Frontside Air Reverse - Spin that Frontside air

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36. Frontside Air Reverse

This is where airs start to look really good (as if they didn’t already). When you see someone bust an air, spin, land backwards and then spin again to ride out it really sticks in your mind and you realise how sick this move really is. When you see them done in a very controlled manner is makes them look even better.

So what is it? Well we have pretty much explained it above. It is a frontside air with a spin in the middle of it so that you land back on the wave backwards and then ride out of it. Nowadays you see guys who are completing the entire spin in the air so that when the land back on the wave they are already going the correct way, but lets not get ahead of ourselves, the guys doing these are the best surfers in the world so we are going to start off teaching you how to do them the same way that the best in the world learnt them.

Again like all airs it’s all about speed. The more speed you have the easier this move becomes. The section you are looking for is usually a nice closeout section with a soft white water landing. If you go trying these off barrelling sections you are going to get smoked.
Make sure you have read lesson 32. Frontside airs before this as it has a bit more detail in it for how to launch out the wave and into the air.
As you race down the line spot the section you are going to launch off. You want to hit that section with your board at about a 45-degree angle. As soon as you launch off the lip you want to really kick your tail round, I mean it boot that thing round so that the tail is going to be at the same angle as your nose was when you launched, without doing this there is no way your board is going to spin in the air. Doing a good spin is all in a good launch. As you kick your tail out you want to open your shoulders right up and rotate them so that your board and your body can both spin in one motion. As you launch and start to spin you might want to grab your rail, some people find this easy some find it very difficult. What it comes down to is if you have a natural low center of gravity and you really bend your knees to suck your board up it should be very easy to get a grab in.
Right so you’re in the air and your rotating around, at some point you are going to be in the air fully backwards about to land back on the wave fins first. You need to really spot that landing so you know when you absorb the landing with your knees. If you land straight legged you will get thrown off straight away. As you come down to land you want make sure your weight is over your front foot. If you have too much weight on your tail it is just going to dig straight into the wave and you’ll be chucked off.

As you do land its all about being well centered over your board, if you are off balance it wont take much movement from your board to throw you off. When you land you want to have a low center of gravity and be ready for your fins to bite back into the wave and spin you round the right way.

This move can be very difficult for some people, you might try it a few hundred times and take you years to land one but when you do it will all be worthwhile.