018: RU HILL - Surf Coach and Founder of 'Surf Simply'

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Show Notes for The Surf Mastery Podcast: Unlocking Surfing Mastery and Flow States with Ru Hill

Have you ever wondered how to master surfing while overcoming plateaus and fear, or how to turn every wave into an opportunity for flow and progression?

Surfing can feel elusive—many surfers plateau or rely on ambiguous advice like "feel the rhythm of the wave." In this episode, Ru Hill, founder of Surf Simply, breaks down the art and science of surfing mastery, offering actionable insights for surfers of all levels. Discover why breaking skills into clear, technical steps is the key to elevating your performance and finding flow on the waves.

1. Learn how to overcome fear and intimidation in the critical parts of the wave with proven drills and mental techniques.

2. Discover the importance of breaking down surfing into achievable, technical steps—like bottom turns to 12 o’clock and surfing to the targets—for sustained progression.

3. Find out how intentional practice, video coaching, and the right mindset can help you unlock new levels of enjoyment and mastery in your surfing.

Listen now to discover Ru Hill’s groundbreaking approach to improving your surfing, no matter your level or experience.

Ru Hill is originally from the U.K. where he worked teaching both conventional, entry-level surf lessons and also video coaching with young competitors. Ru’s vision was to create a scientifically informed coaching methodology which bridges the gap between the two extremes of beginner and competitor. In 2007 Ru moved to Nosara in Costa Rica, where he set up Surf Simply out of the back of his car. Ten years on Surf Simply has become a high-end coaching resort which books out a year in advance. As well as running the resort, Ru is now a keen water photographer and co-hosts the Surf Simply podcast with Surf Simply's coaching director, Harry Knight.

Ru is a very experienced surf coach and has a unique way of breaking things down. In this interview, Ru gives out plenty of original advice as well as a new perspective on some classic surf coaching tips. Great tips on; how to overcome fear, how to surf more critically, what 'flow' is, plus loads more, enjoy.

Notable Quote:

• "Surfing mastery isn’t about vague feelings—it’s about breaking things down, practicing with intention, and understanding the mechanics. That’s where the magic happens."

• "The better you get at surfing, the more fun it is."

• "Don’t be precious with your waves—progress comes from experimenting, failing, and learning."

• "Surfing is a sport, and if you approach it like one, you’ll improve faster—and that’s where the fun is."

• "Mastery in surfing emerges when you focus on the small details, not just the big picture."

Show Notes:

http://surfsimply.com/
http://surfsimply.com/podcast/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8bEqBo6HUYBETZZS2AsMlg

Key Points

• Ru explained how he got into surf coaching and developed a scientific approach to teaching surfing.

• Ru discussed his methodology of teaching functional stances and board control before standing up, rather than focusing solely on standing up.

• Ru emphasized the importance of not being precious with waves and practicing specific techniques repeatedly to improve.

• Ru explained the concept of 'surfing to the targets' and bottom turning to 12 o'clock to maximize speed and flow.

• Ru highlighted the importance of using specific language and avoiding ambiguous advice like 'feel the rhythm of the wave.'

• Ru discussed the different levels of surf coaching, from entry-level to competitive, and the gap in coaching for intermediate surfers.

• Ru shared his approach to helping surfers overcome fear and intimidation in the ocean through understanding wave mechanics and decision-making.

• Ru talked about the types of surfers who benefit most from Surf Simply's coaching, ranging from intermediate to advanced but not elite competitive surfers.

Outline

Ru Hill's Background and Surf Simply's Evolution

• Ru Hill is an experienced surf coach originally from the UK who started surfing at age 15-16 in Cornwall.

• They began coaching at 18-19 to fund their surfing trips, eventually moving to Nosara, Costa Rica, in 2007.

• Initially operating out of their car, Ru established Surf Simply, which evolved into a high-end coaching resort requiring bookings a year in advance.

• Their approach to surf coaching is scientifically informed, bridging the gap between beginner lessons and competitive surfing.

• Co-hosting the Surf Simply podcast, Ru has developed a comprehensive coaching methodology based on years of experience and data-driven analysis.

Coaching Philosophy and Methodology

• Ru questions traditional teaching methods and uses data-driven techniques to determine effective coaching strategies.

• They conducted extensive A/B testing during their early coaching years, teaching large numbers of students to gather data on what works best.

• Ru identified a gap in the surfing industry between entry-level lessons and elite competitive coaching, inspiring the creation of Surf Simply.

• They focus on teaching the mechanics of surfing rather than just standing up, introducing concepts like 'invisible buttons' on the board to control movement.

• Ru emphasizes a 'functional stance' that allows surfers to quickly and powerfully control their boards, rather than just maintaining stability.

Key Concepts in Coaching Methodology

• Ru teaches surfers to aim for specific points on the wave rather than just riding down the line, known as surfing to targets.

• They encourage surfers to make more vertical turns with the concept of 12 o'clock bottom turns to improve performance.

• Ru explains the difference between carving and trimming turning techniques and how they affect wave riding.

• They introduce head snaps as a technique for generating torque in turns, though this is not considered foundational to overall surfing ability.

• Ru describes rhythm and flow as emergent properties of good surfing technique rather than skills to be directly taught.

Addressing Fear in Surfing

• Ru emphasizes understanding wave mechanics through underwater observation and breath-hold training.

• They teach various safety techniques and decision-making processes for different ocean situations.

• Ru stresses the importance of general fitness and preparation before intensive surf coaching.

Unique Coaching Experience at Surf Simply

• Ru hosts 12 guests per week with a team of 9 coaches, allowing for personalized instruction.

• The coaching program includes video analysis, in-water instruction, and classRum sessions.

• Surf Simply caters to a wide range of surfers, from beginners to advanced shortboarders.

• Ru emphasizes the importance of physical fitness and preparation before attending the resort.

• They note that the average age of guests is 37, with many being professionals from tech industries seeking to improve their surfing.

Thoughts on Surfing and Coaching

• Ru believes in demystifying surfing instruction by using clear, specific language rather than ambiguous advice.

• They advocate for a balanced approach to surfing, combining technical training with enjoyment of the sport.

• Ru discusses the '80-20 principle' in skill development, noting that significant improvement can be achieved with moderate effort.

• They emphasize the importance of continuous learning and improvement in surfing, regardless of age or experience level.

• Ru's favorite surfboard is a 5'8" Roundnose Fish by Lost.

• Their favorite surf videos are 'South to Sian' and 'View from a Blue Moon.'

• Ru's favorite surfer is John John Florence.

• They prefer music by Aphex Twin (electronic music).

Transcription

 The better you get at surfing, the more fun it is. I'm really excited to teach surfing. 

Welcome to the Surf Mastery Podcast. We interview the world's best surfers and the people behind them to provide you with education and inspiration to surf better.

