Kai Lenny: The World's Most Versatile Surfer On Adventure, Risk, & Turning Fear Into Fuel

24:57Absolutely. And I think that's like, you know, for me, it's when I commit, it's a hundred percent commitment. There's like no backing out. And I've learned the hard way, you know, you try to pull out and you don't go for a wave because it seemed like scary in the moment. And then there's a bigger one behind it and you wear it on the head or you like hesitate and you fall while you're riding the wave and you're like, that shouldn't happen. So it's like when you do commit it's full commitment, but for me fear, the way I manage fear is like most people think of it being kind of like a disabling sort of emotion.

25:28I look at it as sort of a superpower. And as I believe that the hardest things to do, You know, if it depends on if you're looking long-term or short-term, it's easier to do something short-term, you know, there's like an instant, you know, feedback. It's harder to do something long-term, you know, fear is sort of like, you kind of got to manage it a similar way. It's the hardest emotion to control because it's overwhelming flight or flight fear. Um, like you first want to run second, if you have to, you will fight, but learning how to be like able to turn on in that fight mode immediately. If you can access fear and like allow it to overcome you and then kind of like take all of that and like compress it and like just hold onto it for a little bit and then let it go, all of a sudden it disappears and you don't feel it anymore.

26:22All you feel is like, that's when I start feeling six foot six in the water. You know, is when I've sort of like, I've sort of like allowed it to kind of consume me in the ocean, in the channel, like before I'm out there or like before that big wave is. And it's like, you can do it through breathing. You know, it's like breathing through it. It's like hopping in an ice bath and you breathe through that kind of stress. And then that fear, I think you can really turn into something that you can pull off things. And usually you're kind of questioning how'd you pull that off? And it's like, well, the fear kind of helped me.

26:57You know, it's like when I land that trick, I'm gonna freaking land it because I don't want to fall, you know, but versus it being like, oh, I'm so nervous. I don't want to fall. I'm scared of falling. Ah, you know, you're like kind of get weak in the knees. It's like, I'm landing this and I'm not falling. You know, it's like, there's like the fork in the road and it's hard to manage. Cause sometimes, you know, you feel like just depending on where you're at, you can't overcome that fear the way you'd like. But when you do, it's the most freeing feeling ever. You don't, all you see is what you got to do and you don't see anything else, but you have to, It's like my favorite Latin, one of my favorite Latin words is Acheron, which means in order to pass through heaven, you have to go through hell.

27:40And so it's like, that's like, in order to get to the other side of fear, you have to pass right through it. Does that not also involve having a balance? Like, is this a fear impulse that's holding me back? Or is this my, you know, gut and my feel for my capabilities and the conditions and the ocean that's telling me maybe not today. Like I'm thinking about in Free Solo when Alex starts going up and then he's like, yeah, today's not the day and he comes down. Like he knows himself well enough to know, like, yeah, I don't have it totally dialed. Like that's not necessarily fear as much as it is like deep self-understanding.

28:21Yeah, and I think, you know, it's nothing is black and white. Most the whole spectrum is a lot of gray areas. most of it's gray areas like black and white are just the ends of the spectrum and you know you you need ego to be able to like overcome certain things but then you also need to kill your ego to understand where that edge is or the line and um and so but it's like it's being street smart it's being logical it's trusting your gut but then also knowing when to push your gut feeling out by the way, because the gut feeling can be sort of like mistaken for kind of that fear impulse, you know, like a signal.

29:04Discern the difference between those two things. Discern the difference. And I think our internal resistance is a master of trying to like deceive you. And that deception really comes a lot of the times, like you gotta, so it basically comes down to, if you're ever interacting with somebody and they're really emotional, you get logical. And when someone's logical, you might hit them with some emotion, you know? And that's the same way with yourself, I think. And it's like, it's like when I'm feeling kind of emotional about something and like my gut feelings tell me something, I kind of run through a checklist.

