In Which He Learns to Surf
A washed up basketball player tests the waters
In February of 2014, I spent seven days at the Shaka Beach Retreat on Playa Hermosa just outside of Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. Heading into the trip, I had very few expectations and only one goal: learn to surf. I wasn’t looking to spend a few days at a resort and take a couple surf lessons. Rather, I fully intended on spending several hours each day rigorously practicing until I could stand up comfortably and ride a wave. By the end of the week I did ride several waves, but little did I know that the journey and the lessons learned would prove so invaluable.
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Lesson I: Patience over Persistence
Unlike most sports or physical skills I’ve learned over the years, surfing requires an unbelievable amount of patience. I’m not just talking about the “practice makes perfect” or “shoot 500 jump shots a day” type patience. There is that element, but I mean the “paddle out, swim around, control the board (and your body), don’t fight the sea but listen to it as you wait for the ‘right’ wave” type patience.
What’s the difference? Mainly this:
I’ve found that with many sports or physical skills, persistence can actually compress time needed to learn and therefore supersede the need for patience. In other words, if I want to be a better free-throw shooter and I’m willing to put in the work (shoot 500 free-throws every day, for example), my persistent practice — if performed diligently — can actually turn me into a pretty damn good free-throw shooter in a relatively short amount of time. An amount of time, in fact, that I actually have some level of control over insofar as I can control how persistently I practice. It’s basically an exercise in efficiently training muscle memory.
Surfing is different. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that surfing is the exact opposite. Not in the sense that surfing doesn’t require practice or muscle memory, because it does. But it requires a completely different type of practice and muscle memory — both physical and mental.
Granted, today was my first day of surfing pretty much ever, but the one thing I noticed more than anything else is that the harder I tried, the more waves I hustled to catch, the more I tried to use sheer will power and strength (both physical and mental) to say “Fuck it. I’m going to ride a wave by the end of today!” — the further away I drew from:
a) actually feeling the pure joy of really riding a wave, and
b) truly understanding what surfing is all about.
This is not too dissimilar to several other lessons I’ve been taught with regards to acceptance and will power.
I did get up on the board today and I did ride a couple of waves, but I wouldn’t say that I demonstrated much patience — at least not with any consistency — which is probably why I’m so tired. This is a nice segue into what I envision to be tomorrow’s lesson: Conservation of Body Energy is Everything!
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Lesson II: Conserve Energy
I’ve never been much of an endurance or distance athlete. Sure, I could play pick-up hoops for five hours straight with no problem, but at no point during that five hours would I ever think, “Gotta leave some in the tank for that next game.”
When it comes to most types of physical exertion — whether it be running sprints, lifting weights or playing a sport — everything I’ve ever been taught has always preached: harder, faster, stronger is better.
Overheard while running suicides on the basketball court: “Suck it up,” “Touch the lines,” “Don’t cheat the Big Green,” — that last one I particularly hated.
Overheard while lifting weights at the gym: “Get lower,” “One more rep,” “You’re only cheating yourself” — again, for some reason I have a singular distaste for that last one.
Overheard while playing basketball: “Dig down deep,” “Leave it all on the court,” “They’re just outplaying you” — that last one simply being a way of saying, “Right now, the other team is playing harder than you.”
In any case, this harder, faster, stronger mantra has been ingrained in my mind from over 20 years of training for and playing basketball. In a lot of ways I believe it has actually served me well.
But I’ll tell you what, the ocean doesn’t give a shit how “hard” you’re surfing or how fast and strong you think you are. It doesn’t care if you finished that last rep of squats at 315 or if you put 235 up on the bench press 5x today — these are not self-calls, just arbitrary numbers that sounded semi-impressive for an aging basketball player.
The ocean certainly doesn’t care if you were a Division-1 athlete; in fact, this is likely just more of a reason for her to taunt you and trick you into thinking that some arbitrary level of man-made physical achievement is transferable to harnessing a force of nature for recreational purposes.
After day two, it occurs to me that the ocean — more specifically currents, rips and waves — care about one thing: inertia.
I took a couple of humbling blows from the ocean today. I also rode more waves and rode them longer distances than I did yesterday. Most importantly, I learned a few things about energy:
- A small wave can pack a giant punch. Respect the ocean and stay alert.
- Trying to fight the forces of the ocean is like repeatedly punching a concrete wall. Over time, the wall will always win.
