Why foam surfboards are best for beginners

Posted by Crew Member on

This is Mike.  Mike was looking for a used surfboard for his sons to learn on. We suggested a foam board.  Luckily, we had 2 matching Grecos in stock for the same price as 1 brand new board! Looks like both it's will be surfing in Charleston this holiday season!

Foam boards are ideal to learn on. They're extremely buoyant, so they can catch even the smallest waves with ease.  The most important part about surfing is your pop up.  A foam board (or soft top) is the perfect board to practice on. Also, the soft body and rubber fins are difficult to hurt yourself with while you're learning! That is why surf school and camps use these very forgiving boards.

We recommend that new surfers begin with a longboard design. As already discussed in other articles, a longboard will steepen the learning curve because of the ease of catching waves, the increased stability, and its forgiving nature. On the other hand, the array of foam surfboards on the market today provides a beginner with more options when it comes to selecting equipment. Soft tops come in both shortboard and longboard designs created specifically with the beginner in mind.

It wasn't long ago that a soft top forced a compromise on performance. This is no longer the case. Soft tops now fuse modern shortboard and longboard design with the safety features many beginners need. All three surfboard companies mentioned above, for example, offer boards designed by professional shapers. These shapers always have performance in mind while also making sure you will catch a ton of waves and have a lot of fun in the water. Catch Surf and their "Boards by Y" line claim to hand shape all rails using the same design characteristics as a traditional hard board. Catch Surf also designs each surfboard using CAD software to produce shapes and designs not typically found on soft shortboards. To make their surfboards stronger than a traditional soft top surfboard both Liquid Shredder and Catch Surf use a solid hard wood stringer system and epoxy resin or glue for added strength and flex. Although Surftech does not use a stringer system, their sandwich construction produces arguably the strongest and lightest soft top surfboard with a hard bottom that will satisfy both the beginner and intermediate surfer.