🏄‍♀️ There's a wrong way to wax your board 😵‍💫

👋 Happy National Hair Day! To celebrate, we’ll be including our ultimate guide to keeping your hair healthy, detangled, and out of your face while surfing. The latter is an absolute impossibility for me. After more than 80 editions, and for the first time in our history, there’ll be no newsletter next week. This editor is off to the UK for a week. Alas, the trip is not surf-related.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• There’s a wrong way to wax your board 😵‍💫

• More to surfing than hair, no? 💁‍♀️

• This is brand new info on the pop-up 🤯

• From wetsuits from Panama 🇵🇦

• Extra rich surf news roundup 🗞️

^{SURF SKILLS}

 😱 There’s a wrong way to wax your board 😵‍💫

I'll be honest, surfboard waxing is not a topic that's been on my mind since I wrote about the history of wax. To me, waxing is a necessary chore rather than a meditative exercise.

But there was a question, and down the rabbit hole I went. I came out the other end convinced that yes, apparently you can wax your board wrong.

🧊 First, the basics
Most surfers appear to follow the same two-step method. First, a base coat: a harder wax (often labeled basecoat or tropical) that builds the bumps. Then a top coat matched to your water temperature, which is softer and stickier. Simples.

Then there's technique, and everyone has a system:

The classic: diagonal lines one way, diagonal lines the other way, then small circles over the top until the whole thing is covered in fine beads.

The corner trick: use the corner or edge of the bar, not the flat face. Some surfers go up and down, side to side, zigzag, then circles, until beads form everywhere, then go over it lightly with the top coat until the beads grow a little.

The one-direction method: press the edge of the bar across the board from rail to rail, always pushing the same way, then switch sides and repeat, before finishing with light circles of top coat.

Or just wing it. If you surf in hot places, you may want to give up on patterns entirely, because it's gonna melt anyway.

🤫 Yes, you can wax your rails
Here's the controversy. Somewhere along the way, waxing your rails got a reputation as a kook move. Bullshark.

You do what you gotta do. Wax them so the board doesn't slip out of your hands when you duck dive or turtle roll. Wax them near the tail for pushing your board through the whitewash on the way out, so it doesn't slip and slap you in the face. Wax them if it makes you happy.

🧈 Don't overdo it
The one real way to get it wrong: too much.

A thick, gummy layer doesn't give you more grip. It just collects sand and grime, goes lumpy, and turns into an ugly gray crust.

If your wax has gone slippery and you don't have time to strip it, rough it up with a wax comb before you pile more on.

Every so often, strip it all off and start fresh: leave the board in the sun for a few minutes (or use a hairdryer), scrape it off and rewax. Stripping it off I enjoy. Putting it back on, less so.

🌊 But wait, there's more
Heard of eco-wax? I hear "eco" and immediately panic that my "regular" wax is murdering all the little fishes at my local surf break.

Most surf wax is made from paraffin, which comes from petroleum. Eco-wax brands say it breaks off into the ocean as tiny particles and harms marine life, and that plant-based options like soy aren't much better because of how they're processed. Their alternative: waxes made from beeswax, tree resin, coconut oil and clay.

Here's the thing. Most of the scary numbers floating around come from companies selling eco-wax, and they don't cite their sources. The most-quoted one, that surfers dump 86 tons of microplastics into the ocean every year, supposedly comes from a university study I couldn't find anywhere.

Paraffin in the ocean is a real problem, but a 2024 study in the Mediterranean traced most of it to tankers washing out their tanks at sea, not to surfers. And scientists say they still don't know how harmful it actually is.

I also found a reassuring opinion from a microbial ecologist on Reddit (yes, I know!). He argued that paraffin is non-toxic and will eventually break down, and that the amount surfers put in the ocean is tiny compared to its size.

So maybe don't feel bad about your wax. It's not the biggest problem in surfing.

And you can always use less. You'll get better grip anyway.

🙌 So what's the wrong way?
It's basically not waxing at all and sliding off your board on your first pop-up. But you knew that already. And yes, you can wax a foamie.

^{GIRLS’ RECS}

🤯 More to surfing than hair, no?

