030: MATT GRAINGER + Balter = Educational & Inspirational Surf Stories
Show Notes:
Are you overthinking your surfing progress—and missing the true key to leveling up?
In this raw, beer-fueled conversation with veteran coach Matt Grainger, you'll hear the stories, mental shifts, and misunderstood fundamentals that separate high-performance surfers from the rest. Whether you're chasing barrels or coaching groms, this episode dives deep into the mindset, preparation, and stripped-back techniques that actually work.
Learn how emotional regulation and mindset directly impact your surfing outcomes
Discover why simplicity in coaching and movement can unlock elite-level performance
Hear wild, insightful stories about fear, failure, and flow from one of Australia's most respected surf coaches
Press play now to hear how passion, preparation, and playful experimentation can completely transform your surfing or coaching game.
Matt's passion and progressive attitude towards surfing and surf coaching shines through in the Balter fueled chat, he shares some stories from his younger days of charging big waves with a group of friends who were pushing each other - giving us some insight into the passion and attitude behind what it takes to get good at surfing. He opens up on how he has developed as a coach and is still learning new things to help his clients and friends. Lessons learnt from Tom Carroll, Nick Carroll, Nathan Hedge, Sebastian Zietz (Seabass), Nam Baldwin, Matt Griggs, Wim Hoff, Meditation, different equipment and more. Plus plenty of tips and techniques in amongst the stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
https://manlysurfschool.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSx0ayWHQOs
Key Points
Matt discussed his passion for surfing and coaching, and how he aims to share his knowledge through the podcast.
They talked about the Wim Hof breathing technique and using ice baths for recovery and mental focus.
Matt shared stories about pushing himself in big wave surfing sessions, including tow-in body surfing at Deadmans.
They discussed the importance of being present in the moment and not overthinking during surfing.
Matt emphasized the role of proper preparation and having the right mindset for competition.
They talked about using different equipment like longboards and foils to spread out crowds and enjoy different waves.
Matt described his coaching approach at the Macaronis, focusing on repetition and feeling the waves.
They discussed the importance of technique, like initiating turns from the feet rather than just rotating the upper body.
Matt shared how he learns from studying the styles of top surfers and incorporates elements into his own surfing.
Outline
Coaching Philosophy
Matt Grainger emphasizes the importance of passion, attitude, and mental preparation in surfing.
Surfing is not just about physical skill but also about mindset and approach.
Coaching involves focusing on basics like bottom turns and wave reading before advancing to more complex techniques.
Encouraging surfers to stay 'in the moment' and avoid overthinking actions is crucial.
Teaching adaptation based on wave conditions and board type is a key aspect.
Emphasizing both mental and physical preparation before entering the water is essential.
Video analysis and immediate feedback are used during coaching sessions for improvement.
Cross-training activities such as boxing and martial arts are incorporated to enhance overall athleticism and reaction time.
Big Wave Surfing Experiences
Several stories highlight the mental and physical challenges involved in big wave surfing.
A session at Germans, a big wave spot, involved a pact to take off on every wave, which led to broken boards but built confidence and skills in heavy conditions.
Overcoming fear in big wave surfing is emphasized, with an example of body surfing 12-foot waves from a jet ski to push limits and reduce anxiety.
Equipment choice in big wave surfing is crucial, with a transition from smaller 'Indo guns' to proper Hawaiian guns significantly improving performance.
Camaraderie and shared experiences, such as encountering whales while towing into waves far offshore, are highlighted.
Preparation and familiarity with equipment are stressed, suggesting that significant time should be spent on big wave boards in smaller conditions before tackling major swells.
Mental Training and Meditation
There is a growing emphasis on mental training and meditation in surfing.
Experience with Nam Baldwin, a performance coach, introduced meditation and breathing techniques.
Daily meditation practice includes 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon.
The Wim Hof method, including cold water immersion, is used to improve mental resilience and focus.
Mental training helps coaches stay calm and centered, which provides better guidance to students.
Being present and focused during surfing is emphasized, avoiding anxiety or overthinking.
Surfboard Design Changes
Changes in surfboard design and their impact on surfing styles are mentioned.
Riding various types of boards, including retro shapes, modern shortboards, and big wave guns, is encouraged.
Experimentation with different board types, including longboards, SUPs, and foil boards, broadens skills and enjoyment of different wave conditions.
Board choice affects wave selection and surfing style, with different boards suited for different conditions and surf spots.
Understanding how different board designs affect performance, such as the difference between riding a shortboard and a big wave gun, is important.
Coaching Methods
Insights into coaching methods include understanding each surfer's individual needs and tailoring coaching accordingly.
Video analysis provides immediate feedback and helps surfers visualize their performance.
Repetition and muscle memory are crucial for improving surfing skills.
Cross-training activities like boxing improve overall athleticism and reaction time.
Coaching trips to places like Macaronis offer consistent waves for intensive skill development.
Breaking down complex movements into simpler components and focusing on one aspect at a time is emphasized.
Surf Etiquette and Community
The importance of surf etiquette and community in the sport is touched upon.
Respect and consideration are needed when surfing crowded breaks or using alternative equipment like SUPs or foil boards.
The territorial nature of some surf spots requires understanding local customs and expectations.
Sharing waves and enjoying the sport without excessive competitiveness in free surfing situations is valued.
The global surfing community benefits from the internet, allowing surfers worldwide to learn from and be inspired by top professionals.
Transcription
Michael Frampton
Episode 30 of the Surf Mastery podcast welcomes back the original guest number one, Matt Grainger. What really inspired the conception of this podcast was a lot of the conversations I was having with Matt and the people he was introducing me to through the Manly Surf School and the High Performance Surf Center, and I really wanted to share these conversations with others because I was learning so much about surfing.
Yeah, I just wanted to share these conversations, and Matt was kind enough to do the first one. And during that, there was more of an interview with Matt, and he—during that interview—Matt shares a lot of sort of, you know, more clinical coaching tips in that interview. But this, today's podcast, is a little bit more of a change of format from most of the other shows, whereas we just sort of sat down and had some Boulters, some beer, and just—it just kind of got Matt talking, and Matt just went on a roll with some stories. And what I really love about this conversation and what comes through is just Matt's passion and attitude towards surfing, and it's such a great insight as to how he got so good. And the only thing that equals his passion and positive attitude towards surfing is his passion and positive attitude towards coaching and helping others to get better at surfing as well. So if you want to find out more about Matt, go back to episode number one or check out his website at Manly Surf School. If you Google Manly Surf School and Matt Grainger, you'll come up with him—stuff he's coaching in and around the northern beaches and doing some coaching trips in the Mintarwise as well. Let me know if you like this new format—the Boulter-fueled conversation storytelling format.
Michael Frampton
So I see you've got the ice bath there.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, it's awesome.
Michael Frampton
Because.
Michael Frampton
You did the Wim Hof? Yeah, the—have you been doing it daily?
Matt Grainger
Wim Hof—insane. I love it. Have a beer.
Yeah, I try to. I love it.
So good. You just have to focus on the cold.
Michael Frampton
You focus on the cold?
Matt Grainger
Like, you're so focused on the cold, then you actually go to the kind of Zen, and then it's like meditation. Like you just—boom—because you're just thinking about one thing, and you don't move. Like, as soon as you move, like, you get cold. It's like—it's bizarre.
So if you're, like, so still and you're just like—it's really good. So yeah, and I've been doing it in my classes, like you taught me.
Michael Frampton
You do that—the breathing sequence before you jump in? Yeah? What, 15 minutes?
Yeah.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, it's really cool. I love.
Michael Frampton
It. I was in New Zealand with a guy. He sort of taught me a little bit more Wim Hof stuff.
Yeah. And he just got a—he bought a hundred-dollar, big massive chest freezer.
Yeah, that's a go. And he just plugs it in for an hour a day.
Yeah. And that's it. The water stays cold.
Matt Grainger
Wow. Yeah, because I might get a thermostat that goes through it. Yeah.
So it always be cold. It just loops through. So—and I do it at home sometimes too, if I just go buy three bags—because there's, like, three bags for ten bucks. Just chuck it in there and just go at home and just, like, you're watching a movie with your wife and go in there and go back out. She does—what? Chrissy like, "Nah, you're crazy." My kids like, "You're crazy." But yeah, it's—so I love it.
Yeah. Yeah, I haven't today.
Michael Frampton
You do every day?
Matt Grainger
I had a cold shower though. Did the cold shower.
Michael Frampton
In the mornings?
Matt Grainger
Yeah, and the arvo. Yeah, just like—I was feeling really tired this arvo, just before my last class at four o'clock.
So I was just like, I'm gonna need to reset and just had—meditated because I just got too caught up in work. And just did the—went for the cold shower and just, yeah, back. Rad. It's pretty rad how he just did it all.
Yeah. It's amazing. I went to his seminar.
Yeah, and he's such a cool guy. Just not a guru and just, "I'm just Wim Hof. I'm not the Iceman. Wim Hof."
Michael Frampton
Classic. So you're gonna be out at Germans in midwinter and Bordy?
Matt Grainger
That would be pretty cool. There's been a few people out. It just—it sucked, though, probably because you're—you got on the way and you get cold. You're like, "Damn, I gotta go in." But you probably just stay out there.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I'm sure you'd do it. 30-minute session. You could—you get any swell?
Matt Grainger
Do 30, 40. Get a cool photo.
Yeah. Did year?
Michael Frampton
Any big swells last—
Matt Grainger
Yeah. Yeah, got some good swells.
Yeah, it was pretty bit of a weird year. I got good Cloudbreak. Got really good Cloudbreak. And a lot of White Rock sessions.
Some Southie sessions. And yeah, I actually had—yeah—one German session that was just amazing. Just was swell, just picked up, and it was windy. And I was actually just—did like this—I do a photo shoot for New South Wales Transport, like a surfing thing, and then the last thing was at a bar. And I was like—I had one beer, and I'm like—I looked up at the clouds, and I looked at the trees, and I'm like, they're going still. I said—I just had half the beer and said, "I'm out of here. See ya." And I bolted to Germans, and it was macking, like 15 foot.
Wow.
Yeah, I just paddled out, and a few of the boys were out back by me, and I paddled past them and just went and surfed it on my own. And just—it was heavy but fun. Like, it's kind of scary, like heaps of closeouts, like wash-throughs. And what am I doing? And like heaps of self-talk, like what am I doing, like.