Michael Frampton
Welcome back to the show. Thanks for tuning in. A little bit of housekeeping before we get to the interview. Firstly, I've had a lot of listener emails. Big thanks for the emails, guys. It really does help when you send in an email just saying you enjoy the show. That is awesome. It really does help me keep motivated to get these things out, knowing that there's people out there that are listening and appreciating. Having said that, I'm not gonna read any of them out on air. That's not really what the show is about. I want this to be more of an educational resource that's going to be timeless.
So please keep them coming in, because I do appreciate them, but I probably won't reply and I probably won't read them out online, but they are appreciated. Some of the emails have been in regards to the show notes, asking where they are. Now, the show notes are at surfmastery.com forward slash podcast, and then you can just go to the particular show you're interested in and you'll see them there.
Okay, into it. Today's guest is Ru Hill. Ru is originally from the UK, where he grew up surfing and then became a surf coach. He's done your conventional entry-level surf lessons, as well as video coaching for competitors. Ru's vision was to create a scientifically informed coaching methodology that bridges the gap between the two extremes—the beginner and the competitor. And in 2007, Ru moved to Nosara in Costa Rica, where he set up Surf Simply out of the back of his car.
Ten years later, Surf Simply is a high-end coaching resort, which needs to be booked a year in advance. As well as running the resort, Ru is a co-host on the Surf Simply Podcast on iTunes and from their website. I urge you guys, check that out.
My audio on this interview was not great, so I've done the best I can with making it sound less harsh, but please just bear with my audio. Ru's audio is perfect, it's nice and clear. And that's what it's about. It's about the guest, not myself.
So please just bear with that. And this was an awesome interview. I got a lot out of this. Ru is a very experienced surfing coach who's worked with a very broad range of clients. And he's got a very logical, scientific sort of way of looking at surfing coaching, which I love. I love, as a coach myself, I love that—really breaking things down.
And anyway, without further ado, enjoy. Tell us how you got into surfing, Ru.

Ru Hill
So yeah, I came to it pretty late in life compared to a lot of the people that I'm sure you're working with as competitive surfers. I didn't start surfing until I was 15 or 16. I grew up in Bristol and used to spend my summers down at the beach in Cornwall, where the main swell hits the UK. That's sort of the most consistent spot. And yeah, I finished school and I actually went to art college. And I decided that I was gonna take a year out and just move down to Cornwall and surf.
And then I did that for a summer. And I thought, I'm gonna go off and do a winter in Indo. That looks pretty fun.
So I did that and then I came back and I thought, I'm just scratching the surface here. I really need to get into it.
So I carried on doing that for a few years and I got into surf coaching when I was about 18 or 19 as a way of just funding my Indo trips and everything. I guess my whole career kind of like just blossomed from there, really.

Michael Frampton
And what got you into surfing coaching?

Ru Hill
As I say, originally it was just a way of kind of funding my trips. And it's kind of bizarre, actually. I sort of—so this is slightly tangential—but I grew up in a very religious household. And as any of your listeners that have grown up in a similar environment probably do as well, you sort of get into the habit of like picking holes in things and seeing how robust ideas really are when you put them under scrutiny.
And so when I came to surfing coaching and I was just doing the standard entry-level kind of lessons, I was kind of like, I wonder how solid these ways of teaching are. Like I wonder how much real thought has gone into it. Like I wonder if there's good data behind these kind of ideas that are being taught as if they're fact.
So I sort of started pulling at all the threads a little bit and I was really lucky because this was back in the '90s in the UK, and this doesn't happen anymore. But at the time, the surfing school I was working at had a monopoly on what was a very popular beach. And so when I arrived at the surfing school, there were 30 or 40 people a day and I think there were three instructors. And by the time I left nearly 10 years later, on a busy day there’d be 600 people coming through the surfing school and there were 20 or 25 coaches.
And I would get down to the water’s edge in the morning with my lunch on my back and I would do a lesson of 10 or 12 people. And then I would stay down there when they walked up and the next 10 or 12 people would come down. And it was really like a machine—very different to what I do now. But it was actually a fantastic opportunity because it meant I could do A/B testing. I could just say, okay, I'm gonna teach 50 or 100 people to put their hand here and I'm gonna teach 50 people to put their hand here, and I can start actually gathering data on what works and what doesn’t work.
And of course, there are so many uncontrollable variables in trying to do something like that—what the ocean’s like, what the fitness of the people you're teaching is like—that you just have to have these huge numbers to just compensate for all the noise that's going to be there in the data.
And by doing that, I started to kind of tease out what was working and what wasn’t working. And I guess the other thing that really kind of hit me during that time was I was doing some kids club coaching as well with some more experienced surfers who were riding shortboards and turning off the top. And I spent a bit of time helping coach the British junior team as well.
And it suddenly became really obvious to me that as I watched friends of mine who were surfing coaches, and I watched their careers evolve, they all wanted to go off and work with competitive surfing at the highest level they could. And it became really obvious that there were just these two very different industries. There’s this niche of performance surfing coaching for competitors and elite-level surfers.
And then there's this kind of entry-level surf school, surf lessons, how-to-stand-up-on-a-board type stuff, which I'm sure everyone's very familiar with. And actually, 99% of surfing falls in between those two extremes. And there's really nothing out there for them. And that was really where the idea for Surf Simply came from.

Michael Frampton
Did you receive surf coaching yourself? I mean, how did you progress your own surfing?

Ru Hill
Well, I was fortunate enough to work with some—to spend a lot of long winters in Indo with some really talented surfing. And they would do the sort of the giving of tips rather than the structured kind of formalized roadmap that we sort of work with now. And you know who else was a really big influence actually? Martin Dunn, who I think you've interviewed on the show. He was one of the only people around at the time that was sort of publicly making available some of his approach to surfing—to surf coaching, sorry. And so I sort of looked at what he was doing and I thought, you know, okay, that’s all like shortboarders surfing with more speed and power and flow.
And then, you know, I've got these people that I'm working with who've sort of just learned to stand up and catch unbroken waves. And like, how do we get these people from catching an unbroken wave and trimming down the line to the point where they're even ready to start thinking about, you know, compression through their bottom turn and getting really vertical to 12 o'clock rather than, you know, 11 o'clock or whatever?
You know, that big kind of disconnect gap. So yeah, I mean, I kind of approached it by just saying, all right, well, let's try and be a bit scientific about it.
So we'll take an idea, you know, a hypothesis, like for example, let's have the leading hand outside the heel rail rather than pointing towards the nose of the board, which is the way the sort of the conventional entry-level surfing lesson is done. You know, and then you kind of look at, well, you know, how plausible is the mechanism?
So you have this basic idea in science, which I really like, because I think it applies to life really well. So someone has an idea and if it’s a really plausible idea, you don’t need very much evidence to tell you that it’s probably right. And if the idea is really implausible, then you need, you know, a huge amount of evidence to tell you that it’s right. There’s this old saying by Carl Sagan, you know, the guy who used to run NASA: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So I kind of like took that and like plugged it into surfing. Yeah, and just kind of rethought about how—and about how it could be approached. The first thing that was, I guess, a big shift is we stopped teaching people to stand up as the main goal.
So the first thing that we did was just to try and approach it differently right from the get-go. So rather than teaching people to stand up, which is what everyone wants to do when they first come to surfing because it’s this binary, very obvious thing that every lay person can see—you’re either failing or succeeding to do—we sort of got people to understand that surfing is really just this game of trying to get your board as close to the whitewater as you can without getting your board stuck in the whitewater. And in order to play that game, you don’t necessarily have to stand up.
I mean, you know, you can see kneeboarders and bodyboarders actually doing that really well. So we teach people this idea of, okay, the board has these like invisible buttons on it—we sometimes call it secret buttons.
You know, the accelerator, the brake, the trim right, trim left, carve right, carve left buttons, and all kind of the nuances of the buttons in between those primary ones. And we’d get people while they’re still laying down—like day one—you know, to move their weight around on the board and understand where all of these buttons are.
And then rather than getting them to stand up as sort of the end goal, we’d get them to stand up just because at a certain point laying down on the board, you can’t press those buttons quickly enough and powerfully enough. So then they’d stand up into, you know, what we call the functional stance, which is a way of standing which you see a lot of pro surfing using. And rather than just being a stable way of riding in on a wave, it’s a way of pressing all of those buttons quickly and powerfully. And yeah, and then we kind of like, we kind of take it forward from there.
And it was really interesting because when we started Surf Simply, we had a lot of entry-level surfers coming along and we would get a lot of emails and people getting in touch saying, you know, my girlfriend or my boyfriend doesn’t surf—I do, so I’m not having lessons—but they don’t surf, so they need lessons.
You know, and we kind of had this thing like, well, you know, if you played golf, you wouldn’t say, I don’t need golf lessons because I already play golf, or tennis, you know? And so why does that exist in surfing?
You know, and I think the answer is that there really isn’t very much coaching out there for the vast majority of surfing—it’s just kind of not available. So we had to sort of re-educate people, and most of our guests come from the States. We get more and more from Australia and New Zealand now, but probably about 90% of our guests come from the States.
And trying to actually show them that, you know, okay, this is of value to you. That was about 10 years ago we started Surf Simply. And now 70 or 80% of our guests have been surfing for more than 10 years. And we still have entry-level people come along. And most of what we do is video coaching, and we do a bit of in-water coaching as well, but most people are at that kind of level.
And it’s interesting because we now get booked up about—I think our next opening at the moment is October next year. So we get booked up nearly a year in advance. And yeah, and as far as I know, I don’t think anyone else is really kind of really doing this. But I mean, you’re kind of more aware of the coaching scene that’s out in Australia than I am.
So, you know, maybe it is happening and I’m just not aware of it. But it seems to be something that a lot of people, once they feel confident that they’re gonna come along and actually get coaching—rather than just have a sort of very basic entry-level lesson which really wasn’t much use to them as someone who’s been surfing for five or 10 or 20 years—once they feel confident that they’re gonna get that, they’re really excited to be able to receive it and to have new tools to sort of get away from that plateau that they’ve been sitting on and actually start moving forward again. Because, you know, the better you get at surfing, the more fun it is. And the better you get at surfing, the wider range of conditions you can go out and have fun in.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I think my surfing has progressed more in the past 18 months than it has in the previous 12 years. Just from a handful of, you know, video coaching sessions. It's amazing.

