Surfing is 90% paddling. Until you develop good strong paddling skills, getting to ‘the outside’ will be a problem. Some days, some places, you won’t make it at all.
First of all, Don’t be misled by those sexy video’s of girls duck-diving thru clear blue water in bikini’s: Duck-diving is for shortboards, and shortboards are near impossible to learn on.

Here at Banzai Surf School, WE NEVER START ANYONE ON A SHORTBOARD! It may be months before you ‘graduate’ to that. Also, bigger boards are better suited to small waves anyway – There’s no shame in a bigger board. For that reason, we’ll concentrate on getting out on a big board – a board that you can NOT duck-dive or sink under the wave. (usually anything over seven feet)

TWO THINGS TO REMEMBER:
• Develop STRONG PADDLING skills.
• Keep open space around you, especially in front and behind.
1) Most small waves can be plowed through using good, fast paddling skills – Simply paddle hard, straight into the whitewater – and do a pushup as the wave hits, letting it pass under you instead of smacking your face.
2) In larger waves, the advantage of the big board is great paddling speed – Use it! It’s always best to race to the ‘green side’ (outside) of the waves BEFORE they break. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you see other surfers moving out, MOVE OUT! Don’t stop to rest in the ‘impact zone’ – You can rest when you’re dead : )

With larger whitewater waves, there are several choices when you’re ‘caught inside’:

• Most common method – The Kick-over: As you paddle towards the oncoming whitewater, just before the wave hits, stop & quickly sit near the tail of the board lifting the nose. Just before the whitewater touches your board, scissor-kick both legs in the water, pushing the board forward, as you grab the rails towards the nose, throwing your weight over the wave. This takes practice, and you’ll sometimes get knocked over backwards.
• The Tombstone: Another big wave idea is to turn your back to the wave, and sink the board’s tail with your foot, grabbing the rails. This helps you from getting pushed closer to shore.
• The Hail Mary: If the water is less than chest deep on a sandy bottom, you may actually jump off, stand on the bottom, and THROW your board over the whitewater, as you quickly duck under the wave. Hands over your head as you come up – you can’t be sure where that board landed.
• The Ditch n Dive (for BIG waves): Of course, you can always just ditch the board and swim under the wave. Well, not always: This is dangerous if anyone is behind you. And it’s the mark of a ‘kook’ if it’s done at the inappropriate moment (like, in tiny surf). It’s better to keep your board in-hand in smaller waves.
• The Turtle Roll: The ‘turtle roll’ (flipping the board over on top of you and hanging on for life) is rarely useful. It’s best used when the lip of the wave is about to crack right on your head. Part of the problem with the turtle-roll is the recovery time – getting back on your board.

That should be your arsenal. Learn them all, and know when to use which!

(.. OH, Wait a second, … is that a deep channel over there? .. where everyone paddles out with dry hair?? Why didn’t we see that in the first place …. : )

keywords: Paddling out with a soft surfboard, getting out with a soft-top surfboard, get thru waves with big board, get through waves on a longboard

The Costco Wavestorm surfboard celebrated it’s tenth year in 2016. When it came out, the 99-dollar eight-foot soft board started a panic in the surf shops – “Cheap boards made by people that have never seen an ocean”.

Having surfed all kinds of boards in my past fifty years, I remember the first time I rode a Wavestorm. It was another crappy day at Bolsa Chica (the softer cousin of Huntington Beach:). I paddled out with my teenage son and his friend, and I recall feeling silly, but happy-silly; Not only was I surfing with my kid, which is always fun, but we were on ‘kook boards’, giving us license to be as stupid as we wanted. I was giddy.

And that’s what surfing should be. We’ve gotten so taken-in by the pro tour, by the snaps and airs, by the pressure to PERFORM, that some of us have lost surfings’ grand purpose: FUN. It’s often said, the best surfer is the one having the most fun.

I’m sure I’d feel different if I lived on the point at Jeffrey’s Bay, but here in HB, soft boards have been a good insurance policy – they’re China’s answer to crap conditions. My routine quiver in my car now is my 6’0 Sci-Fi, and the 8 foot Costco mush-buster. This past year I’ve ridden the soft board more times than not. And it never disappoints. I can paddle fast, catch anything, and drop face-first on the deck without bruising. I’ve taken a real liking to the comfort of that soft deck. What’s that? Your Wave Storm has a ding? Patch it with a hot glue gun!

I know that if I took things seriously and paddled out on my 6’0, more times than not I’ll come back frustrated. (Spring is the time of year that I like to tell surfers that you don’t need a new board; You need a plane ticket : ).

