Drop Knee Tribute
D rop knee master 3: Robert "Wingnut" Weaver
With an interview with Wingnut
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Whether on land or sea, it's very hard to imitate Wingnut. The combination of tall stance and powerful surfing is very hard to accomplish. Not to mention all the detail he adds to further his style. I've seen Wingnut surf in person as well as on video and he a wonder to watch. He stands very tall on a board and seems to use this top-heavy stance to swing, pivot, and carve his heavy longboard with great leverage. And yet, unlike in the Weber lean-and-recover style, Wingnut may lean and arch but he never seems to lose his balance, even when hitting the lip or engulfed in whitewater.
KJ What was your first encounter with the drop knee turn?
WW First drop knee turn that I became conscious of was Phil Edwards.
KJ Yeah? Was that, you were watching some tapes?
WW It was just um, still images. You know that quintessential drop knee turn of Phil at Cotton's Point, or Trestle's in front of Diffenderfer. Actually it's Cotton's. Bruce Brown shot it.
KJ And how old were you.
WW Let's see, probably seventeen.
KJ Wow. So, were you originally surfing down south?
WW Yeah, I grew up in Newport Beach.
KJ Was there much longboarding going on?
WW I didn't start surfing till I was seventeen. I started in Newport at Blackie's, and there was a small group of guys, five, five to ten guys that were surfing down there on longboards. Older guys. And then from Phil, the guy who had the best drop knee in town was a guy by the name of Kenny Sanford.
KJ And that was what you wanted to do right away.
WW Well, as I decided that, you know, I want to figure out how to surf like these guys, I'd watch Kenny, I'd try to learn how to drop knee turn like him. I wanted to nose ride like Don Craig. These were guys that I could watch every day that were really good. And I just basically became the leech. It's like that episode of Batman and Robin where Bat-- you know where the Joker has taken you know, this dome and he sucks the surf skills out of that, outta the one guy. That's what I was trying to do, suck the power out of them.
KJ So you were a protege of these guys?
WW No, I was just, you know, an obnoxious kid.
KJ Were you also studying tapes?
WW There were no tapes.
You could say Wingnut's style is neo-classical, because he studied the masters, strived to surf like them, then added personal touches and improvements. Wingnut mentions Phil Edwards, and of course that would be a good drop knee master to study and cop moves from. I thought there was some advantage in studying Wingnut's turn, because although there's a lot of Phil in his style, there is more attention to detail in what he does with his arms and body styling, and also he's always doing something interesting to lead into or out of the drop knee.
KJ So what about when you started to get more photographed or in that film. Did you start looking at footage of yourself and criticizing?
WW Well it was well before Endless Summer that I started working with a still photographer who was trying to get photos published in a magazine. And that's where it really helps because he starts looking at what you're doing daily. And he realizes "this 'ld be a great shot but look at your hands" or "look at your face." 'Cause there's the three, you know the three criminal faces. You know there's "blow-job face" with your mouth wide open, there's "puffer face" when you've got giant cheeks, and then there's having your eyes closed. Those are the three things you can't do, you know, you get this great photo and you realize, "oh f***" you know. You chickened out and your eyes are closed. So you look at those things and you realize and then you have to start consciously thinking about it. That's if you're working in a photo situation.
KJ You do a lot of analyzing, like on the Art of Longboarding tape. Do you think about the physics of the whole thing, or is it just sort of a feel, or a visualization. How would you discribe your analytic technique?
WW I don't, I think sometimes I look at the physics of it because I'm amazed by what you can do with a surfboard. You know, in Art 2 Cody Craig manages to drop in on these really hollow waves and he sticks the nose of his board completely underwater and just forces it right out. And that amazes me because I know-- and until you've done it you don't realize the speed change that happens when you do that. You're dropping in on a wave, using a number, ten miles an hour, and if you pearl just a little bit, you go from ten to six miles per hour. And to keep your body on the board when the board slows down, 'cause your body is still travelling at ten miles an hour. You know to let your legs and body absorb that slowing down and still remain controlled, there's some bitchin' shit that goes on.
KJ Are you looking at anything like lean, leaning with the turn versus leaning against the turn? Kind of like stuff that skiiers might do.
WW Uh, I don't look at it in that way, I watch body shift. You can, there's different ways you can put your weight into a turn. You flatfoot a turn, um, you know really drive it, really compress and extend through it. Or make it real light and real effortless looking.
Wingnut on when to choose a drop knee
KJ Would you say that the drop knee is pretty much the only turn you do when you do a left turn?
WW No. Not at all. I mean, it's functional for me a lot of times. First off, I'll do it when it's functional, second, it's a stylish choice. You want to make a real pretty turn. But it's not necessarily the most effective, especially when the waves get bigger.
KJ But at some point in your surfing life you kind of consciously chose to prefer that.
