How to do a Vertical Backhand Snap with Fred Patacchia

Want to learn how to surf better? Learn from the world's best through Surfline's Pro Tips, a complete how-to series created to improve your surfing skills. In this episode, we go over how to throw a perfectly vertical backhand snap with Freddy P.

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Transcription:

It's always been a highly-regarded maneuver. It will be in surfing for years. How’s it going, I'm Freddy P. Today we're going to be talking about a vertical backhand snap.

You know this type of maneuver can really be used anywhere in any situation. What really sets up this maneuver is a long bottom turn. What you really need is a strong bottom turn, something that really puts you in the zone, and you kind of want to hit that section where there's the most power in the wave. You want to be right next to the whitewash almost or where it's almost barreling. You just want to basically, with as much speed as you can, just stick that board up there and whack it back down as hard as you can.

When you're on your backhand, your vision is slightly impaired. You can't see everything as much as your front hand so really it goes with feel. You’re really feeling your bottom turn, you set up your bottom turn, you get crouched, you take half a second to a second look up at the part of the wave that you want to hit, so you have to go with it and anticipate the section being there. After that it's all feel. You kind of put your head down and you let your hips do a lot of the work because you're really loading up and you're really using that that coil mechanism in your back and then you're in your hips and your whole core area to get you in that position and then to force your board and yourself back down the wave using the power of the wave as well.

The best thing to do is really focus on your bottom turn and focus on staying crouched for as long as possible, coiling up, and then exploding at the top. What you want to do is really dig your heels into your board and kind of be on edge, almost falling over. Once you get to the top, you’re almost square over your board, then your toes come into play and you almost transition. So there's a lot of weight distribution that you have to deal with. Getting stuck at the top is, you know everyone has that problem, even Kelly Slater gets stuck every now and then. The best thing to do is to use the waves energy to bring you back down.

I noticed that a lot of guys use their arms in order to direct where they want to go. They say that in gymnastic as well, that your head dictates where your body goes. So you really want to look where you want to go and then look back down where you want to go and your body will just translate into what your head and your minds thinking. So you know it's trial and error, it's a lot of feel. You got to do it a bunch of times in order to have it down pat and actually do it correctly. Like with any other maneuver and in surfing you can stuff it up or you could blow it out and be like, “Damn I've never done that before.”

Thanks for watching. Go out there and get vertical! Twelve o'clock just like that.

-Freddy Patacchia