If you've ever come out of the water with a crunchy, knotted bird's nest on your head, you're not alone.

Our hair guide pulls together advice from more than 40 posts and 190 comments in the group.

👉 Read the surf hair guide

^{WEEKLY POPUP}

🤯 This is brand new information on the popup

Thirteen. That's how many Weekly Popups we've published. We've blamed the physics, the wetsuit, the board, our hips, our eyes, our brains and our failure to surf more than once a week. We've tried the step-up, the chicken wing and the explosive jump.

I was sure there was nothing left to say about the pop-up. I was so wrong. Here's the latest round of advice we've unearthed. Fingers crossed one of them is the winner for you.

🎥 Film yourself
This one came up again and again, and we've never really said it before. It's a lot easier to fix your pop-up once you can see it.

One member realized what she was doing wrong only once a friend filmed her. Another sticks a camera on the nose of her board. "I look stupid (don't care) with it," she wrote. "I film then watch to see where I can fix it and what's happened."

It works on land too. One member films her practice pop-ups on a yoga mat so she can see herself improve.

🙌 Your hands may be too far forward
This was the most specific fix in the thread, and several members swore by it.

"I popped to my knee for two years," one wrote, "until I realized I needed to actively feel like my hands on the board need to be almost by my waist or ribs! Your hands are too far forward when you pop up."

Another explained why it works: with your hands lower, under your ribs rather than your chest, you lift the middle of your body, not just your shoulders. That gives your back foot room to slide up first and your front foot space to come through. Her cue while paddling for a wave: "Hands lower, back foot first."

If you read our piece on all the pop-up methods, you'll remember the chicken wing puts your hands up close to your chest. This is the opposite. Worth trying both and seeing what your body thinks.

And if your hands leave the board the moment your knee lands, one member suggests keeping them down longer, until you can get from knee to foot. It's slower, but it builds the upper-body muscle memory before you speed things up.

🍑 Hips, hips, hips
Another member was landing on her knee because her hips weren't high enough before she brought her back leg through. The fix: think of the first move as a high plank, and get your hips up before anything else happens.

Her mantra on the wave: "Hips, hips, hips!"

Yes, we've written about hip mobility. This is different. It's not about how flexible your hips are, it's about getting them up in the air.

🧱 The wall test and the half burpee
We've been a bit skeptical of land practice, because the water behaves differently. But the group had two drills we haven't covered.

The wall test. Do 10 pop-ups every morning with your backside to a wall. If your bum touches the wall, your form is off.

The half burpee. Lie on your front, then bring your knees up under your chest, and repeat. One member does stretches, half burpees, push-ups and pop-ups, 10 of each, before every surf. She also stopped thinking of the pop-up as a sideways move and started thinking of it as a forward one. That helped.

😱 Why you still end up on your knee
Sometimes it isn't your technique at all. The group came up with three other culprits.

Fear. "I'm going to my knees when I'm afraid," one member wrote. "I'm starting to catch larger waves and rather than looking where I want to go, I see the drop and freeze on my knees, and I can't get to my feet from there." Another does the same whenever she's panicked or off balance. We've written about fear before, but not about freezing on the drop.

A habit you didn't know you had. The same member had been told to put her head down and lift her feet out of the water to get more weight over the nose of her longboard. It helped her catch more waves, but it left her feet in the wrong place for the pop-up, so she kept landing on her knee. Now she paddles with her feet down and legs together.

A plateau. One member moved to the sea and felt like she was getting worse. She might not be. "Learning to surf seems to happen in plateaus," another wrote. "I go through phases where I feel like I'm getting worse or just not improving at all and then 'suddenly,' seemingly overnight, I do things I couldn't do the day before!" A third pointed out that surfing more, and in bigger, scarier waves, makes you notice your mistakes more, which can feel like going backwards.

There's hope. It might just take a little longer than you'd like, so maybe don't book a surf camp just to fix your pop-up.

I’ll be thinking: hips, hips, hips.

