Not going to be a long post. Just wanted to share these two videos with the community. The first is a video of me surfing, filmed by MG Bruno, with voice overs by me. It’s some pretty simple, straightforward fundamental surfing with slo mos so that people can dissect important points about technique. The second is a video I shot, edited, and narrated of MG. She is my new assistant/mentee and as you can see I am helping her become a more powerful and radical surfer. She is already smooth and graceful. Her pop ups, pig dog, and dead cockroach maneuvers are admirable and imitable. I have received some texts from CSC folks about how stoked they are to see her surf. If you would like to support MG’s presence in the lineup I suggest sending a Venmo of your desired amount to @mmmmgggg. Call it the MG Appreciation Fund. She is not a full coach yet and there is a long way to go for that to become the case, but I thought you would like a way to show your support for her presence in our lineups when they are helpful to your own surfing. Not compulsory. Just a gesture I wanted to make towards MG and all who are inspired by her surfing.
ENTIRELY INFORMATIVE AND SILLY CLUB SURF VIDEO
Get out the popcorn and sit down for 20 minutes of pure CSC club surfing educational fun and humor. I have been experimenting with this voice over format, and both me and the mentees have been loving it. Most of the personal videos are privately linked on the Vimeo channel, but some days just flow in such a way that it makes sense to make one big edit rather than 4-6 personal ones. This way I can intersperse my own surfing and technique tips with those who are in training. MG has been joining us and she has been a great help both with the filming and with her graceful style in the water. She is helping out with filming in trade with help on advanced technique, especially on a shortboard in more powerful surf. As you can see, she’s pretty darn good on a longer board in small surf. We’re stoked to have her around.
MG style for miles down the line. Arms quiet and at the side. Stance narrow and in the center of the board for trim.
This video features students Nina Chavez, Bonnie Stamper, and Liz Golato, all of whom have been working with me for about a year. Nina and I have been working on correcting a bad pop up she had learned that we’ve dubbed “the broken lawn chair” because it involves an incorrect folding forward of her back leg. As with many tough issues in peoples’ surfing, Nina’s is exacerbated whenever she feels anxiety due to either fear or anticipation. My plan to resolve the issue has been to develop her take off and glide technique so that she feels more stable going down the line and thus is more confident about using her back foot to create space under her hips where she can then place her front foot and stand up in one stage. This is only one pop up technique, but I’m finding it’s the one that is most needed to get down for intentional surfing.
Nina likes to smile big when she pops up in one stage.
Some people with fast pop ups, like Liz in this vid, use the fast pop up as an excuse not to look at the wave or paddle hard enough into it. Liz and I have been squashing her paddling and take off confidence issues this spring, and as you can see and hear in the vid, she has realized that a strong paddle combined with looking down the line can get her into almost any wave. Liz is riding the CSC x Barahona shapes 8’6” x 23” x 3” pink stripe rendition of the “pink cloud” board, which is the best all around beginner board in the quiver, especially for the lighter surfer.
Liz cruising — could look at the wave a little more there Liz!
Bonnie Stamper is a “clean slater”. She took her very first surfing lesson with me on August 3, 2019. She and Liz had high hopes for the Costa Rica surf retreat this March, but then Covid hit so they applied their deposits to our NY surfing staycation. In the past month Bonnie has had the ultimate breakthrough in surfing: she knows what the wave looks like when she see the face as she enters the wave. She also has her very own 8’6” x 23” x 3” with her own custom color choice. Now she is moving on to learning pig dog — as you see in the first 90 seconds of the vid — and to turning the board from the tail to avoid the closeout.
Bonnie looks down the line!
