From the sixties ‘til now besides surfboard design evolution there are a couple items that have really helped surfers abilities to advance. This may be a personal opinion… but think about it.
Surf wax…
Unless you were surfing before the introduction of surf wax you may not know this. Paraffin wax was what we used on the deck of surfboards before the brilliant idea of making a wax that actually was sticky… ‘cause Paraffin wax was not.
Paraffin was better than nothing ( we needed something non slippery ) and did keep you from slipping and losing control of you board a fair amount of time but it was nothing compared to the surf wax we use now.
Slipping and falling was a pretty common thing back in the day. Think about getting a nice point wave that you should be able to surf for several maneuvers but instead you fall after your first bottom turn because the wax was slippery on your board. I used to hate the feeling or lack of confidence you’d get from knowing the wax on your board was slippery and you where more likely than not to fall once you scored that nice set wave.
Sometimes I’d paddle inside and slip into the water reach
down and grab a hand full of sand and rub it into the wax to help get the
slippery out of the wax. Now if the water was pretty warm it helped but where I
surfed most of the time (
Anyway, point being, the more you fell the less you were surfing. The less you fell the more you were working on developing you abilities and advance your surfing. The more waves you get and rides you complete the more stoked you get and the better your surfing gets.
The other thing that would happen if you fell off your board… you had to swim to retrieve it. Sometimes your board would be close so there was not much of a swim… that’s when you were lucky. Other wise your board could end up all the way on the beach and you’d have to swim all that way to get the darn thing. Which could be 5 minutes or more. That’s time your in the water but not catching waves. Aside from the fact that your board may be going into some rocks on the beach. Can you say dings!
Well that all changed with the leash…
Leashes started coming on about when surf wax did. They took some time to actually develop and work well enough but when they did there was no more swimming for your board. If you fell your board was about 6 feet away. Not only that but if another wave came before you got back on your board? Not big deal because it was attached to your foot.
With good surf wax we weren’t slipping and falling off our board and with a leash attaching the board to our foot and not needing to swim to retrieve it we all started catching more waves and getting better at it.
After all, surfing is a performance based activity. And you typically get better at a performance based activity by repetition.
D.R.