👉 More weekly pop-up

^{LATEST FROM GIRLS WHO CAN’T SURF GOOD}

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🦭 Moved somewhere cold, put on a 4/3, and suddenly can't pop up? One member took her wetsuit off mid-session out of frustration and popped up straight away. Community verdict: you're not crazy, and it's probably the suit. Wetsuits are not created equal, and a cheap or too-small one can feel like a straitjacket. Try on different brands and sizes (renting is a cheap way to experiment), and practice pop-ups on land in the suit to find where it pinches. Recommended for warmth with stretch: O'Neill Epic and Hyperfreak, Rip Curl Dawn Patrol, Xcel and Janga. The general rule from one member: go cheap on thin suits, invest in the thick ones. And if you learned in the tropics, give it a few sessions. A thick suit is a bit like going up a body size. As one member put it, she felt like "one of those YouTube videos where they put clothes on cats and they just fall to the side."

👔 Should women wear men's wetsuits? Plenty of members do, and happily. Men's suits tend to work well if you're tall, have broad shoulders, a straighter shape or a big chest, and they're easier to find secondhand. One short member likes them for "more room for shoulder movement and definitely no front wedgies." The O'Neill Hyperfreak chest zip got another thumbs up for its stretchy chest. For tall women in cold water, members recommended Xcel (including the 6mm Drylock) and Hyperflex's women's tall sizes. Tip: look for a hood that zips all the way off, because some are a nightmare to get out of.

🇵🇦 Six weeks in Panama for a beginner longboarder who loves a sleepy surf town? Community top picks: Playa Venao, Santa Catalina and Guanico, which got the vote as the sleepiest (and most affordable) of the three, with El Ranchito Surf Camp recommended there. One member's suggestion: do all three.

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Orcas are here, a stranger to the rescue, wave pools on sale, Olympic tickets booked, spy cams for sand, and surfers who don't do warnings.

🐋 Orcas were spotted off Newport Beach, far from home
A whale watch tour spotted a pod of Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas, which usually live off Mexico.

🦸‍♀️ A former lifeguard jumped in fully clothed to save an unconscious surfer
Benita Karo was filming big surf in Oceanside when a wave slammed a surfer into the rocks. She jumped in and held his head above water until help arrived.

💸 DSRT Surf cut its prices after surfers called them ridiculous
Expert sessions dropped from $370 to $270 and beginner sessions now start at $130.

🏘️ A brand-new California town just approved its own surf park
Alchemy Surf Resort, a 5-acre Wavegarden lagoon with a hotel and beach club, will anchor Placer One, a master-planned town near Sacramento with thousands of new homes.

🥇 Kanoa Igarashi and Mirai Ikeda are the first surfers to qualify for LA28
Both won gold for Japan at the Asian Games. Igarashi grew up surfing Trestles, where the Olympic event will be held, and 18-year-old Ikeda plans to practice "a lot, a lot, a lot."

📹 Folly Beach wants to put AI surf cams on people's houses
The South Carolina town paid Surfline $76,500 to track erosion with AI cameras, and is now asking beachfront homeowners to host them. So far, three yes, three no.

🌊 And surfers ignored every nor'easter warning going
About 20 surfers paddled out in the Rockaways despite official warnings. One flew in from Laguna, snapped his board and called it the best barrels of his life.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{SUPPORT THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

☕️ Buy me a coffee or maybe a sticker?

Enjoyed this week’s surf nonsense? Now you can buy me a coffee ☕️, or a beer, or a pizza.

It helps keep The Wipeout Weekly afloat and my fragile self-esteem above the water. But no pressure. The newsletter remains free, because you’re worth it. 😜

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

_{The Wipeout Weekly—our home and digital magazine.
The Wee Surf Shoppe—explore useful, cute, and sometimes simply outrageous surf “stuffs”.
The Wipeout Weekly podcast—surf stories and guests.
All Things Surf Directory—surf retreats, learn to surf, classifieds, surf-side lodging, you name it.
Girls Who Can’t Surf Good—an 87k-member-strong private group on Facebook.}
Feedback—we do want to hear from you! Whatever is on your mind, drop us a line.

⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
If a friend forwarded this and you liked it, hit subscribe & join us! We will see you all next week! 🌊

With stoke,

Zuz & The Wipeout Weekly