066: My Favorite Episode - Clayton Nienaber
Are you pushing harder and surfing faster but still not feeling flow or unlocking true performance on waves?
In this deeply personal and technically rich episode, surf coach and shaper Clayton Nienaber breaks down why traditional surf technique often fails — and how one session on Kelly Slater’s board sparked a complete rethinking of his approach. From power generation to posture, leaning, twisting, and compression, this conversation reveals the subtle shifts that separate average surfers from elite performers.
Learn the critical difference between squatting and lunging that could completely transform your bottom turn.
Discover how Clayton decoded Slater’s surfing technique — and how you can apply it today.
Find out why fast boards don’t matter if you’re surfing flat and how to harness real rail engagement.
Hit play to uncover the specific cues and biomechanics that will help you surf faster, with more flow, and less effort — no matter your level.
https://train.ombe.co/?via=surfmastery
Slater vid: https://youtu.be/XuWDszWiLHc
Key Points
The discussion included Clayton Nienaber's 12-week surfing challenge and the importance of taking action to support the show.
Clayton Nienaber discussed his early life, moving to Blito, and beginning to surf at age 13.
Clayton shared the challenges of surfing with diabetes and how it affected his social life and focus on surfing.
Clayton described the transition from coaching to pro surfing, focusing on learning techniques from other surfers like Taylor Knox and Kelly Slater.
The discussion on surfing technique emphasized the importance of a lunge position over a squat for better wave engagement and speed.
Michael and Clayton analyzed Kelly Slater's surfing technique in detail, highlighting the lunge position, compression, and twisting movements.
Michael highlighted the importance of technique over equipment in surfing, using the example of a surfer performing well on various boards.
Clayton announced two one-week surfing coaching clinics at Macaroni's, with details provided in the show notes.
Clayton introduced the new Spinetech technology for surfboards, emphasizing its benefits for performance and durability.
Outline
Michael's Personal Situation
Michael shared that they recently returned to New Zealand with their children after their spouse passed away unexpectedly.
They lost their visas to be in America and had to abandon their business and lifestyle.
Michael is now seeking donations to support the podcast.
Clayton's Background
Clayton was born in Durban, South Africa, but grew up in Blito on the north coast.
Clayton started surfing at the age of 13.
Clayton's father was a bodyboarder, and Clayton initially surfed on a bodyboard before getting a kneeboard and eventually a surfboard.
Clayton was diagnosed with diabetes around the same time they started surfing.
Clayton competed in surfing competitions from their third year of high school.
After finishing school, Clayton moved to Durban to pursue a career as a professional surfer.
Clayton worked in a surfboard factory, learning how to shape and laminate boards.
Clayton received coaching from Graeme Hines, a well-known coach in South Africa.
Clayton struggled with their surfing technique early in their career but later improved by focusing on feeling and flow rather than trying too hard.
Clayton started coaching to help others avoid the mistakes they made and to fast-track their learning.
Surf Coaching and Technique
Clayton emphasized the importance of leaning into turns and using the correct technique to maximize speed and flow.
Clayton discussed the difference between a squat and a lunge position in surfing, highlighting the benefits of a lunge for generating speed and maintaining balance.
Clayton explained the concept of compressing through a lunge to gain speed and acceleration in surfing.
Clayton stressed the importance of utilizing the wave and its power rather than relying solely on body strength.
Clayton shared insights from Kelly Slater's surfing technique, including the importance of maintaining a relaxed posture and using the front rail for turns.
Clayton discussed the transition from the bottom turn to the top turn, emphasizing the need for a smooth and quick transition.
Clayton highlighted the significance of breathing and exhaling during turns to enhance twist and power.
Clayton explained the role of gravity in surfing and how it can be used to generate speed and maintain balance.
Clayton emphasized the importance of training technique and body control in surfing, rather than relying solely on equipment.
Surf Coaching Clinics
Clayton announced two one-week surf coaching clinics in early 2018 at Macaroni's, a world-class wave location.
The clinics aimed to provide surfers with quality waves, relaxation, and accurate feedback through video analysis and muscle memory training.
The venue offered a hollow top section and a beautiful inside section for surfers to practice turns.
Spinetech Technology
Clayton introduced Spinetech, a globally patented technology exclusively licensed to Channel Islands and Clayton Surfboards.
Spinetech is a decision-molded, barber-reinforced life spawn designed for superior strength, durability, and flex.
The technology allows for greater lift, drive, and maneuverability in surfboards, making them high-performance, faster, and stronger.
Giveaway
Listeners were invited to enter a draw to win a custom-made surfboard from Clayton using the new Spinetech technology.
To enter, participants needed to comment and share the episode's post on the Surf Mastery Facebook page.
Winners would be contacted through Facebook, and the board would be covered by the podcast, but participants would need to arrange and pay for postage if they lived outside of Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.
Transcription
Michael Frampton
Welcome back to the Surf Mastery Podcast. El podcast dedicado to helping you become a better surfer. There's been some time since I released a show, but so back in April, my wife passed away unexpectedly. And I have had to return to New Zealand with my children. A little bit of a long story and personal details I don't wish to go into, but we've been living in Malibu for... Point Dume, Malibu for the past four years. And I was obviously working part-time as a surf coach and running this podcast. And long story short, she passed away suddenly and we lost absolutely everything. Me and the kids obviously lost her, but we lost our entire lifestyle and the business that supported that as well. So we lost our visas to be in America and we have returned to New Zealand. I am now living back here with my three children and we are rebuilding our lives here. It has been incredibly challenging, but the future does look bright, and I'm hopeful. I will begin by saying this podcast was... It's been a passion project, really, and it was supported by my wife and I's business and the lifestyle we had set up. So things are changing now, obviously. So I'm going to reach out to you, the listener, and ask for some donations towards the show itself. So, you know, if you've been a long-term listener, just think, you know, with this episode that you got a dollar or more out of value, it'd be great if you guys could chip in a little donation to keep the show going. I do intend to keep the show going after this little break, but I'm back now and today I will be releasing my favorite episode just after this little housekeeping. There is a PayPal link on the homepage at surfmastery.com. There will be a link in the show notes to this episode. Another way you can help support the show, and an even better way, is just support your own surfing. My highest recommendation to all is take the 12-week challenge that Clayton Nienaber has set up at ombi.com. There is a link to that course in the show notes to this episode, and of course on the website surfmastery.com. There's lots of information at surfmastery.com on this 12-week program, and next week I will be releasing a brand-new episode with Clayton and discussing it more. But that's the best thing you can do to support this show, is actually just take some action. All the stuff you've been listening to over the years on this show, take some action on it. Clayton Nienaber has put together what I think is the best thing out there in the surfing educational world at the moment. Clayton is a very good friend and is in full support of me, myself, and my family's situation, and has offered you, my listeners, a special discount for this course. And of course, I will get a little bit of this in a little affiliation deal happening here to help support me and the show. So please, there are links to this program. Go through surfmastery.com or use the link on the podcast app you are using right now. Since I started the show back in 2016, this episode that I'm about to re-release is my favorite episode from my favorite guest. And this episode was originally published back in 2017. But just like every other episode in this podcast, it will stand the test of time. So please... enjoy and take action. Which town in South Africa were you born?
