Our fears can often knock our surf confidence and stagnate our progression and enjoyment! Let’s unpack this!
I’m just home in the UK from coaching on our Sri Lanka Surf & Yoga Retreat and long-haul travel gave me an appetite for binging on podcasts. The most memorable one that I sat listening to on the plane ride home was Grace Beverleys “How to be Confident in 20 minutes: A no BS guide”
The whole time I was thinking about how I could apply some of this thinking to my own surfing and how much I wanted to share this with some of the lovely women I’ve coached over the years who really struggle to break down the confidence blocks with their surfing!
You can listen to the podcast, click below, but I’ve also summarised below some of my key takeaways!
Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist, therapist or psychologist but I really do think some of these thoughts could be useful to you if you’re struggling with fears around surfing.
Confidence is a Skill
Studies have shown that people who are more confident are more likely to take risks, persevere when faced with challenges and seize opportunities.
When we apply this to our surfing we can ask ourselves..
Am I going to take that bigger wave even if there’s the risk of wiping out?
When I feel I’m getting frustrated because I keep “messing up my waves” can I sit with this and move through it?
There’s an opportunity right now to catch this wave, I’m in there perfect position, am I going to go for it?
If you’re answering yes to all of these then you may feel a lot more confident with your surfing! However if you think back to your previous surfing and the answer is “no” then you may have more fears associated with your surfing!
Grace talks about how we can flip this on its head to build confidence as a skill. So if can practice taking more risks, persevering when faced with challenge and seizing opportunities then we can build our skills in confidence.
Now I’m not saying paddle out into overhead waves and try and take every wave that comes through, if you’ve never done that before it might not be the best idea and surf confidence doesn’t happen overnight. But it we know these are the things we can do to build confidence then we can start doing it in a sensible way.
Building confidence as a skill might look like this in surfing ..
You’ve never paddled out before, so you expose yourself to this by going out with a surf coach who has picked a day manageable for you to try! You paddle out using skills you’ve been to taught to get through the waves such a timing the sets and turtle rolls. If you then get out there and find it’s a bit much, try just sitting there and watching the waves come through and get a feeling for the ocean! Persevere with it, maybe set yourself an amount of time to stay out back then paddle back in by bellyboarding a wave in. The next time you have chance to paddle out, you seize the opportunity and this time you may try catching a wave to stand up!
Need some help paddling out? Read our handy tip list here
The Confidence Competence Loop
The more competent you get at something the more confident you become!
We can do this in 3 steps:
1. Start by learning skills and gaining knowledge
2. Then exposure! Practice these new skills in the water to become competent at them!
3. Gain more confidence through competence building
Then repeat! This is the confident competence loop.
So with surfing if you can become more competent at paddling out back for example, then you’re likely to be more confident paddling out back! Your competence will come from learning when and where to paddle out back, how to negotiate bigger waves and what to do if you get stuck on the inside.
This competence can only be developed through exposure – you need to try! By getting out in the sea and experiencing different conditions that you paddle out in you’ll build up a catalogue of experience.
So the more we learn new skills and knowledge in surfing and then put that theory into practice the more confident we can become.
| This might look like .. Trying to learn to cross-step on a longboard. You may not have the confidence to, but you overcome this by just starting to move your feet up and down the board. Then you may take a longboarding course and learn how to stack and balance your body and use your hips to move back and forth. You also might learn the best parts of the wave for cross-stepping to avoid nose diving. These skills build your competence in cross stepping and give you the confidence to try and progress as you have a better understanding of WHEN and HOW you need to cross step! |
Need tips for Cross stepping – We have a blog about this! Click Here
Getting to the root cause
The word “fear” has popped up a few times already. Often our lack of confidence can come from fear or beliefs around surfing.
Another thing that can help us build our confidence is getting the the root cause of our fears.
For example:
What is it that stopping you from paddling and catching that wave?
Are you worried about wiping out and getting held under?
If we lean into this and ask ourselves “where is this coming from?” then perhaps we can help our brain to rationalise and use skills we’ve learnt to minimise wiping out. For example, better wave selection, practicing new skills in smaller surf, relaxing our bodies when we wipe out and using the count method to calm ourselves.
Of course, rationalising and building skills can’t always overcome a fear, particularly if it’s deep rooted. In this case it might be worth exploring this with a therapist or trained professional who can help with the more “mental and emotional” side of surfing. A little bit of fear and nervousness is ok but if something about surfing it causing your anxiety and fear to sky rocket then we need to take smaller, slower steps. We can recommend Surf Confidence Coach & Psychotherapist Danni Unway if you need some support before hitting the surf.
For some further help with surf fears read our blog: 6 Ways to Make Peace with your Surfing Fears
Surf Confidence is something we build overtime
Giving ourselves exposure to experiences, having willingness to try when we are surfing and always learning and developing new skills in surfing helps us build confidence and utilise confidence competence loop.
Now if you know anything about surfing it’s that progression can be a gradual thing and the surf conditions don’t alway play ball with our expectations!
So look at this as a long game. The more you surf the more you have exposure, can build skills and just get used to the waves and water. It requires a lot of patience and the reminder that each surf, whether awesome or disappointing is another bit of water time under your belt.
How can we help you with Surf Confidence?
So we’ve chatted about more exposure to surfing and building more skills! Which is all well said and done but sometimes the hardest part is getting started!
Particularly if you don’t know exactly what it is you need to learn or improve on. And if you’re unsure of where and when to go surfing this could also prevent you from getting in.
We always aim to meet you where you’re at with surfing and help you build skills and learn things about surfing to support that competence confidence loop. Giving you the tools to go out surfing independently and safely!
The great thing about our courses, and retreats too, is you get LOTS of surfing time, helping you build your bank of surf experiences. We are trained coaches and lifeguards, meaning we can provide a safe environment to prevent any potential overwhelm, support to push your boundaries a little if you are ready, and the space to focus on isolated skills and receive immediate feedback.
We aim to provide that healthy challenge so you ca seize those opportunities (waves), take a risk such paddling for a slightly bigger wave, and be supportive through the challenges which are inevitable but can be overcome with the right guidance.
If you’d like to build confidence in your surfing we’re here to offer the container for this – check out our courses and jump in the sea with us.
