82 How to Start Surfing with Clayton Nienaber
Are you brand new to surfing—or know someone who is—and wondering how to actually get started the right way?
Most beginners get a “tourist experience” at a surf school, buy a board, and immediately struggle. In this bite-sized episode, Michael Frampton and coach Clayton Nienaber break down the first five hours of your surfing journey—what to do, where to surf, and why so many people get it wrong from day one.
Learn what kind of board to buy (and why that soft top matters)
Discover the beach features that make or break a beginner session
Understand the right timing to stand up—and how to stop wiping out constantly
Press play and start your surfing journey with real advice that helps you catch more waves, build confidence, and avoid the common beginner traps.
OMBE: https://train.ombe.co/?via=surfmastery
SMP Ep 14 - Claytons first interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/podcast-surf-mastery/id1088660076?i=1000372736261
Key Points
Recommendation for beginners to purchase a nine foot soft top surfboard due to its durability and safety for learning.
Advice to choose a beach with flat sand for beginners to maximize the length of the ride and minimize the violence of the waves.
Technique recommendation for beginners to jump at the same time as the wave to catch it effectively.
Importance of arching the back while paddling to catch waves efficiently and avoid fatigue.
Strategy for beginners to catch as many waves as possible in a short period to build confidence, stamina, and strength.
Emphasis on the importance of timing rather than paddling to catch white water, and the goal of standing up with the intention of traveling.
Outline
Surfboard Choice for Beginners
Michael and Clayton recommend that beginners start with a nine-foot soft top surfboard.
A soft top is durable and less likely to be damaged by beginners who may not yet be familiar with proper board maintenance.
The soft top is forgiving if a beginner falls on it and is less likely to cause injury.
While a soft top is a good starting point, beginners should eventually transition to a shorter board to progress and avoid developing bad habits.
Choosing the Right Beach for Beginners
Beginners should choose a beach with flat sand to provide a longer ride and dissipate wave energy earlier.
A beach with at least 50 to 100 meters of whitewater after the wave breaks is ideal.
Steep beaches with quick wave breaks are not recommended for beginners as they provide a shorter and more violent ride.
Beginners should aim to walk out to knee-deep or waist-deep water where they can push and jump onto their board.
Techniques for Catching Waves
Beginners should aim to jump onto their board at the same time as the wave to catch it effectively.
Paddling too early without proper technique can result in the wave washing over the board.
Arching the back while paddling can help the wave catch the board more effectively.
Beginners should focus on catching as many waves as possible in a short period to build stamina and confidence.
Standing Up on the Surfboard
Beginners should wait for the initial push of the wave before attempting to stand up.
Standing up should be done with the intention of moving forward, similar to leaning forward when a bus starts moving.
Anticipating the speed and direction of travel can help maintain balance and prevent falling off the board.
Focusing on moving rather than just standing can improve balance and make the experience more effortless.
Transcription
Michael Frampton
Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is just a short 10-minute introduction for those who are brand new to surfing. This is a little mini interview with Clayton. Clayton and I just wanted to give some tips to those absolute beginners. So this is just some tips and perspectives for the first sort of five hours of your surfing life. If you know anyone who's looking at starting out or maybe has already started out but got off on the wrong foot, learned a few bad habits, please share this episode with them. If you have any more questions as a beginner, please let us know: mike@surfmastery.com. Any requests about, like, what do I do to start surfing? How do I start surfing? There's a lot of beginners that go out there and they go to a local surf school, and they get what I call a tourist experience. Yeah. And they're somewhat aware that it's a tourist experience, and then they want to know, well, actually, I really like surfing, and I bought a board and I want to get into it. Their friend surfs as well, maybe their kids surf as well, and they've decided, okay, I'm going to give this surfing thing a proper crack. And most likely they've gone out and bought a nine-foot soft top. First of all, is that what you recommend to buy first of all? Let's go with that—surfboard choice.