Clayton Nienaber
I was born in Durban, the same town as Jordy Smith came from. Or comes from. Yeah, but I didn't grow up surfing there. I grew up playing soccer and then my father got a job at a fire mill on the North Coast, so we moved from the city up into Ballito. And that's when I pretty much started surfing. I was about 13 years old.
Michael Frampton
How much time did you spend in the water when you started?
Clayton Nienaber
Every weekend my father would take us all down to the beach. My brother was older than me. He is six years older. So he was always kind of going backline and I was relegated to the shore break and to foamies on the inside. My dad was a bodyboarder, so I'd always take his bodyboard out and stand on it and just catch the reforms. And then the one year before Christmas, I got bought a kneeboard of all things. So I surfed a kneeboard, which is a really wide podfin. And then I think it was for my following birthday, they actually bought me a surfboard when they saw I was pretty serious about it.
Michael Frampton
Were you living in a sort of a culture of surfing?
Clayton Nienaber
No, not at all. Back then there was nothing to do on the North Coast. It wasn't like the city where there were soccer clubs and everything. So the only thing you could really do was go to the beach. So all the kids went there and just hung out. So you had, I don't know, 14 hours of sunlight and nothing to do, so... body surf the shore breaks and the high tide, and go surf out the back on the low tide and just being kind of just submersed and around the sea.
Michael Frampton
And were you a naturally talented surfer? Did you pick it up straight away and...
Clayton Nienaber
I remember clearly the first time I tried to go in the water, I got stuck in a rip and had to be saved by my dad. There's that little gully between the shore break and the sandbank. I kind of got stuck in that, swept out to sea and felt like a bit of a kook at the time. But... yeah, when you learn how to play in the ocean, all the fear goes away. And then... once the fear goes away, your confidence grows and then things get easier.
Michael Frampton
And when did you start competing?
Clayton Nienaber
I started competing I think my third year of... second or third year of high school. I actually went on a trip to J-Bay, and next door to us, one of the pros was staying over there. His name was Dale Bamford, and he told me he surfed for Natal, which is one of the best, bigger states in South Africa. And then, because I was on the North Coast, I surfed for Zululand, which is like a lesser-known state. So when I went back, I joined Zululand after J-Bay and kind of got into it, and I sort of made the team my first year. Didn't realise how I surfed—whether I surfed well or good—and I ended up being the first seed. And continued doing that for like three or four years until I finished school. After I finished school, I moved to Durban. I told my dad I wanted to become a pro surfer. Well, actually, I'm going to have to go backwards a little bit. When I finished school, most South Africans—it was compulsory to do military service—but because I'm a diabetic, I had that year off. So my parents allowed me to move to Durban, back to the city, and to base there to make a career out of it. So... I got a job in a surfboard factory, started learning how to spray boards and shape and laminate. I moved in with a surfboard shaper—his name was Baron Stander. He started tutoring me on some shaping skills, and I surfed sort of on a high level with a lot more better surfers in the city, and my surfing improved a fair bit. I picked up some sponsorships, and then the following year I went on and did my first year on tour.
Michael Frampton
So when were you diagnosed with diabetes?
Clayton Nienaber
It was right about the time we actually moved up to the North Coast, so I must have been about 12 or 13 years old.
Michael Frampton
Okay, right around a similar time you started surfing.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, I started surfing. I'd been surfing for about... it would have been about a year, and then I was diagnosed as diabetic. So I remember clearly, like I went out for a surf and I tried to paddle out and I was exhausted. I was just super tired. And my dad was like, "What's the matter with you? Why can't you paddle out? It's like two foot. Are you scared?" And he was really giving me a hard time. I was like, "Dad, I'm just—I'm so tired, I just want to go home and sleep." And then the next day we went to the doctors and I was diagnosed diabetic. And then he was almost in tears, just like, "I'm so sorry." And then, yeah, he drove me to the hospital. I was there for about a week just getting my sugar levels under control. And I was on a drip at the time and the nurse took the drip out, and no one had explained to me that you had to do injections for the rest of your life. I just had an impression I couldn't have sweets for the rest of my life. So the nurse came up to me and said, "You're off the drip, but now you're going to have to do your injections." So I'm like, "Well, you're the nurse, you do it." And then she actually broke it down and said, "Did no one tell you?" I was like, "No." "Okay. Well, every meal you have, you've got to inject insulin to break the meal down." And I just burst out crying. I was like, "I can't do this." So it was pretty heavy.
Michael Frampton
And did you get stick? Now, were you given some slack at school for that?
Clayton Nienaber
So... I didn't get given flak at school, but just being a kid and not being normal, I felt different and weird. And what I mean by not being normal is that every time I ate, I'd have to do an injection, so all the kids would go like, "I could never do that," which straight away kind of makes you feel... different. And insulin... no, I'm sure there were a couple around.
Michael Frampton
Weird. Were you the only kid at school... dependent diabetic? Were you the only one within your group of...
Clayton Nienaber
Friends? Yeah, within my group of friends, I was the only one who was diabetic. So I kind of felt like I missed out on a lot of social skills, where all my other friends were going out and partying and maybe sort of having a few beers and hooking up with chicks. I just wanted to leave that scene where I felt weird and just submerse myself in the ocean where I just felt at home. And that's probably why I started doing well at all the competitions and so on, because I was just so focused on surfing.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, or it freed up. It freed up your time. Because if you can't join into a social situation because of the diabetes, then that freed up more time for you to go surfing.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, because being a diabetic I was on a strict diet and obviously there's like no drinking and no smoking. And say, my other friends were going and having late nights and coming home and sleeping in, I was doing the dawnie and surfing by myself. Pumping waves and getting barreled off my head, so yeah.
Michael Frampton
That's obviously contributed to why you're such a good surfer and why you were able to become a pro surfer.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, I think it sped up my learning curve. I wouldn't say I was a good surfer, not a naturally talented surfer, but I put in a lot of hours and I was always keen to learn. I remember subscribing to Surfing Magazine and each issue they'd have a little article on how to surf better. So I'd always cut those out and I'd glue it together like a little booklet and I'd try to study that so I could improve my surfing. I was just eager to learn and do better.
Michael Frampton
Did you get coaching done when you were young?
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, I had a couple coaches. Probably the most well-known one in South Africa is Graeme Hynes. He's coached the South African team for many years. So he was always strict. Got to go hard off the bottom, hard off the top. Surfing can be very ambiguous, and I probably took his information the wrong way. Because normally, if you come hard off the bottom, you end up losing speed and putting the brakes on and stopping, which I ended up doing, and just ended up trying harder and harder at it. So my surfing almost got very stop-start-ish. Until I later on, after my surfing career—pro career—started to, without stress, actually figure out how to surf properly with more feeling. And because I was a surfboard shaper, I needed to figure out how to make boards that went well. So it was a long journey. Figuring out how to make the boards work, how to get your body to do what it should be doing, before I started surfing to a level that I was happy with. I think prior to that, I just tried too hard and made too many mistakes along the way.
