Never saw this captured/recorded on video, but it resonated and cracked me up as soon as I saw it!
The reality of surfing is that for every good ride, one usually misses or messes up a ride 4-5 times, if not more, for every good wave ride caught. While I am nowhere near as over-the-top with my physical responses, I’ll often offer a muttering of “choice words”, or hold up my paddle and look skyward, as in supplication. LOL!
The other thing strikes me with the video is that it’s showing a surfer really having a good time because he can’t afford to engage in that type of response if he were “s^itting in his drysuit” because of high level of fear of the situation.
When I coach novices in kickboxing sparring, I emphasize that you got to make contact with punches and kicks to keep it near “real.” But, if are getting hit too much and/or too hard where one is cringing and stiffening up from the tension, then you need to let the partner know and to ask for the ratcheting down of power and/or speed. To not do that, one is getting trained into fear and bad and ineffective reactions. The sparring should be fun and focused on loose movements and reactions. One can tell it is at the “right” level, because even with number of light hits/touches, the sparring partners are having fun and even engaged in good-natured trash talking with each other.
So for longboaters, go out and find some waves. Challenge yourself, develop skills, get flipped, blow braces and rolls, wet exit, and, more important, experience the fun of doing it. If you are experiencing more fear than fun, then dial back to less challenging venue. Ingrain fun and skills and not “fear reactions.”
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