Really stoked on the progress these women have made in their surfing in the past month. I also enjoy doing the voice overs and keeping the humor clean. It’s also important to include the other surfers in the lineup, just to get a feel for what one deals with on an average day in the Rockaways. I can see there may be an interpretation where I’m “making fun” of the other surfers in the water — and it wouldn’t be totally wrong — but it is in good spirit. There are lots of people out there attempting to ride 1ft mush balls on shortboards. Add to this the herd mentality of going for the same wave as everyone else and you have a perfect comedy of errors. At CSC we try to wait our turn and share waves as much as possible — there are plenty to go around. And furthermore, this video is public and contains some vital surf educational information available to all and sundry! I would say that the first two minutes where I demonstrate the pig dog take off technique are the most informative. The stuff I’m doing on the board on the beach is part the ‘surf salutation’ exercise that I teach in my virtual classes. This is a crucial technique that everyone who hopes to be a competent surfer must have in their arsenal!
Black Lives Matter
A bunch of CSC crew and I attended the Memorial Paddle Out for George Floyd in Rockaway on June 6, 2020. It was organized by @black_surfing_rockaway, which is the east coast branch of the Black Surfing Association (BSA) and also by Black Girls Surf. George Floyd’s death has sparked this incredible time of cultural awakening. The surf community came together for paddle outs all over the country and the world on June 5 and June 6. This is the kind of solidarity and future-oriented thinking that the surf community has so desperately needed. The whole event was deeply moving — 1000s of surfers united as a tribe to call for justice or rather a complete overhaul of the legal (in)justice system in America. We are all normally so hell bent on finding our own peak or our own waves that communing with our fellow surfers is difficult. Add to that less trained people dropping in on you and getting in your way on the inside and you have a nasty brew of animosity and surf rage. This event was not about curing surf rage, but I had the feeling that in a way it could be a positive side effect of more events like these. The paddle out showed that we can join in harmony and recognition of our shared humanity.
But first and foremost it was about honoring the death of George Floyd and countless other black people in America who have been unjustly killed by the police. I think it may have been the first memorial paddle out (along with the others around the world and nation) for a non surfer. Normally when a surfer dies the surfing community paddles out to sea with flowers and his or her ashes and that’s how the ceremony is held. The surfer’s ashes are distributed back into the sea, a few of the community leaders say some words, and then the surfers celebrate by splashing the water and hooting. I myself would love for my life to be celebrated in this fashion after I am gone. When we return to the sea in this way we are truly going back to where we emerged from in the first place. The sea water in the veins of surfer and non surfer alike connects us all.
It will be interesting to see how this movement and uprising plays out in the world at large. Already cities and counties are discussing and making moves to abolish or radically transform their police forces. Many of the things that police respond to do not require guns or badges — and in many places in the world the everyday police do not carry fire arms. The police in America are trained for combat and they look that way. Their whole presence is defensive and menacing. There were two police boats surveilling the paddle out — you’ll see them in the video — and they felt unnecessary. It was later revealed on Instagram that the boats were there at the behest of Black Surfing Rockaway should there be a medical emergency in the water. But this is precisely the point: even though the intention was good, the execution sent the wrong message simply due to the symbolism and ‘vibe’ of the police boats. It’s also a cynical view of humanity and surfers that we would not be able to rescue a brother or sister who had a stroke in the water — I know I am capable of putting someone on my board and paddling them to shore. In ideal world there would be medics — trained EMTs — waiting peacefully on the beach should such an emergency occur at an event like this.
Pic from the water of the circle of surfers in support of BLM — police boat is off in the distance.
It would also have been a different thing altogether if the police had big ‘Black Lives Matter’ banners on the sides of their boats in solidarity. This would have sent a completely different message, and we would not have felt like they were there to quell some kind of uprising in the water.
Surfers have an unspoken code not to get the police involved in any of our water disputes. There have been a few cases where they were in involved — they were called in to respond to the crazy localism at Lunada Bay — and when I lived in SF a body boarder had a restraining order from surfing Fort Point (under the Golden Gate Bridge) for putting someone in a choke hold in the lineup — but for the most part we rely on ourselves to sort out our issues in the water. I do not think we do the best job most of the time — there is a lot of defensive and entitled behavior — and part of my program here at CSC is to endeavor to do better. One thing I have noticed is that one is less likely to commit a surfing ‘crime’ against another surfer if he or she knows their name. This is not always the case — there are bad actors that burn all and sundry — but for the most part it is easier to work out the dispute if you are able to acknowledge the person’s humanity by ‘saying their name’.
