Search - WALKIN' ON WATER (Learning to Surf with Surfer Joe 3) on DVD

Not Cheated

Nom De Plume | out of town | 01/18/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Hey, I bought this one after buying 1&2 for my beginner wife. I used to surf and have been just getting back into it after a many years layoff. I actually learned a few things myself from the 1&2 vid, so I thought I'd check out this "intermediate level" one too. I'm self taught, so I thought there might be a breakdown of stuff that might clear up some gaps or allow me to better analyse what I'm doing out in the water...

and this didn't do that. But, I can't say I feel cheated. I do think the ad copy said something like "intermediate techniques for longboarders and shortboarders", but, from the cover photo, not to mention the Parts 1&2 emphasis on bigger boards, I wasn't really expecting too much in the shortboard realm. I thought it was sort of a strange thing to try to put longboarding and shortboarding together like that, but I was curious to see what they came up with.

What they came up with was essentially completely ignoring shortboards, aside from visual shots of people riding shortboards, of which there are plenty. What I mean is, there was next to no instruction in riding shortboards. I can't say "no instruction" because they were moments when somebody would say something like, "It's all a matter of balance. You just have to spend the time in the water and one day you'll get it." Okay, that's true enough, but I didn't need a video to tell me that!

There was a section on environmental activism which was nice enough (I strongly agree that protecting the oceans is important), but I didn't need to buy a video on that.

And so on. There's a big section on interviews with surfing families and other people living the surfing life. It was good. Not critical, but good. I guess if you didn't know any surfers, this would give you the idea of what surfers are really like. If you're already past the beginner stage though, you already know people like this yourself, unless you're some kind of recluse. A lot of this section emphasizes working your way up to bigger surf and more crowded lineups instead of just throwing yourself in to uncomfortable or dangerous situations. Maybe having people tell it indirectly in story form makes it stick better than just writing a simple sentence "Don't go out into big surf until you have worked your way up to it", though I can't help but feel that point could have simply and effectively been covered in two minutes.

I did learn some things about riding a longboard (of which I've never ridden one). Other than that, this vid was more on vague inspirational and lifestyle stuff, rather than detailed explanations of how to surf.

The excercise section, was, imo, ridiculous (though the reviewer before me wrote that he got something out of it, so more power to him. You'd have to have very high self-esteem though to overcome the howls of laughter of others if you actually tried excercising like that out on the beach in public like the guy in the vid does).

Basically, the vid was nice enough, but a bit quirky in terms of covering the topic at hand. I mildly enjoyed watching it. My review is pretty harsh in tone probably, but the video was okay. A pleasant enough waste of time and money.

Interesting side note, related to execution: they basically have completely abandoned the half-executed (at best) concept of "Surfer Joe" by the time they got to this Part 3."