Michael Frampton
So how many years did you surf at a level you weren't happy with?
Clayton Nienaber
Well, I'd say I wasn't happy because I wasn't making heats. Like the funny thing, I was on tour. I was the one cooking, cleaning, stretching, waking up early, first at the beach, studying the conditions, trying my absolute hardest, and getting a third place. My mates were going out partying, getting smashed, hooking up with chicks, coming to the heat hungover not caring, and they would paddle out and get through the heat. And I was like, jeepers, where's the justice in this? Like, it's so unfair. But when I say a level that I wasn't happy with, I don't mean I was bad. Because I was doing stuff wrong and trying too hard on bad technique, I wasn't able to relax within my surfing, and therefore I wasn't happy with my surfing. It took me a while to surf and fall in love with surfing rather than surf to boost my ego. And when I surfed for a feeling, I started getting results. I kind of started entering the—what do you call it—the SA Champs, which is what's equivalent over here to Aussie Titles. And I got second the one year. One of my team riders beat me in the final at J-Bay. That was pretty good. And then the next year I entered and I got a... both. I finally made the finals and almost kicked into my old habits and tried too hard in the final and I lost. But I really started to enjoy my surfing more. And I started to understand surfing more. And then I actually started to break down all the elements because I got back into coaching. And I wanted to help kids. I’d fast-track all the hard times that I'd been through and almost just not have to let them go through the pain and suffering that I went through with all my mistakes and just start kind of where I was leaving. And I thought if guys could do that, they'd have a much brighter future—easier future—ahead of them.
Michael Frampton
So how did you get into surf coaching?
Clayton Nienaber
After my pro career, shaping boards and trying to get more board sales, I started coaching so I could meet more people and help them out. I ended up being my club coach, and from there I became the Natal coach, and from there it progressed and I became one of the guys who took—we went across with the South African surfing team, the junior side. We went to Brazil on one trip, we went to Huntington Beach on another trip, and to France. And Jordy Smith was in all of those teams. And I was able to help Jordy with certain things, but he was such a phenomenal athlete that I was kind of learning from him as I went along. Like, I was asking him, "Jordy, how do you do that 180 air off the top?" and he’s going, "It's easy, I just look down." So I'd go surfing, I'd just look down and I'd catch rail and, "Screw you, Jordy, it's not working!" And he’d just laugh at me and paddle off. And I kind of figured that guys with that much talent don't actually know how they're doing the things that they do. It comes natural and easy to them, where for other people it takes a while to actually develop the muscle memory and the technique. So I found it interesting and I'd look at his body and when I could understand what his body was doing and how he was doing it, I'd have to train my body to almost kind of like a copy and paste of his technique. So I'd copy his technique, steal it, paste it on myself, do it a few times until I understood it, and then I could get it. And then when the technique was right, I'd use his trigger word—look down—add the technique and the turn got easy and I could do it. Then once I'd learnt it, I could then go and teach pretty much whoever I was coaching to be able to do the similar thing. I really started to enjoy coaching after that, and I was very observant of people's different techniques and styles. And generally, the people with the best styles and the best surfers had the best technique. Those were the guys who flowed the best, they had the most power, they had speed on tap. And the guys with terrible technique were often very stop-start, they looked erratic, their arms were flailing all over the place, surfing mid-face. And the more awareness you get of it, the easier it is to pick up. So I was coaching almost every afternoon after shaping all day. Yeah, I was just open to seeing it and kind of trying to fix it.
Michael Frampton
And then... how did you happen upon Kelly Slater's board?
Clayton Nienaber
So I was in J-Bay the one year. And one of my best friends, his name's Craig, he—Kelly would always stay with his parents. So I got to meet Kelly and we were going out for dinners, or Kelly and Taylor Knox, because they'd both stay with Craig's folks. Kelly was a bit intimidating to talk to, kind of like he peers right into your soul, and I was a bit scared of him back then. But Taylor Knox was just like a happy-go-lucky guy, so I'd often go surfing with Craig and Taylor. And Taylor's known for having some of the most powerful rail game in surfing. I begged him on the beach the one day before he paddled out, "Please, if there's just one thing you do for me, tell me, how do you do your bottom turn like you do?" And he looked at me and he just burst out laughing and just paddled off and left me behind feeling like an idiot. And then about three days later he came back and told me. He said, "The reason I laughed, it was purely because as a pro surfer, one of the most basic elements of surfing, I could not explain it to you." And he said he thinks it's because it's more a feeling than an explanation. And then he kind of proceeded to explain to me what he felt when he bottom turned. And it took me about three months to figure it out... Anyway, the tour had left town, Kelly left J-Bay, and he always leaves a few boards behind. So he left a board for Craig. Craig said, "Look, I'm a bit bigger than Kelly, but here's Kelly's board. It goes amazing. Could you kind of copy it and make me a bigger version of it?" So I was like, "Sweet, yeah, great." So I took Kelly's board, tried to surf it as fast as I could because I thought if I surfed faster, I'd surf better, and surfing the king of surfing's board, I'd be blitzing. But it felt like the board went kind of ordinary. And then I thought back to how Kelly surfed and how Taylor surfed, and then I tried to just do a bottom turn of the feeling the way Taylor said. And man, I was like—Kelly's board just went up five notches and just hit turbo and it just came alive. I was like, my gosh, if I surf this board with the right technique, the thing just absolutely blows my mind. So it was then I discovered that you kind of gotta surf the wave with a hell of a lot more feeling. And you've got to read the sections, and the wave tells you exactly when to do a turn and how to do a turn. And yeah, it was just from there—another road of discovery. Surfing's like an onion. You peel off one layer and there's another great, beautiful layer to be. And you go around to that and you peel that off and there's something probably maybe a little bit smaller, may seem insignificant, but it's just as important. I'm still kind of peeling off layers of my own surfing and still enjoying it, even at 43 years old.
Michael Frampton
So when you got Kelly's board, and thank you, when you first surfed it, it felt like... what was your words? It didn't feel right. It didn't feel like a good board.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, so...
Michael Frampton
Did you go back and watch Kelly surfing it?