Ru Hill
Yeah, and it’s so fun as well, when you suddenly have new things to be able to go out and work on. I’ll tell you just one little cool story.
So, I mean, this is quite an extreme example, but we have this really cool lady who comes and bakes muffins for us at Surf Simply. Her name’s Lulu, and she’s Hawaiian. And anyway, she’s really got into surfing in her 50s, and she’s now 69. We just had her birthday party last night, actually. And yeah, she’s improved so much between 64 and 69. It’s made me really excited about the future.
You know, I always used to think that I was gonna just level off around in my late 20s, and that was it. So yeah, it’s kind of cool to see.

Michael Frampton
What’s the best surfing advice you ever got?

Ru Hill
You know, that's a tough question. I mean, there's so many things, isn't there? I suppose the—I don't know if this is a specific piece of advice, because I can't remember when the light bulb moment was, and whether it was something specific someone said to me, or whether it was kind of an aggregate of several experiences and working with people. But, you know, I think the thing that made the biggest change for me, and I see impact the most of our guests and really changed their surfing, is when they get their head around the idea that you don't want to turn just by leaning on your heels and your toes.
I mean, of all of the things that we—as all of the things we teach—when you teach people how to carve rather than trim their turns, that's just, it's so great to watch someone's mind just get blown. So I'll just explain what I mean by that in a little more detail. This is a classic thing. This probably happens, you know, three or four people a week, this happens with. They'll come along, they've been surfing for like 10 or 15 years, and they're doing all of the turns on their board by not really getting their weight back. They've got their back foot a little far forward, you know, maybe like—let's say they're riding a shortboard—their back foot's sort of near the front of the deck pad, their weight's fairly evenly on both feet, and they're leaning on their heels, you know, to turn onto their backside, their toes to turn onto their frontside.
And then what's happening—we call that a trim turn, where your weight's not really going back. And then what's happening is the rocker of the board, as the board is put on its side, is making the board change direction. And of course, the shorter the board, the more rocker it has, then the more it'll change direction when you just lean on your heels or your toes, and that trim turn happens. But you hit this brick wall, you know, you can't turn more than 90 degrees doing that—the physics just don't work, quickly, I mean, you can turn very slowly.
So what people tend to do is they ride like a, you know, a bigger board when they want to get their wave count up when they're first sort of learning, and then when they want to do more radical turns, tighter turns with a smaller turning arc, they'll ride a smaller and smaller board, and they're feeling like they're turning better, but they're still just doing those trim turns. And we take people and we put them back on a bigger board, so they've got more speed and they're getting into the wave earlier, and then we teach them about getting their weight right back, lifting the nose of the board up and carving round using the fins.
And when people suddenly realize that they can do that, it just, like, blows their mind, because they've seen all of these carving turns off the top and cutbacks, and they've just not been able to do them, because every time they lean too hard, they catch their rail and just fall off the board. And suddenly showing them, like, the doorway into being able to do those kinds of turns is—yeah, it's really cool. And I think probably, you know, that was one of the things that made me suddenly really excited to teach surfing, because I saw, when I had that realization, I was like, you know, this can be so much more fun with just a little bit of knowledge. And you can be surfing for so long without realizing that.
I mean, I'm sure that you've seen people surfing for 10, 20, 30 years that still really just go down the line and do all their turns in sort of less than a 90-degree change of direction. Can you think of anyone that you know that's surfing like that?

Michael Frampton
Yeah, it's pretty much most people really, isn't it? Yeah.
You know, if golf had the same, you know, thought process behind it, then everyone on the—no one on the golf course would have a single-digit handicap. But, you know, most golfers get really involved in it, and they get lessons, and they get down to the single-figure handicaps. And, you know, there's a lot of golfers with single-figure handicaps. And I think there's far less surfers surfing each wave to its potential, and to use your words, you know, close to the whitewash. And, you know, you really do need to start learning the way you put it—you know, carving turns.

Ru Hill
And it's interesting, and it's a big kind of cultural thing, I think, in surfing. You know, it's funny—well, so it's interesting comparing Australia to the US, because, you know, in Australia, there's still a big kind of like alternative lifestyle cultural element to surfing, but it's a lot more widely recognized as a sport than it is in the US, where it's very much seen still much more as a lifestyle and as a sort of a—yeah, I mean, it's just not looked at as a mainstream sport in the same way that it is in Australia.
So there isn't that kind of coaching, like, you know, clubby kind of culture and ethos that people bring to it. And, you know, one thing that we say to our guests when they come along each week—and, you know, the way that we coach is just in the format of a week rather than on an ongoing basis. And that's kind of an interesting thing to work with from a coaching point of view as well, which I'll chat about a little bit later. But when people arrive, you know, we say to them, look, we don't approach surfing as a lifestyle. There's all of this cultural baggage that gets hung onto surfing—you know, political ideology, you know, what your job priorities should be, how you should be living, even, you know, what clothes you're wearing, or perhaps even what music you're listening to, and your types of opinions on what kind of food you're eating and, you know, all of this stuff kind of comes as a package.
And we say to people, look, we're just gonna leave all that at the front door. We're gonna approach surfing this week as a sport, just like you would any other sport. And if you leave this week with the drills and mechanisms in place to go on improving, then all of that cool stuff—all of the travel, all of the people you'll meet, all of those moments of sitting out in the ocean and being overwhelmed by the beauty of nature—you know, that's all gonna happen just on its own. Our goal is just to approach it as a sport because that way you're gonna get better quicker, and that's kind of where the fun is, you know.
So we've really tried to depart from the whole lifestyle thing. And it's funny because, you know, I spend a lot of time obviously going online and we do like a lot of photos for Instagram and little short videos and stuff to let people know what we do and what we're all about. And everyone else out there running a surfing camp in the world is making such a big thing about it being a lifestyle. And we're like kind of—I feel like we're pulling in exactly the polar opposite direction to everyone else.

