Evaluating aerial landings in surfing: Implications for performance and training

Background: Surfing manoeuvres such as aerials have emerged as an impactful way for competitive surfers to significantly change the outcome of a heat, providing them with a competitive advantage when performed successfully. Although these manoeuvres have drawn some attention from the scientific community, no research has been undertaken to comprehensively evaluate the performance of aerials and to identify how they can be trained for. Research Question: The overall aim of this thesis was to systematically evaluate the performance of aerial manoeuvres in surfing in order to develop evidence-based recommendations, which could be used to improve aerial performance and training in skilled surfers. Methods: A series of studies were conducted in three parts to achieve this overall thesis aim. Firstly, Part I explored the current state of wave-riding performance (Chapter 2), as well as establishing the value of wave-riding manoeuvres to scoring a surfer’s performance during elite surfing competitions (Chapter 3). From gaps revealed in the literature and the research direction established in Part I, Part II of the thesis aimed to qualitatively assess how elite surfers perform aerial manoeuvres in competition so that a set of critical features, which were associated with successful aerial completion, could be developed to create a model of elite aerial performance (Chapter 4). These critical features were then compared with how competitive surfers landed simulated aerial manoeuvres in a laboratory (Chapter 5). Finally, for Part III, two simulated aerial manoeuvre variations, the Frontside Air and Frontside Air Reverse, were comprehensively evaluated to identify any differences in lower limb motion or control used by competitive surfers when landing the tasks (Chapter 6). Relationships between aerial performance parameters and other physical qualities of the competitive surfers were then investigated to establish which variables should be monitored in training to enhance succ