Kick Outs! #tiptimetuesday Ending our waves with control is a showcase of skill, awareness, and completion. Not all waves offer an opportunity to do a proper kick out (meaning you exit the wave by pushing the board out of the wave, rather than jumping off or falling off at the end). Here, we can see a back side kick out, which is essentially an exaggerated turn. The technique is the same as doing a bottom turn here, but with way more pushing energy into the back foot, with the foot placed very near the tail. With a longboard, the challenge of the kick out, especially in a powerful section like this, is lifting the nose over the top of the wave. Like a see-saw, the only way to swing the nose up like this is to apply pressure far back on the tail of the board. If you’re in the habit of jumping off to end your waves, start paying attention to the different ways surfers are ending their waves. There’s a myriad of techniques to kick out depending on the board and the wave, but the main key for almost any situation is the exaggerated turn. So, if you’re still working on finding your turns, remember your tail is essential to turnability! As always, be a visual learner while you’re in the water and watching the surf. The more we pay attention to what surfers are doing on the waves, the more we can start implementing it into our own practice! Surfer @canipleasehaveabite Video @jaketrichard Words by @leahloves