I also wanted to write this post to formally acknowledge that CSC supports the BLM movement and everything it stands for. This movement has caused me to honestly and holistically confront my own complicity — as I did in the post below as well — and has helped me see that it is ok to admit that you have played a part in a thoroughly sick system. My goal moving forward is to continue to having these difficult thoughts and conversations and to devise ways that I can contribute to a better (surfing) culture. In the video you may or may not notice that I do not chant along too often — it remains hard for me to shout with a crowd in public — and this is for any cause, even ones I truly believe in, like this one. I don’t have the requisite passion because empathy is a logical, not an emotional, process for me. Given the logic of trying to put yourself in the shoes of others — and this is what so many white people in America need to be doing right now — one can find the reason why one should also raise one’s voice in unison against the cultural institutions that radically underserve black Americans. There is another paddle out on June 20th and I’ll endeavor to join in the chanting then.
Towards A Critical Surfing Future: A Critical Surf Studies Bibliography Primer
Required surf history reading.
Welp writing to you from another critical moment in human history. We’re still in a pandemic, but now we also have a new and much needed cultural revolution on our doorsteps, sparked by the public murder of George Floyd by the hands (and knees) of Minneapolis police officers. I stand with the protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement, but I also stand for Mother Earth, women of every shade, Native Americans and other indigenous and colonized peoples, immigrants, and all the poor and oppressed, in whatever forms their oppression takes — in this I count the spiritually oppressed who may have lots of material means but suffer radically from hardness of heart and clouded vision.
It may seem like a funny segue to talk about some books that I have recently acquired in my surf studies library, but there are a few crucial links. You would think that somebody that surfs so much and cares so much about surfing and has this business based upon surfing education would already have had all these books in his library and would have read through all of them already. I have read a few of them by now, like the above, Waves of Resistance by Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, but a great deal of this stack I have yet to get through completely. Why has it taken me so long to start collecting a surfing library? It’s interesting story, and one that bears on our current moment.
I have realized that I have been defending against surfing and liking surfing for a long time based upon the bad things in the culture I witnessed and experienced growing up in surf culture and have wanted to distance myself from. I watched active and violent racism, misogyny, and xenophobia play out at my local beach. I have seen a surfer whose nickname was ‘White Pride Rich’ kick out his surfboard at black surfer Gary Crocraw. I have heard surfers call one another homophobic slurs and myself have been called a ‘fag’ in a San Francisco lineup, of all places. I have seen surfers throw sticks at Mexican families at the beach where I grew up. I have heard surfers use the ‘n-word’, and words like ‘wetback’ and ‘spic’ as a part of common parlance. I have watched a woman get called ‘cunt’ to her face in the water. I have also not always been an innocent bystander in this culture. Like all young people, I was impressionable and looked up to the guys who were mentoring my fledgling surfing practice. I yelled at people in the water and told them to “Go back to Santa Cruz.”
I also consumed everything I could get my hands on about surf culture. I wanted to signal to everyone that I was a surfer. I wore surf clothing and watched zillions of surf videos a week. I read as many books about surfing that I possibly could. I read every surfing magazine that hit news stands. I was obsessed. But as I started to mature and travel and experience the other side of localism, I began to have misgivings about what I viewed to be the bad parts of the culture. And so in my mid 20s, instead of performing a holistic critique of surfing culture and my role in it, I simply and hastily decided to eschew consuming as many surfing cultural products — books, magazines, videos, clothing, accessories — anything except the hard goods — surfboards, wax, wetsuits, leashes, board bags — that I possibly could. I didn’t just eschew it, but I actively got rid of everything that I already owned that signaled, “I surf.” I made sure I wore logo-less clothing and that there was nary a surfing magazine laying around my apartment. Instead I immersed myself in my studies of religion, philosophy, critical theory, and literature. I still surfed like a lunatic, but in a kind of defiant anti-surfing culture stance.
