A new paradigm for kneeboards

[red]

Having had the opportunity (?) to educate a few standup shapers in the past months I've had to revisit some of the basic premises of surfing. I'm still struggling with some of the ideas. Maybe you can help.

As you know, rocker was the most important development for surfboards once they had a fin attached. I'm now talking thrusters, because there simply is not any other kind of performance board (forget the 'fun' toys).
Standup surfers primarily use the back 1/3 of their boards. They drive by pushing the tail in and releasing - esentially 'hopping' the board over its own bow wave (it's a bit smoother than hopping, but you get the idea, I hope). Their wide stance centre to tail supports this technique.

Standup surfers almost never drive off a full rail. You can check - I've slo-mo'd a heap of DVD's lately. In fact, their boards gag if they try. Occasionally you'll see one grab a rail into a cutty and the board will start to lose it half way through.
Standup surfers often grab a rail when pulling in, usually to drag the board into a high and tight line in the barrel.

Kneeboarders on the other hand, have absolute rail-to-rail control. We routinely bury the board from nose to tail for bottom turns or cuttys. We don't have to grab a rail to hold a line in a late drop or tube.
However, we have little to no rocker control and can't move around, so we are forced to ride off a single sweet spot.

Our enhanced rail control means we can surf wider boards. Our limited rocker control means that we need to build turning radiuses into our plane shape and rocker.

I think that kneeboarders are actually more critically placed than standups for similar turns. Standup surfers universally use their legs for extension to get their boards into or over the lip. Their knees are directly over the board so are really critically placed, but their head is away from the action, moving at 1/4 the speed and generally upright. A kneeboarder's head is located relative to the board where standups knees are. When we hit the lip critically our bodies invert and our head is travelling upside-down at the speed of the board. Sometime during the turn we have to get our head back over our body by rotating board and body to the horizontal, not simply by flexing and letting the board move back under us. In many ways, then, a kneeboard turn is far more critical than a standup turn.

As a movement of body mass a kneeboarder probably goes through a far more extreme transition than a standup surfer. Almost all a kneeboarder's mass moves through the entire turn, whereas something like half a standup's does (legs and hips, with other parts used as levers and fulcrums, but not following the arc of the turn). Possibly this is why kneeboarding is so ridiculously difficult to master.

I'm interested in gathering your thoughts on these matters as the basis for an article to submit to a mainstream surfing mag. It's time that standups understood that kneeboarding is way harder than surfing, not easier. As a group, we think nothing of late drops or deep tubes, but we lag behind surfers in almost every other respect of high aspect surfing. How do we use our advantages to do things that surfers can't do? How do we use width and rail control in boards built for aerials and inverted surfing? Or do we just watch Fanning and the boys to try to learn how to emulate their radical turns?

But it's also time that we realise that it's foolish to emulate standup lines on waves, and to understand that we ride rail to rail, not nose to tail.

[red]

PS I conciously left aside discussions of flex in the monologue above. Flex ideally provides a dynamic rail curve, rather than longitudinal rocker so compensates for our static state on the board. No one is yet pulling mindblowing reos (a la Matt Galligher, Gav Coleman or the Simpsons) on flex boards, so discussion becomes rather moot in this instance.

[surfhorn]

There is a visual aspect to this also. Standups have that verticle appearance while we KBers are in a compact shape....its difficult to see what we are actually doing.

And look at some ov the moves of standup surfers...rail grabs (kneeboard techinque); pig dog....rear knee on board (kneeboard techinque).

It may just be a matter of that the main stream surfing media doesn't focus on KBers thus no coverage.

[albert]

What the hell is a paradigm??

[red]

What the hell is a paradigm?

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -R. Buckminster Fuller

!!!!!

[Beeline2.0]

..

[DrStrange]

Geeze, and I thought a paradigm was $0.20 U.S.

[SFKneelo]

Dr. Strange!

[willli]

a R&D DISadvantage??

an empty barrel might break on your head

[Man O' War]

Red,
So glad to see you added that little PS about flex. I was starting to slip into depression.

I'd like to hear a standup who also kneerides talk about which is more difficult in his eyes, and why.

[willli]

I surfed standup for 35 years and have had inner questions about the rotational aspects of board movement that were put to rest when I began kneeboarding. It IS pleasurable in one way to have the body center relatively stable while you whip the board all over the wave, but I've found nothing compares to the body center and board traveling as one. The emotional investment in laying down a high speed cutback with your chin inches off the wave face is so much greater than the typical snap-back turn made standing. Which makes kneeboarding so much harder cos you can't just pull your legs(and consequently the board) back into position. I guess I'd call it purity of line. You get so much better at reading the power lines in the wave. I saw a piece on Fuel TV on Beau Young, some longboard, some fish, and when on the fish he took a couple of waves kneeling. At one point he said he liked to kneel, less hassle than standing, and good fun. So its out there as an option even among standups.

[ross]

great topic red.
personally i dont know what good can come of us comparing our ability to surfboard riders.
surfing as a whole is such an ego filled pursuit.
most surfers regardless of their skill level, consider themselves better than us simply becuase they get to their feet .
if everyone rode kneeboards(what a horrible thought),i wonder how many of our best kneeboarders would still be at the top of the food chain?
from an Australian percpective PC,Mick Novakov and Simon Farrer are able to transcend all surfing. purely by surfing well.no self promotion required by these blokes.
Nov featured frequently in surfing mags and movies during his world title reign.(hunters and collectors always makes me think of black rock )
to this very day whispers are heard along the coast about SF and his waveriding antics.mostly from stand up surfers i might add.years after his last world title the guy is still featured in double page spreads in prominent surfing mags.
not that these 2 blokes probably even notice.
they just put their heads down and go about their business.
that is the way forward.
recently in Australias Surfing Life magazine,Derek Rielly a surf journo did a story where he took on all manner of surfcraft and reported on his findings.
i was happy to read that he found kneeboards very difficult to turn,was frightened by the visual perspective and the potential to reconnect with your board during wipeouts.he could see why people ride them .
proving to surfers that kneeboarding is hard is fruitless.they cant present a fair argument unless they've tried it.
prejudice upon another surf medium requires the same thought procsess as rascism

[ScottMac]

..

[jamie]

I am proud to ride on my knees but when I talk with friends, its about surfing - to me its surfing whether kneeling, standing, lying or bodysurfing for that matter.
To me its a mute point regarding turning being more or less difficult, we have all being dropping into ledgey waves, getting tubed some of you guys even wear flippers/fins - all these things are easier to do on a kneeboard and even easier to do with fins.
It seems weird to want ot make a big deal about how difficult it is to do a radical turn on a kneeboard, when we have all being happily taking advantage of the things that is easier to do for ever.
It also seems weird to define all kneeboarders or surfers for that matter as turning in a certain way. What your watching in the latest videos is a snapshot of less than 1 % of all surfers.
Kneeboarders and stand up surfers alike come from different era's and depending which you identify with most - this might sway your headspace with regard to the optimal line you might ride on your own perfect wave, and the type of turn you define as being radical.
Check out Taylor Knox doing a cut back Red, and tell me he doesn't put it on a rail.
Everyone is different and thats what keeps it interesting for me.