After the stupid abdominal muscle strain subsided, I forced a session at Gerupuk Insides which still proved too painful, then popped another painkiller for the next session and managed to surf with some of the pain still lingering. I had already rested about 4-5 days because of this silly injury. But that first session back in the water was worth it as I caught a whole bunch of waves.
One of them turned out to be the best forehander I’ve rode so far. At about head high height, I managed to successfully pull off a sharp forehand turn on the wave with good compression on my Hypto replica, based on all my repeated viewings of forehand turns I had seen on surf videos, and it felt good, like a buttery smooth kind of good. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough speed on my next top turn and didn’t manage to move back down the lip after the 2nd bottom turn. I think I either need to make sharper turns or generate more speed before initiating the turns.
I also experienced progress with generating speed on my forehand, as I experienced one wave where I actually overtook two other surfers who dropped-in on me. It was an amusing experience to say the least.
Seeing as the swell was small during my last few days in Lombok before leaving, I surfed a more intermediate surf break, Mawi, for several sessions and during this time I really felt my surfing progress.
Although the line-up was crowded, I sat slightly further inside from the second peak where the crowd wasn’t as advanced and the take-offs slightly easier. And with my duck diving skills improved significantly, it didn’t matter as much when bigger sets rolled in as I could easily duck dive them.
I got a couple of air drop take-offs and nice rides during these sessions, and felt really good about myself, particularly with the consistency of my pop-ups. Assuming the same trajectory of progress, I felt as if I was getting closer and closer to my goal of getting barrelled with the remaining time I have left to surf.
However, throughout all these sessions, I didn’t manage to successfully initiate a backhand top turn on Mawi’s waves, probably because I needed to generate more speed from the take-off. And this again showed my next biggest hurdle: generating speed instinctively on my back-hand immediately upon popping up. At this point, I feel like I’ve experienced enough backhand waves with fast sections or poor top turns to emotionally and sub-consciously commit to generating speed on my backhand the moment I pop up.
