What Is Wrong With Surfer Magazine's Style Post

Once again surfers say that style is "not doing too much" when the exact opposite is true. Sure it looks like you're not doing too much, but even that is a learned behavior. You're actually doing quite a lot: paddling efficiently to get into waves at the right moment, positioning your hands, looking in the direction you want to head, reading the wave, and feeling out the whole ride. Furthermore, people like Craig Anderson and myself, who have been surfing for most of our lives, have had exemplars we look up to and whom we have imitated in order to achieve effortless-looking surfing. And as Anderson's style shows and proves, one of the key aspects to good style in surfing is an ability to fold in one's back knee. If the back knee cannot or does not drop deeper than the front what you get is a twofold knock against your surfing: less power and a poo stance (because if the back knee doesn't fold then you're bending at the waist and therefore sticking out your bum). Next to back knee foldage, hand placement is also crucial. There are a number of ways to hold one's hands in surfing and how you do will solidify what kind of style you have. Some surfers know for "creepy fingers" are Bruce Irons, Rob Machado, Joel Tudor, Alex Knost, and Ando himself. Gerry Lopez had/has some of the best hand placement in the game. So yeah not looking like you're doing much is key, but so is intentional imitation of past style masters and attention to key physiological truisms.