My brain doesn't have the programming for that…yet.
- Laura Day
- 2 hours ago
- 11 min read
The Messy Middle of Learning How to Noseride
This is the first entry in a twelve-week diary I'm keeping through the second annual Noseride Blueprint Challenge inside Surf Societe.
Prefer to Listen? I read this on my podcast:
When you're scrolling through Instagram, you'll inevitably be bombarded by beautiful clips of incredibly talented surfers elegantly perched on the nose for five, six, seven seconds.
What isn't in the fine print is that this is their best day, their best wave, with the best possible combination of everything available to them.
What you definitely don't see is the small, blown-out days, the choppy windswell paddle outs, or the sessions where they trip up and bog every single ride. You don't see the eighty attempts, the wasted waves, and the falls they had to take to finally land that first hang five.
You see the polished edit, with the messy middle cut out.
So I'm going to show you my messy middle. The process of learning how to noseride.
Before the kickoff
Every time I thought about The Noseride Blueprint in the days leading up to our kickoff, I was giddy. All smiles. That was a new feeling, and it took me a moment to figure out why.
Last year was the first time we ran the blueprint. We were trying something ambitious: teaching noseriding over the internet. We had hosted plenty of workshops and challenges in Surf Societe before, but nothing this extensive. Nothing built around the nuances of surfing's most iconic maneuver.
There was a lot of upfront work, a lot of logistics, and a lot of imagining something that didn't exist yet. And a fair amount of skepticism, mine and other people's, about whether this learning series would land the way I hoped.
But this year, I knew what to anticipate. What I learned from the last round is that when you put together a group of women who all point themselves at the same goal, the energy is too good to deny. Everyone goes out and gives it their best. They try, they fail, they come back and share their struggles and their inevitable wins.
You don't sign up for something like this unless your heart is in it. So when I looked at the roster and saw how many new ladies were joining us alongside familiar faces, I knew the kickoff was going to be the start of a transformative twelve weeks.
What's different this Year
There are a few upgrades to the blueprint worth naming.
The first challenge was six weeks long. Productive, but intense. A swift download of everything you want to know as you embark on your noseride journey.
This year it's twelve weeks, on purpose. We wanted the ladies to have time to sit with the material. Hear it, ask questions, go try it, fail at it, come back and discuss. More immersion, and a longer runway to actually soak in the journey.
One of my favorite additions this year is the in-water drills. Throughout the challenge we'll be assigned one task at a time. One thing to take to our local breaks and focus on.
An Instagram clip can give you a tip and show you what a maneuver looks like in perfect waves, but this is about you trying it at your home break, in the conditions available to you, figuring out how to make it work for your style of surfing. Building your noseride foundation through repetition instead of inspiration.
The other addition we've made: two trips to Baja with a mentor.
We'll be working the blueprint with Erin "Worm" Meza-Ashley and our guide Manny Vargas of Epic Surf Tours. We'll search for longboard waves with Manny driving us around in the Baja Mobile, flying the drone and shooting photos. We'll be taking mindset notes from Worm, the style master herself, then breaking down the footage in video review before slurping down margs and cracking open Puerto Nuevo lobster.
The goal of the blueprint was never to take someone from their first cross-steps to a noseride in twelve weeks. It's to give you a framework, so you understand where you are in the process and what it takes to get where you want to go.
The goal is to demystify the noseride.
Two cross-steps and a challenging year
Before we dive into the next twelve weeks, I'd like to take stock of where I'm currently at, so that after twelve weeks I can properly celebrate how much progress I've made. And hopefully show you that if you're ready to take your first cross-steps, close that gap to the nose, or finesse the hang ten, you can make progress in the blueprint too.
Prior to last year's challenge, on select waves, I could accomplish a simple noseride setup: take-off, mid-face turn, two cross-steps, and eventually backpedal to my original feet positioning.
Riding in the middle of the board after taking two steps, I'd examine the space between me and the end of the nose, dreaming of the hang ten. But I still hadn't closed the gap to a hang five. So that became my immediate goal, and without much direction, I made no progress.
Enter the 2025 Noseride Blueprint. Once we launched, it inspired me to push past my first two steps. I started actually going for the nose. I'd find myself wasting waves in pursuit of tip time. Wiping out at the nose. Sometimes bogging because I was too far on the shoulder, sometimes running off because I didn't really understand my spacing.
Not holding a noseride or coming back from it, but nonetheless trying. I was consistently going for it, which was an exciting break in the two cross-step plateau.