- Efficiently storing and exerting energy — whether it be while paddling out or into a wave or simply waiting for a wave — will pay dividends in the long run. So does knowing when to let go.
Incidentally, when taken in a more general sense, these actually feel like pretty solid anecdotes for life.
Oh, and lastly, when trying to catch a wave, always take an extra paddle… or two. There’s that need for patience again.
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Lesson III: Receive Butter; Dodge Shit
This afternoon our Yoga Instructor, Megan, told us:
“Sometimes life sends you butter and sometimes it sends you shit. Learn to receive the butter and dodge the shit.”
As it turns out, this would have been super valuable advice about four hours earlier.
This morning we surfed “out the back” for the first time. In other words, off came the training wheels and on came the big boy pants — or board shorts, as it were. To say this was a humbling experience would be an understatement.
For reference:
- If riding the white water waves (from days 1 & 2) is like making it to triple digits in Candy Crush, then surfing out the back would be like solving a Rubik’s Cube… one-handed… with your eyes closed.
- If surfing the white water waves is like sinking a ten foot jump shot on a basketball hoop in your backyard, then catching a wave out the back is like draining a three-pointer with LeBron James in your face… with 3 seconds on the clock… in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
- If comfortably surfing the white water waves is like, let’s say, solving the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday crossword puzzle, then surfing out the back would be like completing the New York Times Sunday puzzle… in a sauna… with “I Gotta Feeling” by the Blacked Eyed Peas blasting on repeat.
OK, those are slight exaggerations, but the point is: catching a wave out the back is considerably more challenging than simply standing up on a board that’s riding gently atop the white water of an already broken wave because:
- It takes a fuck-ton of energy to even get yourself out the back. Try paddling head-on into a continuous series of walls made of water that are traveling at a non-trivial speed in the opposite direction (waves). This is where an efficient paddling technique can make all the difference.
- Picking out a wave, positioning yourself and properly timing when to paddle into the wave has to be done with so much more precision out the back. As the number of times you completely miss a wave climbs, frustration mounts and confidence dwindles, at least for me it did. Having a short memory and maintaining clear headspace is paramount, especially when the sun is beating down as you drift in open water on a piece of foam covered in fiberglass.
- Trudging back out through several more walls of water after being tossed off your board and tumbled like towels in a clothes dryer is not only humbling, but it’s extremely physically taxing. You always hear: “Get knocked down 7x, stand up 8!" Try getting knocked down, dragged end-over-end and stepped on, and then get up and willingly ask for more.
My spirit was put in check today, but it wasn’t broken. I dodged some shit, certainly not all of it, but if you take one look at the sunset I was able to enjoy after it was all said and done, it’s safe to say I received enough butter to bring me back out there again tomorrow.
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Lesson IV: Wait for the Miracle
After another day or two of paying my dues, something amazing happened. After warming up a bit in the white water, I waited patiently for the calm between one set of waves and the next. After three relatively large waves passed through one right after the other, I hopped on my board and started paddling out through the gentle roll of the next set of building waves. Before I knew it, I had made it out the back. Much to my surprise, I had not spent much energy at all. I had timed it perfectly and somehow managed to remain calm and collected as I gracefully (sort of) paddled out there. Then, the miracle happened.
OK, not quite a miracle, but after spotting a coming wave, quickly turning my board and perfectly timing my paddle into the wave, this happened:
So it was a small wave — OK, a tiny one. But it was my wave, a wave I had worked my ass off just to get to the point that I could say I caught entirely on my own. And that got me thinking…
In a world where, like it or not, I would be considered by many to be part of a generation that favors ephemerality and instant gratification over focus and diligence, there’s something to be said for doing things the “old-fashioned” way. There’s a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes along with setting a goal and subsequently taking the steps necessary to achieve that goal.
I’ve set many goals in my life, and I’ve even accomplished a fair amount of them. Many others I’ve yet to realize. However, for some reason, this one felt different. I don’t know if it was the fact that I had recently turned 30, or simply that I was in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Whatever it was, for those seven days — when I was on the water — I truly felt what it meant to test the waters.
And that’s a wrap.
This is my very first post on Medium. If you liked it, please hit “Recommend” below. You can follow me on Twitter at @PCutty.
Here’s one more amazing shot from Playa Hermosa:
