Anybody care to eloquently describe this physical phenomena? I'm having trouble breaking down the physical mechanics to a friend I'm teaching. Thanks
you want to move your board to a higher spot on the face of the wave while going down the line. and in general if you only stomp on the front of your board while trying to pump then you should just give up surfing.
Your board and its components are working to create lift. Read this to understand lift. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force) Now, know that in the surf world, lift = drive. You have at least two parts of your board creating lift. The bottom and whatever contours you may have creating more of a vertical lift to keep you out of the water. And your fins and rails creating forward lift/drive. Pumping works because you're forcing water past your boards components creating lift/drive.
It's taking energy from your leg muscles and turning it into forward speed. <br /><br />Imagine you are on rollerblades and the wave is a series of ramps like this: 0 /|\ /\ 88 88 / \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\/ \\ If you just hit it without jumping/pumping with your legs the bumps would just slow you down, but<br /><br />If you rollerbladed up and jumped as you hit each bump so your weight all landed on the back half of each bump, you would accelerate each time (because when your weight was on the rollerblades, you would always be going downhill part speeding up, then your weight would be off them for the uphill parts (to minimize slowing down)
i like the first explanation the best. unless the guy has a good understanding of physics just tell him you want to go to the higher part of the face and then ride down, creating more momentum and speed, allowing you to travel faster than the wave is breaking.
We could post this in nearly all treads on SI. Micah needs to have stickies up top for sunilar treads that are redundant if allowed to be made multiple. There's probably only 10-12 different topics we ever post about. Micah, most successful message boards have a sticky and no-repeat policy. Please start enforcing that here so the forum is less crowded with repeat treads.
It's either that or have the first 3 pages of mostly redundant topics yet insufficient treads because more of the past quality posts are in similar treads on the topic. This is how any good message forum operates. It's not my idea. You can also instead of a sticky have "The Official Wetty Tread" so people go there to read then post if their question isn't answered by reading. What is popular as well is editing the first post in the tread to contain the full reference of info so people only sort through 30 pages of posts if they choose.
Emass, I mean this in the nicest possible way but if this website was made any mo'betta you'd be signed on 24/7.
Lol Clemsworth I actually read less than a third of the treads lately. There's a lot of off-topic that I don't have the time or interest to get into. Have kept most of my posts shorter for some time now. Quick hits bro.
Waaahhh, I repeat myself all the time but I can't stand when other people revisit topics they find interesting...
To be honest, if there were treads I'd rather see repetitive more than others it's these technical surfing ones and not those about some government conspiracy, witch wetsuite or crap like that. Central treads that are sunilar to one topic are the key to SI flowing properly. Then again, many here thrive on the dysfunction to dys break.
I felt the most rapid progression in my surfing when I first transitioned from a longboard to a short board and was able to produce speed by pumping down the line. It was an incredible feeling.