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so I had based my whole career on making boards that went fast. Because watch anyone surf—if they stand up and they're going as fast as they could possibly go, they've all got the biggest grin on their face. But... I remembered Dane Reynolds came and got a board from me one year. His boards were, they didn't make the flight or something and he wouldn't have them for like five days. So he came to the factory and I made him a board within about a day or two. And his words to me were, "I don't want a fast board, I want a board that can hold the rail turn." And so I was stumped. I mean, I'd based my career on making fast boards because I made all my customers happy, but now I've got one of the best up-and-coming youngsters in surfing ordering a board from me, and he doesn't want what I make. He had given me one of his old Simon's to have a look at, so I rode the Simon Anderson and it just felt like it pushed water, like I stood on it and I could not go fast. So I was like, no, this thing feels crap. So I gave it to one of my team riders, he gave me the same feedback. But then you watch Dane surf... and he'd do a rail turn from the top of the wave all the way down to the bottom with speed, power, and flow. And he made that board just look like it was a magic carpet ride. So it dawned on me then—Dane was surfing on rail and I was surfing flat. So it's kind of like a horrible understanding, but then back to what Taylor Knox said—if you put your board on rail and you feel yourself leaning and driving through the turn, you're going to get speed out of the bottom turn. Previously, I was surfing flat and I was probably stepping on the tail and getting a direction change but sacrificing a lot of my speed. I know it's crazy to say it, but I'd probably shaped boards for ten years up to that stage and I was surfing flat and I didn't even know what I was doing. I was probably just copying other shapers. Once I had that real revelation and I started to surf on rail and I started to lean and I started to twist through my turns and try to surf more top to bottom, I started to really fall in love with surfing and enjoy my surfing a lot more. And then I had to kind of educate the... the boards that I was making for other surfers, I had to educate the surfers on how to ride them. Because if they surfed the boards flat, they wouldn't enjoy them. So I took it upon myself—whenever I saw someone riding one of my boards, I'd go, "Okay, try to lean through the turn and feel what the bottom turn feels like," and they'd go, "Wow, that felt amazing." "Okay, that's how you surf, that's good surfing." And it was like, "Okay, on the top turn, stop pushing. Rather try to twist the turn and hold it longer." And they’re like, "My gosh, that was the best turn I've ever done." And I'd stoke them up and show them technique, and they'd come back and say the boards were going better. But it was more them utilizing their bodies and utilizing the wave better and utilizing the equipment better, and all the three things all just mixing into one really nice ride.
Michael Frampton
So, the concept of leaning into a bottom turn—when did you first sort of have that revelation or that insight occur?
Clayton Nienaber
Pretty much what Taylor had when he tried to explain to me what a bottom turn feels like. As a surf coach, how do you tell someone who's never really done many turns what a top turn should feel like, or what a floater feels like, or a tube ride, or a barrel? When you surf, you've got to get your board to do two things. It has to hold off the bottom turn, and it's got to release off the top turn. And those are two different feelings. Yet your board's shaped the same on the left rail as it is on the right-hand side rail. So you're getting something that's designed the same to do two different things. If you have a look at when you're on a bicycle—your bicycle's designed the same, the wheels are round. But when you ride a bicycle fast, if you want to take the corner, you have to lean through the turn. You can't just twist the steering wheel, otherwise you'll go over the handlebars. But when you ride a bicycle slowly, you can't lean through the turn because if you haven't got speed, you've got no momentum so you'll fall over. So in that instance, you've got to sit up straight and turn the handlebars and your bicycle will turn. So if you apply that principle to surfing, when you take off and you go down the wave face and you create speed from the wave, you have to lean on the bottom turn. Now, your rail’s round and it's designed to roll the same way a bicycle tire is designed to roll. So when you're leaning, you get weightless, which enables your board to accelerate through the water. You engage a rail, which enables your board to turn smoother and longer for better. By rolling onto your rail, your bottom curve is submersed into the water. And because there's curve in your bottom curve, it actually turns you up to the top of the wave. Because you're leaning into the direction of the way that you want to go, your board will turn in that direction. And the fact that you're weightless, it's easier for your board to get sucked up the wave face towards the top of the wave. So there's all those elements that are coming together in a simple lean. And there's no better way to explain to someone because everyone's ridden a bicycle and they can relate to what a bottom turn should feel like. And then the top turns are simply a twist. The way our bodies are made—using your core, you get a lot more power. So if you play tennis, if you twist through a forehand shot, you get speed and power. The same in golf. You want to twist through, maybe teeing off, to give you a lot of power to get the distance. Or in cricket, you only twist through batting. So it's the twisting that gives you the power. So in surfing, you've got no speed when you come into the top of the wave because you've travelled up the wave and you're burning off speed. But you can twist. And then you use the gravity to ride back down the wave again. And simply the act of riding down the wave, it's like dropping back into a skateboard ramp where you get the speed given back to you again.
Michael Frampton
And that's certainly evident once you start looking at the greats with detail, then that's what you see.
Clayton Nienaber
A hundred percent. So they make surfing look easy and they have flow between the turns. Most people that surf flat look like they're trying so hard and you actually get tired just watching them surf. Whereas the pros, they balance the wave slowly, it looks like they've got tons of time and it always looks like they're burning off speed trying to put themselves into the best part of the wave. Whereas flat surfers seem to be like flailing, hopping, bouncing, jumping, exhausted, doing flicky little turns and always losing speed, never being able to maintain that flow.
Michael Frampton
When you rode Kelly's board... and it didn't feel right, but you knew it was a good board... How did you—what happened then? How did you figure out how to ride that board? Did you watch him surf?
Clayton Nienaber
For years, Kelly—he'd been my favourite surfer. And the thing that I loved about him is that he'd always take off, he'd go nose to the beach, and he'd do this long bottom turn. It felt like it was a minute long. And I was always intrigued and I'd copied it for so long. But my technique wasn't what it should have been and I could never quite do it. So when I got his board, I was so excited. I thought it was going to make me surf better. I don't know if it was the placebo effect, but I just thought that I was going to surf better. Like some of his little—his magic was in that board and it was going to rub off on me. So I stood up on the board and I just went hell for leather as fast as I could. Gunned it down the line. And the board was just like... average. It was like eating vanilla. It was just... nothing there. So I probably tried that on like maybe three or four waves and just going, "No, something's not right." And then just thought about it and went, well, look, I love Kelly’s surfing because of what he could do on the bottom turn. So I remember still to this day—I mean, that was what, 15 years ago maybe? Nah, 10 years ago. Took off, dropped in, nose straight to the beach. And then just got the lean over on the rail. And the board just rocketed up to the top and I twisted and came out of the turn just feeling like the board had a turbo under it. And straight away, gunned it down the line and slowed down again. And I was like, okay, there's something in this. I've got to slow down and I've got to see if I can surf top to bottom. And then by surfing rail to rail, I was actually able to extract all the speed out of the board that I needed to. That moment there probably changed the way I made boards and changed the way I wanted to surf. And it was a long hard road trying to undo my bad habits and trying to implement the new ones because whenever I got excited I surfed and used the bad habits. But whenever I was able to be calm and just focus on my surfing and focus on the feeling—man, I loved the way I surfed. I've seen photos and I like the way the photos looked, photogenic. And yeah, I'm still chasing that today.
Michael Frampton
And you had the opportunity to ask Kelly about that. We'll just play a little clip.
Clayton Nienaber
Well, I always think of surfing as actually three things, because you have compression, and you have twisting, and you have leaning.
Michael Frampton
So straight from the horse's mouth.