And not only are they $99, but it’s Costco, baby: If you’re conscience allows, you can take them back for a refund at the end of summer. They aren’t high performance – they spin-out if you put them on edge, and I have yet to complete a good floater. BUT, They don’t need wax, paddle like a boat, and you can drop them on the pavement. Sitting in the middle of a vicious pack NObody expects anything from the ‘kook on the Wavestorm’; You can sucker-punch the whole crowd. If you run over your best friend he’ll come up laughing. If you eat shit into closed-out shorepound you won’t come up with a concussion or fin gash.

Sometimes a bit of humility pays off.

Surfing carries a long tradition of slang terms. Most of us know the old-school terms like ‘wipeout’ and ‘cowabunga’. Here’s a list of some of our newer favorites. This should help you translate things your instructor says.

“Going off” – “Dude, Brookhurst is going OFF!” This means the waves are good. You could also say, it’s “off the richter”, “cranking”, “macking” or “epic”. (“awesome” is way overused).

“Inside” – “We got caught inside”. This is the area closer to the beach where smaller waves are breaking. However, on bigger days, there is an area just inside called “the impact zone”. This is where you think you might be safe from the waves, but instead you get your clock cleaned by big waves because, in fact, It’s better to be sitting outside where the wave won’t break, and then laugh at your friends who didn’t know that.

“Outside” or “Out the Back” – “Dude, the outside break is going off.” This means the farthest break from the beach, or “outside” of the breaking waves where the (supposedly) more experienced surfers are sitting. If you’re in the water and hear someone say ‘outside’, that means big waves are coming; Move further out, … quickly.

“Onshore/Offshore” – “This morning there were ‘nuggets’, but it’s onshore now.” We’re talking about the WIND here; Onshore means it’s blowing ‘onto the shore’, making the waves mushy and crumbly, not usually desirable. “Offshore” winds blow off the shore into the waves, holding them open for better ‘barrels’. (Most large land masses – ie USA, Mexico, UK – will have onshore winds in the afternoon, as the land heats up)

“Closeout” – “The whole place was wally and closed-out.” A closeout is when the whole wave (or ‘wall’) breaks at once, leaving no place for a surfer to slide across the open/unbroken wave face. Closeouts are the least desirable waves for surfing.

“Left” or “Right” – “Wow, that’s a nice left.” This term refers to the direction that a wave will peel (or is breaking), from the surfer’s perspective. So, when seen from shore, a left peels across the beach towards your right. In Hawaii, the famous Banzai Pipeline (our namesake is a left.

“Swell” – “There’s a good swell this weekend.” We confuse more people with this simple term. It means a wave event, or a series of days when there will be waves. A swell is usually coming from a particular direction, and is labeled a “south swell”, a “west swell”, or just “a big south”.

“Tubular” – “Dude, nobody’s said ‘tubular’ since the 1980’s.” So yes, it’s not new, and more commonly now called “barreling” or “hollow” or “pitching”. It means when a wave opens up and breaks hard, top-to-bottom, “gnarly”, allowing room for a surfer to maneuver through. (Not usually desirable for beginning surfers)

“Frothing” – “I checked the waves this morning, and it was so good I was frothing.” “Frothing” is the new “stoked” – when a surfer is excited.

“Macking” – “Newport Beach was MACKING yesterday.” = huge waves. You could also say “maxxed out”, “double (or triple) overhead”, “cranking”, “outta hand”, or how about just “big”.

“Kook” – “There are too many kooks out here”. A beginning surfer; Not a term of endearment. Also called, “barneys”, “slugs”, or my favorite, “clutter”.

“Set” – “We got picked off by a cleanup set.” This means a set of waves. Most sets have anywhere from two to eight waves, unless you’re paddling back out; That always seems to be the moment you’ll get bombed by a set of a dozen or more. It still beats the heck outta golf.

“Over the falls” – “I tried to push through but went over the falls”. This is a term most beginners will learn the hard way. This is when you get stuck on the top of the wave and get thrown over with it – a sadistically fun wipeout to watch. This can happen while riding OR just paddling out. Humorous on small waves, tragic when it’s big.

“Pearl” – “You pearled on that wave, you kook”. This is one of the first words beginners learn, because, well, beginners pearl a lot :). This is when the nose of the board dives under the water, usually causing a rodeo-clown sinus-flooding wipeout. It comes from the endearing phrase ‘to go pearl-diving’. More on how to prevent this in this blog.

