058: MARTIN DUNN - Surf Coach
SHOW NOTES
Think more water time equals better surfing? What if your biggest breakthrough happens on land?
In this episode, elite surf coach Martin Dunn reveals why most surfers plateau—and how dry land drills, rhythm-based movement, and focused repetition are the keys to learning turns that actually stick in the ocean.
Discover how task-relevant language and counting can sharpen your technique.
Learn why simulating maneuvers like a dancer creates better muscle memory.
Get Martin’s proven strategies for staying focused and accelerating improvement, even in frustrating conditions.
Tap play to learn how to train smarter—not just harder—and finally surf the way you know you can.
My second interview with surf coaching legend Martin Dunn. Martin is one of the most experienced surf coaches in the world. (First episode was Episode 9.)
Martin describes the similarities of surfing and dance, we talk focusing strategies & speed generation. Martin also breaks down some of the finer details of decision making as it pertains to choosing and catching waves.
https://www.instagram.com/martin.dunn.surfcoach/
https://www.martindunn.com.au/
Key Points
The impact of COVID-19 on publishing episodes and the recent fun South West swells in Southern California have influenced Michael's surfing activities.
Martin Dunn emphasizes the importance of learning the movement of turns and maneuvers in surfing, advocating for a dance-like approach to technique training.
Martin Dunn discusses the use of task-relevant words and land simulations, including skateboards, to teach surfing maneuvers and improve ocean performance.
The incorporation of rhythm and counting in surfing technique training helps surfers maintain focus and achieve consistent success in their maneuvers.
Decision-making, particularly in wave selection, is a critical area of performance that distinguishes good surfers from great ones.
The ability to say no to bad waves is essential for competitive surfers to improve their performance and avoid losing heats.
Martin Dunn's new website, martindunn.com.au, offers online training systems and challenges designed to teach surfers how to learn and improve their skills.
Outline
Surfing Experiences and Equipment
Michael has been surfing frequently due to several powerful and clean South West swells in Southern California.
They have been riding a Lost Roundnose Fish surfboard, which they describe as 'magic' and one of the most versatile boards ever owned.
The board is set up as a quad with a hip, allowing for better pivoting and turning compared to a normal fish board while still maintaining glide over flat sections.
Prior to this, Michael rode a large 11-foot old-school shape board for about three weeks, which helped them learn to read waves better by focusing on riding the wave rather than surfing it aggressively.
This experience improved their wave-reading skills, which transferred to their performance on the shorter board.
Importance of Wave Reading
Michael references an earlier episode with Tom Carroll, emphasizing that reading the wave is the foundation of surfing.
While surfers can control their movements and board choice, they cannot control how water and waves move.
Riding a larger, slower board forces surfers to be more calculated and predict wave behavior better, as there is less room for small adjustments.
This approach teaches surfers to understand how waves interact with the bathymetry (underwater topography) of a break.
Skills learned on a larger board can be applied to shortboarding, allowing for different lines and approaches.
Personal Updates and Upcoming Events
Michael completed a stand-up comedy course and will be performing a five-minute set on June 29th in Los Angeles.
They have been writing a script for a single-camera dark comedy and are seeking connections in the industry.
Michael encourages listeners interested in attending their comedy set or with industry connections to contact them via email or Instagram.
Introduction to Martin Dunn
Martin Dunn is introduced as a coaching legend with over 30 years of experience, including time as a coach for the Australian team.
Michael references a previous interview with Martin from 2016 (Episode 9), which is still available on the website and iTunes.
Martin has created a video, available on both Michael's and Martin's Instagram accounts, showing surfing without the surfboard visible to highlight body movements.
Martin has launched a new website with an online training system at martindun.com.au.
Martin Dunn's Coaching Philosophy
Martin emphasizes that surfers often struggle with learning skills, particularly the movements required for turns and maneuvers.
Learning surfing techniques is compared to learning dance steps, using a system of words or phrases to guide body movements at key times.
The approach involves simulating movements on dry land and using skateboards to practice foundational maneuvers.
Martin uses 'task relevant words' to help surfers remember the correct sequence of movements for each maneuver.
The goal is to help surfers develop powerful, smooth, and controlled maneuvers while maintaining speed and flow.
Learning Process and Focus Strategies
Martin outlines a learning process that includes awareness, understanding, simulation, focus strategies, execution, and review.
Maintaining focus while in the ocean is stressed as important but challenging for surfers.
Various focus strategies are discussed, including using wax dots on the surfboard to track successful executions of a skill.
The transfer from land simulation to ocean performance is crucial and depends on the quality of the simulations.
