Today I went out for dawn patrol and I just sucked. It was 3 to 4 ft, high tide on a beach break with a little bit of an off shore wind. I caught one, and after a few feet the wave rode under me and I basically kicked out. Which is fine but not what I was going for at all.

Then I caught another not too long after and I quickly turned and then I saw the lip coming down and I bailed away from my board, probably in the worst way ever. I should have straightened out but the waves were pretty mushy so I wasn’t that worried. Then my rhythm was just off. I couldn’t catch anything after that, and every time I did some aggresive dude was already up and cutting me off. I was at Bay St in santa monica. Plenty of room to spread out, why paddle out and sit on top of me and my two friends.

I was bummed I didn’t surf better since it had been a full week since I was in the water. My job is pretty rad but it often gets in the way of my surfing.

Since my gopro was on the board I slowed down the image and I noticed some things. One, I’m being way hard on myself because the wave didn’t give me much to work with. I slowed it down by 70% in the below video — so 7 seconds was really 3 seconds. A lot is happening in that short time. Let’s break it down:

The first thing I noticed is that my pop up isn’t strong enough. My front foot isn’t center and is turned out. (Curse of having studied ballet in the past). On a wave like this, should I have angled my board at take-off?

Then as I went to turn I put all my weight on my back foot. So look at that, my front foot fully lost contact with the board. The wave wasn’t SO steep that I needed to put my weight back like that, so why did that happen?

Some how I made it down the line but the wave didn’t hold up. Rather then straightening out, I lost my balance/ jumped away from my board. It was exciting to see the lip of the wave. Is that weird?

How can I improve? Water Time. That’s what everyone keeps telling me. I’ve been traveling so much for work but I now have three solid weeks in LA. And I want to surf for 21 days straight. My goal at the end of these three weeks is to do a front side snap. I’m also going to write a post every night (long or short) to write down what I learned/ noticed. Thank goodness for my GoPro otherwise I’d have no idea where to start. I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas or tips on how I can be better, so please please comment with advise.

Day: 1 | Water Time: 60 Minutes | Break: Bay Street | Waves Ridden: 2