After wrapping up our first blueprint, my momentum was halted by a very challenging year health-wise. I was out of the water for much of it. I spent months staring at an unwaxed 7'6" mid length leaned up against my kitchen wall that I'd bought for the winter season, discouraged and wondering if I should sell it and reluctantly reclaim that little corner of my apartment.
I was deconditioned, out of shape, out of energy, and felt so out of my own skin. When I did get a chance to surf, I caught very few waves and struggled to pop up. I fell every time going backside, due to vestibular and eyesight issues on my left side. I felt disconnected from my surfing, and my head was no longer in the noseride game. I was sure I had regressed, and stressed about discovering how much.
Over months I started to feel better, and I made myself a promise coming into the 2026 Noseride Blueprint Challenge. I would fully commit. I would journal my surf sessions, make good health decisions, and start showing up for myself in a way that let me fully immerse myself in the blueprint. To get every ounce of progress I could out of the next twelve weeks.
Although I'm nursing a few nagging Injuries from pushing myself a bit too hard while being deconditioned, I've been able to enjoy the summer and I'm back to clocking multiple surf sessions a week.
Stepping into the Noseride Blueprint mentality this week has made me feel back at home in my noseride journey.
And I'm not just picking up where I left off. The renewed spark has me more confidently hunting for the right section, tapping into the wave's energy source, and running off the nose in pursuit of, one day soon, landing that hang five and returning back to position to finish the wave with intention.
I'm very happy to escape the dread I felt about my surfing regressing.
The Noseride Blueprint Kickoff
I logged onto Zoom half an hour before the launch. Checked my camera, got the presentation up on Canva, grabbed a snack and a glass of water.
Worm and I met up just before for a quick refresher of what we wanted to cover.
Then the ladies started coming online.
I opened with the origin of the Noseride Blueprint, what to expect over the twelve weeks, and how to actually get the most out of it.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about running these types of online events: for the first twenty minutes, it's just me talking into a screen. I'm giddy with excitement, blurting out slide by slide with an energy I'm still unsure is being received.
I've done these enough now that I'm used to it. Unable to gauge the room, not sure how connected anyone is to the material, but bound to the task of bringing my best energy anyway.
I keep broadcasting into a screen of squares, catching a smile here, an inaudible laugh, a head nod, but too focused on the presentation to stop and settle in. You just continue on, hoping that what you're saying is landing.
What was fun was seeing where everyone was joining from.
We had a handful of ladies from the same areas, Ventura, Santa Cruz, a few here in San Diego. I was excited that they'd not only meet each other on the platform, but that they could get together, practice in the surf, and cheer each other on IRL.
We even have one woman joining us all the way from Brasil. Wherever the ladies logged in from, they all brought the stoke to learn. The curiosity and the openness for the journey.
Twenty minutes in, I handed it over to Worm, and that's when The Noseride Blueprint really got going.
I find that surf education is often a one-way street.
A tip, a video tutorial, a few diagrams drawn over in slow motion on a surfer's wave. Don't get me wrong, all of that can be valuable, but what it's missing is a conversation. That's what we're doing here at Surf Societe.
We give you access to the information through mentors, but you have to become an active participant in figuring out how you're going to apply it to your surfing. We can provide the tools, the knowledge, the mindset, and the support. You're the one who goes out, makes it happen, and brings it back to enrich the community with your experience. That's always been the intention.
Watching it happen in real time is something special. Women unmuting to ask questions, to share what they're struggling with. Other women recognizing or relating, jumping in and offering words of encouragement or what worked for them. That's the magic. That's the feeling that will keep you going through to week twelve.
I was very pleased to see the community understanding the assignment quickly in week one.
We closed the session with the first in-water drill, the one thing for each lady to focus on and take to her next session. A cue that would help her build her cross-step and noseride foundation.
And then a giveaway, because what's more fun than learning? Winning. This time we gave away our first Noseride Blueprint swag bag.
Early the following day, one of the ladies shared a video of herself on the feed, doing the drill, saying she felt exactly what we had been talking about.
I commented "way to kick off the challenge!", grateful to see the stoke and motivation right out the gate, carrying the momentum from the evening before and setting the tone for the next twelve weeks.
In the water this week
The blueprint energy bleeds into your surf sessions. You just can't help it.
This week I clocked three sessions so far, but I'm going to include one from the week prior, because I was already running on blueprint energy and it really showed up. Two of my sessions were standouts, and I'll share those here.