Michael Frampton
No, I like—I love that approach. Actually, looking at your tree of knowledge, and for the level four surfing, you've got "understanding contest criteria," and you talk about, you know, maximizing speed, power, and flow.
I mean, that's the criteria for contests. But if you have that approach in mind, it's the fastest way to progress, is what you're saying here, which, you know, makes sense.
So you're looking at it from a sport, but it's completely relative. If you think surfing is an art form or a lifestyle, it's still relevant.

Ru Hill
Yeah, and it’s funny, actually, you know, we talk about—although in that kind of tree of knowledge, and just for your listeners that might not have seen it, the idea is that we put—obviously it's a massive oversimplification because you couldn’t put all the surfing skills in an infographic without it being completely overwhelming—but the idea is that you have, you know, the core surfing skills in different colored bubbles. And when you can do any one of them, most of the time—not all the time, because, you know, you can never have 100% success rate—but you can move on to the next. And if you skip out some of those steps, you can keep going, but you’ll always hit a brick wall unless you kind of go back and fill them in. And we’ve sort of split it up into four levels. The level one stuff is in the whitewater. The level two stuff is catching unbroken waves. The level three stuff is performing horizontal maneuvers.
So primarily cutbacks, roundhouse cutbacks, floaters, and pumping as well. And then level four is, you know, more like the sort of stuff that Martin Dunn is teaching—you know, vertical surfing. And like you say, starting to surf more to the contest criteria with more speed and power and flow. But we introduced that contest criteria and talked to people about it right the way back when they’re sort of first going out the back and catching waves.
And, you know, I really think if you go out and you try and, you know, stand on your board and just look cool with your unbuttoned hipster shirt blowing in the wind going down the line, you might enjoy that one wave a lot more. But five or 10 or 20 years later, you haven’t really improved that much. If you’re constantly trying to surf to the critical part of the wave with better flow and more speed and more power—any one given wave, yeah, you’re probably falling, you’re more likely to fall off because you’re trying to do stuff that you can’t do. But, you know, the aggregate of those constant attempts over 10 or 20 years is that you’re improving more.
And, yeah, and that means you get all that much more joy out of it. And it’s funny because the ironic thing for me is—and this is just, I’m only saying this because I think it’s funny, not really because I have any problem with the whole concept of free surfing. I think it’s a wonderful thing. But I always think that the contest surfers are going out there and actually trying to surf with more speed, power, and flow. They’re trying to surf the wave better and get deeper in the barrel and do all this stuff. The sort of the free surfing—they’re actually going out and basically, as far as their job goes, they’re trying to get their photo taken or trying to get good footage for a movie.
So while the free surfing route is often sort of sold as the more soulful side, it’s almost ironic, isn’t it, that the contest surfers are actually trying to surf the wave better, and the free soulful guys actually are trying to get their photo taken. And when you look at it like that, you’ve got to be like, well, which one is more soulful?
You know what I mean?

Michael Frampton
Yeah, and the pro surfing end up with the best free surfing videos anyway.

Ru Hill
Yeah, I mean, how much are you looking forward to all the footage that's gonna be coming out from Taj now that he's off the tour and can do what he wants? Yeah.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, and me personally, I think surfing needs to be approached in both ways. I think to spend some of your time surfing really breaking things down and spending time working on just one thing for a surf, and then when you do just decide to go out on a free surfing, you have so much more fun.

Ru Hill
Yeah, and absolutely, that's a really important part of it as well. You know, the last few years, I've spent most of my time training coaches rather than coaching. And one of the big lessons that we teach them is when to stop coaching, when to just pick up on the emotional cues that people are a little overwhelmed, and when you step back, and when you suddenly change the conversation and you ask them about something totally unrelated to surfing just so that they relax and switch off. Because it's definitely possible to overthink things, as in all sports coaching, that's kind of a problem.
So yeah, going out and having just free surfing and not thinking about it and just having fun is a really important part of it as well. I mean, that's when you kind of reap the rewards of the previous year's worth of drills. And actually, when people go away, one of the things we say to them is, you know, we hope you'll get some fun weeks while you're staying with us, obviously, but the real point is to give you the tools to take away and keep improving.
And rather than just going for a surfing and hoping you get better, you'll go in the water and have your watch on and be like, okay, for 20 minutes, I'm just gonna practice doing my carving turn. And then for 20 minutes, I'm just gonna make sure that I'm keeping my hand in the right place when I come up to my feet. But then we're like, and then for 20 minutes, you're like, I'm not gonna think about anything. I'm just gonna be out here, just goofing around in the water and having fun. And that's such an important part of it too, I think.

Michael Frampton
For sure. Let's go back to your tree of knowledge, because I think it's awesome. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes for those listening as well. But there's one thing you've got in your level four, which I like, and it's called "surfing to the targets." Could you explain and expand on that for us?

Ru Hill
Yeah. So that's another thing which is like a bit of a light bulb moment, I think, for a lot of people. And that actually came to me from watching a lot of the stuff that Martin Dunn was doing and then kind of, I guess, not moving it forward, but just building on it in a slightly different direction so that it was relevant for surfing that weren't already kind of familiar with that idea of targets.
But a lot of people just think about trying to surfing down the line and make the wave, and that's kind of the goal. And then they hit this point where, of course, if they're surfing faster than the wave, then they're surfing out to the flats and losing speed. And if the wave is outrunning them, then they're getting stuck behind sections.
So you teach people how to do floaters to climb over sections that are breaking in front of them and how to do carving cutbacks to cut back to the pocket and to do a roundhouse cutback and get speed from that pocket of the wave again that way. And "surfing to the targets" is the idea that once you've got those two skills, the cutbacks and floaters in the bag, then you have the problem of deciding what maneuver you should do at any point on the wave. And so we just have the simple idea that rather than surfing down the line, you surf to the targets. And the targets are basically wherever the whitewater is breaking, wherever the lip of the wave is, wherever the critical part of the wave is.
You know, and when you think about a perfect, you know, Indo reef break, of course, the target would just be one target that's peeling behind you, the critical part of the wave. Actually, when you're surfing beach breaks, usually there's multiple targets because we have different sections breaking.
And then every maneuver you do—just as we’re talking about—you know, when you're not Mick Fanning or Kelly Slater, your sort of average everyday surfing going down the line trying to work on cutbacks and floaters and the occasional hitting of the lip—every maneuver you do should end with your target, the breaking part of the wave, hitting the board underneath where your front foot is. Because that's where you get that push of speed from.
You know, when you finish a cutback and you finish it up at the top of the wave and you feel the lip hit underneath your board just at the end of the cutback, and it gives you that boost and you kind of go back off down the line with a ton of speed, versus when you miss the target and you end up getting a little stuck in the whitewater and kind of having to hop around the foam and get back onto the face again.
So that's one example of it. Another example of a target, and this is the first time that we bring it in, is of course when someone's going down the line and the wave's closing out in front of them, so they have a closeout section coming towards them.
And then it doesn't involve such a big change of direction in order to go up and again have that bit of lip hit the board underneath that front foot and they feel that burst of speed as they then come racing down in front of the whitewater out onto the flats. And we kind of talk about how when you're doing a big carving turn and you're putting all of your weight at the back of the board, you're using up speed because you're digging the tail of the board in and lifting the nose up. And the idea is that when you're doing those turns, you're finishing each of those carving turns by hitting a target where you're regaining all of the speed that you just used up doing your turn. And of course, once you start surfing to targets and linking each target together, that's what we think of as flow.
Does that make sense? I'm describing it to you here, but I'm using my hands quite a lot while I'm talking, which is totally useless to all of our listeners.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, no. I mean, you've got so many videos online, which I'll point people towards if they're interested to get that visual. But yeah, no, that's a great way to break it down. I like that analogy. What about—you've got, I'm sure a lot of this tree of knowledge is far more relevant for the guests staying, and maybe a little confusing for those that have never been to your resort. But what's a head snap?

