062: CC#5 - Hunting Waves
Are you just floating in the lineup, or are you actually hunting for the perfect wave?
There’s a huge difference between passively surfing and actively tuning into your environment like a predator. In this episode, we explore how the primal mindset of a hunter—or gatherer—can heighten your awareness, help you read the ocean like a pro, and radically improve your wave selection.
Discover how hunting and surfing both rely on deep flow states and environmental sensitivity
Learn a mental trick to spot wave sections you never noticed before
Get a new perspective that will completely change how you approach each surf session
Press play to learn how a primal shift in mindset can help you find—and catch—better waves with more confidence and precision.
Key Points
Michael discusses the intense experience of hunting and its similarities to surfing, emphasizing the heightened awareness and flow state it induces.
Michael suggests that adopting a hunting or gathering mindset can enhance surfing performance by improving focus and detail orientation.
Michael recommends visiting surfmastery.com for a more in-depth article on applying hunting principles to surfing.
Michael invites listeners to send specific questions to Mike at surfmastery.com to help continue the podcast.
Outline
Hunting and Surfing Parallels
Michael discussed the parallels between hunting and surfing, emphasizing the intense focus and flow state both activities induce.
Michael shared personal experiences from growing up on a dairy farm in New Zealand, where hunting and fishing were common activities.
The primal instinct of hunting for food was described as a survival mechanism that has been ingrained in human DNA for millions of years.
Michael suggested that the same flow state and focus can be achieved through gathering, highlighting the evolutionary biology perspective.
Michael recommended adopting a hunting or gathering mindset while surfing to enhance focus and awareness.
The efficiency and focus of surfers paddling and reading the ocean were compared to the actions of a hunter tracking prey.
Michael encouraged listeners to apply the principles of hunting to surfing, aiming for the perfect wave and section, similar to a hunter seeking the perfect shot.
Enhancing Surfing with Hunting Mindset
Michael described how incorporating a hunting mindset into surfing helped improve focus on finer details and wave prediction.
Michael noted that this approach led to discovering new sections of waves that were previously unnoticed.
Michael recommended visiting surfmastery.com for a more in-depth article on the topic.
Podcast Engagement
Michael encouraged listeners to send specific questions to help continue the podcast.
The contact information provided for submitting questions was Mike at surfmastery.com.
Transcription
Hunting waves.
So... I actually, I am a pure white trash New Zealander. I grew up on a dairy farm, I grew up hunting and fishing, and I always remember going out hunting was such an intense experience. You're immersed in nature, very similar to surfing, you're immersed in nature, but when you go, there's a big difference between going on a hike and going hunting. Going on a hike, you're very immersed in nature, it's very calming, yes, but when you have a rifle in your hand and you're... I mean, I've even been in the situation back in New Zealand where I was sort of stratification. I wanted to... I needed to hunt something for food. I was sort of... very primal instinct to be hungry and hunting. And what it does is it puts you into a very intense flow state when you're hunting.
So, I mean, the flicker of a bird's feather in your peripheral vision is... the sound and the sight of that is heightened to another level when you're hunting because... it's... extremely important to you and it's within our DNA. For millions of years, if we weren't successful at that skill, we and our village didn't survive. Hunters out there will certainly... we certainly... agree with my experience. And if you're a female listening to this, or you're a male feminist and you don't necessarily agree with hunting or understand how hunting could do that to you, you could think in terms of gathering as well.
This is from an evolutionary biology perspective. The same sort of flow state and focus would happen because if you were out gathering, you have to be very detail-oriented and hyper-aware of what you're picking because it could potentially be poisonous. And of course, there could be a tiger ready to attack you from either side. Both hunting and gathering, those words and those concepts tend to put us into more of a flow state.
So I'm going to recommend that next time you go surfing, instead of just sitting there and waiting for a wave or paddling around trying to catch a wave, have the mindset of hunting down or gathering—if you like—about hunting down waves. Hunting waves out, because you see those surfers super paddle fit, and you see them paddling around the lineup. Great paddling efficiency. They're cruising around, they're so focused visually on reading the ocean to a fine detail level. They're hunting down: where is that little weird wave that has it crazy? Where is that going to break? They're constantly predicting where that wave is going to break, and they're hunting down the perfect section, or as a hunter, the perfect shot.
You want the cleanest, most efficient kill, and as a surfer, you want to enter that wave in the perfect spot and have a nice clean line.
So yeah, recent hunting trip... sort of I brought that hyper-awareness into my surfing and hunting down waves, and that really did help me focus in on some of those finer details. And I've been doing that a lot lately, so I wanted to leave you with that thought. You can go to surfmastery.com to the blog page and check out the article for a more sort of in-depth description of that.
So... if you guys enjoy the podcast and you want it to continue... I think it's at that point now where I need questions, specific questions. Send them through: Mike at surfmastery.com. I was actually seeing more in a wave. You're finding sections that you never saw before.
62 Hunting Waves - The Predatory Surfer
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