Clayton Nienaber
The reason being you're not going to know maintenance. So in other words, I see so many guys dropping boards in showers, they're not used to the length of the board, so it gets smashed on the tailgate when you close in the car. There's all these little things, so if you had a hard top, you'd probably destroy it in no time. So a soft top kind of... it's going to last a lot longer. Plus, because you're a beginner, you're making loads of mistakes. So if you fall on the board, you're not going to hurt yourself. You're probably winding the board. So great choice. However, there comes a time when in order for you to progress, you need to jump off that board. And there's another learning phase that you go through whereby your body needs to learn how to paddle better. You need to get stronger. There are certain postures you have to adopt in surfing. And if you stay too much time on a longboard, you'll pick up more bad habits and you won't learn all those little nuances like how to arch your back when you're paddling, how to duck dive correctly, where to sit to catch a wave. There's all those next-level learning things that too much volume will rob you from.
Michael Frampton
I mean, I still love surfing my nine-foot soft top sometimes. So I always encourage beginners: buy that board, buy that nine- or eight-foot soft top, because it'll come in handy when the waves are really small or you just want to go out and have some fun with your kids or whatever. It's a board you'll keep forever.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, when you've mastered a certain level of surfing, it's easy to go back and ride all those bigger fun boards. And the great thing is, when you ride them, immediately you have no expectations on yourself other than, "This is going to be fun. I'm going to get a heap of waves." You get to feel the waves. You get to play. But sometimes when you ride high-performance boards, you go out there with really high expectations, and you get frustrated when you can't meet those expectations.
Michael Frampton
But okay, so let's say someone's gone out and they've bought a nine-foot soft top. They've only had an hour in the water. Yep. They know how to catch the whitewash and stand up straight away because that's what they learned at their tourist experience. But now they've decided, "Hey, no, I'm going to commit 20 hours to this." What should the first hour be of them? Let's start with, I mean, how do they choose the right beach to go to first of all?
Clayton Nienaber
Pretty much any beach where there is a lot of flat sand. It means the energy is going to be dissipated earlier as it rolls in, and it's just going to give you a longer length of ride. Anywhere—and so basically a really good cue—you need to see once the wave is broken, there needs to be at least 50 meters, maybe 100 meters of whitewater. But if there's a very steep beach and the waves kind of suck up really heavy and break, the water's almost going down and around, and you won't get a long stretch of whitewater. So for the beginners, the more whitewater you see pretty much means the longer the ride is. The shorter it is, it's going to be a lot more violent, and you kind of don't want to get pushed down, roughed up, come out and have like a bad experience. So again, anywhere that you could probably walk out, maybe knee-deep or waist-deep and almost push and jump on your board, it's going to be fantastic. The reason being your legs initially will be stronger than the arms. So if you can walk back, you're going to save your arms. Until such time your paddling gets stronger—in which time you're probably going to jump onto a shorter board and want to go surf out the back.
ChatGPT said:
Michael Frampton
Okay, great. So they've chosen a flat sand beach that has a decent length of whitewash. Most likely, probably even the same beach that they had their tourist experience at, but just walk down the beach away from them for a little bit. So yeah.
Clayton Nienaber
They'll be comfortable there. They'll probably keep returning to where they feel comfortable.
Michael Frampton
And then you mentioned using your legs to jump to catch the wave. Is that a technique you recommend?