Clayton Nienaber
So the funny thing about that—when I stumbled across that—I thought, I don't know, discovered like the Holy Grail or something. But then Kelly threw another curveball at me, as he always does. He always has his ways of making you—he doesn’t give the answer. He's a bit cryptic in his explanations. So he threw compressing into the mix. And when I studied that further, I realized how true and how correct he was. A lot of bad surfers, when they surf, they actually squat in their bottom turn. And if you squat, normally a heavyweight can't do that. A lifter would squat so that he could have good balance and not injure his back and so on. But squatting doesn't give you any speed and acceleration. Whereas if you look at a person about to do a 100-meter sprint at the starting line, they will lunge into the start. And when the gun goes, they push from the ankle, knee, waist and then pump the arms and they get so much speed, drive and acceleration. So I discovered that compressing through a lunge gives you so much more speed, drive and acceleration. And it enables you to lean through the turn. Whereas squatting renders you flat-footed and it hinders your movement and it kind of makes you twist off the bottom turn, which tends to make the board sort of just slide out. So... thanks, Kelly.
Michael Frampton
Yeah. Having had the privilege of spending some time with you over the past few days and looking at my surfing and my technique and, you know, I'd already, you know, we spoke, it was about a year ago, we spoke about the lean and the twist. Yep. And I sort of... implemented those cues into my own surfing and noticed a difference. Yeah. But what I was doing was leaning into... into and twisting out of my squat. So... Yep. And this... it's a very subtle but profound difference between a squat and a lunge. Or... maybe a better way to put it is... that slight difference because it's not a true lunge, obviously, you know, your feet aren't pointing in the same direction as your stringer. Correct. But it's definitely not a true squat either. Whereas I think myself and most people tend to go into a squat.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah. 100%. And.
Michael Frampton
It's... it's certainly how beginners start off as a poo man is the most exaggerated form of that.
Clayton Nienaber
Yep, that's a squat in its truest form.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, exactly. But then... just having you, just experiencing the difference the last couple of days of what that lunge position and where I'm moving from and how I'm leaning, just the finer details has made all the difference as to how surfing feels.
Clayton Nienaber
Well, the big thing with surfing is that there's a lot of ambiguity in surfing and people say, okay, you've got to do a hard bottom turn. So someone might read into that going, I've got to push as hard as I can on my tail to get the board to turn. Where probably what it says in essence is that you've got to go straight off the bottom, as opposed to taking off going diagonally. So if there was maybe better education so that some of that ambiguity was taken out of the meanings, you'd probably find people will surf a lot better. But because surf coaching is still relatively new in the sport, it does take a good surf coach to call you up on a move and say, "Actually, I think you're reading into that a little bit wrong. This is the way you should do it and for whatever reasons," so that you can get a better understanding of what you're trying to achieve. Then he'll show you the muscle memory around the movement. You train that muscle memory and then you take that muscle memory into the water to help you execute it.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, you can't beat that. The experience of having someone critique your... yes, I mean, a good surf coaching session, you can't, we can't explain that over audio to...
Clayton Nienaber
Someone. The point I want to make is that people make surfing about themselves when the wave needs to be the star. That's what surfing is, it's riding a wave. Like people usually use their bodies too much to think it's about themselves and not the wave.
Clayton Nienaber
No matter what turn you're doing, the wave always kind of determines your approach. You know, if you're towing, you want to be let go basically at the speed of the wave. You don't want to be going faster than the wave is going because you have to match speed for speed, you know. So with a wave, it's always trying to match speed for speed. It's always trying to surf to the speed the wave allows and not, you know, obviously not go too slow, but not try to do a fast, quick turn for the sake of it, you know. Does that match the shape of the section and the line you can draw out of it and the speed you'll have when you're done with that turn? You know, if you don't have space below you on a wave, you're never going to be able to find the speed. I think there's a lot of ambiguity in people, the way they read the judging criteria with speed, power, and flow. When Kelly talks about being a 10, when he talks about the power, he says you've always got to be on the top of the wave and you've got to drop in to access the wave's power. Or if you want speed, you have to have space below you—get speed. But he never talks about it—him generating speed using his body. He always talks about utilizing the wave. Where many average surfers and tour surfers try to always just rely on their body. And then that's why they don't get it right, because they're not tapping into speed, power, and flow.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I think what they're trying to do and what I try and do, which I'm just realizing is—yeah, try and drive and wiggle just forward of the power zone because I'm not confident enough to hang back in that power zone.
Clayton Nienaber
Correct. Yeah, you're running from...
Michael Frampton
It. Yeah, I'm running from it, whereas I need to be in it. To feel. And that's what I got to experience the other day. Now you've... I'm noticing some of the finer details and from lots of aspects of my surfing. But I guess what I... you have more time than you think. And you can surf closer to the foam ball than you think. Yes. And when you do... you have more—it actually gives you more freedom. It's...
Clayton Nienaber
100%.
Michael Frampton
It's counterintuitive. But when you watch Kelly Slater, where he does his bottom turn, and you envision what he's seeing... and you realize half of his vision is taken up by the lip and the whitewater.
Clayton Nienaber
Yep.
Michael Frampton
So if you're looking up at a wave and you're seeing the wave face, you're in the wrong place.
Clayton Nienaber
Correct.
Michael Frampton
Half your vision should be taken up by the wave. The wave might look like it's going to hit you.
Clayton Nienaber
So, if you had to break a wave down—the lip should be where you get speed from. And the bottom of the wave is where it draws water up, so that's the most powerful part of the wave. So what Kelly does is he's coming out of the power part of the wave, looking up at the lip, and when he hits it, he's looking back down to the power zone. And he rides out of that to where he gets his speed back from. So he's joining those two views where most people look down the line and all they see is the shoulder. They try forced turns halfway on the shoulder. To surf flat and force a turn—it's quite difficult. And inevitably it's going to kill your...
Michael Frampton
Speed. Yeah, and we can... the information's there. Those quotes we just heard from Kelly. The information... is there.
Clayton Nienaber
Every time Kelly talks after the heat in the post-heat interview, he gives away so much surfing knowledge. But if you don't know what to look for, you won't get it.
Michael Frampton
Exactly. So let's see if we can... educate people on a... on a more detailed...
Clayton Nienaber
Level.
Michael Frampton
Okay. You haven't seen this?
Clayton Nienaber
No, it'll be my first time. Drop knee. Lunge. Twist, look down. Lunge. Twist. That was beautiful.
Michael Frampton
So do you reckon that would be a good one to talk people...
Clayton Nienaber
Through? That would be insane. Love it.
Michael Frampton
Let's do this. If you Google "Kelly Slater Forehand" you come up with a video, and we're going to break down that video right now. But what we're going to do is if you go into YouTube, they've got that little gear picture and you can change—the video's already in slow motion—but let's put it down to 0.25 speed. Super slow...
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, so super slow.
Michael Frampton
So I've got that video. It's a 20-second video on YouTube. It's at now 0.25 speed and I'm starting it at four seconds, just as Kelly Slater's sort of popped up. Push play now.
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so... he's dropping nose to the beach, straight down the wave face to the trough. And you can see he's dropped his knee like a sprinter. You watch the back knee tuck—there it is. Compressing, he's leaning over, the right hand touches the water, and he's engaging the turn. Lunge, twist. He's holding the turn until he sees his target and then there's a lift from the shoulders. The hands lift up. Then he starts to torque and twist his body, holds the rail in. Lunge. Twist. He's twisting his body to the full extent like a golfer, swinging his club all the way around. So nose is still facing the beach and he's got his speed back again, right in the last section. So... pretty much. He did not sacrifice any speed off the bottom turn, and he came off the top of the wave and actually created more speed. So everything that he does harnesses speed and power. That was amazing.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, it's a good example... Let's do that again. So this video... I'm going to. It's at .25 speed. And I'm starting it at... at four seconds, just as Kelly Slater sort of popped up. And let's just keep it paused here for a second and just describe his posture for us.