Decision Making in Surfing
Martin identifies five areas of performance in surfing: fitness, technique, decision making, strategy, and psychology.
Decision making is highlighted as a critical skill that can elevate a good surfer to a great surfer, especially in competitive surfing.
Key decisions surfers must make include positioning, wave selection, timing, and approach to the wave.
Learning to say 'no' to suboptimal waves is emphasized, particularly for competitive surfers.
Often, the surfers catching the best waves are those making the best decisions, not necessarily the most skilled surfers.
Martin Dunn's New Website
Martin has launched a new website at martindun.com.au, considered his best work in 35 years of coaching.
The website offers guidance on how to learn surfing skills, including land simulations, skate simulations, and four-week challenges.
Challenges include improving wave catching, skills for early surfers, and fundamental skills for building confidence in the ocean.
The website aims to provide self-paced learning tools and focusing skills for motivated surfers looking to improve their performance.
Martin expresses confidence that his website offers unique guidance for surfers wanting to enhance their skills.
Transcription
Michael Frampton
To the show. You're still there, you're still getting the episodes. I know it's been a while since I published an episode, but this whole COVID—Corona jazz certainly mixed things up for all of us, I think.
And then we had about four really fun, quite powerful, and very clean southwest swells here in Southern California, which just lit up my local break. And so I've been doing—every spare moment I've had, I have been surfing. I've been riding a Lost Roundnose Fish, which is set up as a quad with a little hip in it, and it is a magic surfboard. Absolutely magic. It is... The problem with riding fish is when the waves start to get a little bit power, you kind of have to move your feet from rail to rail in order to really turn off the rail, but this board eliminates that. It doesn't catch waves—it doesn't surf small waves quite as well as a normal fish, but it has a quad setup, and it pivots really well, like a lot closer to a normal shortboard. But you still get that glide over the flat sections like a fish. It is probably one of the best, one of the most versatile surfboards I've ever ridden and/or owned.
So that's been awesome, and actually, previous to riding that, I was riding a very big—a big old shape, old-school shape 11-foot board, which—what I think it really taught me—I was riding it exclusively for a good three weeks, and really, what I was doing was I was just trying to... Instead of surfing the wave, I was just really trying to ride the wave, just sort of hang back and see, "How many places can I go on this big board? How deep can I fade? How far out in the face can I go and cut back?" Just sort of just really slowly playing, really reading the wave. And that approach of just riding the wave rather than surfing it really helped me learn my local break to a whole nother level. And then when I jumped on this Round Nose Fish and started sort of attacking the wave, I just was reading the wave so well—like it's done some of the best surfing I've ever done, I think, in the past ever. And I credit it to that—you know, it comes back to what, back in Episode 2, when Tom Carroll was talking about—you know, that's the foundation that is reading the wave. You can only surf—I mean, you could control the way you move, where you move your body, what board you're riding—but you can't control the way water moves and the way waves come in. If you can really learn to read the wave, then that's the secret, that's the foundation for surfing. And riding a big board, big slow board, will help that a lot, slows everything down, gives you more time. You've got to be—you've got to be a lot more calculated—no, well, I guess big boards lack agility, so there's—you don't really have time for those small adjustments. So really, what it forces you to do is read the wave, is to predict where the wave's going to break better, so as you can catch the wave earlier and at different angles on a bigger board. But what you really have to do is read how that particular wave is going to interact with the bathymetry of your—of that break. It's in a different way. It's been really fun, interesting, and it's definitely taught me to take different lines and approaches on the shortboard as well.
What else has been happening? Yes, I've—yeah, so I did a stand-up comedy course, something I've always wanted to try, and I'll be doing a five-minute set on June the 29th. If anyone's interested, send me an email. That will be here in LA, Los Angeles. And mike@surfmastery if you want to come have a look. And I've been writing a script. So, question out to the listeners: Is anyone in the industry? What I've written is a single-camera dark comedy. You know, having a good script is one thing, but you have to know people, so throwing that out there. If anyone is a producer or knows anyone, get in touch, either DM on Instagram or mike@surfmastery.com.
Today's guest is Martin Dunn, and Martin Dunn is a coaching legend. Over 30 years' experience. Some of that was as a coach in the Australian team. I interviewed him back in Episode 9, which was a longer interview, and that was back in 2016, but that's still available on the website and on iTunes after listening to this. If you want to learn a little more from and about Martin, you can go back to that episode.
