My routine, which is more like an antiroutine, changes depending on the conditions. If the surf’s perfect, you’re not going to find me in the gym. Having variety in your training matters because it keeps things interesting for your brain and your body. No matter what I’m doing on a given day, it’s based on these strategies.
BUILD FUNCTIONAL FITNESS It’s not how much weight you can lift, it’s how much strength you can incorporate into your movements. You want strength that you can actually control and apply. Take big wave surfing, which requires tremendous leg strength. There are guys who are stronger than I am. Physically, they can squat more—but are they able to apply all that power into the edge of the board and project it into the right part of the wave? The ability to put all of your resources to work—that’s the real trick.
When you sit down on a piece of exercise equipment, you tend to shut down the rest of your body. You might isolate your biceps or your chest, but in reality, that’s not how you use your strength. If I’m working on a machine, I’ll add movements so the other muscles aren’t static. I might incorporate leg lifts while I’m doing chest presses or do my shoulder presses while balancing. When you’re performing a motion, try to recruit more than one muscle group.
BE CREATIVE Do the same workout every day and you’ll get consistent—but you won’t get explosive. Once you become too efficient at something, it benefits you less. I believe in keeping the body guessing. One way to do that is to let the conditions dictate what you do. If it’s windy, instead of going to the gym, you might go windsurfing—or even run around outside and fly a kite. If you’re at the gym, don’t just repeat the same routine every time. Change it up. Try it back-to-front, or work only on machines that you’ve never used before. Make it new, not just for your body, but also for your brain.
WORK YOUR BALANCE The best way I’ve found to cultivate balance is standup paddling (see page 203), but you can incorporate balance work into anything you’re doing. Look for balance boards in the gym, or simply lift one foot off the ground while you’re doing biceps curls or other arm exercises. Working balance on both sides of your body helps in all sports—we all have one side that’s dominant. To really excel at something, you need to shore up your weak side so that you really don’t have a weak side.
DON’T TRAIN FOR WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO HAPPEN You can teach your body bad habits as well as good ones. And when your body learns, so does your mind. In fact, they don’t just learn, they memorize—and they do so especially well under duress. In surfing, I’ll see guys training, and they’ll say, “I can hold my breath for 5 minutes underwater with a rock!” Well, great. Personally, I don’t ever want to consciously inform myself that I could hold my breath for that long because I believe that if you cultivate the idea, there’s a good chance you’re going to bring on the occasion. People ask me all the time, “How long can you hold your breath?” and I say, “I don’t want to know how long. I just know so far, long enough!”
PRACTICE BREATH AWARENESS Even though I don’t want to work on breath holding, I think it’s good to practice deep breathing. After all, breathing is our only form of nutrition besides food. It oxygenates the blood, tissues, and entire body. Taking shallow breaths all the time is like watering down your own scotch. The other thing about breath awareness is that it’s calming. Whenever you think about breathing, rather than letting it happen as an unconscious reflex, you bring yourself into the present moment. And there aren’t a lot of distractions there, so it’s a great place to find clarity and peacefulness. For a quality breath, inhale deeply, expanding your stomach from the diaphragm outward. When you exhale, contract your stomach. (Often, people do this in reverse.)
LEAN INTO THE WORK Certain people have a gift for hand-eye coordination or generating speed or building muscle, and once they learn how to apply those skills, they’re naturals. But that doesn’t mean they don’t also have to work. At the end of the day, if you’re talented, great—but it’s still all about the work. One of the main purposes of training is to build confidence, to put yourself through extraordinary paces so that nothing catches you unprepared. I don’t want to be going over the falls at Teahupoo about to have my face ripped off on the reef, thinking, I could have done with a few more squats. Rather than resisting hard work, embrace it.
MAKE IT FUN Let’s be realistic; you’re not going to work out like a maniac and be in peak shape in a week. Real fitness happens over time. Try to enjoy what you’re doing—and if you can’t, if working out is a big grind for you, then reevaluate what you’re up to. When you see people slogging it out on the elliptical trainer every day, none of them looks like they’re really into it. They have to watch TV just to keep their minds off what they’re doing. That might help you pass the time, but it won’t do much for your fitness. Design your routines to include activities that you love.
