The bottom turn and your first real turns

The bottom turn is the moment surfing stops being 'standing up on a wave' and starts being surfing. It's the turn at the base of the wave that converts the speed of the drop into a direction and a line — everything you do afterwards is spent from the account it opens.

This is why a flat, hesitant bottom turn produces a flat, hesitant wave no matter how good the takeoff was. Surfers stuck riding straight toward the beach are almost always missing this one movement, not the exotic manoeuvres they think they're missing.

Frontside — chest toward the wave — is where to learn it. After the drop, as you reach the flat water at the base:

• Look where you want to go, up and down the line. Your body follows your eyes, and this single habit fixes more turns than any other cue.
• Compress: bend your knees and drop your weight. A turn comes from loading the board, and you cannot load a straight leg.
• Lean into your heels (frontside, on your toes-side rail) and drive weight through your back foot to engage the inside rail.
• Extend smoothly through the turn as the board comes around and starts climbing back up the face.

The feeling to chase is being pressed into the board — that's the rail biting and generating drive. If the board slides flat across the water instead, you're turning with your shoulders rather than your rail.

Backside — back to the wave — is harder for two reasons: you can't see the section you're turning into, and the mechanics load your toe-side rail through a less natural rotation.

The fix is rotation and vision. Turn your head and lead shoulder to look back up at the wave before you turn, compress lower than you would frontside, and drive off your toes with your front knee tracking over your toes rather than collapsing inward. Beginners backside tend to stay upright and stiff; the cure is almost always getting lower.

Once riding, speed doesn't come from your arms. It comes from working the board up and down across the wave face — pumping — using the steeper upper section to accelerate and the flatter lower section to project forward.

The movement is a rhythmic compression and extension: weight down as you drop toward the base, up and light as you climb toward the lip, repeating in time with the wave. Done well it looks like nothing and feels like the wave got faster. Done badly, it's a lot of visible effort and no acceleration — usually because the board is staying flat instead of rolling onto its rails.

The top turn is the bottom turn's counterpart: having driven up the face, you redirect back down it. Start modest — a gentle redirect off the upper third, not a vertical snap.

Same principles, mirrored: look where you're going (back down the wave), compress as you arrive at the top, shift weight to your back foot to pivot the board, and extend as you come down. If you're being thrown off the back of the wave, you went too vertical too early; if you drift over the top and lose the wave, you needed more speed from the bottom turn first.

• Straight back leg: no compression, no load on the rail, no turn. The most common fault by a distance.
• Looking down at the board: the board follows your eyes, and your feet are not a destination.
• Turning with the upper body only: shoulders rotate, board stays flat, nothing happens. Rail engagement comes from weight, not twisting.
• Feet in the wrong place: back foot needs to be on or near the tail pad, over the fins. Too far forward and the tail won't pivot.
• Turning too early, in the whitewater rather than the clean face: there's nothing to push against.

Every one of these is nearly impossible to feel and instantly obvious on video — which is why turns are the part of surfing where filming yourself pays off fastest.