In the first part of this interview, we reference a video that Martin made, which I urge you guys all to go and take a look at now if you can, which is posted on my Instagram. There's one version and another version on his Instagram, and it's just a video of surfing, but the surfboard has been taken out of the video. So it just takes away the distraction of the surfboard, and it slows it down a little, and you can really see how the surfer themselves is moving. And then Martin sort of uses the analogy of dance in the first part of the interview. So go to my Instagram @surfmastery, and there'll be a link to Martin's Instagram and two separate videos to go and watch. And Martin has released a new website which has a brand-new online training system there. So if you go to martindunn.com.au, you can go and check that out as well. So that's M-a-r-t-i-n D-u-double-n, that's martindunn.com.au, and of course, I will have a link to that in the show notes. So here is my conversation with Martin.
Martin Dunn
Fundamentally, surfers have problems learning skills. There's a number of skills you can learn, but the main one, in my view, or the foundation one in surfing, is the skill of learning the movement of the turns. And, you know, like cutbacks, re-entries, fin busts, aerials—they all have a recognized technique that people can learn. Because everything happens so fast and people are trying to do their maneuvers—some people who are more athletically gifted, they can learn them because that's just the way they operate, that's how their learning works. But lots of people can't learn or don't learn effectively, so what you have to do is you have to have an intervention into the learning where people can go through a system, just like you're learning a dance. So, you know, dancers learn a step-by-one-two-three-step type of thing. What we can do—we can use that same technique when we're learning to do a maneuver. For example, a cutback, it might be, you know, "drive-bend-one-two-twist," you know, and that's the connection between the two. And, you know, after all, surfing has been described as dancing on water. And, you know, so I thought about that concept and I thought, well, you know, like it is—it's exactly the same as learning how to dance or how people learn to dance, by having a word or a phrase or something that can tell their body what to do at a key time. So, you know, that's the relationship I have between dancing and surfing, and that's what I advocate—that's what I use when I train surfers with their technique, and that's what I use on my new membership site on the internet.
Michael Frampton
Okay, so you're talking about teaching the specific body movements of a surfing maneuver on dry land?
Martin Dunn
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying, is that, you know, you do the simulation on land. So, you do the simulation as best you can—as close to the movement on dry land—both as a static simulation, and I use skateboards a lot to learn the foundation maneuvers: you know, bottom turns, cutbacks, re-entries. Having a skateboard that feels like you're doing a turn, using the words, you know, on a bottom turn that's, you know, "bend-one-up" or "bend-one-lift" for a backhand bottom turn, and those words, which are called task-relevant words—you use them to tell your body, "That's the movement I want at that specific time." And when you simulate it on the land—and if you simulate it perfectly on the land—you get a great transfer to the ocean.
Michael Frampton
Okay, and so—but that's not—it's not really a new concept. I mean, practicing movements of surfing on a skateboard or on dry land. But I think maybe the point of difference that it sounds like you're—that you've incorporated—is you've got counting in there. So there's a sense of rhythm and there's a sense of a delay in what you're saying.
Martin Dunn
The main thing that I see with people—you know, if they understand the movements and they're motivated to do it—the main problem is the focus. So maintaining focus while they're in the ocean, overcoming the frustrations that they will invariably get, because it's not an easy thing to learn a skill, and especially it's not an easy thing to change when you've already got them. But, you know, my training methods that I use, people get great change, but only if they can maintain their focus.
Well, there's different focusing strategies. Again, the process is—if you want to work on a skill, say you want to work on the skill of creating speed, and you know, for probably 70 percent of surfers worldwide—you know, like there's 30 million surfers—there's probably 25 million who don't create their speed well. And so the technique of creating speed is: you take off and you straighten your body—fully straighten your body—and lift both arms up to shoulder level. Okay, so that's the technique of creating speed, both forehand and backhand. If you want to learn that skill, well then, you've got to have a motivated surfer. You go to the park, you simulate that on a skateboard, you simulate that on land. You simulate that on a skateboard, you get a feel for it, then you go to the beach. Before you paddle out, you do beach simulations. You can write notes on your board in pencil or texture, or you can write a diagram on the board. You can use what's called—I have wax dots. So wax dots are where you get four or five wax dots, and you put little balls of wax on one side of the stringer, and the wax dots are designed for the task that you're working on. So one dot means one execution of that skill. If you're in the water and you execute that skill well, then you move the dot to the other side of the stringer, and that tells you—that keeps you focused—"Yes, I did it." So it's a self-congratulation when you're in the water, but it's a focusing strategy that helps you stay focused while you're working on the skill in the water. When you get to the five executions where you've done it correctly, then you come back to shore, review it, or you actually start again with a new skill or some other skill. So you've got—for a lot of people, using a mechanical focusing strategy works really well. But those types of focusing strategies I use, and I use to great effect.
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