Ru Hill
So when we're going through this, when our guests first arrive, we take them in and we kind of say to them, look, we've got this tree of knowledge and we have it up on the wall and it's about 12 or 15 feet high. And we say to them, look, go and look at it now. It's gonna look completely overwhelming. But as your week and your coaching goes on, you're gonna start recognizing bits and going, we did that now, and then we're gonna do that next, and then we're gonna do that next. And this sort of path opens up in front of you. You can see where things are kind of leading to next.
So it kind of makes sense a lot more as part of the coaching program. When your listeners are looking at it, it's not really meant to be just seen completely independent of anything else, you know. But the head snaps up at the top—that's pretty much when you're coming up and you're doing a turn and you're really getting a lot of the torque in order to bring the board around by rotating your upper body very quickly, as opposed to by carving off your heel on your back foot. And if you look at that, like a lot of the other things on the tree of knowledge, some of them sit on the side and they don't lead on to anything else.
And head snaps are one of those things. And it's kind of interesting because there are some things which you might not think are important, but are absolutely foundational to everything else you do.
I mean, you know, level four coaching—your bottom turns is a really good example that you'll hear competitive-level coaches talk about all the time. And then there's other things which, you know, everyone would like to be able to do because they look kind of cool, but they don't really lead on to anything. They're a little bit of a dead end.
And you can see like a head snap is kind of sitting on the side—it's kind of a fun thing to be able to do, to have in your arsenal, but it doesn't lead on to anything. Does that make sense?

Michael Frampton
Okay, cool. What about bottom turns to 12 o'clock?

Ru Hill
So again, that's just the idea that you're looking at the wave from the beach, and 12 o'clock is straight up, you know, like vertical. So a lot of people, you know, they get pretty good at bottom turns, but they bring their bottom turn up so that they're coming up sort of at 45 degrees to the wave face. So if you imagine you're looking at the wave and it's a clock face, 12 o'clock would be hitting the lip vertically, you know, and three o'clock would be just pointing straight down the line. So, you know, most people, if you're coming up, you know, on the left, they'd be coming up at like one o'clock or two o'clock, something like that. And people don't really wanna come right up and try and bottom turn to 12 o'clock because they're not good enough to do the top turn that will bring them back down into the wave again.
So, you know, what they logically think is, "Look, when I go up right to 12 o'clock, when I go up super vertical, I never make the wave. So I'm just, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just gonna like only bottom turn as much as I know that I'm gonna be able to come back round again."
So getting people to actually go, "Look, don't worry about making the wave, don't worry about your top turn. What we want is just a bottom turn where you go all the way through with tons of speed, come back up the wave, and we wanna freeze-frame on the video camera from the beach of your board at 12 o'clock pointing straight up through the lip of the wave." And once we've got that bottom turn really good, then we can start working on your top turn depending on what the wave's doing and the various ways that you're gonna turn the board back and come back round.
So that's like a classic, you know, level four coaching thing that we do with shortboarders all the time. And it actually kind of falls under a bigger umbrella, which is the biggest challenge for us as coaches, which is getting people to not be precious with their waves, which kind of goes back to that idea of trying to make the wave and surfing down the line. And, you know, with any sport, when you learn something new, there's two steps to it.
There's this first step, which is understanding how you do something and why you're gonna do it and what the body mechanics is. And you can even understand intellectually, like, what the timing is. And then there's kind of trying to do it. And you're thinking about it. It's not in any way automated. And your brain really isn't actually fast enough to react quickly enough to really make most of it happen in time.
So, you know, most of the times you're trying it initially, whatever it is—whether it's, you know, doing an air or a snap off the top or whether it's kind of standing up on the board for the first time—and it all just feels like it's happening too quickly and it's all gonna go wrong. And of course, you know, if you stick with it, eventually it does become intuitive and that takes, you know, 200 reps, 400 reps, 1,000 reps. It depends what the thing is.
So, you know, teaching people what it is that they're supposed to practice, but then teaching them not to be so precious with the waves that they don't wanna keep with it. You know, people always wanna like shy away from the stuff that's gonna take 200 reps because they're like, "You know, I could just surf down the line and that's pretty fun and that's gonna look cool." And teaching people the value in actually riding off a wave and kind of going for it.
And actually it's funny—that concept is so important and it's so critical to surfing coaching. And I actually learned it from when I was at art college, bizarrely enough. Our art master in London would—he saw us, everyone being very precious and, you know, like most artists, I used to beat myself up about how good any given painting was. I was doing fine art painting at college. And so he used to make us tear up everything we did at the end of every day.
So we would, you know, spend all day working with whatever material it was and then everything would go in the trash at the end of the day. And it's kind of heartbreaking, but it was the most liberating thing because you realize that nothing that you're doing is gonna last, so you're suddenly really free to kind of experiment with it.
And sending people out—and this is true whether you're coaching or whether you're yourself and you're never gonna get any coaching and you're just, you know, listening to this podcast thinking, "I'm just gonna go out free surfing"—just breaking your surfs up into like, "Okay, 20 minutes, I'm just gonna try doing a 12 o'clock bottom turn, for example, and I don't care about making any waves. I'm not even expecting to make one. I'm gonna fall off every time."
And then your clock beeps on your wrist and then you're like, "Okay, now I'm done. I've practiced that. Now I'm gonna surf down the line and just enjoy some long rides." And the value of segmenting parts of your surfing off where you're not precious with your waves will just pay dividends years down the line.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I love that. You're on the money because, you know, a lot of the anxiety in surfing comes from that—you know, that surfing the wave being such a rare and exclusive experience. We don't wanna, you know, we don't wanna mess it up, especially when others are looking.
But to stay on that same kind of theme—surfing to the targets and 12 o'clock bottom turns, head snaps—it's all good and well to understand the technique and the theory behind it, and then you overcome the next hurdle, which is like, "Okay, I'm not gonna be precious with my waves." But there's another hurdle as well, which is just the fear of putting yourself right in that critical part of the wave. How do you help people overcome that?

