Pro Surfer John John Florence Breaks Down Surfing Scenes from Movies | GQ Sports

he was on a toe board and you can tell because he's in the wave so much earlier than the way of breaking behind him and he's kind of going really fast and skipping across and when you're on a toe board you get toed in by a jet ski and you're on a really small board and then it shows him switching back to a big board i thought that was interesting they kind of switched in and out of that agq i'm john john florence and this is the breakdown [Music] first up we're getting sarah marshall his timing for catching the wave wasn't too bad it looks like someone learning to surf on a pretty small wave until the point when they just showed the other wave that was like three times the size of the wave that he was on so they definitely switched waves there but that's actually not far off of like someone learning to start taking off on a wave and running someone else over in certain areas where people are learning to surf that definitely happens often there's definitely ways to avoid running other people over and that's just going to where there's less people and going to places where the waves are fit like more your talent level in hawaii we have a place called waikiki where a lot of people learn to surf when it's smaller it's on the south side and the waves are really really weak and you can kind of just go straight when you're learning to surf you ride a really big board bigger boards are harder to control especially if you don't know how to surf long boards are the best boards for beginners to use because they're just bigger they have more of an area and they're easier easier to stand on it's kind of more of a platform so the the board kind of directs where they're going and they have no control over where it's going that's another thing is he stands up what we call goofy footed where your right leg is forward on the board on the next clip all of a sudden he's going the other way which we call regular foot where your left leg is forward on the board unless he got really good and he's switching stance all of a sudden i i don't think that's what happened there's definitely kind of uh i guess unwritten rules in the ocean among everyone kind of surfing especially at certain places you know where there's a lot of localism and things like that you know some people have more priority over other people at home one of the most famous waves in the world is pipeline so many people out there and it's one of the biggest kind of scariest waves in hawaii when you're out there the people that have kind of been surfing there the longest kind of have the most priority so there's um the ho brothers which is derek and michael ho who have been surfing out there for you know the past 30 years or so maybe more they have the most respect that of anyone and so if they go for a wave like everyone just stops and and they get to go on the wave and it kind of trickles down like that through the generations all the way to my brothers and i you know and so like the generation above us like we we try to stay out of their way and and so on but then other places in the world if you just show up somewhere in the world for the most part it's if you know whoever's been waiting the longest gets the next wave if someone was unconscious in the water like that it would probably be a much bigger scene with that many people around it wouldn't just be one person carrying him up on the beach especially in hawaii it's like a really big thing if someone is unconscious then there's the lifeguards and jet ski and there's a lot of people kind of coming in to help it wouldn't just be the one person kind of diving underwater looking for him oh wow you got coral right there in your leg can you call the front desk for me please i don't think that's the first place you would call if you had a big cut like that is the front desk you'd definitely be calling the lifeguards or probably anywhere but the front desk coral injuries are pretty common maybe not so much in hawaii well you have like a big piece of almost live coral sticking out of your leg like that but in other places in the world like tahiti and fiji places like that will have live coral on the reef and so that's possible i've never had anything this bad or there's a big piece of coral sticking out of my leg but throughout my life i've definitely hit the bottom and had pretty bad cuts next up blue crush rock running is actually kind of a thing when you're holding your breath and kind of running at the same time it replicates surfing and getting worked by the wave because you're holding your breath while trying to swim up to the surface at the same time there's a couple really good places in hawaii where this was filmed to go do that you know you go down and you just pretty much hug a big rock and then can run on the bottom we don't normally have people trailing us when we're rock running it's more of a thing you do just for fun i don't do it as a main part of my training and i definitely wouldn't have a trail of people pulling on me all the different waves in the world have different bottoms to them and so the bottom of say waimea bay and hawaii is partially like big stones and then some of it is sand whereas if you go to pipeline which is in hawaii also it's a lot of really big kind of reef caves very different looking than that underwater if it's sand like that the just from the constant movement of the water it creates this perfect little form of waves in the sand on the bottom you could have stayed down longer than that i'm tired holding my breath breath training is really important as a surfer especially as a big wave surfer because you get caught in situations where holding your breath is your key to survival and when you're under that amount of stress when you're paddling and a big wave is breaking in front of you your heart rate's really going pretty quick and holding your breath with your heart rate high like that is really hard to do next up point break we definitely surf in storms but i don't think you're surfing in a storm like this on a boat by yourself somewhere in the ocean about to jump off and tie the steering wheel of the boat that wave is um like a hundred feet compared to the boat it's definitely so far from reality we call it step-offs we usually do with jet skis and so you'll jump off the side of the jet ski onto a wave like that and kind of paddle into the wave i don't think it's possible to do it on that size of a boat especially by yourself with no one driving the boat into a wave that big when the waves are big like that they're moving incredibly fast so in the movies the waves look like they're in slow motion in reality it's it just depends on the size of the wave i guess when the waves are really really big like when it's as big as it gets it's so big that it looks like it's moving in slow motion actually like just there's so much water moving there's some waves in the world that are pretty far out there in the in the middle of nowhere there's a wave off of california that's i think it's a hundred miles out or so off the coast that wave is pretty extreme but you're taking like a big boat out there but for the most part the waves are really relatively close to the shore so i think this is actually goes into a real surfing clip from jaws and yeah people do this i mean my brother spends every swell at where this wave was filmed it's amazing what some of the guys do out there they really push the limit of our sport kind of in these big waves jaws or piahe it's called is a place on maui in hawaii and it's on the north shore of maui and so it's probably