And then, like, it closed out, and you had to bail. You'd, like, bail out. And I'm like, it's getting bigger and bigger. I'm thinking, when we tow, I'm like, I'm out where we—like on the gnarly days where we're towing—I'm actually out there. And I was like—and doing heaps of self-talk, like I'd spin around and go, and then I'd pull back and go, what's wrong with you?
Like, and you're the only guy out, and you're talking to yourself like a mammoth. Come on. And yeah, made one drop, and then that was like—the switch went. And I was like, yeah, you've done it, you're sweet, let's go and keep going.
And then I got the rhythm. And it's so weird in big wave surfing when you—yeah, like, you gotta go. I remember Nick Carroll saying to me when I was a grommet, like, in the first two minutes when you go out there, if a wave comes, you got to go. Go over the falls, get smashed, and then you'll work it out. And you'll go, wasn't that bad?
So I've always had that in the back of my head, which is really good, because when I go out there—and I've just had sessions where I jumped off the white point, and boards hit me in the head. Just an old side of Huey. Is that all you got?
Like, you know what I mean? You gotta have that kind of psychoness. Now I'm older, you still got to be psycho as well, but at a more calculated realm. You're not stupid. We're not breaking boards as much. Not when we grew up. I was lucky. I had four maniac friends, and we had this pact that when we went out surfing together—and actually, we had this swell that went on for like—yeah, cyclone swell—went on for weeks. I mean, like, two weeks. And we had to take off in every wave that came. So we had Dewar Point, we had Makaha, we had Germans, and every wave—every time a wave came—your mates watching you, and you weren't allowed to pull back. So we were just going over the falls, you know, snapping boards. One guy broke eight boards in two weeks.
Wow.
I broke three. And yeah, it was just like this mentality of—you just have to go. And it was low tide, the reef's popping out, you still went, you go over the falls and just get totally axed.
Yeah, it kind of molded us as surfers and chargers, like—and that's why we'd all go out Germans, or you'd dream—you'd see something, and you'd dream of it and go, why is there no one out there? Let's just try it. Let's just go look. And then, as we got older, now we've got good boards, you know—we got thicker, wider, proper Hawaiian guns. Whereas before, we were trying on Indo guns, you know, like seven-sixes around, little grommies, you know. But we were still on seven-sixes, but they were too knifey and too thin and too rockered. And then went to Hawaii, and someone gave me a 10-footer, and I rode it. I was like, what have I been doing, you know? And my chest is, like, four inches above the water. You're paddling, you're up, you're riding, and you just go—and this is like having a jet ski.
Yeah.
So we went through that whole—yeah, it was just like not caring, like, just didn't care. Just going for broke. Everything was going for broke. Like, not—and then you realize that you're not getting hurt that much. Like, yeah, we didn't break any bones, didn't get, you know, nothing serious happened. Broke a lot of boards. But it was just like a turning point where you're like, what's everyone—what's the normal world thinking about? Like, why are they all so soft? Like, you're not saying that walking around the street—just in your own head.
And you're just out there laughing too, because it's like this full laughter, like you're looking over, your mate going over the falls. You're like, that's unreal. Like, what's he doing? And then your turn's up. And then this bomb comes, and you're gonna go. And it's unmakeable, but you go, and you just get flogged. And then you come out, and you claim it.
And I remember reading an article about this Jose Angel. He was a schoolteacher at Waimea Bay. He was one of the best surfers at Waimea Bay. And he would do this—just go out there and charge. No leggy. Just maniac. And I think it was in the '70s. And he'd actually just even stand there sometimes, and the white water'd be coming, and he'd mess—and he'd just stand there and do, like, the Jesus Christ pose and stand on his board. Wouldn't dive under and let the whole white water just destroy him. And all his mates would be, "All right, that guy's crazy."
But he would—that sort of putting—taking the fear out of it, if that makes sense. So he's gone, well, I've made the choice to get hammered. I'm trying to get hammered. But lots of times we go surfing, we don't want to get hammered. We don't want to fall off because of fear and anxiety or looking stupid. And he's just turned it on his head and gone, I'm just gonna actually try to get hammered.
And Ross Clarke-Jones is probably the same. Like, I'm talking to Tom Carroll. Tom Carroll's telling me him and Ross would be on top of a cliff, about to jump off, you know, into the water, like, just do a cliff jump—just being grommets. And Tom's—even though he's pretty—he's like a charger—he might go, "Oh, maybe dive to the left or to the right or out." And Ross is just like, "Don't care. Boom." Off. He doesn't even care. He's just gonna go.
That's like—Ross is always just going for it. And he's, like, one of my favorite surfers. And there was a thing in—if you look back in one of the Performers—if you go look and you go and check out Performers, in one of the Quiksilver movies—Ross Clarke-Jones talks about—he wants to—always wanted to be a pilot, like part of a plane. And as he says it, he's out Sunset, and he just throws his board and dives off headfirst on about a 12 to 15-foot wave.
And just dives off. And even my mates saw that video, and we're like—we used to call them pilots. So when the wave came, and you had to go and you weren't gonna make it, you'd do a pilot. You'd "Ross pilot" and just dive and pin drop headfirst.
Yeah.
So it's kind of—it's crazy how all those little things manifest in itself.
Yeah, just—yeah, it's good. And yeah, another—get on this tangent about one day, we're actually towing out Germans, and it was big. There's no one out. Actually, Tommy Carroll came out later on his ski with Barton Lynch. And me and the captain, who had my tow partner—we were towing. And then there was Jason Coffey and Ewok, one of the guys who's in that group. And Jason Coffey was in that group—he's the guy that broke eight boards.
Anyway, we're towing Germans, and then we see like a pack of like—we see just a pod of whales just come past. Like all these whales just coming past—like, we’re about six whales coming past about half a K off Germans. So we're like, let's go and just go and hang with them. And of course, captain's very conservative, and he knows marine stuff. He's smart. So we go out there, and he goes, "Look, we can't chase them." I'm like, "No, we're not gonna chase them, but we'll just cut the motors, we'll jump off in the water."
And these humpbacks were swimming past underneath us, you know, like four to five feet away. And we're like, you know, 2K off out to sea in the middle of winter, and it's just the full buzz, just going, how sick is this?
And that was kind of scary because you look how big they are, and you think, man, they could just hit you with the tail, and you'd be toast. But you got that buzz as well. They're beautiful.
And so you got that thing with your mates. You're like this—you know, camaraderie but nature. Yeah, we're fully in the zone, just going, yeah, claiming it was this.
And anyway, as we're coming back to Germans, I'm on the back of the ski. The jet—the actual board's in the gunnels, and it's a tow board, so you can't do step-offs because they're so heavy. So, like, we come flying in. This 12-foot wave comes, like a perfect 12-foot wave, a-frame. And I'm going, we can't catch it.
I said, "I'm gonna body surf it." And captain goes, "Nah, you won't." I said, "I'm gonna do it." And I just thought, I'm gonna do a bodyboard—like body surf—jump off. So I'm on the back of the ski, and I'm holding onto his shoulders. And as the wave's just starting to pitch, the ski's kind of here, and I'm on the back standing up at this stage, on the actual seat. And I go, "I'm gonna go." He goes, "You have to, because you said it."
So I jump. And actually, I jump head—like feet first. And I just go feet first, go top to bottom. A whole barrel goes over me, full-on barrel. And nothing happens. I just go out the back, get spat out the back.
Let's go. What? And captain's laughing. "That was insane."
The other boys are going, "What are you doing?" And we're going, "It's a new sport. It's called tow-in body surfing at German Banks."
And Jase Coffey is a classic. Goes, "Yeah, you should put that in the Manly Daily next week, you know, for school holidays. Like, there's a new sport coming out. Put your kids into it."
Anyway, so I had another couple of goes, and I was trying to go headfirst down the wave and hands behind the back—all that sort of stuff. Okay, pretty unsuccessful.
And then captain goes, "Give me a go." One of my mates I grew up with and my tow partner. And he did this perfect one. He jumped off and just met the water perfectly. He's just skimming down the face with his hands behind his back, just like a perfect—like an albatross just going down. And then the thing just smote him.
The thing was, because we were towing—we were in that state where we chose to get whipped. Like, before that, we were actually scared. Like, before that, we were actually on the wave. There's a lip. It's pretty big. It's 12 foot. I'll go around it into a cutty.
Yeah, so you—you know, you didn't want to fall off your board. And now we changed the game. We're gonna go get smashed. And you're coming up laughing.
And in one stage, the wave—we were doing this funny thing. You do your first—like, you do your tow-in body surfing, get absolutely flogged, sometimes not. And then you come up, and there'd be a three-wave set coming. And you just wave at your mate and just go, "Hey, I'm going in." And it's this whitewater, quite like just coming at you.
And you'd put your head to the boards of beach—like, you're just like you're swimming with a one-foot wave—and then just grab your legs and just throw you into a somersault and just KO you.
And just—the both ski riders are just laughing their heads off. You're getting flogged, he's getting flogged. But then you come up and claim it.
And then Tom Carroll comes up and goes, "What are you guys doing?"
I go, "A new sport. It's called tow-in body surfing."
And he goes, "You guys are nuts."
"Yeah."
And it's that weird.
And then we're back on our surfboards, towing in on our tow boards—like little six-foot by 18 and a half, two and a quarter, with straps and whatnot. There's no one out there that day. It was beautiful. So back in the day, before paddling got here, we were doing a lot of towing. We were towing, and no one was paddling. So we'd just be out there on our own all the time. There'd only be, like, one or two skis, maybe three.
And now it's cool that we're paddling. And it's heaps harder paddling. Like, when you tow, you just get dropped in like it's a cartoon. And you just go, "Hey," and your mate puts you there, and then you've got to deal with it. And, you know, it's a beautiful little six-foot board. But yeah, we went back on the six-foot board. Like, there was a couple of sections where captain and myself—not trying to talk ourselves up—we'd go up and try and float a section. You never think of it because the fear's gone. We're laughing.
And we did talk ourselves into not caring and all that sort of stuff. We were doing floaters and hitting the lip and then doing cutbacks and coming back and trying rebounds. And it was bizarre. So, like, the 12-foot wave felt like a three-foot wave.
Wow.
Yeah, so yeah, it's pretty cool stuff.
And then it makes you think—you know, it's so much about the brain, isn't it? I know you're studying that in neuroscience.
And so you kind of got to have a skill set, you know. You got to have that skill set to be able to deal with it, to be out there. And, like, we've been paddling that place when we were grommets and other places. And then we got on jet skis, and we got good at—proficient at that.