Clayton Nienaber
Yep. So pretty much when the wave comes, you almost want to jump at the same time as the wave. A lot of people start paddling too early and they don't have good technique and the wave kind of washes over them. There's this little experiment that we've done on OMBE and we've posted a couple times, and what it is—if you put a sandbag on the back of the board, alright, so the nose sticks up. When the wave comes, it will push the board forward. If you put the sandbag on the front of the board, it almost dips in and nose dives and flips. So it sounds weird, but when you're paddling in, if you lean back a little bit and arch your back, the wave will catch you. And we try to encourage beginners to use the right technique whereby it's easy to catch waves and you don't get fatigued, but that does require some arching of the back and some back muscles and some strength. When beginners go surfing, they've got to find out the amount of energy before they get gassed out because you're literally going up against the ocean. So what I suggest is: try to catch as many waves in as short a space as possible. Because I see so many beginners that try to paddle all the way out the back. By the time they get out the back, they're absolutely gassed. And they lie flat on their board and they get washed away, almost out of position. And they spend half an hour out there feeling really uncomfortable. "How do I get back in?" They're too embarrassed to ask people, "What should I do?" They're getting in the way. People are screaming at them and shouting at them. Then that starts to affect you mentally and physically. So the best thing to do is, as you work out—probably within the first two to three minutes—spin around and get a foamy. And then if you're tired, just wait on the beach until you get your energy back. And then as quickly as you can, enter the water, turn around and get another one. If you're a guest, do you want to be sitting on the beach? And then when you do enter in the water, get your job done, get your wave done, and try and get back to the beach as quickly as you can. The quicker you do that, the more you learn, and it builds confidence. It builds stamina, it builds strength. And you'll find by getting waves more quickly, you get used to going out in the water and expecting to get more waves. The worst thing a person could do is go out there and stew on their own thoughts and start overthinking issues.
Michael Frampton
You only really have to walk out to waist-deep water and catch a bit of whitewater, and you don't have to paddle for it. You just have to get the timing right. It's all about timing, which will actually teach you to read the ocean better anyway in the long run. And what's the goal, do you think, for the absolute beginner? Is it to—once they've walked out, they've jumped and they've caught the wave, they're trimming along with the whitewash—is it to stand up? Or is it to... as quickly as they can, what should they be trying to do?
Clayton Nienaber
So if you think about an airplane: in taxi, the airplane starts speeding up, and only when it gets enough speed does it actually start to take off. And if you're teaching a kid how to ride a bicycle, at a certain speed the bicycle stabilizes. So generally, if you're going to catch whitewater, the first "Boom!" it's doing this! So you kind of want to brace off your back and let the wave push you, and then there'll be a part of that wave where you start moving with the wave and you start to stabilize. That's the time you want to stand up. And then when you stand up, you're standing up with the intention of going somewhere. So a lot of people pop up, trap balance, and look at their board. So I'll give you an analogy. Have you ever caught a bus and the bus is loading passengers, and you're not paying attention, and the bus pulls off and—whoa—and you almost fall over backwards? Okay. And then you catch the next bus and you're like, "I got caught out." So you're paying attention. As the bus pulls off, you lightly just lean forward and you kind of move with the bus and you don't fall over. So the problem with beginners is they're standing and they don't anticipate the speed at which they're going to travel or where they're going, and they end up falling off. Now, if they caught that wave and looked where they want to go and stand up with the intention of traveling there—the same way you stand up in a bus and just lean forward a little bit—you'll find that they travel there effortlessly, the balance is going to be better. Because now they're thinking about moving and they're not thinking about standing. There's a big difference there.
Michael Frampton
Okay. So I like that. So choose a decent-sized foam board, choose the right beach with flat sand, and the goal is to catch the whitewater with timing—in not too deep a water—with timing rather than paddling. And just take your time. Wait till that initial BAM of the wave. There's no rush to pop up. And when you do stand up, look where you're going. Yep. All right, Clayton, well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks. Thank you for tuning in.
Clayton Nienaber
Michael. Till next time.
Michael Frampton
You can find out more about Clayton and what he does through his website ombe.com —O-M-B-E. There are links to that website in the show notes. There are links to previous episodes that I have done with Clayton in the past to find out more. And welcome to the sport of surfing. It's a challenging one, but it is a very rewarding one. And please note that every single episode of this podcast is standalone. So you can go back through the catalog as a beginner and dive in. And if you have any specific questions, please reach out: mike@surfmastery.com
82 How to Start Surfing with Clayton Nienaber
For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.