I wrote this post on past blog and thought I might as well post it here again. Sharing this occurred to me when I was checking a large number of boards at the Surf Center to make sure they were all good to be rented out again. Part of this check consisted of making sure that the foot-straps we screwed on tightly. Most people will not do this small change in technique as they usually only have to screw on one, maybe two, sets of foot-straps at a time and therefore will mot feel the consequences of doing it wrong. The way people usually screw on foot-straps is by turning the wrist. The wrist is pretty much the weakest part of the arm and with a long streak of continuous use it will get very sore and drag into the next days. Instead, rotate your arm around your shoulder. The benefit of this is threefold

  1. We will get less tired as we are not using only the forearm but the entire arm.
  2. We can screw the screw from jumping out of the slot as we can apply all our bodyweight onto it.
  3. Our shoulders will not hurt after spending a lot of time screwing the foot-straps. This would not be the case for our forearms.

One more thing: Electrical screwdrivers are not a good idea to use as the screw holes are usually made out of plastic. An electrical screwdriver might rotate too fast and the heat from the fast rotation will cause the screw hole windings to go soft meaning they will be less resistant. This can result in the the foot-strap ripping out of the board on the water. Elecrical screwdriver