Beginner's Guide to Surfing

Video Transcript

MIKE JONES: Hi, I am Mike Jones from AZ-HI-AZ-I-AM and this is a beginner's guide to surfing. All right, first off, getting good equipment is the key element in continuing your surfing career. If you do not have--if you are not comfortable your first couple of times out in the water you are going to get discouraged, be really cold and it is going to be a bad experience. You are going to end up not wanting to surf again. If you are going to go rent wetsuits and stuff, the surf shop that you get the stuff from, it is usually about $10, $15 maybe $20 a day to rent a suit. They will hook you up with booties, gloves, a hood, whatever you need. And also they can give you an idea of what is the right board for you. Next thing you want to do is find a good location where most beginners in that area would go and surf. You want to take it to a nice, flat sand beach with easy breakers. Talk to people at the shop where you get the equipment. Talk to people on the beach. I am always asking if I go to a new place, "Do people surf here? Where to they paddle out? How do they do this?" You want to make sure you have somebody there with you that knows that you are going out. You do not want to just blindly go out there even if there are just other people. And if you are a beginner, you want to make sure you have somebody tied to you on the beach or in the water with you because a lot of times guys will just be surfing. They are used to seeing beginners. You are often on their peripheral vision. They are not even paying attention to you. You get hurt; they are not necessarily going to even know that you are hurt. They are surfing, might be their only day to surf, they are going to be thinking about themselves and getting waves. Call your local shops, maybe the shop you got the board and wetsuit rented from and you can get a lesson through them. A lot of them will offer lessons. Local pros, you might be able to get a lesson off of one of them for cheap. You know you are talking anywhere between $20, $50 an hour. It is worth it to take a couple hour of lessons just to get the fundamentals.