Ru Hill
That's a really good question, and actually, there's kind of two parts to that. I mean, one is just how do you coach people through being intimidated by anything they're dealing with in the water, whether it's the critical part of the wave, doing a maneuver, or just being out in big Surfing. And then the other part is to sort of talk about how you specifically get people over being worried about hitting the targets. So let me just talk about the second one first. Obviously, it's different for everyone, and you need to work with someone and find out what is the limiting factor for them particularly. But the really common one is that people Surfing with their front foot pointing a little bit forwards—45 degrees—which actually isn't functional, and it's not particularly good for your knees either when you're doing it with your back foot in the same sort of pointing back a little bit. But they have their front foot pointing slightly forwards, and often slightly off to the heel side of the board. That's a really common mistake.
And then as soon as they go up and they hit a target—you know, a bit of whitewater, a bit of lip—and it's hitting the bottom of the board underneath where their front foot is, instead of their front foot absorbing that pressure and turning it therefore into forward momentum, the board actually flips, and it can, you know, catch you right between the legs or in the forehead or the nose. I'm sure that you've seen that happen to even really experienced Surfing when they go up and hit the lip, and their front foot comes off the board and you see the board like crack them in the forehead.
So, I mean, usually it's not quite that dramatic, but what does happen is if people's front foot is just off the center, as soon as they have the foam hit, the bottom of the board wobbles and, you know, usually they'll come off the board. And actually, you know, this is one of those things where we take them right back to their functional stance. The hands are on either side of the rails, the front foot's square on the front foot, the toe is well on the toe side of the stringer. And then the knee really absorbs that power when it hits the bottom of the board. So, you know, that's just one example of a classic way you can coach someone through that particular problem.
But just talking more generally about being intimidated in the ocean, there's—like most things—there isn't any one magic answer. You kind of have to approach it from multiple angles. So, you know, being out in big waves particularly, or having the confidence to stuff yourself in the pocket when you want to run for the shoulder, comes from really understanding what's going on and the mechanism of how the wave's working. And, you know, we spend time with people who will go out with a mask and swim down under the waves when it's big and really watch what's going on. And we'll get them without a board to sit a little closer to the wave so that, you know, they'll get sucked up and over or sit a little further down so that they don't. And so they really understand what's going on underneath the water. And we've found that really changes it for a lot of people because suddenly it's not this mysterious, scary world of blackness, but they really kind of know what's happening.
Then there's—you know, we do breath-hold training, which is really important. And again, that helps people a lot. General fitness training, understanding all of the things that can go wrong and how you can deal with all the situations the ocean throws at you. So, you know, one thing we do is we teach people about, you know, leash climbs and safety positions for getting in, and the different ways that you can get through waves on boards that you can duck dive and boards that you can't duck dive. And then we'll kind of sit down with people and we're like, "Okay, you're on the inside, you've got a wave about to break on your head, you've got a Surfing coming down the line, and you don't know which way to go. The beach is here or the reef is here. This is the situation." We'll draw it out on the whiteboard. "What choices have you got?"
And then, you know, there'll all be things that we've gone through before—five or six different options that they've got for tactics for dealing with the situation. And then we'll talk about the pluses and minuses of each tactic. And then what you have is people who are in the ocean who are still gonna wipe out, still gonna roll around, and still get intimidated by waves. But instead of just being in blind panic mode, they're like, "Okay, we sat in the classroom and we talked through this situation. And I've got three options. And if I choose the worst of those options, I know that I'm still gonna be okay. And, you know, if I choose the right one, I'm still gonna get rattled a bit, possibly, but at least I'm gonna minimize it so it's gonna be efficient."
And then it becomes just a simple decision-making process. The whole process of being out—not just Surfing, but paddling out and being in the impact zone—just becomes a, "Shall I do A, B, or C?" You just keep making decisions all the way until you're either out the back or you're back on the beach.

Michael Frampton
Nice, that's a great way to look at it. And I totally agree, knowledge is power.

Ru Hill
Yeah. And knowledge is fun. Yes.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, well, that's what sparked the conception of this podcast, is that just little tips like that and shifts in perspective—and obviously going and getting lessons and doing courses—they just stack up on top of each other, and the next thing you know, two years later, your Surfing has progressed so much more than if you hadn't have invested all that time and knowledge and courses and things.

Ru Hill
Yeah, and I think there's, for a lot of people, there's still a real stigma about being coached in Surfing. I think people feel self-conscious about it. I mean, I think it's something that people do for fun, and they feel like if they go and get coached, then it sort of says that they're taking it too seriously, and they kind of feel—as I say—they kind of feel self-conscious. We have this chat with people before they go out and do their first video lesson.
And if you don't have this conversation with people, you can guarantee that they'll go out and then they'll come back in like a really dark place in their head because they didn't Surfing as well as they wanted to for the camera, you know? And when people haven't seen themselves surf before and then they see it on video for the first time, you know, it's mortifying. It's like hearing yourself sing for the first time. It's just not good.
You know, so we kind of say to people, "Look, when you go out there, you're not gonna surf your best. The chances that you're gonna do your best Surfing exactly the same session that we pulled the camera out and video you is almost zero. It's just not gonna happen. And not only are you not gonna Surfing your best, but you're gonna go out there and you're gonna make some stupid mistakes. You know, you're gonna go over the handlebars, your hand's gonna slip off the rail, you'll misjudge the wave and nosedive. And then you'll think in your head, 'The coach is gonna think I always Surfing like this, and usually I'm much better than this. This whole thing's a total waste of time.'"
And then you kind of go down that little dark spiral. So, you know, I think it's really important—and for anyone that's listening to this that does video coaching, this is a really important conversation to have with people. Tell them you're only gonna be looking at the things that they're doing four, five, six times. Only the repeated mistakes you're gonna be addressing. The one-off mistakes, you're just not even gonna address them. You're just gonna move on.
And just telling people that gives them the freedom to go out and actually Surfing and have fun. And in front of the camera, which gives you much more useful footage to work with later on. And it's good to point out to people that really the most useful thing they can do for you as a coach is to make every mistake they ever make Surfing that time when you've got the camera out and the camera's pointing at them. I mean, they may feel really stupid, but that's fantastic because it means that you can address everything. And the most unhelpful thing they can do is actually to go out and Surfing their best—you know, way better than they usually do. Because then when you come in, you're gonna be addressing all the wrong things.

Michael Frampton
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I wish someone had told me that ages ago. I've got another question. On your website, on the Surfing coaching section, it's got, and I quote, "You will never hear us offering ambiguous advice like 'feel the rhythm of the wave.' Instead, we communicate, you know, blah." Basically, you're saying, you know, we wanna break it down, demystify it, and simplify it so people can learn it. Now, if I backpedal and go back, some of my previous interviews I've done, a lot of the surfers and surf coaches are often talking about the feeling of Surfing. Can we logic, can we analyze that?

Ru Hill
So, yeah, there's two things there. And actually it's funny, because I was listening to a couple of your podcasts before and, you know, the people you're interviewing were using that same expression. And I thought, we can talk about that. That's awesome.
So first of all, that part of the website, the point that we're making isn't that everything can be completely broken down technically and, you know, we all enjoy Surfing and there's an emotional aspect to it, which isn't what we do. We just teach people how to Surfing technically better, and then we hope that kind of joy comes as an emergent property of that. But what we don't do is use ambiguous language.
So whenever possible, if we're gonna bring in a technical term—and I think this is just true of teaching across the board actually—but whenever you wanna communicate something, I think it's really important if you're gonna bring in a term, like earlier I was talking about trimming versus carving, you know, I was very careful to define what I meant by trimming and carving. And, you know, that's really the point. I see a lot of Surfing coaching going on where people use what I would call, you know, circular logic.
So they'll say, "I want you to do this better by doing it better." For example, "I want you to have more speed through this cutback, so really drive through it." You know, it's kind of like you're telling the guy you want him to go faster when he's coming out of the turn, and so the way you want him to do it is to go faster when he's coming out of the turn.
So we wanna use really specific language, and we don't wanna just try and explain something by just saying the same thing in a different way. That's really the point.
The specific example of feeling the rhythm of the wave is interesting because there's a lot of aspects of Surfing—and this kind of comes down to critical thinking actually, and, you know, evaluating how valid a specific hypothesis is, right? So there's a lot of aspects of Surfing that are emergent properties of Surfing well, and you hear coaches talk about them as if they are things that you need to do.
So let me give you an example. Going back to that cutback example, right? If you're going through a cutback and you're coming out of it with a lot of speed, there's a reason why Conner Coffin comes out of his cutbacks with so much speed, right? And telling him just that he needs to, you know, drive through it faster or make sure he turns in rhythm with the wave actually doesn't really help because you're just left as the Surfing thinking, well, yeah, okay, I know what it looks like when someone's in rhythm with the wave, but how do I get in rhythm with the wave if I'm not in rhythm with it? Just having someone tell me doesn't really help.
You know, one of the things that we often see is someone like Tom Curren connecting different maneuvers together really well. It's just as a classic example when I was growing up. And that's because each individual maneuver has been performed at the right time. And the emergent property is—the aggregate of all of those maneuvers is—that there appears to be a fantastic rhythm as he Surfing along the wave.
But you can't tell someone to do the end result. You have to tell them how to do each maneuver and how to judge each next maneuver. And then the emergent property is, you have this sensation of rhythm and this appearance of rhythm as you watch someone else.
Another example in competitive Surfing is, we talk about—this is a classic conversation you've heard a thousand times—you know, "Are you gonna win the world title?" You know, said to insert title contender's name here. And then, you know, they'll say, "Hey, I'm just trying to focus on winning heats, and it's just one heat at a time," which is exactly the right response.
You know, winning the world title is an emergent property—on a much bigger scale, obviously—to having rhythm in a wave. But it's an emergent property. And actually winning heats is the mechanism by which you get there.
So, you know, what we try and do is teach the mechanism rather than just tell people, you know, "This is what you wanna do." And those are two specific kinds of language, which I think a lot of teachers—and this isn't a Surfing coaching thing, this is just a teaching thing—I think a lot of teachers and sports coaches fall into that trap. And we certainly do too, but we try to be aware of it and we try to avoid it as much as we possibly can. Does that make sense?