WW Oh yeah. Because stylistically it is, you know, the most aesthetically pleasing. And for me that's what a lot of surfing-- actually what so much of this is about. Has to look really good.
KJ Cause I noticed for instance, the time I saw you surf at Private's there's a section there. I couldn't make it around it and you went over it.
WW Mm hmm.
KJ So you go to bottom turn and then do a turn off the top. Or an off the lip. And even that looks like it has a little drop knee when you do it. I don't know if you're conscious-- it just looks like to me that you kind of reach back with your foot. Is that possible?
WW Well you know, just, I might be reaching back with my foot but I'm definitely not going up on the toes. Which a drop knee turn is, going back down to your toes.
KJ So that's more of a flat foot turn.
Wingnut describes a drop knee routine on a left wave
KJ About cross stepping. The drop knee, do you feel that leads better into a walk?
WW Um. It's fading that turn. See the drop knee really works with fading a turn. You're going to go left on a wave, you fade right, and then as you get to your feet, you do that big drop knee turn coming around the corner. And as you come around the corner, you've got to reposition that back foot. You're not gonna ride you know, with your back foot on its toes. So as you bring that foot around it just kind of leads-- you can either-- stop right there to stall. Or if you come out of your turn right and you want to start walking. Boom, you're lifting that foot up as you come out of the turn.
Photo sequence 3: Wingnut Weaver: cross stance trim to drop knee cutback
followed by arching cutback ending turn
What Wingnut describes above that he might do on a left is similar to the routine shown with the Robert August drop knee. My routine on this page is based on a right wave. The routine Wingnut uses on rights as seen in "Art of Longboarding" is what I observed to put together this sequence of maneuvers.
In this sequence, I try to knit two arching turns together without changing the lean very much at all, but simply giving it more arch to change the turn direction. This use of keeping the body in one spot on the board is one secret of Wingnut's linked turns, and an example of evolution in drop knee technique, from classic to the present.
In frame one I'm cruising straight on the front of the board in a cross stance. Wingnut does this often before a drop knee, trimming his board to pick up speed and using the cross stance as a windup. It takes some practice to be able to ride and steer like this comfortably, since it's a kind of switch stance, and also cross legged.
Next I walk back a step and hit the tail. In frame two I've uncrossed and stepped my right leg all the way back to the tip of the tail, placing it in the drop knee position. My weight has been dropped onto the back ball of the foot through bending both knees and pressing downwards toward the ground. The right arm comes up, and the left stays down. I watched the tape to make sure I got the arm motions and timing. Wingnut may use this raised arm as a pure style move, or "hand jive," but it may help in balance as well.
Body lean in a "modern" turn vs. a pioneer turn
In frame three the shoulders have rotated left, which helps torque the board in the direction of the turn. Although as with the Dewey turn the right hand comes up and I do a little arching of my rib cage, there is a big difference in how body shaping works in this turn. In the Dewey turn most of my weight goes to the left and creates lean. You may remember that through arching, my hips got pushed out toward the right, or outside rail. In the Wingnut turn, my hips push or sit the other way, to the left out over the inside rail. Meanwhile my upper body goes to the right through a little bending at the waist. This makes my upper body a counterweight that balances the board. The point is I can get the board to lean more than with the Dewey turn without actually leaning myself.
In frame four I start the second turn, the toeside turn that completes the two linked turns. I like to think of holding onto a bar down low, pulling my body into a backbend. I arch my back, pushing my hips forward, my shoulders back. Now my hips and shoulders are counterweights again, only they've switched sides. I'm still not leaning into the turn-- if anything, I'm leaning away from the turn, and yet the board is getting a lot of rail and is turning sharply. Note that the body shape is a lot like the Dewey arch drop knee, only the turn goes in the opposite way.
Board crossunder vs. body crossover
Frame five and six show the progress of the toeside turn as my arch deepens. This whole sequence is like the Dewey sequence inside out. Wingnut's turns are more modern because they use counterweighting and little or no body lean to achieve more board angle, thus more efficient turns that are easier to link together. Without the swinging of the body across the board like a metronome pendulum, it's alot easier to stay afoot. By counterweighting I can put more weight directly over the rail I want to push deeper instead of losing leverage by leaning into the turns.
With less crossing over of the body comes more crossing under of the board, with a positive effect. Notice in frame six that my board is actually quite far away to one side of my upper body. The outside wheel has come off the ground, showing a very deeply railed board. The board has crossed under and is drifting in an arc around my straight upper body, which acts as the axis of the circle the board is drawing. I suppose you could say I'm leaning toward the turn, but it's not really the case-- my upper body is straight up and down and there's no lean, only the board is leaning. Board crossunder is a much more stable way of linking two turns than body crossover, especially at low to moderate speed. It's a hard technique to learn, because it may be intuitively against what you'd normally want to do to turn a board. But once you've learned it, it's physically much easier and smoother to do than the leaning style.