29:39It's like, I'm going to be, what's okay, logically, is this possible? Yes. Am I, how's my strike rate for making every drop? 99%, you know? So you go through your little checklist in a millisecond in your head. And if it crosses all the boxes, you're like, that's that fear impulse trying to hold me back. But then sometimes the gut feeling, there are times where you're paddling and you wanna go. And then something's telling you, don't go. Like just like something like in your stomach, you're just like, don't go. And it's like, but it's a difference between like, don't go to being like really like, no, don't go.

30:20So like something, someone's telling you something, you know, like you're getting a message from somewhere and you pull back and then you watch the wave just completely close out and annihilate. And then you see there's a bigger one, you just scratch over and you're like, man, if I went on that, I would have like, what could have happened, you know? But so it's a case by case. And sometimes you make the wrong call, but then you learn from it and you're like, okay, well I can make that. I know I can make it next opportunity. So how does having one-year-old twins change that analysis for you? Or does it at all?

30:52Well, since I had them last April, we, I mean, I had all summer to sort of think about it. And I think there's two paths you can do. You can slowly kind of phase out or not do something that dangerous. But then I always thought setting an example for my kids to, you have to, I think you gotta follow what you love. And for me as a father, I gotta show the strength of the family and I gotta show the perseverance and the dedication and the work ethic. And I don't wanna be somebody that my daughters think of as weak. I'm the example for them. And to me, it made me train harder. I just basically just did everything better.

31:38I'm training harder when I train. I'm training smarter. I'm much more meticulous. I'm much more focused. I'm better at the long term versus the short term. And, you know, there was swells for sure that when I had to step into the ring, you know, go into the pit where I was like, like, it's just a weird feeling, you know? It's like, could I not see my daughters ever again? But then again, you get underwater, you're, you know, before you were only fighting for yourself and it's pretty easy to give up on yourself, I think. whereas like when you're fighting for something greater something more like your kids you know it's like no i'm gonna crawl i'm gonna do whatever it takes to come up yeah you know another like yin and yang kind of thing yeah totally and um my performance got 10 times better because of my kids i'm like and i'm way smarter and more logical like in my decision making like like i can let go of like uh this wave my gut's telling me not to go and then maybe i should have gone and it's like, all right, well, okay, the next one.

32:43I'm gonna be out here for 12 hours. You know, I got another opportunity. It's like having the foresight to know that there's gonna be more opportunities and not being hung up on a missed opportunity because you're gonna miss opportunities. Everyone does. It's just the nature of the game. And to me though, like coming out of the season, I feel like I feel so confident and smart and better for it. Like I just feel like everything I do is better because of them. Without them giving me anything directly, just them existing has made me a better athlete. Tell me about your training. Aside from being in the ocean and riding waves, what is the regimen look like?

33:23I train in the gym five days a week and it really varies throughout the year. Sometimes it's more endurance-based. So it's playing between being an endurance athlete and then like having really fast twitch muscles. And right now, since I'm focusing so heavily on being like physically strong, to be able to handle a lot of the waves that I encounter and, you know, being able to protect my joints from blowing out or I'm balancing the, I'm balancing doing some heavy lifting with being really light on the ground, being able to do, you know, flat standing backflips, doing air awareness sort of stuff to be able to have that spring.

34:02So when I land, I can on a big wave, I can have the strength to handle the wave. I can have the strength to handle the chop, but I can also have that ability to be like a spring off the floor. I can bounce off the water. Explosive exercises to improve your explosive energy. Yeah. But I would also think a lot of like stability core kind of stuff. Totally. But I've been doing that since I was working out at the gym with my trainer, Scott Sanchez, since I was 12 years old. and it's, I spent, yeah, he's been your coach that whole time, right? Yeah. And it was like, it would go like, I usually would do three days a week and you know, the motivation would go up and down, you know, when you're a kid, you're like just going through the motions.

