 hours to complete. Each section comes with a PDF of main websites and points. And just in case you want to brush up, you have indefinite access to it once you’re finished. Furthermore, taking this course is a prerequisite for doing any sort of coaching with me. If that’s something you’re interested in, the course will give you a head start. 

I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn to surf forecast, especially if you’re a beginner or intermediate surfer. One of the necessary conditions of becoming an “expert surfer” is knowing how to read a forecast, and especially how to read between the lines. Surf forecasting is multi-factorial, with tons of variables and contingencies, so you want to get a good grasp on those basic constituent parts before putting them all together. Sometimes a site can have just one variable off and this can make the difference as to whether the surf will be good or bad the following day. If you lead a busy life and don’t have the luxury of hanging out at the beach 24/7, then you do not have time to spend driving to the beach only to find out it’s too flat or too big for you to get adequate reps in. And at the end of the day it’s all about getting in those adequate reps. When you learn to read between the lines, you’re going to find yourself surfing lots of uncrowded waves with just yourself and maybe a handful of friends who also know how to read the charts. Remember, smarter not harder! You can score empty waves, even in crowded urban surf zones, just by seeing certain data points that other people aren’t looking for. 

After you’re done taking the course, sign up for my weekly Philo-surfy Zine:

I do a global forecast 2-3x a month and will even do specific forecasts for subscribers’ home zones if requested. A lot of my default forecasting is for the NY/NJ area, but that doesn’t have to be the case. I’m perfectly comfortable forecasting for any break in the world using the method that I teach in the course. 

And last, if you want to test your knowledge and get special insights into your home break or for a trip you’re planning, you can schedule a virtual consult with me!

How to Read Tide Charts

Do you want to score the best waves of your life? Then you need to learn to read tide charts. Being able to read a tide chart can make the difference between scoring the waves of your life and getting completely skunked, or even worse, dragged out to sea or plunged onto dry reef. Not having checked the tide is a beginner error you definitely want to skip!

WHAT IS A TIDE CHART

Tide charts are displays of tide data for a given date or set of dates. Fortunately we humans have become fairly good at predicting high and low tides accurately across the globe. Tide charts are readily available across the internet on surfing, fishing, and wind-related websites.

TYPES OF TIDE CHARTS

Tide charts come in three main forms:

1. Tables

2. Wave Graphs

3. Combination of the two

I will go over all three of them in order.

TIDE TABLES

A tide table merely plots out the dates and lists the high and low tides of each day. This is a screen grab from a tide table on CR Surf Dot Com. You simply look to the date or date ranges you’re planning to surf and then correlate the times with the tides. You’ll notice that each high or low tide moves up in time by about 45-55 minutes every day. This reflects the fact that the earth is constantly changing position as it orbits the sun. Tide tables are great because they have all the relevant information laid out right in front of you. You can look backwards in time to a day you had a particularly good or bad session and find out what the tides were doing. You can also use them to plan surf trips. For example if you find out that a certain place is only good for beginners at high tide and it’s a tropical destination with high heat midday, then you might want to plan your trip around an earlier morning high tide cycle. You may also want to factor tides into other important data points like favorable winds. If you’re planning to surf somewhere where the winds are usually only good at certain times of the day, then it would be ideal if you could plan for the ideal tides to also line up in that window.

wave graphs

This is a screen grab from Surfline.com, Long Beach, NY tides at time of writing. A wave graph gives you a visual sense of how full or empty the tide is at any given time. You can get more accurate data about heights in between peak tides. This is great to know if you’re really trying to dial in a spot. You can retroactively check what the tide was doing exactly when you had the best part of your session, and use this information to help plan future sessions. Surfline has a larger at glance wave graph tide calendar that you can access through their “tide calendar” widget. You simply enter a two week range into the search bar and it will pull up two weeks worth of tide data. Technically Surfline will give you both the wave graph and the tide table, so you are able to get the best of both worlds there.

HYBRID TABLE + WAVE GRAPH 

As for the third kind, the hybrid model, as I said, it is available on Surfline’s tide calendar widget. It’s also common in physical tide calendars you can buy to hang on your wall. This screen grab is from Tidelines.com, a company who can make custom tide calendars for your area. Another popular product that includes both wave graphs and tide tables is the tide journal or log. You can purchase one of these for your area on Tidelog.com. It’s a stellar idea to have a physical tide log journal so that you can write down the conditions you surfed on any given day. Of course you could also do this in any sort of e-journaling app. The upshot of the Tidelog is that you wouldn’t have to also source the tide data – it’s right there! The other great thing about this hybrid model is that it always displays the moon phases so that you can better correlate them with the tides.

moon charts

I also recommend downloading a moon phases app to your phone. Not every tide chart also lists the moon phases, and they’re worth knowing. Both the sun and the moon’s gravity have an effect on tidal cycles. During full and new moons we say that the earth is in syzygy, which means they’re all lined up. When they’re lined up that makes for larger differences in high and low tides. When they’re at right angles the sun is exerting a counter force to the moon and the tides are less extreme. If you want to learn more about this check out this blog post I wrote. That will help you understand more about how tides work and how to find out the best tides for surfing at any spot in the world.

additional considerations

We live in a technologically advanced age, and it’s possible to wear the tides on your wrist. In fact if you’re a surfer, sailor, or fisherman I would not even consider purchasing a wearable smart watch if it doesn’t have a tide function! I am a recent Apple Watch convert, and I love to be able to see the tides at a glance at all times. I do not, however, use the watch to forecast tides. For that I use tables and graphs online. 

In conclusion, it’s crucial that you learn to read tide charts so that you can be on the best waves for your level at all times. For example here is a picture of a low tide wave in SW Costa Rica near my property, Rancho Diandrew:

You can see the river mouth rocks exposed in front of the wave. It’s steep and fast and hollow, which is perfect for expert surfers. If you’re looking for tubes in this part of the world, then you need to target a low tide cycle in the mornings. For comparison here is a high tide wave in the same area:

Note how much softer and gentler and “fuller” this wave is compared to the low tide wave. If you’re visiting this area of the world and you’re just looking to cruise, you can find any high tide window to suit your fancy. If you want to surf higher tides and escape the midday heat, you’d want to look at a tide chart to find out when it will be high tide in the mornings. 

Remember that these are just examples from one part of the world. Tides work differently at every break. Fortunately tide data is available for every break! If you need any help planning a trip you can always book a Virtual Consult. I also go over tides extensively in my Online Forecasting Course.  

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