I say this original critique wasn’t holistic because instead of holding myself accountable for my own complicity in this culture, I simply repressed it and defended against it. If surfing culture had an ethics problem, I was not part of it, or I was going to distance myself from it. I was above it — I could surf and love surfing but do it without engaging in the culture. You can already see the flawed logic here. This is simply bad, unprocessed elitism. It is one of my greatest struggles as a person, one of my my nearest and dearest personality flaws. Even still, even as soon as last week, I got mad at how when I surf an extra amount in a given set of time, I end up feeling stupid or brain dead. I voiced as much in my last newsletter, but ultimately came around to the conclusion that I find myself coming to more often: surfing involves a lot of practical wisdom. If I surf 40 hours a week I have no one to blame but myself for brain cells that I’ve shed. I am also not spending those hours solely focused on my own practice, but am sharing my practical and theoretical know-how of surfing with others. My life’s work has become about creating and fostering an intentional and ethical surfing community.
These kinds of thoughts are more indicative of a holistic critique — a critique that takes into account my relationship to others, to the ways that I have been shaped for the good and the bad by various aspects of surfing culture, and to the fact that I am a better surfer, philosopher, and leader when I examine my traumas, defenses, repressions, and projections as they play out in my words, actions, and well, habits. Forming better habits is, after all, what ethics is all about. Furthermore, as a philosopher, as someone who loves wisdom, and therefore loves truth, I was disavowing a very simple truth about myself: surfing is foundational and central to my identity as a person. This doesn’t mean that I have to wear head-to-toe surf brands, but it also doesn’t mean that I need to be ashamed for wearing them either. At least not ashamed for the fact that they signal that I surf or that I endorse a brand formed in surfing culture. I may have other ethical issues with how that clothing is produced, and I do have a very strong stance about fashion ethics and hold all clothing companies accountable for their exploitative labor practices. It is sad that surfing brands have been on the wrong side of history in this regard more often than not. This thought is also indicative of a holistic critique of surfing culture. Critique is not a dirty word — it’s a hopeful word. Critique is the process of examination that helps us locate practices in our selves and in our institutions that are more and less just, more and less true. It helps us highlight what is worth holding onto and nourishing — like the joy we get when we share waves with our fellow surfing brothers and sisters — and what we need to work to discard or reshape.
Part of the process of my own critique of surfing has been first to embark on this project of writing my philosophy dissertation on surfing (rather than on fashion). In so doing I have had to rebuild my surfing library. How can I have a truly critical attitude and approach to myself and to the culture I’m most active in if I turn my eyes away from the stories others have told about it? The project is coming along well and I hope to be done soon.
Something else that has become evident due to Covid-induced shifts in doing business, is that I can mobilize my love and knowledge of surfing with others not just in the water physically coaching, but also through seminars on oceanography, etiquette, surfing history, and well, what I am starting to realize are ‘critical surf studies’, which is already an academic sub field in Australian universities. I am in the process of brainstorming what a full critical surfing education might look like, including getting better at the physical practice, and how, beyond writing books and blogs, I can make this vision come to fruition. I would love to found or participate in founding an institute where critical surfing theory and practice function hand in hand. I mean CSC is the beginning of this vision, of course. And we’re starting down this theoretical road now with the invention of our book club, which meets for the first time this coming Monday, June 8 to discuss the first two chapters of Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean (2014) by Jonathan White.
Re-reading Tides has already shown me that caring critically about surfing doesn’t mean just caring about surfing culture — it means caring about the ocean and the planet more generally. A part of any critical surfing bibliography, therefore, should also include literature on climate change and ecology. Asking important questions about the relationships between people and people, people and the ocean, the ocean and the universe, and how all of this is connected, is truly inexhaustible, and that’s ok! Of course I’m also interested in these connections from a philosophical and larger scientific perspective, which is why in this future critical surf institute there will be classes on Spinoza, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as classes on subjects like quantum gravity and evolutionary biology. Education is the salvation of humanity. We never flourish more than when we examine self and world with others.
In that spirit, here are some books in my current critical surf studies rotation. I have been boycotting Amazon lately and a lot of these I recently got through Alibris.
Discovery: TSJ Has A Vimeo Channel!