34:44And now, you know, it's like, I'm asking for more. Usually I'm like, Oh, can we do this? You know, like, I think this would help me a lot. And he's like, okay, settle down, you know, like hold up a little bit. But, um, so I do that with Scott and, and, you know, we also like, um, you know, I'll ride my road bike or mountain bike, you know, for endurance types of stuff. It's seasonal. Usually if the waves are good, it's like a lot more on the water stuff, but, you know, it's like small challenges too that, that I consider training. It's, you know, going in the ice bath, you know, before a workout, which you could get the best training effect, you know, for lifting, you can actually get, or for explosivity, so you can get the best muscle growth from doing an ice bath first, which is kind of like contrary to what it used to be.

35:29But I still do it before bed. And that's really important for me because it's like when I'm the most tired and I just want to go to sleep, it's like up in the ice bath. It improves sleep though, for sure. It does for sure. And then it's like, I make sure I read every day. I make sure that this is like brain stuff, right? So it's like, I'm always reading. I'm trying to learn the the native language of my home, which is Hawaiian. I don't have to, but it's like, I feel like it's learning a language is pushing your brains. And then also since I go to Portugal so much and my toe partner Lucas Chumba over there is Portuguese and I never know what he's saying.

36:12I'm like, I should learn some Portuguese. So it's like - That's a rough one. It's actually come a lot, Portuguese has come a lot easier than Hawaiian. Hawaiian is like really tricky because it's not Latin based. and so the words are like, you can understand the words but you don't know the order of putting them. So how do you speak it? You can understand it but you might not be able to speak it. I think it's one of the most beautiful languages. But anyway, so it's like the training stuff kind of comes down to mental stuff as well. But then like in on water stuff, it's changing my approach to like how I can maximize my performance.

36:50warm up on the beach for eight minutes. And then in that eight minutes, I'm studying the lineup. I know exactly where the best waves are gonna be. So I know subconsciously where I'm gonna be able to kind of like hang out out in the lineup. And then it's a 20 minute warmup from when I paddle out. I surf basically that 15 minutes because it takes five minutes to get out there. I come in, I have to watch for 25 minutes, cool down, be like cold, and then go out for 25 minutes and put my best performance on. And that has really like helped me learn tricks fastest because like I'm 25 minutes on the beach.

37:27I'm just staring at waves, watching them and like imagining how I'm gonna do it. So you're really like focused. But I mean, yeah, like everything varies. Like the best big wave training, if I had to do one thing for big wave training, only one thing, it'd be stand up paddling because it works everything from the soles of your feet all the way to the top of your head. You're constantly out of breath. It's endurance, but it's explosivity as well. It's balance, it's maneuvering a large board. So after the gym, I might go torture myself and go down to the harbor and do a bunch of laps and do it under time.

38:00And that's probably the loneliest type of training just because you're just paddling and it's not fast. You're going max nine miles an hour in flat water. So it's challenging in that respect. But as far as like breath holding stuff, it's pretty easy to train your lungs doing CO2 tables. So like basically getting less and less of a big breath hold and then doing the same amount of breath hold. So the shorter and shorter, excuse me, the shorter and shorter breathe up to the same amount of breath hold. So you start at like, if I'm gonna do a three minute breath hold, for example, let's say I do at first two minutes and 30 seconds of holding my breath and then I hold for three minutes.

38:53And then the next one I do two minutes, 15 seconds. And then the next one I do two minutes. Then I do one minute 30. And by the end, I only have 15 seconds to breathe up. And then I still have to hold for three minutes. Right, so that short interval in between. Is that like a typical exercise that like free divers would use to develop that? Or where does that come from? Free diving is good because it gets you, it allows you to understand the anatomy of how your breath works and how to properly breathe through your stomach, then through your chest and then filling your nasal cavities and your throat and your mouth and all that sort of stuff.

