How to Backside Barrel Ride with Andy Irons
Surf 15 years ago 115,540 views
Want to learn how to surf better? Learn from the world's best through Surfline's Pro Tips, a complete how-to series created to improve your surfing skills. In this episode, we go over backside tube riding with Andy Irons. Become a better surfer. Watch more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL73F9E9FED90AFA59 Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/surfline?sub_confirmation=1 Transcription: I’m Andy Irons and we're going to talk about backside tube riding. The best type of wave for a backside tube rider is obviously hollow, depending on if it's deep water or shallow water, deep water barrels are a little more almondy so you might have to make yourself a little more tight. Almond barrels are a little easier because the foam ball doesn’t explode up the face as much. If it's square barrels, those are the hardest ones to ride. That’s when the foam ball can bounce you off. When it's draining and real hollow you kind of gotta keep your line really low. I usually like to grab back side rail between my two legs, kind of just put my arm on the wall for indicators to guide yourself. You don't want to sit yourself too far out. Back in the day guys rode really long boards so they were always coming from a little farther out. These days all the top guys are usually sitting inside on the reef letting the waves come to them. When you set yourself up in that situation, you’re usually under the lip and makes it really late and extremely and that’s the best feeling. As soon as I get to my feet I’m already grabbing rail. You know you angle yourself toward where you want to go and as you're going down the face you just grab rail all the way through it, from the take off to the bottom turn and then depending on how deep you are or if you want to slow down you just butt drag it. If you're too deep, for me, I just kind of do this thing where I pull my rail up literally, like I pull up the face and as it comes up to face you rock it up and then let it down. It’s kind of like a give-and-take. It's an intense balance you gotta know not to pull too hard, but hard enough to get enough drive out of it. It's good to, once you get in the barrel, to really notice what's going on and adjust to the situation. You always have to be moving and adjusting to the lip and one thing is good is that you notice the lip on the barrel you can see the corner of it throwing out and just to make sure that you're as close to that corner pocket you can be. Once you start getting comfortable you can actually get on the foam ball and start sliding the tail around. You can actually start dropping in later and side slipping down the face and catching the rail. Start playing and have fun with it, it's the best feeling in the world. That’s probably the hardest part is dropping in on hollow waves, just getting down to the bottom. It's always good to take one extra stroke. In those situations where you’re not sure it's good to get down the wave. I see a lot of guys they don’t take that extra paddle and they end up just getting rejected. For me best board is nothing too long. I don't like anything over 7’0. It’s just because of the contour of the wave. Littler boards are a lot more maneuverable and can get you out of scary situations a lot faster. If you're in the barrel and the wave is closing out, the safest spot for me is to be in the barrel cause you get this like little air pocket and it's kind of a last gasp. You get to the end and the white water comes up the face and you see the section closing out, I usually just dive forward, you know dolphin out the back. You want to penetrate the water and not hit flat because the flatter you are the more you get caught up with the momentum of the lip. Thanks for watching Surfline’s Trick Tips. I hope to see you pig dogging in the future. -Andy Irons
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