Lohena, I just wanted to say thank you for pointing me in the direction of Rob Case. My shoulders have been totally fcuked, with intense bursitis pain in both, and my paddling has always been crap to average.
I watched all the videos (just the free stuff, haha) and three days ago made a massive effort to change my technique. Huge difference! My shoulder pain is all but gone, I paddle faster. And now I feel a pleasant soreness in my lats and pecs, meaning I'm using the bigger muscles, rather than punishing my ageing rotator cuff muscles.
Very grateful.
Glad you found that useful! Here are some of my thoughts on all of these topics now:
Paddling Injury:
As I’m getting older, and have existing chronic repetitive stress injuries, I should probably be more concerned about getting long-term pain/injuries from paddling. Not strictly from a wave catching point of view, but just becoming more efficient to reduce fatigue and potential injury. I’m actually thinking about visiting Rob or sending over a video at some point next year just to have somebody check my technique for deficiencies.
Wave Catching:
The most eye-opening part of Rob’s discussions/podcasts has really been about how little actual paddling is needed to catch waves (Check out a cool video series of his here:
). His physics discussions on the speed of waves versus max paddling speed, and the need to use the force of gravity to catch waves, has been a real game changer for me (I know it seems obvious!). The best way to reduce paddling injury and fatigue for me has been to do a lot less of it and instead focus on wave selection and positioning.
Think about this, take a mental survey of waves you miss or blow along with all the waves you see other surfers missing or blowing. Are the majority of those waves missed because people are trying to take off on a too flat part of a wave face by being out of position (either too far out or on the shoulder), or are they blown because people take off too late in a very steep part of a wave and get pitched? From my experience, the answer is definitely the former, which typically leads to people thinking they need more “paddle power.” I’m thinking that really people need to position themselves better to utilize the force of gravity and stop paddling so hard for waves they are out of position for.
Board Design:
Back to the discussion I started in this thread! That research article was super interesting, thanks for posting that. I guess the conclusion is that volume forward doesn’t help or hurt paddling because, somewhat obviously, surfers just adjust their position to maintain the same balance point on the board. I’m guessing this would probably apply for wave catching also because you’re positioned more forward on a volume forward board. There’s so many other elements of a board such as rocker and overall volume that contribute to wave catching it is hard to isolate just one thing without doing studies such as the one above.