And then—so you're matching the skill level to the fear, and you get in this beautiful zone where—yeah.
And it's like—it's so much cooler than normal surfing because it's not competitive. And it's not like, "I'm better than him, he's better than me." You don't care. You're just doing it.
Yeah, you.
Michael Frampton
Was it two weeks like a kind of like a turning point, like a, like you got over a plateau, like.
Yeah, it's kind of like what the—it's Wim Hof's attitude towards jump in and just go, realize it's not that bad and good for ya, it's.
Michael Frampton
The cold.
Michael Frampton
Go to the extreme, like what's the worst thing that can happen? Yeah, I'll try and body surf 12 foot of whitewater, and you realize it ain't that bad.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, it's—and it's so—even like a kid today, it's all right. Yeah, kid today, like he—like, for instance, a guy I was training, a kid today in a coaching class, and he was going on about—he just had the worst session in our session. It's just an elite session where they go out and get three waves, and we video them, critique them, and we show him later. This kid was just off, just off, so off. He's angry. He's just coming in every time. I'm like—and then I just walked over and said, "What's wrong, mate?" Like, he said, "I just had the worst day ever. I've got detention on Friday, and then I've got—tomorrow I've got lunchtime detention," and he told me why. It wasn't that bad. And I said, "Mate, it's not that bad." Like, in your head, it feels bad, but you'll look—in a month's time or a week's time, it's nothing. Like, you've made it up in your own head. Like, we all make so much stuff in our own heads. And it's the same with big wave surfing or competition surfing. You've dealt with a lot of coaches recently. I've listened to your podcasts—they're amazing, by the way—and all the content, and the guys that you have on, and the girls you have on. And it's—yeah, it's so much like that—the relationship, coach-to-student relationship, and just knowing what's wrong with the person. And I don't think that happens enough in school as well, you know, in this education system. Like, good teachers will know that, or good coaches will know that. But I could just wipe that kid off and just gone, "Oh, mate, get over it. What's wrong with you?" So I under—worked out his story, then I said, "Hey, mate, that's just—" And I said, "Let's just—you don't tell your mom this—but just say a swear word and just scream it out as hard as you can for the next three seconds," because there's no one on the beach. And he did it. And I said, "How do you feel?" He goes, "I feel great." I said, "Well, go back out there and let's just surf." I said, "Don't even care about what you're gonna do on the wave." I said, "I want you actually just to fall off your board and actually don't even care. I want you to nose ride, which is not high performance. I want you to do a soul arch, and I just want you to actually have a smile on your face." And he was like, "Thanks, Matty," and I was like, "Yeah, well, just get out there. It's not a big deal." So many people—and I thought—Nick Carroll talked about too about surf anxiety, where people are anxious about watching, you know, you got a crowded lineup, and a wave comes, and everyone's like, "Shit, I don't want to stuff it up because the wave's so good." So it's pretty heavy with surfing gone now. But if we stop caring a lot, we're gonna actually surf better.
And, like, you look at Pako, and he's got that beautiful not-caring style, but it's amazing because he's so technical. But—and then other guys, you see, you know, other guys getting so angry, and anger is not gonna make you surf better sometimes. But I think more often than not, you know, you're gonna get drop-ins, you're gonna get interferences. Like, I like Jeremy Flores—like, he's passionate—but sometimes it gets him in hot water. Like, I love how he's passionate. And same with Medina, but sometimes they get interferences. And—or even Filipe last year when he stormed the judging tower, you know, could have cost him a world title, maybe. So sometimes, like, emotions—dealing with it—and it's actually in the moment. Like for meditation or breathing or whatever, just going, "Hey, it's actually not—the situation is not that bad."
It's something that comes with age because I was a hothead. Like, I've never seen John blow up. I've never seen him hit his board or in the scaffold. Yeah, so good. Yeah, like, he's just calm. Even when he loses, you can see he's just like—inside, as you said, he's probably like feeling it, but he's like, "Well, I'm not gonna show everyone that, for one. And two, I'm just—" He just says, "Right, I'm just"—like, I love how John always says when he would get through a heat, he just wants to surf. He's like, "I'm just stoked to get through because I want to get to surf Snapper on my own, or I'll surf Chopes on my own, or, you know, J-Bay."
And I think that's a really good motivation as a coach or if you're coaching someone. It's not about winning it; it's about being in the moment and doing the right things. Yeah, doing the right things all the way. Like, catching—like, I've seen so many comps, and you have too, and especially QS. And QS is a little bit different to CTs because CTs are so—the level's that high. But the level's that high too in a QS.
But if you did two big turns in the QS in the pocket on a set wave when you got priority, you're pretty much gonna get an eight-point ride. You know, you're pretty much—you know, if it's critical. So it's pretty easy to coach. Like, just, "Hey guys, just keep it simple. Just go to the vert in the pocket, bang," you know.
And then under priority, if it's a closeout section, if you're a Filipe Toledo kind of guy, go throw that crazy joker card out and go for the massive air rev. Because if you fall, it's not gonna matter because you're under priority.
So yeah, it's so much to do with—yeah, just the emotions and the mindset.
Yeah, I mean, you would have talked with a lot of guys you've seen. And, like, surfing's a game. Like, if you go free surfing, if you're Craig Anderson, it's cool. You just go and cruise and get barreled and do airs.
But when you've got only 20 minutes or 30 minutes, you've got to know what the judges actually want.
Michael Frampton
This one separates the great from the good, isn't it? Like being able to control that sort of stuff. Look at calm. I'm sure he feels those, but he just knows how to. And he's.
Did you read that article Jon wrote?
Matt Grainger
No. No?
Michael Frampton
He was talking about, like, in competition, like he really enjoys competition because his goal in competition is to try and get into that free surfing headspace. Yeah, and he obviously finds it easy to do when he's free surfing. But it's just, you know, when you're that good, you're kind of almost seeking out challenges. Yeah, it's kind of changed his attitude towards competition.
Matt Grainger
So that's so good, hey? That's a smart way, because if you're gonna—yeah, everyone—like if you've got a purpose, that's the main thing. Like, if you look at anything, people who work or, I mean, even doctors, lawyers, athletes—money's great, but at the end of the day, if you've got a purpose, that's way better. You wake up for the purpose; you're not going looking at your bank account. And I think Jon Jon like that, like he's got it. Like you said, he's got to have those goals to be motivated. So he's gonna go—he wants to be in that zone. That's cool. That's so cool. Yeah, and he's a freak.
It was pretty cool. I—Bede, we did a thing with Bede Durbidge last year and Nalm Baldwin, and Bede got up and spoke when he got after his injury and whatnot. And it was a really cool talk about being positive about, you know, breaking his pelvis and whatnot. And he was not ever negative one bit; that's why he recovered so fast. But he got the call-up for Jon to be the coach, and he was like, that's a positive. You know, I can't surf this year, but I'm gonna coach Jon. And he told Jon—was basically three things.
One was sacrifice, like he just had to sacrifice himself to win the first world title. And one was being the first guy out there every morning, so that's one.
Two was surfing, like actually finishing waves, which is number two.
And three—yeah, not going out for a video clip.
So that was the first year. That was his first year. So maybe he's achieved—so he achieved that, and now this year, when he's with Ross Williams, he's probably going, well, hey, I've got that first world title, now I'm gonna try to make my free surfing into my heats.
Yeah, when he lost at Snapper, it was pretty cool what he said at the end. He said, "Yeah, I could see my wave section was wrong," against Mikey Wright. He was like—it's good that, you know, he acknowledged that. He wasn't like—that's a good athlete. He's not going blaming the judges. He's not angry. He's just like, "I think my wave section let me down," which was pretty much black and white, you know.
So that's the—that's—and that's why I think the good athletes, like the Tom Currens, they just stay level, you know. All the good athletes are just level, you know. Like, they're not—they're teaching, and I know Nalm taught that to Mick a lot.
So you see Mick Fanning—he's going for that world title at Pipeline. There's chaos all around him. And Nalm showed us his handycam video, and he did a workout with Mick before it. So he got—he, you know, got him in the zone. And then Mick's there on the beach doing his—which Nalm taught him to—like doing the hands, like rubbing his hands together because your nerves finish, you know, your fingertips. So that's calming him.
And at the time, there's some thousands of people at Pipeline, and it's so different in surfing because you don't walk out of your change room. He's sitting on the beach, and there's people right next to him taking photos, and Mick doesn't even know they're there.
And then he's just looking out to sea at Pipe, and that's what—and he said to Nalm, and Nalm said to him, basically, "You've got to get two waves and just get two big barrels, and I'll win the world title."
That's it.
So it'd be—so that's—I was just like, that's so cool, you know, from hearing that from Nalm. And I know what Mick's like as well. That's just such a good, just a narrow focus, because that's all it is.
So simple. He's just—he's done it. He's a good barrel rider. He's just—and Mick went over the falls about probably ten times before that last beautiful barrel he came out and looked at the sky, you know. But he trained himself—I'm just back out there. No negative self-talk, you know. Just one more barrel.
Not like, it's over. You know, like if you weren't as strong in the mental state as Mick—if there was a grommet, like a grom—he would have just probably just gone in, like had a shocker, would have melted, you know, after those ten wipeouts.
And, you know, he was fit for—you know, he's physically fit, so that's probably helping him too with his mental state. I've got this paddling back out.
Yeah, and he gets that wave, you know.
Whereas I've seen it in junior surfing—and I try to coach this out of all my kids—they'll take off in a wave, and they'll bog their first turn. And it's a 20-minute heat, and then the whole heat's over. And sometimes there's almost four turns left in that wave, but because they bog the first turn, they're like—arms go up in the air, they flick off the wave. Your video as a coach, go, "What are they doing?" Everyone's going, "What's he doing?"
And, you know, you talk to them, and he's like, "I thought it was all over."
I said, "Hey, it's the first minute of the 20 minutes."
So if you're coaching a kid like that, or you're saying, hey, before they paddle out, saying—back to Mick—it's two waves, two turns. That's all you gotta do. Go and do that. All I want, nothing else. Two turns in the pocket, two waves, that's it.
If you catch five waves, it's fine as long as you're improving on those waves each time.
And they're like, "Is that all I have to do?"
"Yeah."
Because I remember when I was competing, I was—you know, you thought that sports psychology was kind of this kind of weird, kind of voodoo thing. You know, like, what's it all about? Is this mystery? Is there something else there?
