How to Learn How to Surf

there's this old bartenders trick wherein the bartender that's you a beer that you can't do this you take the bait and give it a go you fail the bartender shows you again again you fail the bartender like a puppeteer takes your hands and shows you how it's done you still can't do it but after some fiddling on your own eventually you get it the cork trick you see is not a trick that can be readily taught the cork trick must be learned the same is true to a certain extent with surfing learning to serve is well what the hell do I know I've been at it for 26 years and this is about the best I can do and let's face it most of the time I'm more like this then you know overcast Gary and ice landed the same twice and sub all this changed up but and I don't want to fake make face big false claims about oh it's so much fun surfing is so much fun it is fun but I think I'm still a little mixed up with bringing all these standards of achievement into it and now we're feeding us a lot you know it's like old habits die hard anyway who's really going catching them ride in a really long one I bet you're doing great this is Sinar he's eight [Music] yep his uncle is showing him how to attach his leash to his board [Music] and his dad still straps it to his ankle sinara is what surfers call a Grom wrong one of those surfer words short for Gromit I looked it up the urban dictionary says that groms are known not just for surfing but for surfing with all their hearts of passion like any professional [Music] but CNR can't teach us what he knows he doesn't even know what he knows he just knows it and we have a mansion we have mansion you don't have to be mad you just have to live a mansion we have the best teachers we've got a fleet of three vehicles we've got board caddies we've got individuals carrying or forth in and out of the bands in and out of the water for us professional-grade surfboards we have custom-made tops and four different thicknesses we've got two different boards short bottoms gender-specific tops wax custom leashes we've got resolved how do you say resolved lastly we don't know we've got resolved we've got Pat and we've got Marlin teaching us the best way that the world can offer the waves of Bali Indonesia Patang batang and airports we've got drone writing analysis we've a jet ski towing us in and out of waves so that we have more strength to pedal we've got nasi goreng and mia touring best possible surf food smoothies antibiotics for our Bali belly we have puppies to greet us when we get home we have everything we want we have everything we need and yet [Music] and yet we stink [Music] takes seven of this trip we're all kind of like really beaten up and it doesn't feel like fun what the are require we doing this like when back me back to like that blog please this is a movie about bad surfers on the long painful road to becoming okay surfers we range an ability from first-time greenhorns to tried it here tried it there [Music] to 20-plus year veterans we are all of us that [Music] we all of us have bad attitudes well all of us but Sarah each surfer has come with a goal a surfing goal i surf back home for over 20 20 years and I just want to learn to enjoy it my goal is to catch a wave and jump onto another surface board my goal is to ride the blue wave [Music] to be able to start well enough that I look cool [Music] in pursuing these goals we have come away with ten insights [Music] in short what we've learned about learning learning how to surf [Music] for surfers these waves are sacred space you're looking at twenty four of them waiting for a set to roll in a set is a group of waves waves come in little groups called sets all of these surfers are good they all know the rules there's rules surfing rules who gets to go when who's wave is who's on top of the rules there's the skills you can't just catch a wave from anywhere you have to be precisely in the right spot and it takes years to learn just exactly where that spot is and it's different spot for every wave now if you're a beginner you don't want to be out there with these surfers as you're trying to learn they've already put in their time you haven't and you could hurt them these waves are knee-high and look at the trouble they give us watch our boards go flying now take a look at this wave it's barreling that means you can stand up inside well not you an expert can stand up inside take a look over to the left ankle deep water overhead waves that break into ankle deep water imagine the consequences [Music] [Music] it takes quite a long time to catch a wave time mostly spent waiting and paddling and paddling after 2 minutes and 30 seconds or so result points out the set to Tom and tells them to get into position right now resolves saying paddle paddle paddle and Tom's missed it ok try again [Music] three minutes 30 seconds another wave paddle paddle paddle paddle harder missed it try again [Music] results of justice another spot where the waves might be better bunker Pat comes along paddle paddle paddle 445 still paddling notice how much faster and with what ease rizal on the Rasta board pulls his board through the water he's a pro seven forty eight more paddling to change position Tom still has not caught a wave 803 result gives Tom to go ahead paddle paddle paddle 847 waiting for another wave and nine eleven we switch cameras here we go [Music] he's got it he's up one two three nine minutes and 22 seconds of paddling and waiting a three and a half second ride let's watch that ride again from another angle paddle he's up and he's down three and a half seconds in addition to paddling surfing has three main fundamentals the first is catching a wave the second is standing on a wave and the third is riding a wave okay now let's watch a pro do it catch stand ride [Music] experience keeps a good school but a fool will learn and no other you could go ahead and try to figure out the ten thousand subtleties to these fundamentals yourself and some of us fools have but a master can double maybe triple your learning speed with his expertise this is the same break as Pat's wave but on a big day this is see nars father resolved resulting June rizal is a world-class pro Pro skill pro experience pro style we're not getting there no way but maybe we can come away from this trip with just a little