Clayton Nienaber
Okay. At the moment, he is super relaxed. There's no tension there whatsoever. Like I said, it's like a sprinter just about to... start a 100m sprint... He is... probably exhaling. It's kind of if you deflate a balloon, it sinks. So because he's going down the wave, he's exhaling and making himself a little bit heavier going down, and he'll probably find he'll inhale on the way up and he'll exhale on effort when he does the twist. So the breathing is a large part of it too. Because he's lunged, his center of gravity is centered over the front leg and you'll probably find that he's supporting most of his weight over the front leg, which is making the board accelerate more. Down. See... the bottom power zone.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I think that's the biggest... thing for me is just his posture now. I could probably convince someone that he's in a squat position, right? But this is a one-dimensional... Yeah, we're only looking at him from one dimension. So when you start really looking closely, he is actually in a lunge position, where both his knees are sort of, they're just as much facing towards the nose of his board as they are the rail. So it's almost halfway in between a lunge and a squat. Now if we push play now again and let this video run for a little bit. So he's weightless now, right? He's coming down, and if I pause it now at the 5 second mark. Okay, so you'll notice how long he went straight down with nose to the beach.
Clayton Nienaber
Yep. So if you compare that to skateboarders, they don't go diagonally down the ramp because it'll take longer to pick up your maximum speed. So the straighter he goes down to the beach, the quicker he accesses speed from the wave. Now the nice thing about that is that he did not have to use his body to wiggle to generate speed. Okay, so straight away, he's got speed and he's looking stylish. Now, he's looking to the bottom of the wave to find the part of the wave where water's drawing up. Create the hollow part for the top turn.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, and he's looking there now, like, isn't he? Yeah, on...
Clayton Nienaber
He's trying to focus on the wave.
Michael Frampton
He's looking for the power zone at the bottom of the...
Clayton Nienaber
Correct. He's focusing on where to set the rail for the turn. So in other words, if you're riding a bicycle down a hill and at the end of the hill you want to do a turn, you kind of look ahead to figure out where you're going to lean. To figure out how long you have to hold the turn for with that amount of speed that you got.
Michael Frampton
And... one thing you... in the first couple of seconds of this video that we've watched so far, the first one second, throughout it, Kelly Slater could easily be balancing a book on his head.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah.
Michael Frampton
That's a big realization because if you squat then your bum goes back and your head goes forward. That book falls off your head. You lose the upper peripheral vision of your upper field. But if you lunge and compress using more of a lunging, knee-dominant movement, then you're able to see all around you and remain relaxed and be aware of your situation. So that's really evident.
Clayton Nienaber
So before you go on forward, most people think that a bottom turn is a hard stomp on the back foot. Which means that you're using the fins and the back half of the board. But what you'll notice about Kelly's bottom turn is that the nose does not lift above the tail. Which means he's not stomping on the tail. So your surfboard has round rails the same way a bicycle tire, if you look at the front profile, is round. That if you lean, the board rolls. Or the bicycle, if you lean over, the bicycle rolls. So he rolls the front rail, which again says that he's... he's lunged into the turn. And he's more turning off the front rail.
Michael Frampton
Yeah. And that enables him to maintain the pressure on the rail and the speed throughout the...
Clayton Nienaber
Turn. Yeah.
Michael Frampton
Well, let's go to the next couple of frames. So now we're at the... six second mark, it's still playing, he's just about to lean. Now, he's just starting to get that rail in the water now.
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so the best way for me to probably explain a bottom turn was if there was a pole sticking out of the bottom of a wave and he were to swing around the pole. You would need to take... he would need to take his right hand and grab onto the pole. So he's got to extend the right hand. The lower he holds the pole, the more momentum he'll swing around the pole with. If he held that pole a lot higher up, he wouldn't be able to get a lot of momentum, a lot of swing around the turn. Again, you have to actually hold the pole and swing and finish the turn before you let go. If you... just touch the pole, you won't get a long drawn-out bottom turn, and you probably won't hit your target.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, well if you look here again, it would be easy for us to convince someone he's in a squat position. But if you look more detailed, what you actually see... so now it...
Clayton Nienaber
Is he's... let it run another second.
Michael Frampton
Sort of halfway through the eight second mark and he's...
Clayton Nienaber
That's looking more like a lunge.
Michael Frampton
Now he's in that... again I'm just trying to... convey to people that... the difference between a squat and a lunge. And it's so easy to watch surfing and think that they're squatting. But then when you start looking where his right elbow is...
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so let me break it down this way. If you were to... a heavyweight lifter, if they put a heavy weight on them, they're in balance. So it would be difficult for that person to jump forward, to jump back, left or right. Whereas Kelly in that position, he could quite comfortably jump forward or jump up. Or left or right. So he's in a position where he's primed, it's like a spring that's been loaded. And he's going to fire that spring off to wherever he's looking and wherever he throws his hands towards.
Michael Frampton
His right hand, he's leaning his whole forearm down towards the wave. Yeah. And it's forward. It's like right in line with his front foot, not his back...
Clayton Nienaber
Foot. So a lot of people, when they surf, they... information's been handed down, you've got to touch the water. If you simply touch, you could touch perhaps by your back leg.
Michael Frampton
As a...
Clayton Nienaber
Squat? As a squat. But you'd be loading the board up on the tail, the board might spin out. Kelly is—his head is actually in front of his legs and the elbow and the hand is in front of his body, which means he's engaging the forward rail. And if you ever look at the front of his board, the water's right up to maybe, say, 12 inches back from the...
Michael Frampton
Nose. Yeah, it's just rail. Front foot, rail, lunging position. He's leaning. He's kind of gone into that. He certainly didn't... like... stomp. He just gently leaned.
Clayton Nienaber
Correct. Now, look how long he holds that turn for if you have to let it play a bit further.
Michael Frampton
So... nice. We're at eight seconds and we'll let it play again.
Clayton Nienaber
Still leaning. Still leaning. Still leaning.
Michael Frampton
And we'll stop it at nine seconds, and then that hand touches the water, and that's that kind of, like he's holding onto that pole, isn't it?
Clayton Nienaber
Correct. And now he's... coming out of that compression. A little bit now? Yep, he's coming out of the compression because he's loaded the rail up, so he wants to ease up on that. But if you look at a skateboarder when they go up a ramp, there's a certain amount of lift that comes up. So what Kelly will do is he'll want to push his hips forward and do a hip thrust, eyeing out the section ahead that he wants to thrust towards. And along with that hip thrust, he could lift his hands up, and probably inhale and make himself larger on the way...
