Hang Ten for beginner surfers

Wouldn’t it be nice to hang ten one day? Hang ten for beginner surfers may seem like an unachievable dream. But we can still talk about it, right?

Here’s to the ultimate achievement in noseriding, where the surfer hangs all 10 toes off the front end of the board. Yee-haw!

🏄‍♀️ What is hanging ten?

Hanging ten is the most advanced form of trimming the wave, and the end point of cross-stepping to the front of the surfboard.

When “hanging ten,” “the curve of a woman’s hip is off the end of a longboard,” as writer Jen See describes it.

This maneuver can only be done on a suitable longboard (typically 9–10 feet or more). According to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, hanging ten is possible only in small waves — up to 4 feet.

Despite how casual the term sounds, hanging ten is notoriously difficult. It’s often called one of the hardest tricks in surfing — a move that requires impeccable timing, wave positioning, and footwork. Noseriding really came to “define” the top surfers of the 1950s.

🕶 Who started it?

“Hang Ten” first popped up in surf culture in the early 1950s on the beaches of Southern California.

In 1951, legendary surfer Dale “The Hawk” Velzy stunned onlookers at Manhattan Beach by walking all the way to the nose of his 10-foot surfboard and dangling all ten toes off the edge while riding a wave.

Surfers had traditionally stayed farther back on their boards, so Velzy’s nose-walking feat was pretty groundbreaking. It’s possible that some hang tens were performed by Waikiki surfers in the ’40s, but they were known to return to the trimming position.

As such, surf historians credit Velzy as the first to “hang ten” on a surfboard — and the rest is history.

🧢 The Legends of Hang Ten

It became one of the most recognizable bits of surf lingo. Famous surfers who performed hang tens early in surf history include Californians Mickey Dora, Mickey Muñoz, and Dewey Weber in the late ’50s.

It fell out of fashion in the ’60s with the shortboard revolution.

But not before it got “borrowed” by California surfer Duke Boyd and seamstress Doris Moore, who founded Hang Ten surfwear in 1960. It’s still around today.

🚫 What about Hang Five?

And of course, you know about a “hang five” — hanging one foot’s five toes over the nose — but that’s considered a halfway house compared to the full glory of a hang ten, so we will not talk about it.

Because it’s Hang Ten — that dance, that swing — that is the most beautiful thing in surfing, says Jen See.