And when I started becoming a coach, I wish I knew all this stuff. And I was just like—keeping it simple, you know. Pack your bags at night, get prepared. Pack your wetties, pack your food, pack your waters, your spare fins, your boards, your leggies. Everything is in the car or at the doorstep, and then you jump in and you go.
So you're prepared.
So the day starts good, and you're ready.
Not waking up at six, going—your heat's at 8:30—and you can't find your fins, you can't find your leggy. You just go into this spiral of just, you know, "What's going on? Oh, the world's over," you know.
Then you just—it's gonna have a shocker. You set up, it's a shocker.
So yeah, this golfing coach from the Olympics, John Kramsen, taught us all this.
And when I worked in shoesport, I was like, "What?" This psychologist talked about preparation, and that was it.
I was like—and then it hit me. I was like, that's it.
So yeah, prepare the day before and prepare, you know, six weeks before.
Yeah, I know it's bizarre, but everyone gets it in their head that it is—it is rocket science.
You know, everyone just wigs themselves out, overthinks it.
Michael Frampton
It's not rocket science, yeah.
Well, most people were like, I had dinner, and I just want to watch TV. I'll do it in the morning. And they wake up in the morning, and your brain doesn't work properly. And, yeah, where's my leash, where's—
We've had free surfs like that. I mean, obviously, free surf, it doesn't matter, but yeah, then important.
Matt Grainger
A leash that's all done too late. Yeah, where's my—yeah, I know. Imagine it's like a career. Chris Davidson, but he could pull it off. He said against Slater and didn't have a board because—and someone gave him a board from the Rip Curl shop because he was sponsored by Rip Curl. And I remember Rip Curl did a thing on it—you want to be a champion—and he beat Slater. It was heavy. He went out Bells with no leggy and a borrowed board and just waxed it up and never surfed it because he's rock and roll. He pulled it off, but you're only gonna pull it off maybe once. You're not gonna—if you keep doing that pattern, it's not gonna work. And that's why I think the Americans came on—the Slater era just came on and just waxed all the Aussies at that stage because Aussies were just dominating. Because the dominant Aussies at that stage weren't preparing. I mean, the Tom Carrolls were, and those—he was super prepared. Like, I'm talking to Tom, and he would go out—I think he's in your podcast too—like he'd go out and surf the worst wave. He surfed Bungan Beach and just surf a closeout to try to do a two-turn combo. But the Aussie guys, some Aussie guys, got in the party program, you know—not the top level, like the mid-range level—and, yeah, so they always had to prepare. And, yeah, nine times out of ten, it's not gonna work. But, yeah, it's funny, hey? Like, what do we like to say? Poor preparation leads to a piss poor performance. Say that to the grommets, and they're like, "What?" You say it again, and, yeah. Like, for instance, you're surfing a fat right in the heat, and then they free surf a slack down the beach. You're like, "What are you doing?" It's a totally different wave. The slack looks sick, but do you want to win the heat? There's a fat right in your heat. And the grommet's like, "Okay, I get it now." But, yeah, that's what a coach does. The coach is just a guider. You're guiding, and you're knowing the person. Some people are frothers. Some people aren't frothers. Some people get angry. Some people are too mellow. So you're just trying to find that fine line of actually getting to know them. And I think as a coach, yeah, you can't ever change anyone. Like, if you rocked up, I didn't know you, I never seen you surf, I could give you a couple of things, but I wouldn't give you a lot. You know, like, I've seen coaches over-coach because they think it's the way to do it. But at the end of the day, as I've got older and coached, less is more. Yeah, like, so someone will come to me, like some dad will bring a kid to me and want me to make them, like, change the world. And I'm like, "Hey, look, I'll do some—I'll do video work, and I'll do it." They're going at two waves, come in, check it out, two waves come in, and then I'll give some things to work on. And it's gonna take ages. It's like getting a block of ice and get a little chisel, and you're just doing a sculpture. And each day, just, like, chiseling away. I'm not gonna change that kid's surfing in one day. No way. I'm gonna probably wreck his surfing if I come in overzealous. That makes sense. So it's just like little chips. And then, like, I've had—coached Hedgy since he was 11, Cooper Chapman since he was 10, and now I'm actually learning stuff with Cooper right now because he's gone through a bad patch—surfing great on a free surf level, but then sometimes he'll go out in a heat, and he knows that he wasn't surfing to his potential. So I've had to be very—and we talked about that today—now we're gonna be really honest with each other, and there's no bullshit anymore. I'm still his mate, but it's like, "No, we gotta go." What we're working on now is just going to the vertical as you can. We gotta go vertical. Every wave is vertical. So now we've just got one purpose, and it's either vertical or in the air. And today he went mental. Every time there was this big steep section, he was just going so square. When there was an air section, he's doing these full rotations. So it was really cool. And he's been working with Nalm as well for the Olympic team. So working together—Nalm and I and Coops. And, yeah, talking to Nalm too, just—every training session has to be just so purpose-built. And it's just—it's gone bang straight in the Cooper's head. It's amazing. Like, look out. Yeah, it's gonna be good. So, yeah, I did a six-day—I did—yeah, I did six days with Nalm in—with Surfing Australia. Yeah, so they nominated—I think it was like 16 of us, and I was in the first group. And it was awesome. It was a really good crew of guys and girls that I grew up with as coaches and surfers and competed with. I think there was, like, Kate Scarrett, and there was, like, Bede was there, Bede Durbidge, Dan Ross, Bottle Thompson, Blake Johnson, Adam Robinson—a really good crew of people. And it was—yeah, it was more so about us being better as people, as humans, so we could actually—if we felt good about ourselves, we could coach better. It was really good. It was an amazing course. So he taught us a lot about meditation. He taught us a little bit about breathing. And then I've taken that further because I felt so good. I remember you were talking about when you did it. So then I took—I've done a bit of—you taught me some Wim Hof. I remember that in here, in the High Performance Center, and I really loved that. So I've sort of—after Nalm teaching us—yeah, I went and did some—I did some Vedic meditation with Gary Goro. So I did that, did that course with my wife. So every day, I try to meditate in the morning, 20 minutes, and then 20 minutes in the arvo. And then because I'm such a frother, I'll throw in a Wim Hof as well. And then I do an ice bath either in the morning or the arvo somewhere. But it's—yeah, it just made me more—way more level when I'm coaching. So if—you know, like, years ago, because I froth so hard, I would probably over-froth. If I look back in hindsight, me as a coach probably 20 years ago, I was just so energetic, which is good, but at the same time, as you get older, you gotta kind of be more like Yoda. And, like, someone asked me now—they might say, "What do you think about what happened in that heat, Matty?" or "What happened on that wave? What was that turn?" And I'll go—be like Yoda—and I'm gonna get back to you on that one. Years ago, I'd want to give the answer, and now I want to actually give the right answer. So it's a really cool way to coach, which Nalm taught us, because you're better off giving nothing than something that's not right. Whereas back when I was overzealous and frothing, trying to give too much, you know—and I've learned heaps from that. And I've learned—because I'm always up early anyway, I want to froth for a surf—but sometimes now I'll go, I'll make myself meditate. And Tom Carroll does it too. We went to out Germans one day, and Tommy was in the car doing meditation. And he's just going, "What's he doing?" He's doing it. I said, "He's doing his meditation." I've already done mine. But you go out so much clearer. Yeah, it's sort of less is more. And I found that's been—that was the whole plan behind it—Surfing Australia. It was a really good plan. So, yeah, so if we're calm, we're like rocks. Our students are always gonna come to us, and we're not giving bad information. And they'll always feel calm around us if we're centered and grounded. So Nalm was all about teaching us centered and grounded. So if we get in a bad situation—you know, you do the force. You can in-breath for a second, out-breath. You know, something's stressing you. You see those coaches, you know, in any sport that are crazy—they're losing their minds, like yelling, pointing this way, pointing that way. Phil McNamara, who's a mate of mine, who's been Mick's coach—he was always the rock. He was just, like, so level. It's like his heart rate probably doesn't get over 40. And he's so smart. So he'd always say not much to me. But all the other coaches saying heaps, and Phil's just like, "Yeah, mate, just—you know, just need you to start Chopes. You just need to get deep. Pull in. That's it. Boom. Bang. Done," with his calm voice, with the beard. Yeah, the older guys. Yeah, like, I think in society, we always—we're not—well, it's all about the youth. But it's all—I think now, as you get older, like, we need to—it's all about the elderly people. They're smart. People don't look at old people—that they're smart. They know their shit. Yeah, so that was a really cool course. Especially, like—and he said a really cool thing about Ryan Hipwood, about adrenaline, and it seems to go—it was going with me a lot. You used to see me—I was pretty crazy and always, like, just always blah, on, you know, just going crazy, like on coffee. Still love my coffee, but—and Ryan Hipwood went around the world just chasing waves. And then at Cape Fear, he just broke down, started crying. He didn't know why. And then Nalm goes—Nalm trains him—goes, "Well, now you're just too much adrenaline. You need to calm. You need to meditate."