Michael Frampton
Up. Well, I liked your analogy from the previous podcast about the difference between long jump and high jump.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, okay, so to go back to that. If you want distance, you're going to run as fast as you can with one trajectory line to cover as much distance as you can. But what Kelly's trying to do is go off the bottom and go up. So a high jumper will approach a high jump almost in an L shape, so the trajectory is different, and there's a lot less speed than the long jumper. And that enables you to actually load up your muscles into a springing effect to get the height that you look...
Michael Frampton
For. Yeah, and the technique... kind of similar. I think it's a good analogy to use to describe the difference between average and great surfers is average surfers are just racing and long jumping.
Clayton Nienaber
Yes.
Michael Frampton
And good surfers are just taking their time, just finding the flow and the pop and the high jumping.
Clayton Nienaber
That's it.
Michael Frampton
Yeah. So if we start playing this again, so he's kind of weightless now. And we pause it at 11 seconds.
Clayton Nienaber
So you can't get much more critical than where he's going at the moment. One really big thing to notice is that his back is straight. So anybody who's ever done yoga and who's done a twist in yoga, the yoga instructor will always tell you that your back has to be straight when you twist, otherwise you'll injure yourself.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, can I just clarify that because... I like the analogy. This is paused in again. He could have a book balanced on his head.
Clayton Nienaber
100%.
Michael Frampton
I think that's a better deal because his back is a little bit rounded. He doesn't have military posture, but he's upright so he can see and balance a book on his head.
Clayton Nienaber
Yep.
Michael Frampton
What's he about to do now?
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so... Kelly is doing a transition from the inside rail on the bottom turn to his outside rail for the top turn. And if you look at the distance or the transition there, it was maybe like one second. So there's a very quick transition where most surfers, they would go at the top of the wave, they go flat and then they start pushing their tail. So his transition is really smooth and really quick. And if you... tipped your fingers in and then just bent your wrist back, arching your hand back, you would actually get your heel in. The simple act of Kelly changing his hand positioning is then transferring into his feet.
Michael Frampton
So this, where the video is paused now, is kind of the only time that a good surfer will have their board flat on the wave, isn't it?
Clayton Nienaber
Pretty much, yes.
Michael Frampton
It's that moment where they're... they're weightless for half a second, the board's flat, and all they're doing is changing from one rail to the other.
Clayton Nienaber
So a better analogy is if you go to a... if this was a skateboard ramp... Kelly could not have his skateboard horizontal, because it would slide down the ramp. So you have to have your board sideways, but then you have to have the speed to keep you sideways. Another thing to notice is that his hands are in front of him. So because his hands are forward, he's able to push and twist through the turn nicely. If his hand was behind him, he wouldn't be able to twist. So he's loaded up for a twist.
Michael Frampton
Already. Yeah, and he's... most of his body is... is over top of the board. Like his head is not forward of his toe rail and his bum is not behind his heel rail. So he's still very much in that lunge position. He's not in a squat position. Even though the angle of the footage is you could convince someone he's in a squat. So let's go to the next... let's go to the next frame. A couple of frames, so now we're at 12 seconds. It started to blow out.
Clayton Nienaber
12 seconds, what I want you to notice is that, look at his cheeks. See how he's blowing out?
Michael Frampton
Yep.
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so a heavyweight boxer or any boxer will... blow out on effort. As you push the air out of your lungs, you're able to do far better. Bigger twist. So a lot of people hold their breath when they surf. And by holding their breath, you could never blow up a balloon. But if you deflate the balloon, it's easy, and then you can push the plastic around. Breathing again relaxes you and gives you a far better...
Michael Frampton
Twist. Yep, and so at 12 seconds, he's just starting to sort of get that twist going, that change of direction.
Clayton Nienaber
Something else that you'll notice is that he's not standing on his board. He's weightless. And he's buried the rail. Which means that his board's not pushing any water and it's free to move and do a direction change.
Michael Frampton
Yep. And again, he could be balancing a book on his head.
Clayton Nienaber
Yep. He does not move.
Michael Frampton
And there are a couple of frames, we're still on 12 seconds, let's go. Okay, as soon as we hit the 13 second mark, we'll pause the video. Okay. What's happening here?
Clayton Nienaber
I can tell you what he's not doing. He's not pushing that hard on the back foot. No. He's got most of his weight centered over the front foot. He has held that position and that twist for as long as he can, because the longer you twist for, the more spray you throw and the bigger the turn looks. If you force that, it's going to be a flicky little move. So yeah, he's trying to hold that rail in for as long as possible. And if that was just a takeoff, the simple act of riding down the face and holding that position, he will throw buckets of spray.
Michael Frampton
And we play again. And we're halfway through the 13th second, and he's just twisted more, really, isn't...
Clayton Nienaber
He? Yeah, so what you'll notice is that he did not twist on the top of the wave. He went up the wave, started to ride down the wave face, and when he had speed, he started to open up in the twist. So he's got that speed and he's got the power and then he's opening up the twist and he's... it's got torque through the turn. It's absolutely amazing.
Michael Frampton
Yeah. And he's directing... like everything's facing his right hand, his nose, his knees, they're all facing back. Back to that foam ball. You could take a... pencil and draw a straight line between his front leg, his hip, and his... left shoulder. So he's well centred and balanced over the front foot. So a lot of people make the mistake of being balanced on the back foot on the turn. And by doing that, they put the brakes on, the nose lifts up, the tail slides out, or the fins pop out, or something gives. Where he is working with gravity, because gravity always flows down. So he's doing the turn following the way water would flow naturally down that wave.
Michael Frampton
And his goal now is to get back down to that bottom power zone to do it all again.
Clayton Nienaber
Correct, his goal is to extract as much speed out of that wave face and to set up the next turn.
Michael Frampton
That's the end of the video. That's it. We do that again? You want to have another go?
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah, let's run one more time. I'll see if I pick up anything else.
Michael Frampton
Kelly Slater, 4K. Starting at 4 seconds. And it's at 0.25 speed. Here we go, push play.
Clayton Nienaber
So Kelly's taken off the top of the wave, he's gone straight down to the bottom. And where he sees the steepest part of the wave drawing off the bottom, he starts to lean in and touch it, and the longer he holds a turn, the more vertically he's going to go. So the weight's centered forward for more speed and direction. He gets some lift out of the turn. He does a direction change and he twists, he rides down the face, exhaling. Opening up the shoulders to the turn so he can see where he wants to go to. And heading straight back down to the next power zone, where he'll go into the next lean again.
Michael Frampton
Pretty awesome. When he does his bottom turn, he's got... there's definitely some spray coming off his bottom turn.
Clayton Nienaber
No, 100%.
Michael Frampton
But only about 30% of the amount of spray that he sends from his top.
Clayton Nienaber
Well...
Michael Frampton
So, because one thing... I noticed what you pointed out about my surfing is I'm just putting too much twisting and too much effort in the bottom turn and there's lots of spray off the bottom turn.