39:29And it's really good training to do. It doesn't apply directly to big wave surfing because the best example of wiping out and holding your breath is imagine running up a hill for 30 seconds as fast as you can. And then at the top, you have to hold your breath. your heart rate's high, you wanna breathe so bad, but you can't. And so, and, but you have to be relaxed. You have to go limp. You have to allow it to like flush through you essentially. And so the sea of two tables are really, I would say freedivers might work on longer breath hold. Like, you know, people are blown away when they ask me, how long can you hold breath?

40:02I'm like, oh, longest I've done it was like five minutes. And that's just through training. Like you'd be surprised a lot of people that, you know are less athletic than me kind of just have a day-to-day job that I've done training with, they can hold their breath for like eight minutes. Wow. And sometimes - It is trainable. Oh, it's totally trainable. Highly trainable. Like pretty much any average person in a room, you can get them to two minutes, no problem. It just comes to teaching them the right breathe up. But in your case, it's really, it's about what happens if you get pushed under. So you're in a position to be able to like, you know, deal with that.

40:37But isn't it just as much about like down regulating your autonomic nervous system so that you can figure, it's like a hack to calm yourself down in a high stress environment. Yeah, and for me, I learn everything through, I'm more of a physical learner. And so that's been an advantage in learning how to be comfortable underwater because I'm really aware of where my body is in space when I close my eyes. That's probably been trained from being thrown underwater. Like I know exactly where my arms are and I can see it with my eyes closed essentially. And so in learning how to go completely relaxed, it's a cue for my brain to be like, it's okay.

41:19Whereas if I start kind of doing any kind of movement underwater that's like goes against being absolutely calm, my brain might start freaking out. And that's why like that like type of training, you know, it's good to do. Like having, I can't hold my breath for five minutes. like that in the back of your head, but it doesn't even matter. What's important is being able to be able to hold your breath for a shorter period of time, but with less of a breath, cause you're probably getting the wind knocked out of you with CO2 buildup in your lungs. That's that burning sensation that you feel in your lungs and being able to just like, you know, be comfortable in the most uncomfortable situation.

42:03Yeah. And, and know like, okay, like I've been here before. or I know I'll be able to like deal with this. Totally, yeah, no, totally. And it's like, and your legs have been working really hard because I think what people don't realize too is a lot of the equipment is twice as heavy that you're using. You like the board itself is 20 pounds, 22 pounds. And so trying to move that versus something like, and being able to train on the boards that you're actually gonna ride on. Like those boards do not work in small waves because they're too heavy, they're too narrow. You know, the tail, the weight is all in the tail.

42:40But if you go from surfing a six pound surfboard and then you go surf a 60 foot wave and you're riding a board that's 22 pounds, 20 pounds, and you're trying to do the same aerials, you're just like your legs, the legs in surfing take the most oxygen. So kind of a rule of thumb when you wipe out on a big wave or any wave in general is you don't kick. If you're going to swim, you just use your arms because their legs are gonna take most of the oxygen. And at the same time, now we have these amazing innovations in inflation vests, and anyone that has worn one in big wave surfing has never died. I mean, it's been close calls for sure, but it's that airbag.

43:19We have CO2 cartridges, and you pull it, and it's airbag deploys. And we all train so we can run the stairs of the highest building in the biggest city, but we're gonna take the elevator first. Nazare, didn't you, you were in a situation where you couldn't pull the cord to inflate your vest when you went down? No, I pulled it, but it just didn't really make that much of a difference. And there's that YouTube video that I posted a while ago. It's, I had my GoPro max filming and the rule of thumb goes, the cameraman never dies. So if I was like, man, if I just filmed this whole thing, like I'll be totally fine.

43:58And it was like finding hope in a hopeless place. you know, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. You know, all my jet ski drivers like came for the rescue. They thought I was over here, but I was over there. And you know, people commenting on the video where it was always like, why didn't you use a whistle? And I'm like, I actually have a whistle right here, but I was filming. And so I just started yelling at them to let them know, okay, I'm here. It wasn't like help save me. It was more like, I'm over here. Like, hey, hey. So you know where I'm at. So when you come around, but the problem at Nazare, once you go in, takes like 10 minutes to get back out.