Well after surfing and coaching 8 days in a row last week I got stuck behind in my intellectual output. Was cramming to get vids and session invoices to those that I coached and I didn’t have the 12-24 hours required to craft the blog posts that I have been churning out. It’s early Saturday morning and I’m gearing up to go surf, but I wanted to post something. I was thinking about finding and sharing Wayne Lynch footage, but when I started digging a little I realized that that requires a larger post. He’s an important figure in surfing and has some pretty strong views worth giving a more concerted dig into. In search for clips of Wayne, however, I discovered something else: The Surfers Journal has a Vimeo Channel! It is filled with tons of new and archival surfing footage like this competition in Western Australia. I cannot link any of their videos here due to privacy policies, but if you’re looking for inspiration and surfing cultural history in the form of 3-20 minute surf vids, I suggest you head over there before or after your next surf or at-home visualization session and click on anything. The further down you scroll, the better and better the content gets. Like this video Spyder Wills took of Gerry Lopez and Rory Russell at Uluwatu in the 1970s, which starts off with a perfect image of how to paddle a shortboard followed by 7 minutes of perfect trim and tube time.
Many people that I have been working with both at the beach and virtually need as much good surfing content as they can lay their eyes on in order to see what good form looks like. Where are their hands placed? What about their eyes? How do they crouch to get into the tube? What is their stance like when trimming? Sure you can take your surfing by feel, but that won’t account for an effective approach unless you’re some kind of savant like Lynch. Most humans need exemplars to mimic if they are to learn any grammar proficiently, and this channel is full of that, so get over there and start studying!
Pandemic Surf Diary Entry: May 16 -- Phenomenology of a Self-Coaching Breakthrough
A view from a tube on my second session.
On Saturday May 16th I had a personal breakthrough in my surfing. I had not surfed for 12 days. I spent those days writing, doing yoga, administering virtual consults over Zoom, brainstorming, walking my dog, and cooking. In preparation for our May 14 Zoom lesson, I had assigned my student, young Max, to watch Loaded by Dane Reynolds (2014) on YouTube. We spent most of the meeting on board design and did not get to really dig into the video together, but I had the link saved in a tab for watching down the road. I accidentally scrolled over that tab when doing something else and it cut to the video, which somehow had been playing for a few minutes. I paused it in the middle of precise Taylor Knox cutback, did a double take, and decided that I ought to watch the whole thing.
First, however, I re-read my blog post about the pumping surf on May 2 and paid special attention to the sequence Guy Barash shot of me dropping into that gorgeous wave. In the first slide my hands are up in the air. Then I connect with my board, lean on the rail, and sneak into and out of the tube. I was looking at my arms, and asking myself, “Is it normal for a good surfer to do that from time to time? Why are my arms up there and does it have to be that way?” I also ruminated on what my anxiety state is as I enter into waves like that or as I enter into tubing surf. I still get scared. I have that upper stomach fear tickle, which is obviously related to a deep seated fear of death, failure, and injury/suffering. I’m still going to override it, but it’s there causing me to hesitate in tiny ways. The slightest hesitation — can I really stand up under the lip? what if I pearl and ruin the whole wave? — may cause me to get ever so slightly hung up, thus making me air drop down the wave rather than simply tucking up under the hood from the get go. I am aware of this tickle in my upper stomach and the feeling of mixed excitation and dread as a heaving tube beast is headed my way. The anxiety is also a result social and cultural positioning: I want to be a stylish surfer who goes fast with little extra movement. I don’t want to look like one of those people who are riding a board that is too small for them, making jerky motions and bogging rail because they are not distributing speed properly. With this kind of surfing as a negative example, I can err on the too conservative side and not throw caution to the wind. My next move was to watch Loaded with an eye to these thoughts.
Loaded is loaded with great surfing by Dane Reynolds, Nat Young, Noa Deane, Taylor Knox, Andrew Doheny, and Craig Anderson (I could be missing one or two others, but this is the main cast). It is filmed in CA, Indonesia, Japan, and Mexico (and again maybe some other places, but they’re not exactly listed). It is a highly consumable length: 20 min. The music and visuals are pleasing. There is not much gender or race equity in terms of the talent presented, but at least Dane omits the formulaic and passe “woman as object” shots that unfortunately are still common in surf content. His touristic shots are also tasteful. One does not get the dirty, exploitative, colonialist feeling that many surf travel films evoke (Taylor Steele’s are particularly bad for this).