A week before the kickoff, I met a friend at a reef break in North County San Diego.
Watching from above, I could see the majority of surfers were crowded around hoping for a set wave. But on the inside I saw some cute rights coming in and nobody sitting there. I decided that would be my spot.
I paddled out and waved hello to my friend from the inside. Waves would lazily roll through and nobody would even attempt to paddle for them. They were much too soft out back. As I paddled, I quickly understood the strategy I'd want to take to set up for a noseride. They were too mushy for an angled take-off, so I'd have to paddle in straight and do a mid-face turn straight into the steps. Cool. This is a technique I'm fairly comfortable with.
The inside wave gave a standing section, and without a crowd I was able to catch more waves than I can count. I took off, turning and cross-stepping on each wave and even trying to go for the nose. One time I ran off the end, another I bogged at the nose. But what felt good was that I was out there trying, and I had a runway to fail at the noseride, wave after wave. Gather information and try something different.
The other memorable session was the day after the kickoff. I had our in-water drill in mind.
Another thing I've been working on is learning to take off deeper than you think, especially in a beach break at high tide. I've spent the last year convincing myself that what my eyes register as NO GO may not always be a no-go wave, and that I'd have to start "exploring the unknown," as one of our mentors put it.
I'd have to start trying things I haven't done before, even if that means taking off with the risk of eating shit.
This session was another banger. I paddled out with a friend who's also in the challenge, and we must have caught that shift change. You know, that sweet spot where the dawn patrollers are leaving and the hungover or unemployed crowd hasn't shown up just yet.
This break is a combo reef and beach break, so there were a few consistent peaks but also a few surprise, shifting peaks that would stand up. I took off on waves I wouldn't normally take off on, in a deeper position than I'd ever go for, and I was rewarded.
Because of it, I was able to see sections and parts of the wave that would potentially stand up for noseriding. This is the good stuff you miss when you shoulder hop. I had plenty of waves where I set up and cross-stepped, but no running off the end, because this isn't quite the type of standing wave the other one was.
I was pretty satisfied that all the information I'd been marinating in was coming out in my surfing. I was seeing different opportunities and opening myself up to new scenarios, simply because The Noseride Blueprint taught me where to look.
Where my mental programming ends
As I mentioned earlier, coming into this challenge I was comfortable with a simple setup and the first two cross-steps. What I'm still figuring out is how to successfully close the gap to the nose, land a clean hang five, and come back to finish my rides.
What the repetitions in that first session taught me is exactly where my brain programming ends. I can take the first two steps. But then I look at the end of the board and draw a blank.
And if I push myself to override that, I'm running off the end or bogging out on the shoulder.
It's not embarrassment. I don't care about looking ridiculous. It's an automatic fear firing when I gaze out at that last stretch to the nose. It's like being asked to walk the plank.
But naming it that precisely is what makes it workable. I think many people experience that fear or that block and treat it as a verdict on their surfing. But that roadblock is actually data. Valuable information. A moment to get curious and formulate a solution to work around it.
Nobody normalizes that hitting this moment is a required part of the process, not evidence you're doing it wrong.
Here's why this is actually good news.
I now have information I can work with. I'm aware of my limitations, my mental hangups, and the gaps in my knowledge and muscle memory. These are all clues on how I can workshop myself into improving. But you only get that information by going out and trying. By failing and collecting data points.
Moving forward I'll be working in some visualization, and I'll be paying close attention to Tessa Timmons' cross-step and land drill workshop. My instinct is to hone in on the programming for those next two steps.
So I'm failing at it. But I'm also gathering the intel on what to work on, and that's the exciting part.
Going into week two
The blueprint isn't a magic pill. There's no magic board, no magic wave, no shortcut that hands you a noseride. The closest thing to magic in this process is your mindset, and what the challenge actually does is give you the information alongside the environment and the support to hold that mindset in.
Week two we're getting into equipment and how it shapes the way you ride. I'm really excited to have Mando Levitt of Mando Surf joining us, a board builder out of Santa Cruz, to go into the nuances. Mando and I talked about expanding on what we covered last year, and we're adding a new section to this workshop on the extremes of your board. We'll be talking about the role each part of your board plays in noseriding and how to access it.
Every workshop and every conversation expands your world a little bit. It helps you understand that there are endless possibilities in surfing.
Join us in The Noseride Blueprint
Our 12 week program designed to demistify the noseride. You can still join us for this round.
Learn more: surfsociete.com/noseride-blueprint
Comments