Surfing Basics

FIRST:
• Location Location: Start in a surfing area that’s within your abilities. Ask around.
• Always start off with a BIG board, and a SMALL wave, and NOT the other way around

IN THE WATER:
• Unless the waves are tiny, you should be learning in the broken ‘whitewater’ waves, on the shoreward side of the ‘pros’.
• When you’re lying down paddling your surfboard, keep your toes on the tail (or thereabouts). That should keep the board in the right trim. (Especially true for the Costco ‘WaveStorm’ boards)
• When you’re walking or paddling out, keep the board pointed straight into the waves.
• 3 keys to CATCHING waves: Toes on tail, board straight towards shore, paddle hard!
• When you stand up, keep BOTH FEET ON THE CENTER line of the board. Weight back for control, forward for speed.

Those are my best surfing tips; The quick pointers that I give whenever I pass new surfers that are struggling. They should save you some frustration. And for the dedicated, let’s add this one:

• Learn to paddle STRONG. Surfing is 90% paddling. If you just want to try surfing for a day, it’s not a big issue: Your instructor will help you into waves. But if you’re serious about surfing, get serious about paddling. Upper body strength: This is why old surfers are built like roosters

FOUR KEYS TO GREAT SURFING:
• AWARENESS
• TOES AND TRIM
• STANDING CENTER-WIDE-LOW
• PADDLE STRONG.

If you’ve tried surfing and you’re wondering ‘why does my surfboard dig-under’, keep ‘nose-diving’ or ‘pearling’, check out our ‘How to do a perfect takeoff’ article.

In 1995, a twenty-year-old Chris – known in his neighborhood as the indestructible kid who rode his BMX bike off the roof – crashed his pickup truck into an illegally parked car in Long Beach and was almost killed. He sustained brain damage that caused tremors and left him unable to walk or function normally. His right side is still almost paralyzed – cut-off from the command center. His speech is slurred, and visual acuity is limited. And he’s a big guy – 250lbs.

Years ago when I answered the call from his Occupational Therapist, Diane, she briefed me on her patient Chris, and thought surfing might be good therapy. They had been to several other ADA recommended programs and surf camps, but none of them worked out.

After giving me the full list of his disabilities, I was thinking this could be a tough lesson to do, and it might be hard to find the right instructors. Then she added, ‘Oh, … and he says whatever comes into his head, including hollering and profanity’.
I said, ‘Bring him down’. (We like spontaneous people

Since then, ‘Holtzenegger’ has surfed with us every Tuesday morning, including the cold winters. He walks with a cane and an assistant, so he never stands up on the board. He’s a joker and a kind soul – a social butterfly who says hi to everyone. He greets new friends with a handshake routine that’s become part of a series of ‘auto-pilot’ habits that Diane is trying to replace with something that better demands his … engagement.

We customized a 10 foot surfboard for him; extra thick with grip pads and handles to pull himself aboard. On good days, he can get up to his knees. On his off-days, he’ll roll off the board and lie face down in the water, pretending like he’s drowning. The first time he did that I sprinted over in a panic and heaved him face-up in the water. He just broke out laughing.

He’s also the only lesson who comes with an entourage: Diane, a Banzai instructor, and Edison (the ‘muscle’). Edison’s job is to keep Chris upright and do the heavy lifting (and Chris is heavy). Last summer Chris’s mother Linda was joined by his grandmother to watch one of his surf sessions from the beach. They stood there and cried with joy.

It comes down to what every surfer knows: The ocean heals. There’s something about seawater that speaks to our DNA – it puts all the pieces back together. Holtz has been surfing with us for four years now, and Diane has noticed on his surfing days he’s happier, more ‘perky’, as if someone turned his electricity on. “It makes me feel alive again”, he says. That goes for all of us, Chris.

They suck. There, I said it. And this applies to surf lessons via LivingSocial, TravelZoo, Scoutmob, yada yada. Here’s why: Today I had the opportunity to watch one of our Huntington Beach surf school competitors – who do a ton of discount Groupon surf lessons – as they gave a budget surf lesson. What I witnessed was amusing and sad at the same time…

A group of about 8 people showed up in the parking lot, half of them too young to keep up with a group (and should’ve had private lessons). They were then put into cheap ill-fitting wetsuits and given boards that were too small.

When they got down to the water, I watched as most of the group sat on the beach waiting their turn, while the younger kids were taken out in very rough conditions, getting tossed around so much that I think people nearby could see me cringing.

After each “ride”, the instructor would then run back up the beach and take the next customer.

Note: If you’re repeatedly made to sit in the sand awaiting your turn, then perhaps your ‘two-hour lesson’ is actually closer to 45 minutes. That’s not a deal.

I’ll make an allowance for bad conditions; There’s nothing an instructor can do about Mother Nature. But ANY of our Banzai instructors could have done a better lesson in the given conditions. Instead, the students got pummeled and tossed and were put in dangerous situations with obviously inexperienced instructors.