My goal in watching Loaded was to study the drops, paying particular attention to the hands, and to take other notes from the surfing to apply to my own surfing. Here are my takeaways:
Their arms very infrequently come up above their heads when they drop into waves of any size. Regardless of whether they’re dropping in early or late they keep the hands down at their sides — just lower generally with variations on position — through the drop. This helps cement their feet on their boards and places weight on the rail and fins immediately to lock the board into the face of the wave, allowing them control of what they decide to do vis a vis what the wave is telling them is possible. It is especially helpful for tucking into tubes off the drop frontside. Backside this is less of a problem because one is normally taking off with some kind of rail grab in mind if it’s a tubing wave. But still, one can apply this idea to backside drops as well.
I was reminded that it is important to pull into closeout tubes. Yes, it’s great to make tubes, but it’s spectacular and fun to watch someone pull into a closeout. You get a really nice view, the wipeout isn’t so bad because you just get ejected out the back of the wave, and it’s entertaining for the whole lineup.
Craig Anderson drops in to a good size wave with hands in lower position.
This allows him to stay compressed to the board and set his rail sooner.
I noticed that arms go up in the air on their big air maneuvers. Or any time there is air under the board and it’s threatening to drop out from under you, the arms of a human go up, as the feet reach to grab onto the board for control. As gravity brings you down, you settle in and connect back with the board, absorbing the impact with knees and ankles, then doing whatever comes next whether it’s a bottom turn into the next maneuver or just stalling to kickout.
Noa Deane hands up for the air!
The Taylor Knox footage of technical surfing in sizeable Lowers is awesome. His rail surfing is so precise. Riding a thruster allows one to push hard through a long bottom turn with no risk of sliding at the bottom. Most all of them are riding thrusters or three fin set ups.
There are two minutes they show Taylor Knox trying airs. He can get up there but can’t land. It’s humbling especially for me who also suffers from something similar. And to be honest my attempts are not even as good as Knox’s. It makes sense to try this stuff out and figure out the techniques and limits. Some of us are not innately air surfers, but we may pull the off one over time. It takes a lot of willingness to wipe out to get it right.
Taylor Knox precision and aggression on the rail riding a thruster at Lower Trestles.
I enjoyed watching how aggressive Dane, Taylor, Craig, et. al. are with their turns. I made a vow to be more aggressive in mine. I had also studied an instagram post by Ace Buchan of a roundhouse cutback with a vertical backside hit. I have always struggled to get the board up to the lip vertically on the rebound. My right (front) shoulder is really tight so it’s hard for me to open up sometimes. It was a goal for me in addition to being more aggressive to get that nose up there. I also wanted to focus on not focusing on not falling. Go hard and fall if that’s what happens.
Pro surfers get burned by oblivious kooks too. Me, I would not think twice about going on a wave Dane Reynolds or Taylor Knox are already up and riding, but then I know to look back to the peak before taking off. If someone is coming down the line, and even more so if that someone is a super fast, precise, and exciting surfer to watch, then I’m backing out immediately. While it is always frustrating to be burned, it’s great to see that we all go through it, and I love that Dane keeps it in the vids.
Dane Reynolds getting burned by an oblivious surfer. Dane’s body language says everything here.
With all of these things in mind, but especially with the notion to keep my hands down when dropping in on tubing ones, I went surfing. The waves were quite good. I paddled out at 630a. I decided on the jetty where the waves looked more vertical, which was less crowded, and there were a variety of take off points should crowds descend. Slow paddle out. I did not bring the Go Pro for my first session. I wasn’t wearing gloves — it was fine! I wore the hooded Isurus 3mm suit with 7mm Xcel boots, and was riding the 5’4” Lost RNF I just picked up from ding repair. I chose to ride it with twin keels rather than a quad. I want to say that it was as soon as my first wave I put my intention into action: under the lip, go full confidence, keep hands down. Tube. Then tube. Then tube. I was taking off deeper than I normally do and had a lot higher make ratio than normal. Granted, these waves were only head high, and I’ll have to try this strategy out when I’m a little more scared. But still, there were some that I would have gotten hung up on before that I was making just fine. My mind was a little blown.