Michael Frampton
You've been doing a little bit, quite a bit of stuff with Nam. Well, that's what we often ask the people we coach to do is just stay calm, make good decisions, and focus on the wave. Yeah, which—but as a coach, you need to be able to do that in the water and on land. As a coach, you’ve got to lead by example, right? Exactly. Yeah, that’s profound. Yeah.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, because you got it, you—yeah, so it sounds like I'll never—I'll be the happy guy in the water. If someone's gonna be gnarly on me, I'll just out-happy him. And I surfed with Sea Bass in Kauai not long ago. I went there with a family holiday, and I just—I knew him. I met him through Hedgy when I was coaching Hedgy on the CT. And Sea Bass is such a cool guy, and you've always seen it, and he's actually like that in real life. And it was so cool. It made you love what he does, and it's always like going out and surfing and frothing, right, and having a good time and smiling and talking to people—"Hey, how you going?" blah. So Sea Bass—it was like four foot at Pine Trees where Andy and Bruce grew up, and Sea Bass grew up. And we're out surfing there. I was with my kids—they're like 17 and 15. I surfed this left shorey. It was this beautiful shore break on steroids. So sometimes it closed out the back, like four to six foot, and it'd come through the shorey, and then a double-up. There'd be barrels and there'd be sections, and some would be bad, some would be good. When you surf a shorey—you know, that's what I say to the crew—don't overthink it. When you surf a shore break, you just go catch heaps of waves, because one might be a ten, one might be a one. Doesn't matter. Because if you get caught in—if you don't catch waves, because this rip was gnarly—if you don't catch that wave, you're gonna get out to sea, and then you gotta do the paddle of shame back in or bodyboard. Anyway, we're surfing out there, and I got a wave, then my son got a wave, my daughter got a wave, and then Sea Bass and his mate were like, "Hey guys, how you going?" Like paddled over, like, "How you going? Good to surf with you guys." I'm like, "What? We know... why?" And, like, people want to talk to us, and are smiling and frothing. Like, this is unreal. That was our first day, and then we started seeing them out there. And I love Sea Bass because he's smiling, talks to everyone, gives groms waves. But he's still—I think he had about 250 waves in this session. It was about two hours, and he would catch a four-footer, get a tube, come out, do an air reverse—this on his good waves—to a big reo, and then that was it. Then he's paddling out and a one-footer comes. He catches a one-footer. He goes crack on a one-footer. He didn't have to catch it—he's on his way out—but I think you're like, he just can't sit still for one, and he's happy. And I think he's like self-training himself too, because he's like that. In his brain, he's probably going, "That was like a tiny wave in Brazil." Then the barrel—he's in a barrel, you know, it's like mini Chopes. And then the next wave he goes over the falls—doesn't even get to his feet—comes out laughing. I just can't—this guy's amazing. And then next thing, does a full rotation backhand reverse. And he's just out there—he's happy. And I'm like, "Man, when I go back to Australia, I want to do this in like a more Sea Bass level." I do it anyway, but I'm gonna go more hardcore. And it's sick because you go out at a wave—like, even when it's crowded. Like, I'll go at Longie or go at North Narrabeen. The other day I surfed North Narrabeen, right? So there was probably 30 guys out, and I was paddling out thinking Sea Bass. And a one- or two-footer came, and it was surfable. So I did two reos on it. But out the back was pumping. But I did two reos, and then I got my first wave. Then another—paddled back out—that guy fell off, got another one, then got another one. I had ten waves before I got out the back, and I didn't even want to go out the back, because I didn't want to go with the hassle. I just wanted to be—you know, it was really cool. And like, we were surfing Hanalei Bay, and it was eight to ten. Sea Bass couldn't be bothered with the crowd. He's surfing a three-foot inside bowl but ripping. And I saw him. I said, "Yeah, how crowded was it?" He goes, "Man, I couldn't deal with it. I couldn't deal with it. I just surfed the inside bowl." I said, "Yeah, I saw ya." And he goes, "Yeah man, I'm not surfing with crowds." Yeah, so yeah, learn off people. You know, watching—I suppose, there for two weeks. Yeah, rad. Beautiful wave. So good. You didn't surf Tunnels? The grommets weren't too keen on it. But we surfed Cannons. And you—because they're goofies and they weren't too keen on Tunnels after the Bethany thing. It's an area, yeah. And the little left in front of the lifeguard tower—not little—but we surfed that, about five foot, two Pukas. Pretty cool there. You've been there a couple times. It's beautiful. Mountains and Path of the Magic Dragon and stuff. Yeah, it's insane. Hey, how about I’ll throw it back to you. So what have you been doing with your stuff? I know you’ve been right into your studies, and yeah, I’ve...
Michael Frampton
Yeah, how long were you in Kauai? Beautiful. Surfed Tunnels. I surfed Cannons.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, surfed Tunnels once. It was the—
Michael Frampton
Paddle out is air.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, only once. Yeah, actually reminds me of the Northland in New Zealand. Really similar sort of landscaping. Waves are a bit smaller in New Zealand though. Been studying a lot of functional neurology stuff. Well, just learning about how the brain—the body—really, yeah, how it’s—the brain receives all this input from the body. Like it’s receiving input from your skin, from your joints, from your muscles, well, from your vision, from your vestibular system, from your hearing, from your smell. Then based on all of that input, it makes a decision on what it can do for output. Sometimes those signals turn into pain, because there’s often—that’s just a mismatch of signals. Yeah, the pain. And sometimes the mismatch of signals or the inaccuracy of a signal can just decrease strength and performance. So what we’re finding is increasing the quality of the input is getting people out of pain—yep—and increasing performance. Vision is a major one, man. Like, wow. Like, I know Nam does a lot of it as well, a lot of visual stuff, like throwing tennis balls at people as hard as you can. He expects them not to flinch and just catch it, right? Yeah, that’s a very visual thing. Stuff, yeah—that’s a performance example. But even from an injury example, like if your eyes can’t—if the muscles—if your brain can’t control the muscles of your eyes very well, your brain knows that, and it kind of holds you back. So we can, you know—we can assess and retrain the coordination of the eyes. So there’s a lot of focus on the input rather than the output. Yeah, you know my background—my main background is in strength training and movement training, which is all output-focused: move it, move stronger, faster. But now I’m learning, well, if you improve the input, then the output. So, input first. Kind of how you summarize. Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of complex brain loops that are involved in it. I’m only scratching the surface, but it’s powerful stuff, man. Okay. I’d...
Matt Grainger
And—is interesting, yeah. Yeah, I do that here on my boards, on the Surfset. Yeah, I do pop-ups and throw balls, and yeah, that’s great. That’s—it’s a lot to it. Love to do a session with you, that’d be cool. Yeah, so yeah, that’s what I like doing, like, in my coaching now. Because I’ve had a martial arts background, and, you know, trained with Nam as well, but I do it with all my groups now. Like, I do a lot of boxing, a little stick work, and I throw a lot of balls just to start the session. And I love it. Everyone loves it. And out of comfort zone, like—and I do kickboxing. Like—and people, "Never kicked a bag in my life." I don’t care how bad or good you do it. I’ll show you once, and then we’ll get there eventually, you know. And a lot of that sort of stuff, like, you know, I’ll go further—throw it up there—high round kick, low round kick, inside leg, and then have the pads and go, "Left, right, boom," and heaps of just reaction stuff. And I’ll go, "Two punches, eight, fifty thousand!" No, not a hundred. But yeah, just that sort of stuff.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, you're onto it, man, because that's—you know, that's foot-by coordination. It's massive, which is surfing. You need what you do. I—
Matt Grainger
Quit, and you're turning—like, doing that, like a round kick as a kickboxer is similar to doing a turn. Exactly, you know? I say, yeah, like exactly what you're talking about, and they're out of comfort zone. And people—that's what adults are so—we're wrong. If you're a kid, you just do it. If you're a kid—like, I had a kid the other day, and I was just going bang, had the pad, I'll go high kick, he just kicked it, bang. Low kick, bang. Inside leg, boom. He'd never done it, and he's just going. Then I drop it, and I go, "Left, right hook, uppercut, duck, stick, go over his head." Then I now do a stick one too. I've got a stick as well with one mitt in the hand—sounds pretty weird in the podcast—but so I got a mitt on the left hand and a stick in the right hand, so waving that over their head, and then they've got to jump it, and then they've got to throw combos on that hand. Because I remember doing—when I was competing, Terry Day got me into boxing as my coach, and we were doing heaps of—it’s just hand-eye stuff. Like, it helps your paddling, like with the paddling too. So if you come out fast and light with your paddle and pull through the water with efficiency and then come out fast, you're gonna be a way better paddler. You see anyone paddles past you, they’ve got that really good rhythm—like a boxer—like throwing jabs, not big haymakers. But then you see a weightlifter, a guy who's in the gym just lifting heavy weights, he will—he paddles past you slow and clunky. Anyway, so that one, that helps your paddling. And then the second one, the hand-eye—when doing combos and someone’s throwing out randoms, you know, boom—the left, right, hook, uppercut, boom. I remember one day doing this with Terry, like being trained with him for about a couple of weeks, I took off on a right-hander, and I did like three turns—I was about 18—I did like three of the fastest backhand turns I've ever done in my life. I flicked off the wave, went to boxing straight away. I was like, wow, because the lip just came up in the corner of my eye, and I didn't hesitate. Just went straight up into it, and then I was enough, I went back up again. Whereas if I wasn't trained, I might have just gone around it. Like, all the top athletes are sharp. Look at the UFC guys—they're crazy. Yeah.
Michael Frampton
It's all about being sharp. Yeah, it's all about being sharp, because you probably noticed that when you say—yeah, the best athletes are already halfway there by the time you're already there. Yeah. And average guys are like—they kind of—they hesitate. Yeah, you like to say they're not sharp. So if you can build that sharpness into anyone, they're just gonna be a bit of—so yeah, the decision-making. I'll send you an article about it. It's complex, but yeah.
Matt Grainger
There's the shot—bang—it’s the decision-making, like it's called the OODA loop. Yeah, right. Yeah, and so it’s sort of like, yeah, if you live in—if you're trying to think about the future, you're gone. You think in the past, you're gone. You got to be just bang in the moment. Hey, I mean, that's cliche, but it's so true. Like, when you're in big wave surfing or barrel surfing—when you're tube riding—you are so in the moment, hey? Like, it's crazy. Like, you take off on a big bomb out Germans, and then you're connecting the dots—you're connecting like the dots when you're a kid, like with a paper—and you're looking through—okay, I'm gonna go bang, I'm gonna go to the right here so I don't get the lip to the head. Then I'm gonna do my bottom turn, then I'm gonna hit the section where I need a tube to you. Like, come in, you're surfing Greenbush or Macaronis, and you knife it in, and you're like, okay, this one, I've got to actually knife straight in. I can't do a straight down drop—pull straight in—and then you're pumping in the barrel, pumping, and everything's—the time stands still, hey. And you're just so in the moment, and noises are amplified and everything. You're only like a three-second barrel, but it feels like two minutes, and it's just so much stuff going on. Then, you know, it blows out, or you're on the foam ball or whatever, and you're just reacting—bang, bang—and that's where you come out, you know—flow state. And you're just so stoked because you didn't think about anything in the world. The whole world could be blowing up behind you—you’re in the barrel, you don't care. Yeah, it's really awesome. That's why we surf. That's why we do it. It's so addictive, and we have to surf every day to be good on those moments. So you've got to surf—not every day, but I do, luckily—but yeah, train and surf. So on the shit days or the terrible days, and then we’re ready for those good days. You're sharp.
Michael Frampton
Cliche for a reason. Yeah. And I noticed a lot—like, being in California for the past few months, just being—the ocean is so calm there, and you get nice, clean, long-period swell. Yeah. But I've just been longboarding and just cruising. And then I come back here, and there's three swells, and there's refractions off the headland, and I'm surfing LA, and it's pitching and it's drawing. I'm like, man, I've just lost my sharpness. I know.
