Can you learn to surf as an adult?

Surfing looks as if it belongs to people who grew up barefoot on a beach with sun-bleached hair and no apparent job. In reality, surf schools are full of adults: couples on holiday, colleagues on an away day, a fifty-year-old who finally decided to stop just watching. It is one of the few sports where everyone starts out looking equally ridiculous, which is wonderfully freeing.

Start with a lesson

A good surf school does three things you cannot easily do alone: it picks a suitable beach and time for the conditions, it gives you the right board and wetsuit, and it explains the ocean before you meet it. In a first lesson you will usually:

• Learn how to carry the board and attach the leash.
• Practise the pop-up, the move from lying to standing, on the sand.
• Learn where to surf, how to read the water and how not to collide with people.
• Spend most of the session in waist-deep water catching white water.

Look for a school with small groups, instructors who are qualified in water safety, and a calm, clear safety briefing. A few lessons, or a short course, is a far nicer start than renting a board and hoping.

The foam board is your friend

Beginners use long, wide, soft-topped boards. They float well, they are stable, and they hurt a great deal less when they bump into you, which they will. It can be tempting to move to a small, sleek board quickly. Resist. The big board catches more waves, and catching waves is where the fun is.

The white water stage

After a wave breaks, it rolls towards the beach as a wall of foam. That is where you learn. You stand in the shallows, point the board at the shore, wait for the foam, paddle a few strokes as it arrives, then pop up. It is fast, simple and very repetitive, which is exactly what you need. Riding the foam all the way to the sand is one of life's undignified triumphs.

The pop-up

The pop-up is the core skill. Lying on the board, place your hands flat by your chest, push up, and bring your feet underneath you in one movement, landing side-on with knees bent and arms out. Practise it on the beach, in your living room, on the hotel floor. The more automatic it becomes on land, the more it happens in the water.

Most people fall off a lot at first. Try to fall flat and away from the board, protect your head with your arms when you come up, and never dive head first into shallow water.

Pick friendly conditions and places

The ocean is the whole point and the main challenge. Safety comes before anything else:

• Surf at lifeguarded beaches and during patrol hours. Surf Life Saving New Zealand's beach safety messages include finding a lifeguarded beach and checking when it is patrolled.
• Learn the flags where you are. Systems differ between countries. On Queensland beaches, for example, the state government explains that red and yellow flags mark the patrolled swimming area, a blue flag marks an area for surfing and a red flag means the beach is closed. Ask the lifeguards what applies on your beach, and keep surfboards out of swimming zones.
• Know what a rip looks like. The same Queensland page describes rips as strong currents running away from the beach, often showing as a choppy patch, an area where waves are not breaking, or foam drifting out. Our page on rip currents has more.
• Small waves, gentle beaches. Learn where waves break softly over sand, not on rocks or reefs.
• Never surf alone as a beginner, and if the conditions make you uneasy, stay on the beach.

Will you enjoy it?

Probably, if you enjoy being in the sea. The first sessions are mostly paddling, falling and laughing, with occasional moments of pure, gliding joy. Fitness helps with the paddling, but you do not need to be an athlete to stand up on white water. Our page on trying a new sport as an adult is a good pep talk.