Your wanting to get into skimboarding but your somewhat afraid your going to make a fool of yourself. First of all quit worrying about looking like a fool. You need to practice and keep practicing if you want to get better. The more time you spend on the board the better your board skills are going to be. Now besides getting out there and doing it I figured I would help people out with some helpful tips on how to skimboard.

First off the most important aspect of skimboarding is timing your waves right. When your first starting out I’d recommend finding a flatly sloped area of the beach to practice dropping onto your board right after a wave breaks. Now dropping onto your board is one of the toughest things to feel comfortable doing and many people give up at this step in the process. You just have to keep practicing and you’ll eventually become confident doing it. Be prepared to get some nice bruises learning how to do this.

Now once your on the board enjoying the slide your going to need to feel out how to place your weight. Some basic guidelines are to shift a lot of your weight to your backfoot right before meeting the ocean to prevent the nose digging into the sand. This allows you to glide smoothly across the water instead of smashing into it. Also remember that wherever your head looks your body follows, this will help later with turning on the wave.

Another important part of skimboarding is running fast. To be a good rider you NEED to be able to run fast. Practice dropping over and over as fast as you can. At first your control will be a little off but over time you’ll get used to the speed and you’ll end up having more control. Speed is key to riding waves and the more you have the easier it will be to shred those waves up.

If you practice enough you should be able to wrap small waves which involves banking off the wave and riding it back to the shoreline. Try watching some skimboarding videos on youtube and watch the riders closely and try to do what they do.

In the more advanced guide on how to skimboard I’ll go over things such as pumping the board, one step dropping and getting air. Stay tuned.