44:33And by that time I'm flushed out on the beach. So by the time I ended up getting flushed in, you know, it was like, I was already good. But it was like, you know, you have this camera and I'm like, I'm about to capture something no one has ever captured before. So this is like really exciting. I would never put myself here on purpose, but now that I'm here, I got to film the best I possibly can. So like every time I got wiped out underwater and I was like, felt like I was drowning. I was like, just hold onto the camera and all the screws on the mount, it was a custom mount was like loosening up.

45:07I could feel the thing wiggling. I'm like, if I lose this camera on the last wave I am going to kill myself. Like as I went through all this to lose the golden shot. You know what I mean? And then I waited like five days after to look at the footage. Cause I didn't, I wanted to like, I knew it was gonna still be a lot more tame than what it looked like for real. because GoPros tend to make 80 foot waves look like eight foot waves. And to my surprise, the waves looked still pretty big, but I didn't want it to distort the actual feeling of like, all right, I'm here right now. You gotta take it in.

45:45If you're gonna go through it, you might as well take it all in.

45:55We first met at this event at Surf Ranch, which was like two years ago, I think. And that was a event that was put on by GoPro. And it was an interesting day of surfing legends like yourself, but also all these mucky mucks from like the entertainment world and the business world, like people from Netflix and stuff like that. I have a very vivid memory of showing up early that morning and I'm like a below average surfer at best who has not surfed very much in my life. And I kind of told the guys they were like, hey man, like I wanna kind of backpedal this a little bit. Like, let me just sort of watch for a while and get kind of like comfortable with what's going on before you throw me in.

46:38And they're like, no problem. Well, you'll go up in the heat in the afternoon. And then they ended up throwing me in the first heat with you. So I'm having like a panic attack because the last thing, all I'm thinking is if I wipe out and my board like hits Kai and he gets injured, like I'm just never gonna forgive myself. You know, so luckily I did not injure you and I got a chance to know you a little bit. And that was a super fun day. And I remember talking to Raimana and he was saying that like Mark Zuckerberg would, would occasionally like rent the whole place out. Like he would fly in on a helicopter or whatever with his buddies and just like take the whole day there.

47:22And I know that like, you're a guy who all these billionaires like wanna hang out with and foil with and surf with. And I think you even like taught or went foiling with Zuckerberg in Kauai. And that just has to be like a surreal, among the many surreal, you know, things about your life that has to be strangely kind of disorienting. For sure. I mean, when I started doing all these things, I just was a real product of my environment. And, you know, the motivation behind everything I'm still doing today is the love of just riding waves and riding it however many different ways. And so when people that are on, you know, a global level of influence, like Mark Zuckerberg, or, you know, somebody like, it takes interest in what I do.

48:09I mean, I think it just cements the fact that what I'm doing is probably the right thing, like the funnest thing anyone could do, because, you know, it's something that I get to fortunately do for a job and have support. but then you see a lot of people who work their whole lives just to be able to have the time or the ability to go surf or do other water sports like foiling and go to different places and stuff. So yeah, when someone like Mark hit me up once before, it was kind of like, wait, how does he even know who I am? That's just crazy. And it just seems like a completely different world.

48:53I always felt like what I do is sort of outside of society's bubble because you sort of leave the shoreline and you're out in the ocean and you're in Mother Nature and there's just no sort of rules. I mean, I guess there's some maritime rules, but for the most part you kind of can go out and be free, like true freedom and that's always been my draw, especially in big waves because big waves are unmanageable. But yeah, like being able to go, you know, foil and ride with these crazy people, it's definitely interesting and also inspiring just to kind of be able to pick their brains and, you know, try to understand how their mind works.

