How to Pop Up on a Surfboard: a Step-by-Step Guide

The pop-up is the transition from lying on the board to standing on it, ready to surf. Surfers say pop-up and take-off interchangeably, in the line-up as much as in surf school. In practice it strings three things together in a couple of seconds: you build speed by paddling, you go at the right moment as the wave picks the board up, then you push straight up in one smooth move and land your feet. Some surfers do it in a single motion, beginners break it into stages, but it is this one skill that separates the beginner still lying down from the surfer riding waves.

If you are just starting out, the board changes everything. A foam surfboard is wide, thick and very buoyant: it floats a lot, it is stable and it paddles fast. You catch the wave earlier, you get more time to stand up, and the board stays under you instead of sliding out sideways. A soft-top is what makes the pop-up achievable, because the volume forgives sloppy hand placement and a slightly late take-off, where a short board punishes every mistake. Once the movement is automatic you can move on to something more technical. To find the volume that matches your weight, read our guide to choosing a foam surfboard.

Here is the reference method, the one that works for the vast majority of beginners. It breaks down into three steps that you will run through slowly at first, then faster and faster until they become a single movement.

Timing matters as much as technique. Go too early, before the wave is carrying you, and you stand up on a board that is not moving: you fall. Go too late, once the wave has rolled underneath you, and you catch nothing. Start your pop-up the moment the wave lifts the tail of your board: that feeling of the board taking off on its own tells you the speed is there. Before that, you paddle; after that, it is too late. On a soft-top the window is wider and far more forgiving, which gives you time to learn to read that moment.

Four mistakes come up with almost every beginner, and simply knowing them is often enough to fix them. Looking at your feet or your board: your body follows your eyes, so if you look down you nosedive; keep your head up and your eyes forward. Standing up too early, before you have the speed of the wave: wait until you feel the push. Sloppy hand placement: hands stay flat under your chest, never on your fingertips. Going through your knees, the most stubborn habit of all, the one that slows you down and forces you to stand up a second time: the fix is to bring both feet under you in one go, and that is mostly drilled on dry land.

Once the basics are there, three things move you forward. First, know your front foot: left foot forward makes you regular, right foot forward makes you goofy. To find out, ask someone to push you gently from behind without warning; the foot you put forward to catch yourself is usually your back foot. You will always place your feet the same way, which makes every pop-up more reliable. Second, keep going back and forth between the water and dry land: correcting on the sand what you noticed in the water is how you break bad habits. Third, work on your fitness over time, with more core strength, more mobility and stronger arms for paddling. The pop-up is only the first of the surfing skills: for the full picture, go back to the complete beginner’s guide to surfing.