one of the most perfect big waves in the in the whole world there's not really anything else like it he was on a toe board and you can tell because he's in the wave so much earlier than the wave breaking behind him and he's kind of going really fast and skipping across and when you're on a toe board you get towed in by a jet ski and you're on a really small board and then it shows him switching back to a big board i thought that was interesting they kind of switched in and out of that when you're surfing big waves it's really scary when you're watching it and it's scary to think about going on the wave so when you're sitting there in the position to go on a wave your heart rate's going and a set is coming you're getting ready to like okay this is the one i'm gonna go on this i know that i sit there and i have to like work up into going on a wave like sitting in the lineup for a second getting comfortable and seeing the bigger sets come in and then finally working myself up to go on a wave next up orange county brother's a tropical storm three miles off laguna let's go dude surf's up what about next period 20 footers man screw your period i don't think i've ever brought my surfboard to school and i don't know anyone who has but skipping school to go surfing was definitely something i did when i was younger i don't know you guys too face the fear i don't think anyone's rushing out of high school to go surf 20-foot waves like that usually when people are surfing 20-foot waves there's a lot of preparation that goes into it and a lot of safety kind of revolving around that i think those boards are meant for learning to start paddling on maybe and maybe start to learn to stand up but definitely not to go serve 20 foot waves [Music] righteous that's maybe the biggest wave i've ever seen waves like this exist but waves like this uh aren't very often and usually when people are surfing them there's jet skis and all kinds of stuff going on you're not just paddling out from the beach and going by yourself like that in southern california the waves do not get that big either southern california gets some really big storms but it will never look like this i don't think he should approach it like that people kind of get caught in that position quite often when it's really big but it's not really the position you want to be in if you're in that position you're usually at this point diving off your board and taking your leash off of your foot letting your board go and trying to get through the wave to the other side next up chasing mavericks [Music] mavericks is a wave in northern california it just holds some of the biggest swell the water's brown it's really cold and it's dark and it's scary it's a really challenging way to serve and a big part of kind of our surf world a lot of people dedicate their lives to surfing that there's a lot of history and big wave surfing there and even still to this day people get some of the best rides and big waves surfing out there [Music] jumping off into a wave like that as well you kind of wait for a wave to come and it puts more water under you and usually you're jumping off trying to land kind of right on the back of the wave timing like that this just allows you to be in the lineup really quickly without having to paddle out through the waves we kind of call it like a reverse because you're doing an error and you're landing and then kind of reversing around this is a pretty standard maneuver in surfing now you'll see a lot of the young kids doing it it's like their first kind of aerial maneuver it seems like the easier one to go to this is also one that you see in competition a lot i spent a lot of time there when i was younger doing contests he's taking off right next to the cliff oh you can see all that kind of wobble all the the bump and the wave there that's kind of all the refractions that come off the cliff as the waves go by and it makes it a really challenging wave to surf next up leiland stitch [Music] some of this is sort of realistic you know like i think growing up in hawaii is kind of similar in the sense of like going surfing with your friends and family it just it does it it makes you feel good it makes you happy and there's turtles and things like that for sure but going into the air with someone on your board maybe not so realistic [Music] most people can ride on a board at once and it's kind of a fun thing you do call it tandem surfing yeah that's totally possible hawaii can have really clear water sometimes almost exactly like that's where you're surfing and there's you'll see a turtle or you'll see fish it can be really clear crystal clear like a swimming pool [Music] there's definitely reasons why we when we're getting into the barrel we put our hand in the wave a lot of the time it's to slow down because once you're in in there you get a lot of speed and it really starts pushing you through it and kind of the goal is to always just stay in there as long as you can another thing sometimes too is when you're just in there you kind of just naturally do that i guess for feel i guess it is um not really thinking about it though i think the idea behind leland's dish is good going surfing and relieving stress and being out there with friends and family some of the surfing was probably a little bit unrealistic and getting waves like that with that many people on a board i don't know if you could do that on the way that big next up surf's up final wave go man this is it this wave wins it huh man this wave is stacking up to be a beautiful tube you wouldn't have multiple surfers on one wave you could if one person was going one way and the other person was going the other way so there's a priority system within competition and so the person that has priority gets to choose which way they want to go on that wave and if the other person interferes with them at all that's when you get a penalty they'll take away half of your score or a whole score at a really small level some of this does happen sometimes you're on a wave and you're kind of going around rocks and maybe surfing with someone else but you could imagine it like a video game what you would do in a surfing video game like dodging rocks and being with kind of other people on the wave like that breaking boards happens quite a bit and i think every server goes through like different phases of it you know and sometimes you'll break a lot of boards and sometimes you won't break any for a couple months but definitely have gone through winters at home where i've broken 30 or 40 boards i think you would die if that happened and you know the lifeguards i think around the world and in hawaii they have these kind of big yellow boards and they're they'll they'll paddle those out to get a surfer i think depending on the wave size though and for the most part though the lifeguards have jet skis now and so they can launch the jet ski within minutes and be in the water and go out and save someone i don't know that letting the wave carry you and someone catching you that's pretty unrealistic but the part of like sitting behind a rock kind of on when a wave comes maybe not on such a big scale but on like a much smaller scale it's kind of something like we even do at home for fun is like there's there's a big rock by my house that's on the beach and you can run and stand behind it and the waves will kind of hit it and go way over you and you'll be totally fine behind the rock thanks for watching these clips with me and we'll see you next time

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Id: rP9gu9pvIBU

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021