The sad part is that most surfing newbee’s have no way of knowing the difference between a good or bad surf lesson – they have nothing to compare it to.

Before I go further, you need to understand how Groupon works from a business owners perspective. If a school normally offers a surf lesson for a hundred dollars, Groupon wants them to offer it for half-price, $50 dollars. BUT, Groupon takes half of that for THEIR end of the deal. That means that as a business owner, the school is now selling their product for 1/4 of the asking price, less credit card fees.

How could you expect to get a good surf lesson for $25?? That’s less than the cost of a rental. So the business cuts back on equipment and especially staffing; Big mistake. Even good instructors can’t succeed if the student to instructor ratio is 10/1. That’s almost criminal.

So, you’ll find that most *reputable surf schools won’t offer Groupon deals for these reasons. For some businesses (i.e. selling widgets) it might make sense with the (hopefully) return business. In the surf lesson business, the customer’s greatest value is in their very first lesson; Learning all the critically important basics. After that, most will scratch it off their bucket-list and never return, and certainly not at full price.

*When I say “reputable”, I mean a permitted surf school that operates legally and (at least in these parts) is sharing profit with the city or state government. In this way, the legitimate surf schools contribute to the upkeep of the beaches. Most bargain surf lessons are offered by “pirate/rogue” schools that operate illegally and lack the safety oversight, insurance, and instructor background checks. There is a list of legally permitted OC schools here.

So a smart customer might take the all-important first lesson at the full and fair price, and hope for a discount on the subsequent lessons, after they’ve learned the basics and established themselves as a regular customer. The Groupon business model, in this case, is backwards.

The crux of it is this: Staffing is everything. A good lesson comes from good people (and enough of them). If you’re bargain shopping, consider what kind of business you’re supporting, and the safety of your family.

As I write this (May 2015) I’m reading an article in the L.A.Times about our new shark friends visiting Huntington Beach. Whaa? Sharks in Huntington Beach?!

I should clarify: What was seen – mostly up around Sunset/Seal Beach – were young sharks, four to six feet in length. (At that size I call them “pets”:)

I also got a call from a young lady who canceled her surf lesson because of the news. Her father apologetically said that she got on the internet and started reading, and then there was just no turning her around.

It struck me how silly all this is. Of all the ways to get hurt surfing, sharks are way down the list.
But the real issue to me, is how an unreasonable fear can squelch your desire to try new and exciting things. Living in our present-day cyber-world, everything can be pseudo-experienced on your computer: You can fly, fight, shoot, and crash, then just reboot. People think they can “live” their life without ever leaving the safety of their Wi-Fi signal.

Is there a risk in surfing? Well as with anything, yes. But at some point you’ve gotta leave your house!

Whenever I write on this subject I feel like the cranky mayor of Amity Island in “Jaws”; Yes, I have a commercial interest in keeping people in the ocean – I own a surf school.
I should add though, that I have no problem telling my own kids that they are safe from sharks ANYWHERE in Orange County. (Well, they already know that, because they’re teenagers, and teenagers already know EVERYTHING :).

So, I stand by my original article of a couple years ago: The shark scare in Orange County is a non-issue. Not only that, in the big picture, the sharks may be a good thing. Here’s an excerpt from the May 23 article in the LA Times:

“Marine officials said the sightings are not unusual. The young sharks, which have been feeding mostly on stingrays, are not aggressive and have not attacked humans.”

The sharks are eating stingrays. Anyone who’s felt the pain of a stingray injury should take some comfort in that. At Banzai Surf (being closer to Newport Beach) we get just a handful of stingray injuries per year. (I wrote a separate blog about it)

In recent years though, there’s been record numbers of stingrays, and injuries, and this can be attributed perhaps to the warmer water/El Niño.

This looks to be a case of nature putting things in balance – More stingrays means more of their natural predators. So the little sharks are actually a partner in our fight against stingrays.

Go kiss a shark.

UPDATE – eff: July 2015: “Surfers have a 1-in-17 million chance of being bitten”,  According to this article by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Wait, this is good too “13 Things More likely to kill you than a Shark”

UPDATE – MAY 2016: After asking around to our various local lifeguard headquarters, the consensus seems to be a big decline in stingray injuries since last summer. I can testify that here at Banzai, we haven’t had one stingray injury in almost a year! That is unheard of! Looks like our little shark buddies cleaned up!

On a side note: The word ‘camp’ can be a misnomer too: There are NO ‘overnight camping’ surf camps in northern OC.

Otherwise, picking the right surf camp is a lot like picking a baby sitter; Trust is everything. Here are a few pointers on how to quiz your prospective surf camp.