Michael Frampton
Definitely. Yeah, just if we go back to your, like your Surfing to the targets. If you went out and spent a session with an intermediate surfer saying, "Hey, I really want you to surf to these targets," they might come out of that session and they would describe their Surfing as being more rhythmic and more flow, they have more flow. So that's how they would describe the feeling of Surfing. But you didn't coach that in those terms. You really broke it down into, you know, Surfing coaching.

Ru Hill
Right, exactly. I mean, so again, just to use that world title example, you know, I mean, if you were coaching someone to win a world title, you wouldn't say to them, "I want you to win a world title." You'd teach them how to Surfing each wave and get the highest score, you know? And then like I say, the world title, or the contest win, you know, or even the heat win, you know, that comes as a result of doing the other stuff.
So we just, we try to make sure that we don't put the cart before the horse, which I think a lot of people do.
And, you know, it's really interesting. I don't know if you ever listened to our podcast, but me and Harry—our coaching director—and some of the other guys, we're all kind of a little nerdy, and we're quite into science and we're quite into critical thinking. And it's funny how many lessons you can take from that and you just kind of like plug it into Surfing coaching and you get some interesting things come out.
You know, one of the common ones we were talking about on the podcast recently and that we use all the time is not mistaking correlation for causation. You know, so one of the classic things that you see a lot of videos—like online Surfing videos—do is that, you know, a pro Surfing will do a really nice turn and then the guy doing a voiceover on the video will say, "You can see how, you know, whichever the Surfing is, he's holding this hand here, he's holding this hand here, he's compressing here, and therefore that's how you do the turn."
And it's like, well, possibly, but you don't know which of those things are causing him to do the turn really well and which of those things were actually—if you took it away—would the turn work just as well?
You know, and that's more true for turns off the top than turns off the bottom. But even in bottom turns, I mean, look at how John does a bottom turn, and it's almost like contrary to how bottom turns were taught through most of the late 90s and early noughties.
You know, sort of more up straight and with his hands less out. So it's just kind of interesting making sure that one doesn't assume that just because a Surfing is holding their body in a certain way, that is necessarily the thing that's making them Surfing well.
You know what I mean? And again, you have to use that process of, all right, well, you know, if something is very plausible, then, you know, we don't need a lot of evidence to be quite convinced it's probably right. If something's really implausible, then we need a lot more evidence to find out if it's right.
And, you know, there's not really anyone out there at the moment who's really, you know, doing a deep dive and trying to like do A/B testing and really find out what works and what doesn't work. And it's very tempting to just think, "Look at how good all the best Surfing in the world are. They must be right."
I mean, to suggest that they don't know what they're doing is insane. And mostly that's probably true, but there's probably nuanced little things which are going to evolve. Because if we look back at the best Surfing in the 90s, you know, the way they were Surfing was pretty different.
I mean, look at the boards everyone was riding in the 90s, right? It's like, we all got it wrong. Just everyone got it wrong in the Surfing community.
You know, and it would be naive to think that right now we are at the pinnacle of knowledge and it won't go forward. So, you know, the conversation we always end up having is, what are the Surfing in 2050 and 2070 going to be laughing about when they look at videos of us Surfing today?
You know, I mean, us collectively as surfers in 2016, and trying to think about what those things might be. It's a really difficult thought experiment.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I do. That's what I love about your podcast, is you really do nerd out and break things down and educate us a lot. I mean, that's awesome. I think Surfing needs more of that. And I think there's a misconception in the general Surfing public that a lot of good surfers are just good surfers because, you know, they started when they were five and they're natural athletes. But the more I get to know these Surfing, just being in the industry, the more I learn how much goes on behind the scenes. Like, so much goes on behind the scenes. It's ridiculous. Like, these surfers that are Surfing at these high levels, they are completely 100% obsessed. Like, they are not watching Game of Thrones at night. They are watching Surfing videos and slowing them down and breaking them down and doing yoga. They're not doing what most people do to chill out at night. They're studying Surfing and they're really, you know, they're spending money on boards and footage and there's so much that goes on behind it, so.

Ru Hill
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, Game of Thrones is pretty good, so that's a bit of a sacrifice.

Michael Frampton
Well, you do have to sacrifice, don't you?

Ru Hill
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, there's an interesting—I can't remember who wrote it off the top of my head—but there was a really interesting kind of thesis that I was reading on TechCrunch the other day. And he was some, like—it was written by some CEO startup from Silicon Valley, you know—and basically he'd written this idea, which is apparently quite well supported by research, that you can put in, if you imagine in order to be the best in the world at something, you have to put in 100% effort, right? Just sort of to give you a scale, right?
So if you put in about 20% of that 100%, you can actually get up to being about 80% good at something, and then to climb from 80% to 100%—in other words, that difference between being, you know, the best guy at your local beach break to being on the world tour—that takes the other 80% of effort. It's called the 80-20 principle. If any of your listeners are interested, if you Google it, I'm sure there's a ton of articles they can read. But I mean, it's kind of interesting, because again, we focus mainly on people who are not those elite level competitive surfers, but are just, you know, everyday surfers that you're Surfing with every day out at your beach break.
And I think sometimes they're almost intimidated by knowing how much work those top guys put in and they kind of think like, yeah, I just Surfing for fun, I'm not really into doing all of the drills and the coaching and the cross training, because like I'm not a competitor. And it's like, well, actually, you don't have to, you know, give up watching Game of Thrones. You can just put in 20% of the effort and see a huge increase.
And unless you're prepared to put in the other 80%, no, you're not gonna make it up to that elite competitive level. But most Surfing aren't. I mean, most of us are in it for the—well, you know, the reason that I'm in it is because, you know, I just really like being out in the water and Surfing and I love having something that I enjoy that keeps me fit, you know, especially as the years go by. So, you know, I think it's just worth bearing that in mind.
And it's kind of hit me recently as well. I'm sort of just coming up to 40 now. The average age of the guests that come and stay with us is 37. We have a lot of people in their 30s and 40s and 50s come along. But most of our guests are like really fit, really smart, capable people. And they just have either come to Surfing later in life or they surfed when they were younger and then family and career took over.
And then before they come and stay with us, you know, we send them a whole training program of swimming and whatnot to do in preparation for coming, because it's quite a full-on physical week. And people come along and they're like right in the peak of their fitness and they're really smart people, you know. It's not a cheap week.
So people have to have been good at something to make enough money to come along and stay with us. We had a bunch of people come from Google and Facebook and—I don't know—the word, I guess, the gossip's kind of gone around. So now we have a ton of Silicon Valley types come from Google and Facebook. And you know, they're really smart, interesting and interested people. They're really interested in stuff and really capable. And, you know, watching the way that those people approach Surfing later in life is really inspirational to me, you know, because they're so passionate and they so want to be good at it.
And, you know, I think we all tend to just, again, think of this binary thing of there's like, you know, the beginner doing their kind of lesson and then that's it and we don't take them very seriously. And then there's the really good free Surfing who's the best guy at the beach who you'd never see him at a Surfing school. And actually, you know, these people that are kind of right in the middle there, to me, are just fascinating.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, totally. And you know, nowadays with the internet, we have all those Surfing that are willing to put in that 20% to improve. There's so many resources online, like just your YouTube channel, for instance.
You know, I urge people, listeners, to go and check out the Surfing Simply website and the YouTube channel and just start learning. And for sure, go and check out what the Surfing Simply Resort is offering. It looks pretty amazing. It looks pretty awesome. Now, is there any Surfing—thanks, Mike—is there any surfer that would get nothing out of your resort? It doesn't—it looks like even an advanced surfer would enjoy their stay there.

