It was a long wait and..........

.....I had to paddle around the bay and back before I eventually got a few nice rides as the swell started to pick up a little more ahead of the incoming front. Today I added to my mat riding technique and had a philosophical realisation about riding a mat. I have often been told that keeping the chin down is a big part of mat riding technique and for the most part I had thought that I have definitely improved this aspect of my mat riding technique. Interestingly, I heard this piece of advice again very recently from MT who said that it is his secret to achieving the incredible speed he manages to extract from a wave. In the image above MT provides a great demonstration of how to do that. It takes a little while for these things to sink in but finally today I think I get it. It is odd, when learning to do something new, how suddenly one starts to do things differently and today for some reason I started to get my chin right down on the mat's deck. The stunning result was I got through a couple of sections and back on to the face that I don't think I would have got through in the past. Hooked by this new sensation I experimented further with the technique with more positive results. I remember now when I first viewed the Musica Surfica mat riding footage how intrigued I was by Warren Pfeiffer bobbing his head up and down so much and now I understand why.
Of course, a fundamental change at the physical level usual results in a change in the head also and I think it was the subtle change in the relationship that occurred between myself and the mat out there in the water today that led me to it. Now everybody else in the matting world has probably already realised this or thinks I am completely nuts (Yeh, ok I already proved that one to you all) but I think that mimicking the way a dolphin moves through the water as one mat rides might be a really useful thing to do. I know Daniel Thomson has thought this also as he used it here in a post after he had started riding a mat so perhaps it is not so far fetched a thought?
I know how intrigued GG was by the way dolphins moved so efficiently through the water and I am suspecting that his choice to ride a mat and the mats evolution into a thing that is malleable in shape may have been driven by the quest to mimic the dolphins movement through the water.
Anyway, my new mantra? "Ride like a dolphin!"