Lessons
25.Throwing the fins out
26.Chop Hop
27.Grab Rail Turns
28.Carving Reverse
29.Off the lip Reverse
30.Backside Reverse
31.Backside Tuberiding
32.Frontside Air
33.Backside Air
34.Air Grabs
35.Alley Oop
36.Frontside Air Reverse
37.Backside Air Reverse
38.Superman Air
39.Rodeo Flip

26. Chop Hop

The chop hop is a great little stepping stone for getting some altitude on your board. They are not airs but you are getting your board out the wave and your chucking a spin in there for good measure. It is well known that the old school purists have a little problem with chop hops, weather its because they cant get their head around them or they think any move where your board leaves the water is sin for surfing I don’t know but one thing is for sure they are a cool move that you can bust out when your mates haven’t got enough speed to do a turn and they are a must learn if you want to start doing alley oops and backside air reverses.

A chop hop is this: Ollie your board with a backside 180 spin, land on the wave backwards and then spin 180 out to carry on going along the wave. If you skate you will very familiar with backside 180’s. If you don’t then a backside spin is when you spin and your back faces outwards. A frontside spin is when your front (stomach) faces outwards during the spin.
Its one thing being able to do a 180 Ollie on a 7.5-inch wide piece of wood with wheels on the bottom it’s a whole different ball game doing it on a 6ft 18.5-inch wide piece of foam and fibreglass.
The actions compared to skating and surfing are pretty different so we are going to teach you how to nail this.

Forget about stamping on the tail and dragging your foot up the deck like you would on a skateboard this wont work on a surfboard so you need to do the following.

Firstly having the right conditions plays a massive role in how quick you are going to learn this move. A moderate offshore wind helps out in a big way because as you stamp down on your tail the wind catches underneath your board giving you a huge assistance in lifting your board off the face of the wave.
You want to have a fair bit of speed, if you don’t have any it’s extremely hard to pop your board out the wave.

You can do a chop hop either going left right or straight, a good time to practice them is in the flats going straight after your wave has closed out, if you learn them here it means you aren’t wasting waves trying them as your first manoeuvre.
We are going to teach them by going on your frontside (right if you are regular foot, left if you are goofy) by learning them on your frontside it means you don’t have to complete as full-a-spin as if would do if you were trying them on your backhand.
Go along the wave and generate a decent amount of speed slightly turn on your heel edge to angle your board about 45 degrees towards the beach and the bottom of the wave. As you do this push down hard on your tail and split second later onto your toe edge and kick your tail out. The key here is making the spin using your shoulders. As you push down on the tail hard you should already be rotating your shoulders round to make the spin happen, by pushing the tail down and kicking it out behind you it will make your board follow your body movement.
You are probably going to fall on your face a number of times and it might even take a while to figure out the spin but persistence here is the key.
As you land backwards you should have your weight evenly distributed. Too much on your back foot which is on the tail and it will sink, too much on your front foot and you will loose all your speed and the wave will carry on without you. As you are going backwards you want to be looking along your toe edge down towards your tail. Keep a low center of gravity and be ready for those fins to bite back into the wave and spin you back round so you are now facing back towards the beach.