of his pro attitude day-in day-out result pushed us into waves drilled us on technique patiently explained to us the fundamentals he cared it was as if he was teaching us how to love surfing [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're happy more smile you can see surveys fun so they should be fun [Applause] [Music] I'm suffering because I have the standards of a professional but the experience of a novice even though it's been spread out over thirty years of this activity fully realized [Applause] comparing ourselves to others will not help us learn and it won't help us grow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we should compare ourselves to our past selves among our team members the surfer who embodied resolves pro attitude with Sarah she was in it to have fun to look good in the pictures and look at her go which I as of two days ago thought I would literally never do for the rest about that and I can see the light and if this one alike I see how you get better now I see how you want and why you give it away generally when we're new it's something we don't feel deserving of expert resources we feel like we deserve that rental skates but sometimes an indulgence can enhance our education when learning to surf it is a great luxury to have solitude the best way to access that solitude is with a boat usually it's the experts who rent the boats and the experts generally stay away from the beginner waves so as beginners with a boat we basically had these waves all to ourselves [Music] [Music] through the left side with the channel around it's all good Fred where the boat is now always go right let's go right in front of ya if you fire just you know stand up don't bend too little don't like squat so hard just chill realize remember that have fun [Music] the advantage to having these waves to ourselves is that we're free to make big mistakes without consequences for our fellow surfers but the thing about surfing out here a mile from the beach is that it's scary surfing is often a little scary and these waves were big for us they held you down a little and you weren't really in control of when you could come up for air swallowed two bellies full of water I was just like alone I came up I think I cried I do you think that I went it's like actually I'm not even sure I think I stood up very Sam got spooked we all get spooked when we leave our comfort zone but when we do the thing that we're afraid to do even if we fail we get better stronger and braver [Music] [Music] [Applause] my goal is to get the 10 bullets team to reach their goal individually and collectively it just Tufts sitting with the uncertainty and like seeing the fear in his eyes of his job security Pat had vouched for us he had convinced the suits at Hurley that it was a good idea to sponsor a bunch of New York City creative types and send them 15 time zones away from home to make a movie about how to learn how to surf in this team this so-called team was not only not learning how to surf they were not even having the common decency to have fun not learning how to surf we had made the mistake of treating surfing like work surfing is not work this this is work or this [Applause] surfing is play which brings us to the genius of Sam's go [Music] [Music] he makes up for the misery of nearly drowning the other day I had a really good time my new goal is surprise the longest wave of my life cooler thing in the store coolest thing in the store above his talent for sculpture and art lies Tom's ability to find in any store the coolest thing in the store we play this game all over the world we're in this pharmacy because in one way or another all of us are hurting most of us have Bally belly which is a fancy term for good old-fashioned diarrhea but Sam has a hurt shoulder and a banged up foot I have a rash on my thighs Trevor has boo-boos on his knees tom-toms 51 years old basically he's sore all over these aches and pains are not injuries really there's simply scars of our labor this is our body's getting used to an activity that they're not accustomed to [Music] Osaka Dom it might in my heart I know that we will prevail regardless of the mansion and the best teachers and the fleet of three vehicles and the board caddies and the best equipment and the puppies regardless of our resources there is a reality to learning you must put in the hours you hear a lot about this concept of the learning curve the learning curve is basically a graph that shows you how long it takes to master a skill mister Gladwell has taught us that to become an expert takes an investment of 10,000 hours Trevor Sarah and Sam have fewer than a hundred hours Tom has over a thousand this is the miserable part of the learning curve tom is just about to reach the fun part sonars well within the fun zone Tom just needs a little bit more time and his fun will accelerate quickly [Music] we just haven't earned it yet baby [Music] and yet [Music] we had our moments for our week of effort we each got a couple minutes being the surfer we set out to be for a couple of minutes or so we look good in the pictures [Music] we rode the blue wave we rode the longest wave of our life yeah we reached our goals and had fun for a couple of minutes [Music] the grassman [Music] icgv City that's our 1% inspiration the rest was the sweat [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Tom Sachs

Views: 41,900

Rating: 4.9363704 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: wn5KqWwP6uQ

Length: 31min 32sec (1892 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/evensevenone]

This is by Tom Sachs, who is an internationally known sculptor/conceptual artist/goofball.

[u/Edelgeuse]

Good for the head, and the heart.

[u/earache77]

Nice video keep paddling!

[u/Kfm101]

Wish this was a bit shorter so that I could force anyone who wants to “learn to surf this summer” to watch it first.

[u/weverkaj]

Most honest surf video I've seen

[u/Baljeet__]

Holy shit the editing is amazing

[u/skyellesa]

Awesome editting!

I'm watching this stuck in the urban jungles of HK. I miss Bali!

[u/muggins66]

Very inspiring even for a salty old dog! Totally brought me back to my first trip to Bali in 94. The gambelan music and monkey chant, staying on the beach in Kuta. Great editing and narration!

[u/ioeo]

going to get out there today now