How good is your duck dive?

All,

Please see below from a student who is studying the art of the duck dive...

I am a keen surfer and a 4th year Sports Science student at the University of Edinburgh. For my thesis I am undertaking a research project on the biomechanics of the surfing duck dive technique. As a surfer I am sure you will appreciate the importance of duck diving, an effective duck dive allows a surfer to get out back more quickly, reducing fatigue and increasing time spent catching waves.

The purpose of this research is to analyse the technique in order to identify the movement patterns required to perform it successfully. This will provide information on how the technique can be improved and which muscles can be trained to make duck diving as effective as possible.

The research is taking place at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Aquatics Research, which has cameras placed both above and below water, providing detailed three dimensional analysis. There is very little research on surfing and nothing published in this area at all, making the results of this project potentially very interesting.

I am planning on getting started with the project in the next few weeks and I am hoping to find some surfers who may be interested in taking part. It would require performing a few duck dives in the University pool, allowing for the performance to be filmed. This would only take an afternoon and should be interesting to take part in because immediate feedback of the performance is available so a participant can watch themselves duck dive, and see how they could improve their own technique.

This project is completely reliant on volunteers being willing to take part and I would greatly appreciate anyone who is willing to come along and participate.

If you think you might be interested in participating, please email me at s0673892@sms.ed.ac.uk and I will be happy to give you some more information.

Kind Regards,
Robert Kupris
4th year Sports Science Student
University of Edinburgh