Matt Grainger
Great, like the East Coast, because the short period too—we're getting short period—and that's what the guys used to struggle with going to Aussie titles. When I was competing, the Aussie titles, the Queensland guys would come down and surf the first few rounds, and a lot of them get smoked because it's so short, sharp. It's like paddle hard on the angle, pop in the top third of the wave, get up in that first section, and then, if you're lucky, get a second turn. Where someone from Snapper's got boom—okay—roundhouse, drop down, vert, barrel, blah. Yeah, so it's like you've come from their long periods. It's so intense, hey. And I think East Coast—and that's heaps of the Aussie surfers from the East Coast—if you look at the personalities, intense. You know, they're saying Brazilians are intense because they're from short, sharp. So there's probably—there's a point there with the person that—with short—if you did a study, they should just study. Like, look at Parko from Snapper—he's real cruisy and has that beautiful style. Then you look at someone East Coast—just Mikey Wright, for example—animal. So there must be something said for period swells. And I teach that in my classes, and the kids look at me at first going, "Has he gone crazy? Matt lost his mind again?" And I'm like, "Okay guys, before we paddle out, just tell me what the period is today—what the period is, where the wind's from, the swell from." Because they just forget that. They just think, "I'm gonna sit on a pallet here and sit on the bank." Right? No. Not good enough. Okay, today it's a short, sharp period. It's a five-second period. There's a wave coming every five seconds, so you can be busy on the bank. You don't have to wait. If you're surfing a heat—especially if you're competing—and if it's priority now, so there's no point in pulling anchor for priority on a short-period swell. So that's where crew will get mixed up sometimes. The priority's come on board, and no one can touch you, and you've got to be on the best wave. But sometimes on short periods, the ones under priority are good. On a big period swell—sit out the back. You're gonna wait for that bomb. You wait for that bomb, because it came every, like, three minutes or five minutes, you know. And the kids look at me like I'm crazy. And I'm like—and you video it—and you go, "You know, the guys that get it, you know, they're busy on a short-period swell and come in and nail it. And the guys that don't are sitting out the back, and everyone underneath them is catching waves, and the kid gets two waves or one wave—comes in spewing." So yeah, it's so—they're so important. Like, we all forget that. I think we all forget—watching the ocean, watching the period, watching the swell. And then paddling, take-offs, everything. All go all the way back to basics—bottom-hand turns—and then everything else will be fine. The top turn's gonna be fine if you've got a good bottom-hand turn. It's gonna be good if you know how to do an air. You know, it's all set up with the bottom turn. Yeah, everyone's gone looking at the top, don't you reckon? Then you listen to good coaches, like, they're all—it’s all back to bottom turn.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I'm just been watching Curren. He's just looking, like, just in front of the nose of his board. Yeah, he's watching the bottom of the wave and just looking for the power zone of the swell. Good. Just—I think you learn, like, the more you start watching the bottom of the wave, it's way better. Yeah, then you start to be able to predict what's happening. Yeah, anyway.
Matt Grainger
So good. And then you can feel it, and you stay low. Then they actually get super low in your crouch, and you're not all up top, up high. You're actually compressed, and you're looking, like, coiling, and you're, like, coiling, coiling, "Okay, now go." Whereas the crew that are going, "I just want to get to the top," they do this really weird turn because they haven't compressed on the bottom turn, they haven't looked, they haven't felt it—exactly like you said. And Curren would go turn by turn. He's not thinking of the ten turns he's going to do. That first turn—beautifully. And then hit that, and then come out of that, "Okay, I feel the section," and then—he, a good surfer like him, does the turn for the section. So if you're doing it turn by turn, you're always doing the best turn for the section. So grommets go out there and go, "I want to do airs," and you go, "There's no air sections today." Yeah, it's fat. It's high tide, and it's a fat wave. It's fat. You're not going to do an air. Okay, Obama. So, you know, you'll say, "Well, let's work on roundhouse cutbacks." Even though they don't score in competition, you've got to have a good roundhouse cutback, so you got to do—so I say to the kids—and, you know, the pros do the turn for the section. You can't manufacture it. You can't. It's gonna look shit anyway. It's gonna look terrible—absolutely terrible—if you try, you know. You're trying an air on a fat section—you know it's not gonna happen. You're just gonna do a flyaway. And Curren was perfect. Like, just surfed turn at J-Bay, and then he walks his feet up and down. You know? Yeah, it's amazing. That's what I think—you look at that old stuff, and it's so timeless. I mean, some of it's relevant—let's say relevant now. I reckon when Curren surfed in that against Occy in that Masters heat in J-Bay, I thought he was probably—he surfed better than anyone that whole event, in my eyes. Like, I might be delusional, but the way he was reading the barrels and the turns—because he wasn't overcooking it. Because a lot of the pros probably thinking in their mind, because they're—you know, they're in—yeah, they've got to surf for points and money, blah. They're surfing to do for that. They're trying to surf for the judges. Whereas Curren was actually surfing for the wave. I mean, that Occy heat—I was like, "My goodness, that's the best surfing I've seen for a long time," because he was drawing the craziest lines, and he's getting barreled when he was supposed to get barreled, and then doing cutbacks when he's supposed to, and then was cool, and then walking up the board—up and back—and, yeah, and still going down sections, where some of the guys in the pro tour, because they'd have to do that big turn in the pocket, they'd lose speed, and actually the wave run off. There's still another hundred meters of wave—two hundred meters—and Curren's still doing it.
Michael Frampton
He's got so much grace.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, that's what surfing is, hey? I think, yeah, if you get grace in anything—all the good athletes have grace, don't they? Like anyone—golf, tennis, surfing—they've got time. Like Parko—they've got that time, you know. He's just got so much time in the world.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, exactly. And you do. I've been—we went to California. I just bought a longboard.
Matt Grainger
Nice. Nah, it's not—it's good for your surfing.
Michael Frampton
Always had this attitude, like, longboard's for old people. It's the best thing for your surfing.
Matt Grainger
Julian Wilson. Yeah, longboard champ.
Michael Frampton
No, I've been meeting a lot of surfers, and then, like, pro shortboarders do a lot of longboarding, and we just don't know.
Michael Frampton
A lot of.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, like, interviewed Beanie the other day, and he's like, yeah, nearly won the longboard—like, the—and Julian Wilson and Steph. Yeah, it's just picking the right board for the conditions is something I've been learning more and more about.
Matt Grainger
Title. Yeah, he was bummed because he didn't win the world title. He was that close. Yeah, Gilmore. Yeah, yeah, huge. Like, I was listening to a podcast by—and Dave Parmenter was on it—and I heard, is it a Beach Grit one or Surf Splendor? Yeah, it's good. I love that one. And he was really—I really like what he said, because everyone narrow-minded on shortboards is just gonna get angrier and angrier because we're all gonna—we all want to surf the same wave. We want a sucky, nice, like North Narrabeen setup or, you know, Whale Beach wedge, you know, on these coasts around here. But that's the only—that's the only waves we want to surf. But the longboarder could be down the beach on a fat right, or you go to Collaroy, or—yeah. And then foiling—like, people hate foiling. I almost KO'd myself the other day trying it. And that spreads out. People are gonna surf waves that you don't want to surf. And then sup—you know, sups hate it as well—but we're spreading everyone out. You know, if we all have this mental—like, if we all had this mentality, "We've got to surf a six-foot shortboard by 19 and two and a quarter," it's great, but we're all gonna go crazy. Like, who cares? I've got finless boards. I love finless boards. I've ridden sup boards. Started foiling. Yeah, put six staples in my head at the moment from that.
Michael Frampton
Having the time of the life. Having a ball.
Matt Grainger
I've done tow-in surfing. It's all—it takes the competition out of it. I think that's where surfing gets—we get ourselves wrong. I remember talking to a skateboarder, and skateboarders, they take turns on the ramp. They take a turn, and then they, "Yeah, that was sick," whereas surfers—you get one, if you're greedy, and then you go—if the greedy guy will go and snake the other guy and piss him off, and then there's, like, anger out there. But if you're foiling with someone—yeah, they're on a foil—you're like, "Yeah, it's mental, bro." Like, you're just going along this swell. Then you're on a sup out, you know, somewhere that's fat, and you're, like, having fun with your mate. Or you're on a longboard learning how to switch foot. Or—yeah, I think that's where we've got it so much wrong in our heads.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I think people—it’s different in California because everyone's on—almost everyone's on alternative stuff. Yeah, everyone's on big fishes and eggs and longboards and, you know, fat shortboards. And, yeah, they're onto it. The waves they've got over there do kind of demand that. And.
