All great stuff here. The neuroplasticity element that was brought up is very much the case and I liked the way that poster presented it. On one end, I can see the standpoint of more expert surfers having such a gap between their regular stance that they've used their whole career (10,000+ hours in some cases) and the switch stance they may have only experimented with every blue moon. The statement about not trusting one's switch stance in the most challenging conditions is very understandable. Also understandable is the lack of time many surfers may have in getting their switch stance up to par with their regular. I'm a world-class competitor in another sport that is very style-specific and I spent most of my career thinking that if I was so far into one of two very polar oppositional styles it would displace me in the competitive realm to veer to the other side. Then I had enough of beating 98% of the opposition nearly every time and 2% of the opposition less than half the time. I went cold turkey and developed the complimentary, yet polar opposite style. It made me bulletproof and a chameleon to any opponent. Then again, it's not in a domain where we are talking about being victim to a life-threatening triple hold-down if the dice were rolled. For some reason, I'm one of the ultra-righty people mentioned earlier yet ride goofy and always did from day 1 of snowboarding as well. Wrestling is the only sport I've trained where right foot forward is specific to right-handed athletes. The recent focus of my surfing progress has been bottom turns and I'm finding that going backside is more instinctual than going frontside in many instances. Doesn't hurt that it seems to be one of the only (if not the only) carry-over techniques from snowboarding and that my muscle memory already exists to some extent for this technique. I'm looking forward to how it eventually sets up cutbacks and snaps from the top and re-entry once I continue to move things along. I'm a big believer in kinetic chains and the relationship between shoulder and hip placement/movement on full-body movements so all of the fundamentals of turns are making lots of sense to me.
my pops is a pro at it he can surf just as well going left and right frontside. you couldnt tell if he was goofy or regular but he has 40 years practice. he no longer surfs backside.
