In any sporting activity, there are simple rules to avoid injury. Learning on the job involves a certain amount of risk, as you learn at your own (or other people’s) expense. Going to a good surf school can help you avoid certain mistakes. The accidentology of surfing, mentioned here, is not intended to discourage or frighten. Each discipline – climbing, table tennis, kungfu, soccer – has its own specific set of injuries, which you need to be aware of to better protect yourself. Safety rules are an integral part of learning about sport.
Let’s take a look at the classic precautions for beginners and experienced surfers alike.
Warming up before launching
Young surfers, excited by the sight of waves, rarely take the time to warm up.
Sport subjects the body to unusual articular and postural stresses, specific to each activity, which over the long term can lead to certain pathologies and osteoarticular pain. A warm-up will help you avoid all these traumas, and enable you to continue surfing well into old age.
Surfing, subject to the vagaries of waves and weather, doesn’t always allow for regular practice. As part of your physical preparation, it’s a good idea to combine cardio training with more explosive workouts, and to develop a multitude of motor skills through the complementary practice of other sporting activities.
I can’t recommend martial arts highly enough, as they not only improve flexibility and coordination, but also enable you to develop good reflexes and react effectively in emergency situations. And yet, surfers constantly find themselves having to manage an environment in constant transformation, the wave being the personification of spontaneity.
Don’t jump headlong
The surfer, whether gliding over a wave or awkwardly standing up on his board, is careful never to plunge headlong into the water. Whether the water is opaque or transparent, gauging the distance to the bottom is a hazardous undertaking: the wave crosses sandbanks of varying heights, the depth may also have diminished due to the ebbing tide, and some surf spots are strewn with rocks. The surfer therefore acts cautiously, leaving the board at an angle and not diving vertically. When the bottom is rocky (reef) and the water very shallow, the trajectory of his jump will be almost parallel to the surface of the water, in order to stay on the surface.
It’s also in the surfer’s interest to jump with his arms forward, rather than head first.
This can prevent many injuries:
One thinks of the simple accident of a bather banging his head on the bottom of the pool. By diving at an angle, you can avoid spinal injuries.
Presenting the arms also protects the head from impact with the bottom or the board, or simply with the surface of the water. In fact, on a big wave generating a lot of speed, the feel of the diving surfer is sometimes that of hard water on impact. By entering the water first, the arms help to avoid the sensation of the head being “flattened”: this shock, which is not very pleasant for the cervical vertebrae, can damage the eardrum if it occurs at ear level.
A word of warning: it’s better to present the arms together rather than apart, to avoid placing the shoulder joints in neuralgic positions (extreme amplitudes).
Hence the second rule: don’t look down. Anyone looking down tends to lean over and lose their balance.
At the edge, watch your step
By the time the surfer has glided to shore, the water is sometimes only about ten centimetres deep. It’s best to leave the board carefully. The bottom of the water is not always flat, and although it rarely happens, you can twist an ankle. Rather than jumping with stretched legs, it’s better not to jump too high and to bend on landing. You can also sit on the board and let yourself slide sideways.
You should also avoid landing on your hand when there’s hardly any water – you could get hurt, so it’s better to let yourself fall on your side. But that’s where we enter another domain, the art of falling.
Master the basic rules of take-off
Beginners sometimes have poor reflexes and intuitive but inappropriate gestures: they stand up holding the edge of their board, looking at it in the hope of placing their foot correctly – all technical faults that prevent them from freeing up the space needed for the front foot. As a result, he sometimes twists his toes. Hence the importance of learning with a competent sports coach, as we saw in a previous article that the most fanciful techniques are sometimes taught.
This ties in with the previous rule: don’t look down. This poor reflex will result in a slower take-off and the board will dive to the bottom of the wave before the surfer has had time to put his feet on the board. However, it’s better to put your feet down quickly, as this keeps the board at a respectable distance; in the event of a fall, it’s harder to bump into it, and you can easily jump to the side. Whereas by lying on the board, clinging to it, the surfer undergoes the glide, the risks of encountering the board are greater when, inevitably, it buries at the bottom of the wave.
Avoid placing the board between the wave and the surfer
It’s a classic Brice de Nice situation, with the first wave bringing the board down on your nose when you could have just held it on its side.
But this rule applies to yourself as well as to others. The surfer who, passing the bar, lets his board drag or escape while another surfer is behind him can easily imagine what will happen next: the next wave will throw his board onto the other surfer.
In the same way, the more experienced surfer, when making a turn at the top of a wave, is careful to have enough speed not to fall, as the board between him and the lip of the wave could come back on him. In the tube, if the foam tries to swallow him, he leans on his feet to jump away from the board, for the same reasons.
Get out of the water with your head protected
After a dive, the board may come between the surfer and the wave through no fault of his own. This may happen once in a thousand times, but it doesn’t hurt to protect yourself.
The surfer is still underwater, and rises to the surface with his arms in front of his face, because he doesn’t know where his board is. As he emerges, the surfer may bump into the board’s daggerboards, or have the board knocked back by a wave, or the leach may bring the board back a little too quickly. The arms will stop the board and prevent a head impact that could have had a variety of consequences: bruises and cuts, shock to the neck.
Leach management
The leach should be a little longer than the board to keep the board away from the surfer when he or she emerges from the water. Using a leach prevents the board from being lost in the event of a fall, and prevents it from colliding with someone close to the shore.
However, here again, two precautions must be taken: a cord connects the leach to the board, so you don’t get your fingers caught in this cord, which could injure you if it twists when the wave carries the board away.
If the surfer wants to hold on to his board, when a wave passes (let’s say a bather is behind him), he grabs the strip of fabric around the base of the leach.
No one is behind him, the wave is too powerful, and he lets go of the leach before he feels a burning sensation caused by the rubbing of the fabric and to avoid putting too much strain on the shoulder joint.
This ties in with another piece of advice: don’t try too hard to hold on to your board if the wave is too powerful, as you could end up hurting yourself for nothing. That’s why, as far as possible, we avoid queuing up with other surfers or swimmers.
Respect the rules of conviviality on the water
Often, the surfer’s main danger is not the element itself, but other surfers. There are a number of rules to prevent surfers from injuring each other. Click here to learn more about these rules of priority and friendliness. These rules allow you to pass the bar without getting in the way of others, but also prevent several surfers from ending up on the same wave, with obvious risks of collision.
Don’t turn your back on your opponent
The surfer emerges from the water, whether he’s fallen or jumped off the board, looks for his board to make sure it’s safe, but also looks out to sea: this way, he anticipates the waves rolling towards him and the trajectory of surfers sliding towards the shore.
Tired, the surfer lets himself be pushed to the shore and rests on the sand. A floating surfer, lying on his board with his back to the waves, becomes a human target. He sees nothing coming, waves, surfers, he puts his fate in the hands of Mama Nature, perhaps not a wise choice.
Dive in!
When the board floats between you and the wave, it’s better to dive rather than try to catch it in a hurry. You’ll then have time to retrieve it, in complete safety, as it’s connected to your ankle via the leach.
The same applies to a surfer coming at you. If the impact becomes imminent, it’s best to escape underwater.
Finding yourself at the point of impact of a large wave can sometimes make ducking complicated, so beginners will be well advised to push the board to one side and dive.
These are just a few of the relatively simple rules that can help you avoid most of the risks inherent in surfing.
All in all, the liquid element is a relatively accident-free environment, especially for surfers: they don’t fall onto a hard surface, the board is like a lifeline and the use of a neoprene wetsuit allows them to float.