Ask what the camps ‘student-to-instructor’ ratio is. This will give the best indication of how much personal attention your child will get. The younger the child, the lower that ratio should be.

Surf camps typically staff anywhere from three to ten kids per instructor; The ratio may vary depending on ages, skill level, and surf conditions.

Ask how much actual water-time your kids will get. Most schools will rotate students, being as there may be sixty kids and only twenty surfboards. The amount of actual time they spend surfing might take some of the shine off the “bargain” price.

You should also find out if a surf camp/school has an actual permit to operate on the beach, and where. This would seem obvious, but the illegal (“rogue”) surf schools have gotten more brazen, using expensive websites and marketing. Having your kids at a “school” that doesn’t have a permit exposes them to a variety of risks, such as a lack of safety oversight, and a staff that isn’t background checked or qualified. Also, if they are caught, you could lose your money.

Legally permitted schools – through the fees they pay – contribute to the care and maintenance of beaches. Illegal schools not only don’t pay these fees, they compete with an unfair price advantage (ie Groupon, or cash deals, etc).

In reality, a rogue surf school would be unlikely to offer a week-long surf camp; It’s too conspicuous. It’s more likely they would try to talk parents into a ‘package of lessons’ at a variety of locations, with the selling point being that they can ‘do lessons anywhere you’d like’. This is because they aren’t permitted in any one location, and keep moving to stay ahead of the authorities. They may offer to pick-up and drive kids/customers, also illegal.

They may also have a ‘shop’ where you’d meet, make payment, and do all the basic land instructions, so as to not call attention to themselves on the beach.

Remember that anyone can put up a nice website and get a business license, but an actual contract to operate on the beach is much more expensive and harder to qualify for. Below, I’ve included a list of legally permitted surf camps/schools in North Orange County.

Legally permitted surf schools in northern Orange County, CA

If you don’t find a surf school named here, it is very likely operating illegally.
Updated 5/2026

Under permit from the State of California:

Banzai Surf School
Corky Carroll Surf School
Let’s Go Surf School
Salty Grom Surf School

Under permit from The City of Seal Beach:

M&M Surf School

Under permit from The City of Huntington Beach:

Clint Carroll Surf School
Orange County Surf Coaching
McKinnon Surf Lessons
Little Surf Co
Serene Waters Surf Adventures
WaveHuggers

Under permit from The City of Newport Beach:

Endless Sun Surf School
Erik Nelsen Surf Camps
Newport Surf Camp

Confession: I may be the only surf instructor in Huntington who hasn’t been hit by a stingray. I’ll credit this to two things:
• My good habit of ‘shuffle and stomp’ to let them know I’m coming,
• Limiting the area that I/we are occupying,
• and my vulcan atomic force-field :).

For surf instructors, it’s not a matter of ‘IF’, it’s ‘when’; We’re much more vulnerable than most because of the huge amount of time we spend in the water, walking around where most surfers would jump and paddle, avoiding stingrays.

Our area in south Huntington Beach has fewer stingray problems than areas to the north like Bolsa Chica and Seal Beach. Banzai customers with stingray injuries total just over a handful a year, and that’s mostly during the springtime, when the bottom is stirred up with short-period swells. That’s a pretty small percentage, when you consider that we see over a thousand customers per year. Still, it represents one of our more common injuries, and it’s fairly preventable:

• Any time you’re walking on a sand bottom, SHUFFLE your feet.

I would add a little stomp to that, but ONLY (of course) in the area you’ve already cleared and ‘claimed’. This scares them away. Rays don’t want to be stepped on, and in fact, are timid. We may be approaching this all wrong: There are areas in the Bahamas where the rays are a tourist attraction; They’re handled, fed, and actually seem to enjoy contact with humans.

A stingray injury hurts more than a bee sting, sometimes much more so, but is almost never fatal. Treatment for stingray injury involves hot water, and lots of it. The heat breaks down the protein venom. The hotter the better – generally above 110º F. During the peak summer months, the lifeguard headquarters become ‘social clubs’ full of ‘SRV’s (Sting Ray Victims), seated with their feet in warm buckets, trading stories about the big one that didn’t get away.

At Banzai we’ve also treated people by applying mustard, which is a good addition to your beach First Aid kit if there’s a delay getting to hot water. It works; I’ve done some research, and this may have something to do with the turmeric in mustard. (Turmeric is being used is some snake anti-venoms) I’m currently working on a balm that I hope to have ready to test this summer at the nations’ stingray capital, Seal Beach, CA.
Meanwhile, do the rays a courtesy and keep shuffling.         – Jaz K.