INTERMEDIATE LEVEL


By saying that you are an intermediate surfer, that means you can catch your own waves, going up and down the wave to generate speed and starting to do cutbacks. We would also assume that you have been trying different sizes of boards, coming down in size and trying different boards suited for your volume. A lot of intermediate surfers tend to rush things and push themselves too much to a point where they are punishing their potential abilities, i.e. choosing a generous rocker board, thin rails and going to places where they can’t properly surf due to the lack of experience and skills. Below are the tips to choose your next board to further improve your surfing.

VOLUME
Volume is key. Having too much means it will hinder your ability to learn how to put your rail in the water while doing turns. Your board would feel sluggish and boaty, that feeling of disconnection to the wave. A good way to gauge your volume is by looking at your favourite surfer of the same weight and add on about 5-7L more. Best if you can find a surf shop that rents the boards so you can try different volume to suit your needs.

ROCKER
As an intermediate surfer, you now need to know about different types of rocker to decide on your next board purchase.
Flatter rocker = fast, more drawn out turns and easy to paddle and catch waves.
Curvy rocker= slower but more top to bottom manoeuvrability and tighter turns.
The trickiest part here is finding that fine line that will suit your level and style of
surfing. The perfect combo in our opinion is to get a board with a flatter nose rocker with a generous amount rocker in the tail, giving you that combination of speed and paddle power as well as a board that that will be nice and loose to manoeuvre in most conditions.


WIDTH
The narrower the board the quicker for you to go rail to rail. However, if it gets too narrow, then paddling would become an issue and that means you will lose the ability to catch more waves and you will also lose stability. On the contrary, the wider the board, the slower it is for rail-to-rail transition, yet is good for paddling and stability. A width of anywhere between 19 1/2”inches - 20”inches is a good start. Wide enough to provide you with paddle power and stability yet its narrow enough to lean on that board to do your cutbacks.

LENGTH
With the trend that has been going on since the early 2000s, thanks to the GOAT Kelly Slater, people have started surfing really short boards. The advantage of this is to be able to fit the board in the curve better, easier to do snappier turns and handy to travel with. The problem with this is that coming down from your longboard/minimal/funboard from 7’4-9’0 to a really short board of around the 5’10 mark, you would feel the board rather skatey and out of control. So, it’s good that you take your time going down in size and give it time to get used to it.

CONCAVE
Bottom contours can be really confusing for people and yet some people purchase boards that have the wrong contours to their needs. Thankfully with current technology and models, a smaller wave board would generally have double Concave to Vee bottom. By having these attributes, the board would feel looser as the water rushing out from the bottom of the board is channeled out from the Concaves. Having that Vee bottom would also allow the board to go rail to rail with ease especially on smaller, weaker waves. 

A single concave is normally applied when you have a surfboard with a generous amount of rail rocker. This flattens out the rocker of the board, creating a good amount of lift. It’s normally available in high performance board where precisions and flow are of importance. 
 

Below is our SX6, a board that is perfect for progressing intermediates. A friendly rocker combined with generous  tail lift will hav you ripping in no time.