Clayton Nienaber
Fair enough, okay. So I always like using crazy analogies. So if you had to chop a tree down, you'd never swing upwards on the chop because you're going against gravity. You always want to chop down. So you only lightly lift the axe up and have the power to chop down on the movement. So if you bring that analogy into surfing, you never want to push so hard on your bottom turn because it's going to be a lot harder to get to the top. And then because you've spent so much energy on the bottom turn, you're going to have a really small, poor top turn. So if you can lightly lift up to the top and then cut down or twist down the wave face like you saw Kelly do, using gravity, riding down the wave face again to get your speed back up, your surfing is going to flow beautifully and effortlessly.
Michael Frampton
I like the way you just... one of your taglines is advanced surfing made simple.
Clayton Nienaber
Yeah.
Michael Frampton
And it's so true. It's... it's simple, but it's subtle. Because... it's subtle as in you've got to be really... the way you hold your body has to be spot on, doesn't it? Otherwise, you just miss it. Yes, you want to lean. Yes, you want to do all these things, but... if you don't have the self-awareness... as to whether you're actually doing that, then you're never going to feel...
Clayton Nienaber
It. You have things that you can't control and things that you can control. You can't control if it's onshore or offshore, but you can control what your body's doing. And it's something that you can train up to be on point and precise. Say, for example, someone takes off at J-Bay in the CT. The commentators generally say, "My gosh, that board looks amazing on him." Whereas if you watch someone running a marathon, for example, they never go, "His shoes look like they're amazing. Those shoes are on fire. What's he wearing?" They always go, "That guy's got an amazing stride." So in other sports they compliment technique, but in surfing they go, "He's got a great style," and they kind of go, "But his equipment, he's riding these fins and he's got this X-flex fin pattern with such and such a board." Surfing is about your body and what it's doing on the bottom and what it's doing on the top half of the waves.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, having the right board is important, but it's more important... to train your technique. If you're a surfer that wants to know even just a little bit of what it's like to do a man turn like we just watched, then it doesn't really matter what board you're on. It matters how you move, how you control your body.
Clayton Nienaber
Correct. If you look at Rasta, he can go bodysurfing. He can do somersaults and all crazy stuff bodysurfing. He can jump on a finless piece of wood like an alaya and make it look beautiful. He'll jump on a single fin and he's won the Burleigh Contest riding a single fin. I think he's 20. Won the Maldives Twin Fin event. And he's probably even twice as good on a regular board. The thing is that riding a regular board for him is boring because his technique is so on point that he prefers the challenge. So if you can get your body to fire and respond the way it should do, the art of surfing is made easy.
Michael Frampton
Cool. Clayton, thanks so much for... doing the podcast again.
Clayton Nienaber
Cool. Thanks for being invited back. It was a lot more fun second time around. It was great.
Michael Frampton
You. Cool. Educating surfers and inspiring. Awesome. Thanks, man.
Clayton Nienaber
Cool.
Michael Frampton
Sweet. Hope you guys got something out of that. Let me know. Give us some feedback. Stay tuned for details on how to go into the draw to win a surfboard from Clayton. It's using the new Spine-Tek technology. But first, Clayton has teamed up with Swellnet and Macaronis, and there is a surf coaching clinic, actually two surf coaching clinics, happening in early 2018.
Michael Frampton
They're with Clayton.
Michael Frampton
It’s two one-week coaching clinics at Macaronis. The first week being the 21st of January until the 28th of January and the second week being the 28th of January until the...
Michael Frampton
February...
Michael Frampton
5th of...
Michael Frampton
There still are a few spots left. There are links to find out more about this and to book, etc., in the show notes at surfmastery.com/podcast. And just go to this episode and you'll see the show notes underneath the MP3 there. And let's hear from Clayton about the trip.
Clayton Nienaber
Okay, so what I've been finding is that it's been increasingly harder and harder for surfers to actually go out and practice surfing. And the reason being is that the lineups are getting more filled, there's more people surfing, which means there's actually less and less waves. And not only that, all the good surfers tend to steal all the good waves. So the whole idea behind the Macaronis trip is to get it at a time of the year where it's not as busy, to still get quality waves, which offer more time to relax and to actually try to get the turns done that you want to be able to do, and then to video film that, analyze it to be given accurate feedback to make those turns done easier, and to do some of the muscle memory training outside of the water to then take back into the water. So the venue is amazing. Macaronis is a world-class wave. It's such a hot dog wave. For me, it's one of the best lefts in the world. And it's got a hollow top section with a beautiful inside section where you can do as many turns as you want to do. So the setup I think is going to be fantastic.
Michael Frampton
That sounds like a dream surfing trip. Not only are you surfing one of the best waves in the world, you're getting filmed and coached. Okay, the surfboard that's up for grabs... if you want to go in the draw to win a brand new custom-made surfboard from Clayton using the new Spine-Tek technology, then stay tuned to find out how. But first, here is Clayton just giving us a quick rundown on...
Michael Frampton
The new technology.
Clayton Nienaber
Shapers Spine-Tek is a globally patented technology and is exclusively licensed to Channel Islands and Clayton Surfboards. Spine-Tek is a precision-molded, fiberglass-reinforced laminate spine that has been specifically designed and engineered to deliver superior strength, durability, and flex. Unlike wood, that has very little flex, Spine-Tek almost works on the same principles as tennis rackets, fishing rods, and golf clubs in that kinetic energy is then transferred into the surf once the board bends and bounces back through the turn. Simply by standing on Spine-Tek, the board gets so much more lift and drive. Because they are lighter, they're easier to maneuver. It makes them a lot more high-performance, faster, and stronger.
Michael Frampton
Okay, so to go in the draw to win one of these boards from Clayton, custom dimensions, all you need to do is go to the Surf Mastery Facebook page and go to this episode's post and make a comment and share it on your wall. Simple as that. So two things you need to do to go in the draw is comment and share the Facebook page post relative...
Michael Frampton
To this podcast.
Michael Frampton
And... the only catch is this is covered by us.
Michael Frampton
Board is the board.
Michael Frampton
But you guys have to sort out the postage. So if you live on the Gold Coast, you can just swing around and pick it up. But if you live outside of the Gold Coast, then you're going to have to pay for...
Michael Frampton
Postage.
Michael Frampton
And actually, same for South... Clayton does have a workshop in South Africa, so the same will apply in South Africa. You can go around and pick it up from the workshop or just get postage within South Africa. But for listeners who are outside of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa... paying for the postage is probably not going to be worth it. So for those listeners in America, Europe, and the...
Michael Frampton
UK.
Michael Frampton
We will have some giveaways coming up in future episodes for you guys. Please subscribe.
Michael Frampton
Like us on Facebook. Comment on Facebook and Instagram. And give Clayton a follow on Instagram as well. And share with your friends. Spread the word. The more people that listen, the...
Michael Frampton
Better and more guests we can get.
Michael Frampton
Thanks for tuning in to the Surf Mastery Podcast. Again, I'm your host, Michael Frampton. Make sure you subscribe so you can keep up to date with the latest interviews. Please share with your friends. Check us out on Facebook at Surf Mastery Surf, and if you're on iTunes, please go and give us a little rating. That'd be awesome. Until next time, keep surfing.
66 My Favorite Episode with Clayton Nienaber
For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.