Matt Grainger
Christensen's got—like, he's got those crazy—he's got some sick boards, hey. Like those twinnies and singles, and then there's bonzers, and that's, like, my—like here, I've got all these boards, these old boards. All my boards—I've got about 30 retro boards—they're all riders. They're not for show. Now, I've got them up there because they look good, but I've still got my riders. So every time I bought a second—like a secondhand retro—it was a rider. Had to be for my weight. You know, I'm 78 kilos. I wanted a 6'0" twinny MR. I didn't want a—you know, I wanted a good one. I was like—I look at it, feel it—like, it's not going on the wall. I'm surfing it. You know, so fun. And you put that feeling into the shaper. The shaper's thought of what that board was like. Now everything's so vanilla, like it's, like, the same, like, in shortboard realm, you know. But there's cool stuff coming out. Like, yeah, there are—like, if you're just thinking about—I'm just talking about if you're just thinking about shortboard realm, like we said before, standard 6'8" by 19, 2¼. But I don't want to be on that. It's way better—like, for instance, I went foiling the other day just because I got one, and I surfed off the reef, so long away from my own, because I—that's another thing I want to come back to. If you're gonna ride SUPs or foils, you shouldn't go where the people are. You need to go on your own. I think that's a given. Like, don’t go out—someone’s having a really good surf—don’t go out in this weird equipment and just wreck someone's surf. You know? Don’t do that. You’ll get—you’ll get killed. One day—I was actually—we'll go back—we'll come back to that. But one day, I was surfing off Narrabeen, and it was terrible, and I got a lot of mates from North Narrabeen, and two guys paddled off at Longy, like, just on SUPs, and they're coming into the lagoon. Just—they weren't even gonna surf. And two guys ran down there and punched their fins out, said, "No SUPs here." And I was like, "I know him. He's not—he's actually not surfing. He's just gonna just take it to the back to the bloody lagoon, to his car." And they’re like, "Okay, fine." But that’s—I reckon that’s cool. At North Narrabeen, like, you know what you're getting. Like, I love that. Like, I know there's all gonna be shortboards there. It’s a shortboarding wave. It’s sucky. It’s perfect. Left and right. And if a SUP comes out there, it's gonna wreck the whole dynamic. A mal comes out there—they have anti-mal zone as well. Okay, sick. So when I surf Northie, I know that it’s on a shortboard. I've never ridden any other equipment out there. I haven't ridden a finless, actually, but that was only a six—you know, a 5'10" or whatever. But I love that about Northie, because you know what you're getting. It’s like you’re going to the grocery store, and you go to Woolies, and then that’s what you’re getting. That’s all you’re getting. And there’s not some guy sitting 50 meters out and just cooking you. And that’s good—how the boys just go, "Nah, get out." If you go there on your shortboard—have a ball. And I see you out there the whole time. And like today at Longy, we’re surfing this sick shortie, and a SUP guy came out—top, really nice guy too—and then he’s doing the old—taking off 50 meters out, or 100, and on it, because he’s coming from all the way, and then he made it through the pack, and then he got a few people telling him to beat it. And then after that, the poor guy had to paddle down and surf a sub-zero wave, which he should have gone to at the start. But, I mean, there's—like you said—like, there's so many cool boards out there, and we just got to be mindful of other people. Like, Tom Carroll and I used to go—we still—you know, he’d ring me up, "We got German Banks, southwesters, like 8 to 10 foot, it’s crazy, some days 12 foot." And I was like, "Tommy, why don’t we just go out prone paddling?" He’s like, "No, because that’s too easy. This is good." And we’re going over the falls, getting smashed, doing airdrops in the southwester. He’s like, "No, we’ve got to challenge ourselves." And I was like, you know, we paddle up at S-Rock, Butterbox, I want to paddle out there. And he goes, "No, I’m going through the middle." I’m like, "No, Tommy, no." He’s like, "No." I said, "Mate, I know where to paddle out." He goes, "I know, but we’re going straight through." And if any of the listeners—it’s like a closeout, and it’s 8 to 10 foot closeout sandbar. So that’s TC. He’s like, "Yeah, okay, listen to TC," because he’s my hero.
Michael Frampton
If the waves are pumping, that’s where I want to be.
I dare you to take a SUP out at North Narrabeen.
What big wave equipment are you riding now? Are you on Christensen now?
Matt Grainger
Yeah, I went on the Christensens because I ride for Channel Islands, and they’re affiliated with Christensen. But it wasn’t just because of that. Hedgy had a six foot—I mean, a nine foot—Christensen, and he was just tearing on it. I was just like, wow, there's some magic in that board. And the other boards I’ve had too—like, the Webster is insane. Like, the Webster I’ve had—I’ve caught some of the best bombs ever on that thing. That thing’s a Black Hula. I think you had one? Yeah, the 10'2". And I was riding a Sulacus before that, a 9'4". So 9'4" Sulacus, that was amazing. And we just—Mike and I did that on our own together. That was before paddling got big around Sydney. I was paddling on my own a lot on the 9'4". That went amazing—great board—still got it. Then just the 10'2" is just like almost cheating, but it’s that good. When you’re next to your mates, and you go on a party wave, and I’m going past them, and I’m already up standing—you know, it’s sometimes 15 foot—so you just want to make the wave. You make the drop, and you run back to the tail. That thing turns on a dime. Then I got to ride Hedgy’s nine foot Christensen. That was amazing. And you can ride that thing in, like, two foot too. You can go out and ride it at two foot and have a good fitness session. So I’ll go out sometimes on my Christensen or Hedgy’s and have a 5'9" on the beach, and my Fever—like, have a 5'9" Fever Channel Islands. So go out on the 10'0" or the 9'0", get like 10 waves and come in, and then it’s almost like weight training. Then you jump on your shortboard and just lips in—just go bang. So it’s almost like doing a leg press, but perfect, like with functional training. So I found that really cool, because, like, I don’t want to go out blind when it’s big and drop into a bomb and I don’t like the board. So sometimes I’ll—if I always do now—if I get a gun, I’ll just surf it. I’ll probably do about 20 hours on it before I go out on the big days, just to feel it. You get that subtle ease of where your chest is, where to paddle, where to spin. There’s so much to it. There is, yeah. So much—that first spin, when that—you know, you sit up on the tail, and you—and then you put the chest down, you start paddling, and you get that full-on, like, glide. When to back off, when to keep going, and then jumping up. And then am I too forward or am I too back? And then I’ve got to turn. Now I’m on a 10'0" or a 9'0"—I’ve got to run back to the tail and get that foot on the sweet spot. Yeah, so that’s the equipment I’m riding. And Hedgy and I had a crazy session last year. We surfed a bommie that they’d been towing, but never paddled—off the South Coast. There was a 2k paddle out to sea, probably 4k’s off the shore. So we actually jumped off a headland. Hedgy had been watching it for a while. We paddled out, and there’s heaps of great whites out there. We didn’t talk about that—we just went. And I was, like, paddling out next to Hedgy. Sun was coming up. That’s what Hedgy’s so cool about. I’m trying to keep up, and my shoulders are burning, and he’s just, like, flying away. Just like, Hedgy—that’s what it’s like. I come back to paddling. He’s an amazing paddler. I’m trying as hard as I can—I’m a good paddler—and he’s, like, so far ahead. Anyway, we get there, and he’s all about gratitude. Hedgy’s really cool. And the sun’s coming up—we’re like 4k’s off the beach, but about 2k’s off the headland—and he jumps off his board, we have a hug, and like, "How good is this? Let’s go." And it was perfect. It was like, probably 12 foot. It’s a-frame. He’s on his 9'0", I’m on a 10'0". So I’m 10 years older than him. He forgets that. He’s like, "You’re almost 50, man." I’m like, "Yeah, yeah, so I think you’re my age." But anyway—not that I care about—I couldn’t give a crap about how old I am. And yeah, Hedgy was ripping, man. Like, just surfing so smooth on his Christensen—just lightly drops down and tucking the back knee in, coming up and just hitting it and sometimes getting barreled. But the good and the bad was there was only two of us out. I mean, I love charging, I love getting destroyed, as I said before, but you’ve never surfed this joint in your life. And, like, the first one came, like—this thing came. The first—we got out there, this big rogue—we had to bail and dive under. Lucky it wasn’t a second one. We got up, and anyway, Hedgy gets a wave, then comes back out, and one comes to me. It’s like a bomb, and he’s just like, "Go, Matty!" And you have to go. And lucky I made it. I was just like—and then, like, sometimes I pull back, like, in the session, and he’s like, "You would’ve made that easy." Well, it’s pretty lucky having those guys around. Yeah, TC—like, they just push you. Like, I was always the pusher, but always the—always every session you have the guy screaming and going as hard as possible. And now I’m a little older—I’m not going soft—but, like, his skill level’s higher, and he’s fitter and younger, and it’s, like, good. It’s good. I’m not—it’s crazy. And he goes, "Sorry for yelling at you for the last three hours." I’m like, "Man, but that’s so good. I love it." That’s like, you know—if Hedgy says go, and TC, man—Tom Carroll—and Nick Carroll—amazing. So good. Like, they’re so technical too. Yeah, like, I always thought, you know, Tom was this fitness guy on the world tour. You know, he won all the world titles. Thought he was just full fitness. But his mind’s amazing, hey. How he looks—I mean, you’ve interviewed him as well—about his boards and his, you know, his diet and his mind. And man, I’ve seen him do some craziest drops. Like, when his knee was stuffed at Germans—just airdrop—and he doesn’t have any cartilage in his knee. And he’s just had a knee replacement. But before that, he’s airdropping a 12-footer and just making it and does this beautiful bottom turn. He’s level. His rotator cuff—he just had a rotator cuff surgery—surfing off Narrabeen before it. He’s—
Michael Frampton
Gotta push, yeah. It's what you need. It's—had next level. Next—really, that was the day of his surgery, wasn't it? Yeah, so I came—he's like, "I'll get a couple in before I go into the surgery." Yeah, no, I ended up surfing LA, I think.
Matt Grainger
The Northie that day with us? That was crazy. He was ripping, like—the best lines. He’s doing the best lines, like surfing that good and catching heaps of waves. And I go, "Don’t you have your rotator cuff, like, torn—like six centimeters?" And he's like, "Yeah, but I don't think about it." Yeah, next level.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, it's crazy. How did your Macaronis trip go?
