The head is the steering wheel of the body and the body tells the surfboard where to go. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If you want my opinion, everyone should ride a longboard. Not exclusively — I wouldn’t condemn anyone to that — but every surfer should at least have a decent idea of how to surf a longboard. Bella Eberz has more than a decent idea, and she’s been enlisted by the iconic T&C Surf Designs to give a few tutorials.
So far, they’ve covered some of the basics. How to hang five. How to hang 10. How to cross-step. And most recently, how to do a cut back.
These are all important aspects of riding a longboard, not only from a style perspective, but also from a functional one.
“When you’re setting up your turn,” Eberz explains, “you generally want to be on the back half of your board, depending on where you are on the wave and where you’re coming from on the board.”
In order to really get that giant piece of foam cranked around, it helps to have your foot directly over the pivot point.
“When you execute your turn,” Eberz continues, “you want to make sure that your back foot is over your fin and that your stance is about shoulder-width.”
Now, for someone just learning to ride a longboard, it might feel strange to be all the way back — many people just getting started tend to stick to the middle of the longboard — but once you get that nose whipping around, you’ll get it. And once you get it… well, you’ll like it.