Ru Hill
So, you know, I guess there's sort of two ends of the spectrum. You know, we sometimes have people come along who are coming along as, like, with a friend or, you know, it wasn't really their thing to come along, but they were coming along with a partner or with a friend. And like their physical fitness just becomes the limiting factor pretty quickly.
So, you know, if people come along and they're not in great shape, you know, we always say, look, we're gonna make sure you have a fantastic time. I mean, we have 12 guests each week and we have nine coaches that work with our 12 guests. So, you know, usually it's like one-to-one or two-to-one. It's not like you're going out in a class.
You know, so your coach takes it at the same pace. You know, we never mix ability or fitness levels within, you know, little groups. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of a bummer when you see people and you think, look, you've got all the pieces there, but if you're out of puff, you know, after half an hour, that's a very difficult thing to work with as a coach.
You know, you just kind of have to slow the pace of things down. You do a little more theory, you take everything a little slower. But, you know, I would really urge people that are thinking about coming along to get in shape before they come. That's one thing.
And then, you know, right at the other end of the spectrum, you know, we work a lot with people that are shortboarding and interested in tube riding. We've got a really nice, heavy beach break. It's not the one that we Surfing at every day, but it's about 15 minutes' drive north and it's sand-bottomed.
So that's a great little place for practicing tube riding. We work a lot with vertical Surfing, as we've talked about, on shortboards. When people start getting, like, up in the air, you know, and doing rodeo clowns, that kind of stuff, and really focusing on specifically competitive Surfing, then that then is a little out of our pay grade.
I mean, you know, we work with a few people like that, but that's not really what I would say our specialty is. They do much better checking out somewhere like where you are at the High Performance Center.
And actually, if any listeners are in the US and they've got under-18s that want coaching, one of the guys I used to work with called Al Esbir runs a program called Initiative Surfing. And we used to work together, and he sort of branched off and he just now works with young competitive kids between like 12 and 18—12 to 18 I think he does. But he runs a great program.
So yeah, you know, those are the two kind of bookmarks, I guess, at either end of what we work with.

Michael Frampton
Yep, okay. And folks that wanna learn more, just go to surfsimply.com. Pretty awesome website. You guys have created a great website full of loads of information, but it almost looks like just looking at the website, you just know what you're gonna get. You guys have got everything covered—meals, accommodation, Surfing, education, yoga, blah. I'm hoping, I'm actually moving to America soon. Hopefully I'll get the chance to go and come and stay with you guys.

Ru Hill
It'd be great to have you down here sometime. That'd be awesome. And yeah, thanks. I really appreciate the kind words about the website. I mean, we have like seven or eight—no, maybe a few more than that—maybe nine or ten Surfing coaching tutorials just to kind of really give people an idea of what we do. They're a little bit out of date now. So I probably need to shoot them on an HD camera to keep up with what the internet has to offer these days. But people seem to find them helpful. So if they're helpful to any of your listeners, that's great. And thanks so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm a big fan of what you do. I think it's fantastic.

Michael Frampton
Thank you. And by the way, listeners, there is a Surfing Simply podcast as well, available on their website as well as on iTunes. I recommend that. I'm a listener as well. But before you go, Ru, can I just ask you a quick few questions? What's your favorite surfboard?

Ru Hill
So my current favorite surfboard, not high performance at all actually, is I stole off my fellow podcast host, Harry. I stole his 5'8" Roundnose Fish—you know, the Lost Roundnose Fish, the same as the one they had in 5'5" x 19 1/4". And I've been Surfing that for the last couple of months and just having a ton of fun on it.
Some of your listeners might be familiar with Harrison Roach. And we have a little Surfing Simply magazine, and he writes for our magazine as well. And he and I were chatting the other day about an article he just put up recently, which is all about how, you know, fishes are often thought of as small wave boards but they're great in big waves. And I've been trying to put that to the test with mixed degrees of success. I'm not nearly as good a Surfing as him.

Michael Frampton
Okay, I've got a fish just on that note. I've got a fish board called the Alien by Formula Energy, which is a board design that Gary McNeil and David Rastovich came up with. And it's such an all-round Surfing board. It works from one foot to—I’ve surfed it in like choppy eight-foot waves and it held its own far better than I expected.
So go and check that board out, the Alien model from Formula Energy. Okay, the second quick question is, what's your favorite Surfing vid?

Ru Hill
Well, we reviewed South to Sian, and I'm kind of biased because, you know, Harrison made the movie. But I do think it's just a beautiful movie. I really love, you know, the way they're riding slightly bigger boards and it's just beautifully shot. I've got View from a Blue Moon as my screensaver on my computer at the moment.
So it kind of pops up. And I love Jon Surfing. I think that's just a beautifully shot movie as well. I think those two at the moment are kind of standing head and shoulders above the rest for me.

Michael Frampton
Awesome, favorite Surfing?

Ru Hill
It has to be Jon. I'm sorry, that's such a predictable answer. But I mean, it's like, how could you not love watching him Surfing? It's just—it's so good. And he's such a nice guy as well. We were staying next door to him in France a few years ago and we got to have a little chat and yeah, just such a humble, unpretentious guy, very positive, and yeah, just a huge fan.

Michael Frampton
Agreed. Do you listen to music before you Surfing? And if so, what's your current favorite song or album?

Ru Hill
Yeah, I do. I've got my Spotify—I got into Spotify recently. So I'm trying to—actually, it's funny, talking about being, you know, not precious with stuff. So when I got Spotify about six months ago, I deleted all of the music I'd ever owned and just decided to start again from zero in that spirit of trying to not be precious with stuff.
So I'm discovering, like, a lot of new stuff at the moment, which is pretty fun. But I've got a secret soft spot for Aphex Twin, which is this kind of off-the-wall English electro stuff that most people probably hate when I play it to them.
So maybe that's not one I should recommend to your listeners.

Michael Frampton
Okay, cool. Ru, thank you so much for your thoughts on Surfing and I'm looking forward to more podcast episodes, more video tutorials, and hopefully eventually coming to stay with you guys and maybe even future podcast episodes. Looking forward to it. Again, thanks Ru.

Ru Hill
Thank you so much, Micah. I'm a huge fan of the show and I just think it's a great project that you've got going with the Surfing Mastery. So yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Thank you.

Michael Frampton
Thanks for tuning in to the Surfing 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 Surfing 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.

18 Ru Hill - Surf Coach Founder of Surf Simply - YouTube

For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.