I was turning more aggressively. I fell back on some fin wafts on the end section, but I did my damnedest to push hard. I was still suffering from some residual stiffness in my right hip (yoga is helping), so I had to take back some parts of my aggressivity vow on certain turns. Also I realized that the twin fin was not going to allow quite the same torque as a standard thruster would. I found myself desiring a “normal” shortboard with three fins for the hold and pivot that back fin provides, and actually texted Charles Mencel after my first session and got him to start shaping me one.
I went in from my first session at 8:05a after about I don’t know 10-20 tubes, and no hands up in the air take offs. I ate two pieces of apple cake and finished my coffee. I also drank water and took two Advil for my hip. I geared up the Go Pro in preparation for my next session coaching Zac. I was satisfied by my first surf so I vowed to be mostly focused on Zac and just go for sets that came right to me. It just so happened that I got into a rhythm. Zac had a great surf for not having surfed since December. He’s a trooper. We kept fighting the rip as it took people down the beach and this kept carving out a place in the lineup we could sit alone. He had more patience than he normally does, but was noticeably getting winded from his dormant surfing muscles being newly activated. I got at least 5 or 6 more tubes and did some turns that felt fantastic, hooking one cutback rebound wonderfully with nose up at the white water. I also pulled into a closeout tube intentionally. Feels great to nail more than one goal in a session!
Zac and I surfed until about 10:40a. Then I came in, changed, and sat in my van eating a tuna fish sandwich and drinking water. An old man walked past me — my van door was open — towards the beach and then he quickly went back the other way. Then he comes back again, this time wearing a blue surgical mask. He sees me and says, “I forgot my mask. You have to wear a mask. You can’t forget it. My doctor didn’t wear his mask and now he’s dead.” This is truly surfing in Corona times. I felt self conscious that I wasn’t wearing mine, so just after he walked off I shut my van door and continued to eat my sandwich. A large man wearing his mask around his neck, i.e., not really wearing his mask, passed by my window and coughed. I had shut the door just in time.
Liz showed up at 10:45. I spent some time on the beach with my mask, sun hat, and camera and talked to Liz about the lineup. Zac paddled back out and I got a little bit of video and some stills. Time to head back out. I was done ripping shredding, so I brought my 6’7” Kidman. The waves were petering out for it to be fun for me, but still too big for it to be manageable for Liz. She managed one at the end of her session, and we made the call to just keep getting her the water to get her paddling muscles back in gear.
Masked at the beach in NY.
This experience shows me in my own surfing is that most of the great achievements accomplished in the water were prepared for on land. There is seriously no amount of visualization and learning on land that can possibly be enough. Part of everyone’s froth to get in the water as the sole place to figure it out is slightly misguided. It is an incomplete notion of what surfing is and what constitutes learning to surf and becoming a proficient surfer. This is why I’m trying to push all of my clients and future-clients, and urging you dear reader, to carve out some time to study surfing when they are not surfing. Improving your land game is an essential part of improving your water game. There is no way around it. 2-4 hours in the water per week ain’t gonna cut it. If you add 2-4 hours of studying surfing at home to the 2-4 that you spend in the water, you will see results. Double the hours for both and you’ll get even more bang for your buck. Simply put, in order to become masterful at surfing you have to study surfing. There are infinity ways I can vary my experience and tweaks I can make to improve, whether its in equipment, technique, or attitude. Surfing is like a calculus that involves all multiple variables in a variety of dimensions. It’s a quantum calculus.
In closing I want to draw your attention to the Vimeo I made linked above to announce that I have figured out how to do voiceovers! This is another huge breakthrough that should help everyone who follows me and works with me personally. Expect voiceovers on most videos that I drop in the future.