Matt Grainger
Yeah, good. I had two last year. Got one coming up in May, and that's just—the place is amazing because it's just the perfect speed. So if you're going to coach people or to surf with people, it's got the perfect speed. So if it’s barreling, you take off and knife it and go straight in the barrel, and then you come out of there, and there's, like, another five turns and sometimes another barrel. But the best thing is—it doesn't—like G-Land—I love G-Land too, but G-Land just runs. G-Land, you might take off and you might not even do a turn for about 300 meters, which is fine—you just wall it. You just, yeah, running like J-Bay, just like on your forehand. Like, I’m goofy, and then you might get a barrel, then a couple of turns, boom, then again. Whereas Maccas—you just fit so much into a tight space. So if you want to train someone, it's a perfect spot. It's kind of, sort of—yeah, a bit like Trestles' pace. Be like Trestles but more amped up—like more solid Trestles. Yeah, solid—like angry Trestles, if Trestles was top to bottom. Yeah. So you can fit—if you're training someone or just—or you want to be good for yourself, like training people—so you can get a tube, and as you come out of the tube, you can do, like, that little drop down where you come down, backhand or forehand, and really set your bottom turn up. And then you go up, hit the lip, come down, come off the bottom again, look back up, same lip’s there, you know what—back up there again, down, back up again. So if you want to work on vertical surfing, it’s just like bang—it’s perfect. And then if—the air guys—they'll might—they’ll waste sections to do the airs. So it’s just like almost like a wave pool. Like, it’s almost like—if you wanted to build a wave pool, it's a perfect wave. And you've got Greenbush around the corner when it turns on—when it gets real south of direction. But Maccas is good because forehand and backhand—everyone’s happy. Like, backhand guys get more turns than the frontside, because in your backhand, you can fit all that turn straight in the pocket, because you're not—like when you're frontside, yeah, sometimes you overthink it. You're looking, because your vision is so good—what you’re talking about, vision—you’re looking and you’re actually going—reacting too slowly, probably, because you can see so much. Whereas backhand, you can’t see so much, so you go. If you're a good surfer, they go bang after the barrel section. Like, a backhand guy might do six turns. The frontside might do three, because it’s so tight. You saw that at Snapper. See that Snapper—the last comp there? That’s why the back—the goofies—when it’s not—how's ridiculous—Owens and Medina, Wilko—if Snapper stayed at that small-range swell, those—the goofies would have won it, you know, unless if those—if Filipe kept going. But at Kirra, like, it was easy to read on your frontside because there’s no slabs. But Ace did really well. So yeah, so what I do—I actually do kind of—I’m already there, so a bit more relaxed. I’ll be out there, I’ll tell everyone what time I’m surfing. There’s already filmers there, so that’s sick. So I can be a grub and just surf. The best thing—and then we break it down—the footage in the water and after at night. Everyone’s wave is filmed if they can, but they have two filmers there. Maccas has two filmers. It’s unreal. So—because filmers just get—it’d be the worst job in the world. Like, you're looking at waves—pumping—so they have two now, which is good, because you get so burnt out. And I always go there because there's filmers so I can surf with the people. So I can tell them where to sit, tell them which wave to go, what turn to do. If I've caught the wave before, I’ll be paddling out, I’ll see them on that wave, and I can have a little chat on the way out. And I’ll be like—it’s not like—that’s what’s so cool. You got all day. It’s not like when I’ve got clinics here, I might have three hours, two hours, one hour—I’ve got to throw that in. I’ve got eight hours or sometimes twelve hours, you know. So you can really pinpoint what’s going wrong or what’s going right with their surfing. And it’s not like a hardcore thing. We can just go, "Hey, you know that set—remember that last wave you just got? Do you remember where your hand was there when you’d come off the bottom?" "No." "This is the wrong side of your body. Like, I think next wave—why don’t you just try and put it—you're a natural footer, right? So why don’t you put it on this side, on the inside rail, and just feel and touch the water on every bottom turn. Just touch water." So you can really—like—it’s coming back to you. You're not trying to change someone in a day. Because you’ve got so much time in seven to ten days, you can get massive results—like, massive results—because the wave is—high tide and low tide, it’ll be great on both those tides. Whereas Greenbush is not good—only good at high—and there’s HT’s—it’s only good at, you know, mid to high. Heaps of waves in Indo aren’t really good at tides. So this wave—you can surf it at one foot, and if it’s a ten foot swell, it becomes like Chopes. And there’s Mini Maccas as well, and there’s The Right. So you got that, and then you got Rags Right, Roxies, Thunders—so we go to other spots as well. But Maccas in general—like, I’ve been there when I took my son Taz when he was 12, and he just—it was crazy. He improved daily. I’ve never seen—like, I’ve taken crew and they improve daily. Like, "Put your hand here, look there, bang." You know? And then go up there, do it—your next tip, where—you can’t do—like—it’s like Kelly’s wave pool. Like—and it can be onshore and offshore, high tide, low tide, one foot, ten foot. And we went there one time and it was like—the owner—which is—I’m good friends with Mark Loneran—and he’s like, "No, you can’t, Matt. I don’t want you to come. I’ve been there that many times." He goes, "It’s technically flat." I said, "It doesn’t matter. I’m coming." And the best thing was—there’s no one around. It was me and Taz, my son—you met Taz. It’s me, Taz, and the chef. And it was, like, two foot. And it was weird—every half an hour a good three foot would come through, and it’d be so glassy. It was crazy. And it was just three of us out, just having so much fun, like, in February. And, like, it’s not the season. Yeah. So it’s so important. That’s just that rep—like muscle. I mean, you’ve been training your whole life, and you’re doing all your new stuff—muscle memory and feeling’s huge. Like—and excited people have that feel. And they go, "Yeah, I’ll put my hand here, I’ll look there, rail feels like this." Yeah. I think heaps of coaching went a bit weird at one stage. Everyone was taught to put their—rotate the upper body, which is great, but they’re forgetting about the feet. So everything’s about the feet. So if you’re—I mean, you’re riding longboards right now. And so if you come off the bottom, and you just put a little tilt on—if you’re going right, you’re a natural footer—you’re gonna put, like, pressure on your back foot and then a slight pressure on your front foot. So more pressure on the back than the front. And just come off the bottom and not even use your hands—you’re gonna turn. And then come off the top, and then you’re gonna use, you know, your heels, coming back, looking through the turn. So—more important—looking through the turn, I think. But I think where surfing went a bit crazy with coaching and sort of lost in translation—they would—everyone would just throw the arms for the arms. So you probably see heaps of people out in the water—they just got these terrible styles. So they’ve been overcoached. So they’re coming through their turn, the top turn, the butt—and then they just chuck their body, and it looks horrible. So I’ll say to people who’ve done that, I say, "Hey, I don’t—I just want you to put your hands by your side for a while and just slow it all down. Like, go ride a single fin. Ride a longboard, and your style is gonna get way better." And that’s why we’re talking about, like, Julian’s got a great style. And John came on board and he wasn’t part of that—people going, "We don’t like John. Don’t surf him," because he doesn’t rotate his upper body. His hands aren’t high. And, like, he—he’s not this wide wingspan, like eagle. Yeah. It was just here. But it’s the hips, not the arms. So a lot of these coaches getting it wrong—just chucking the arms. So all you see—these kids out there just chaining on—no feet first. Like, the posterior chain, you know—like, go feet, calves, hammies, quads, glutes, core, then upper body. So—whereas these guys are going—and girls are going—full upper body rotation, but before they’ve initiated the heel or the toe. And then you got to coach that out of them, you know. So that’s where the longboarding comes in, or single fins. Adam Robinson’s a really cool guy from Surfing Victoria. He did a program with his guys and girls—top crew—and they had to start off, like, on a—it’ll probably correct me anyway—but start off with a seven-footer. So say you’re a 15-year-old kid—start off with a seven-footer. This could be a single fin or twinny or a single fin or thruster. So seven—he does, like, over seven weeks. Start off on a seven, you ride that for a week. Then you drop down to a 6'8", then a 6'4", bang—down to your normal board. And heaps of these guys and girls got great styles. Just—there you go. You probably got off that. Yeah.
Michael Frampton
Because it's so fast and—like the pace of Trestles. Owens. What's the premise of the Macaronis trip? Like, it's a coaching trip, yeah? What does the day look like? Do it—20 waves and then next tip, yeah? You can't beat repetition and feeling. Does—but it's so subtle. Like this instead of that.
Michael Frampton
Yeah.
Michael Frampton
Like that—so North Shore, yeah—the movie. He started on a finless log, like old Hawaiian—like old school, yeah—Hawaiian origins, and worked his way through the progression of board shaping.
Matt Grainger
Yeah, because heaps of crew over-surf. And I remember my brother—one day I was out at Longy and he was just coaching himself, because my brother's like—he's won Australian titles—and he was just coaching himself. And it was weird—I was surfing with him, and he’s put his arms by his side and he's doing, like, these proper turns. I said, "What are you doing?" He goes, "I'm going back to basics. I'm just trying to smooth out my style." Yeah, that's pretty cool. He's, like, coaching himself. He's a really good coach, and like, he's really—he's another competitor too. But yeah, he still rips, my brother. But yeah, it was really cool to watch him because he wasn’t doing that—he was just doing this. And John—he was just doing this. And then that helps his rotation, his airs, because he’s got less swing. So when he's out here like an eagle—if you spread out wide with his hands—he can't rotate as fast. But if you put it in close to your—and then Andy King got onto that, and so did Julian. They started doing stuff at the HPC, doing these crazy off the pipe—off pipe into the airbags so they could spin fast. So they watched snowboarders. Yeah, so if you put your hands close, you've got less—
Michael Frampton
Resistance. I remember—you do it on a chair. Like, you put your arms out—yeah, you bring your arms—yeah, like ice skaters. They start out like this and they bring their arms in—they close up and they end up going so—
Matt Grainger
Fast. I know! That's so cool, hey? So we can just learn off every sport. Yeah, I mean, it’s so cool—the podcast—what you're doing. And then I listen to a lot of others, and you look—listen to other coaches as well, you know. And those are pretty cool. One of the podcasts—I think it was Surf Splendor as well—because that's why the Brazilian Storm came through. Because they've got information now. They never had it. From—like, Aussies had Aussies ripping around them. Americans had Americans ripping around them. Like, in the—you go to your local break. So now a guy or a girl can be in Brazil or anywhere in the world—it doesn't matter where they're from—they can Google Dane Reynolds and copy Dane Reynolds. And then they can get a shaper to copy a Lost board or whatever, or get a Lost board, or get a Channel Islands or a DHD. And so that guy or girl—it’s just accelerated their learning so fast just by watching stuff. Whereas we had to—you know, I’ve got some of that—there you go. And that—you got that VCR? Yeah, you got the VHS stuff. I miss—I watched Occy. I said, "What? Occy." Just Occy. I'm like a short, stubby goofy footer like him. I just studied him. And then someone filmed me and I’d just—I’d look at Occy and then I’d try to compare myself to Occy. What would Occy do there? What would he do—his layback—what would he do in that section? So I’d self-coach—basically self-coach myself for years. But I was having a ball, you know. And now they can get it like that. Like, they can check out, you know, who’s the best air guy, who’s the best rail guy, who’s the best all-around. The world—I surfed—I was surfing at Macaronis with Dane Reynolds and I was talking about his blowtails. I said, "What’s the go with that blowtail you’re doing? That’s crazy." And he goes, "Yeah, I studied this guy—two doors—you know, he lives, like, two kilometers from my house. I look at his clips." I said, "What? You do? You're, like, one of the best guys in the world." He goes, "Yeah, but he's got the best blowtail. So I look at him. Then I look at the best air guy—I’ll study him. I’ll break down every skill of all the best guys in the world, and then I’ll copy it." Yeah. "And I’ll make it my own." So—
Michael Frampton
We’re each other. Yeah. And—sick. On that note, bro, thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. We’ll do it again sometime.
Matt Grainger
Thanks, brother. Thanks for having me. A lot of rambling, but that’s what it’s about. Awesome. Gotta be entertaining. Yeah, thank you. Love what you're doing. It’s awesome. Sweet.
Michael Frampton
Thanks for tuning in.
Michael Frampton
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.
30 Matt Grainger + Balter = Inspiring & Educational surf stories
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