An audience member asked how Hamilton would coach an average surfer toward big waves. He describes raising the consequences in small steps, then contrasts that with people who just go for it. His point is that surviving on ignorance teaches the wrong lesson, and puts you in a deeper situation next time.
Yeah. Oh, guaranteed shortbreak. Hey, Laird. Don't make me cry. Give me a guitar.
My question is, is you talk about the way you have a plan for taking someone who is average surfer, like myself, or average-sized wave, we'll say. And you obviously have this peak performance mindset where you can incrementally coach them to do something close to what you do and experience that. I mean, that's where the thousand questions for me lie. And I don't know if you could explain, like, how do you create, how do you develop? What do you look for? Is there an abbreviated way that you could just like what you're going to do for Sean Callagy? Like, what does that look like? And how did you develop that framework?
Well, I mean, listen, I tell people surfers are actually wave readers, right? So everybody goes, oh, surfing. Oh, yeah, but that's the reward for understanding what a wave is going to do. And so when you understand what the wave's going to do and you know its behavior, it's very reliable. It's consistent, much more than the humans. And you can. No, it's true because humans do all kinds of sporadic stuff. But waves are very reliable when you understand them. And so when you, you know, if I'm going to take Sean and have him ride a giant wave, well, first I'm going to see how well he can be on a medium wave with minimal consequence. So we're first going to go get on there and be like, hey, how stable is he? How secure? So if I put him on something that has more consequence, and then there's just incremental consequence, I can move him in from completely no, you can fall down and not even get touched by the wave, but still be on it and ride it. Then we can be, okay, fall down and get slightly touched by the wave. And, you know, and then we can put him in a, if you fall down, you get very touched by the wave. So we can just move that. And we can stay in the, hey, he can be on the side, ride the side of the wave, be on the wave, ride the wave, and never really be put in a position to get touched by the wave. Like, that's how well you can do it if you want to. Now, if you're just a yeehaw, you just put him anywhere and be like, wow, look what happened. That's not what's happening. So we don't operate like that. And I mean, you can play that way if you want to, and people do that. You know, I always say there's three ways people go about doing dangerous stuff: there's denial, ignorance, and skill, or experience, should I say. So you have denial, ignorance, and experience. There's sometimes a little denial, a little ignorance, quite a bit of skill. Sometimes there's a lot of skill, some denial, very little ignorance. It's a combination of those things. And so, and, you know, I think you operate within that. Sometimes there's just pure ignorance, and the guys pull it off, and you're like, you know, that was just plain stupid. But they pull it off, and then they think it's because they're so good. And then before you know it, they're in an even deeper situation because they didn't get the consequence for being ignorant about it. So I think there's like a whole way, but definitely incrementally, there's ways to do it. I mean, there's waves that break, that go into deep water and dissipate after, that don't have any, there's, there's a, you can run away in all directions if you know what way to run again. And so there's ways to, you know, and that's how you, that's how you make people experience it. That's how you can take someone and get them close to the energy, get them slightly in the energy, and then you can just have them be, you know, if it's somebody puffy whose things are really tough, then I just put them right where all the energy is. How tough are you? You don't need to do anything. You just let the wave do the work.
I'll take the buildup.
Yeah, of course. Well, that's the only way we do it. There's no, I wouldn't, I would get no joy off of watching you get pounded. That wouldn't, I'd be like, where is he? I got to go get him. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It's like, I don't need that. I'm good. I don't need that stuff on me. So, I mean, for us, just because of the way we conduct ourselves, when I say us, I just talk about like, because all of what, I mean, okay, stand-up foiling, but a lot of what we've done, the reason why we've really been able to evolve is because we've worked as a team. And normally surfing is very selfish. Normally, it's like my wave, it's me. And when we change it into a team dynamic, that's what revolutionizes you. Because now you have a partner who's towing you on. You trust them. You trust him. You trust them. He, and you know, like I have somebody that I've been towing with for 20, 25 years. I mean, we don't even talk because he just knows. He just knows how to cover me. I know how to cover him. I give him what he wants. He gives me what I want because what I want is what he wants. And what he wants is what I want. And so we have such a chemistry, but that's really the breakthrough is when you have that team effort and it's not a selfish thing because what do they say? Two people working together can do the work of three individuals working separately.
It's all about that. Yeah. Let's go. So can you do one more question? Yeah. One more. You got one more? Please, Mike. Lord,