How to do a Cutback with Taylor Knox

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 cutbacks with Taylor Knox.

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Transcription:

Hi your’e watching Surfline Trick Tips with me, Taylor Knox, and we’re going to talk about doing some cutbacks. Well basically there’s two types of cutbacks, theirs a frontside one and a backside ones and within that there’s about a hundred different varieties you could possibly do, but we’re going to just talk about a couple today. First being the front side one and I think most people who surf, they can relate to that turn, most people can do it. I’m just gonna talk about how I approach it.

When I go into a cutback I like to get a good, deep bottom turn and come off the bottom really heavy on the back foot and then as you’re coming up the face you kind of shift your weight a little bit more equally to the front and turn your hips and arms to go with your body. I think it always helps to have your head follow your body as well. I do move my back foot a little bit sometimes going down the line and I’ll do a nice high line and I’ll have my foot kind of up here and then, as I’m shifting down towards the bottom, I’ll move it back maybe one or two inches like right in between the fins is where I really like to have my foot. Then you can just really like to push into that and the board should want to skirt up the wave pretty quick.

Then as you get to the crest of the wave, you’re going to want to put your you’re board right on the edge of it and that’s where you’re going to get the most speed you’re going to want to drive your board around like this. And you’re gonna want to use that bottom curve of the wave want to get all the way to the bottom so it kind of wraps around in a perfect, nice circle.

I think normally backside bottom turns are a little stronger and easier to kind of get low on. So when you go into backside you’re actually low in the bottom turn and then you extend as you come up backside. You kind of guide your board up into the spot and then you can really push hard on your back foot but you’re also extending your body a little bit more vertically and you your body is uncompressing, not decompressing.

One really good tip that I learned watching videos of Tom Curren was he was always really centered over his board and he didn’t let his limbs fly off to the back cause that always slows him down. He was always so centered and technically perfect, I mean it’s unreal. When a guy does it right, its shocking how much force and how beautiful it can look, it’s pretty cool.

-Taylor Knox