49:34Because mine works so differently. Yeah, yeah. And I personally love meeting everybody, you know, even if they may be considered controversial. It's like you don't really know somebody until you meet them in person. and it's really cool to be able to just know that in my life, I've been able to meet all walks of life from, you know, just the hardcore surfer kid, maybe the, you know, Indonesian rainforest to like all the way to one of the most influential, powerful people. But, you know, generally I've had great experience with just about everybody because it's not about anything else except for, you know, the whole time you're talking about having fun and surfing and boiling and riding the wind.

50:22And it comes from a very pure place and it just feels like you're on the playground. And I think that's why a lot of people are drawn to what I do is because it's just about having fun at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the opportunity, although your worlds are so different, you sort of operate like a modern day explorer on some level. and from an outsider looking in at your life, it appears that you have like this freedom to play. And to your point, that's something that most people maybe get a taste of once a year on a weekend or like on their vacation or something like that. So there's something kind of really alluring and appealing about that.

51:02But then to be in the company of other high performers in different fields, I'm curious as to whether, like even though the disciplines are so different, there must be common strains of like, how do you do something no one's ever done before? How do you think about the world and possibility and innovation, you know, there has to be like parallels with that. I think the parallel is like kind of that undying passion for what, you know, field you're actually doing. Like for me, it's like, it's so in the moment, like right away for 30 seconds and how good can you be on that wave? Like it doesn't, it's maybe not the pyramid that'll last the test of time, but in that moment, it's like the most pure feeling.

51:46But when you talk to, or when I have the opportunity to talk to these guys, it makes me kind of wonder, it's like, gosh, if I took a different, you know, path in life and my interests didn't fall in being, you know, consistently athletic or, you know, it was maybe more in whatever, computer science sort of stuff or just anything like innovations and other fields, then I might be able to, you know, have risen to the top in that field because I feel like if you're always sort of thinking about it, you got, you have to force yourself to like give a rest so that you could have these fresh ideas. But at the same time, you're not going to stop until you kind of fulfill whatever goal or dream that you have.

52:29And, you know, when one goal or dream is accomplished, I tend to nearly forget about about the one I just accomplished and it's always onto the next thing. So it's been a real lesson to sort of like reflect and understands like, oh, where did, where have I come from? What has been accomplished? Almost as motivation, like, okay, I can continue to strive to do different things. And when I was a kid, I always thought I wanted to be, three things, a world champion in multiple sports. I wanted to invent the things that I ride and there was one more it's slipping my mind right now but I mean really it was like if I could invent things that could change the world I didn't realize that I would just be I guess changing my world and subsequently maybe changing some of my friends world you know and then I guess you change the world with some of the equipment that world changers you know experience you know someone who like like a mark or somebody who you know invents a social platform that you know you can reach the whole world.

53:33And it's like, well, their whole ocean experience has changed because they're riding this hydrofoil that, you know, I had a part in sort of innovating because I saw it as a gray area in the sports that I did. And it's always been about finding those gray areas and trying to figure out how you could make something work in there. So, you know, it was like you had, you know, this one time in surfing where the waves were never good for high performance things. So being my goal to always be high performance how do you make a piece of equipment that isn't just riding a wave and going straight because the waves don't allow you to do more and you know thinking on you know the pioneers before me in my respective sport like the Laird Hamiltons the Rush Randalls Dave Kalama's that strapped crew from Maui sure you know their goal with the hydrofoil for example was to ride the biggest waves ever ridden and then you know one day I I sort of had an epiphany after paddling between all the islands my entire life, for a solid 15 years, I was like, how could I make this less brutal and miserable?

54:38It's the ultimate test, but you end up spending so much time by yourself in these channels, these great bodies of water that, I want something high-paced, something that's like riding a Jaws wave. And it's like, well, instead of riding the biggest wave ever ridden on a hydrophilic, could I ride the smallest wave ever ridden? which is these soft open ocean swells between the islands that vary from six inches high to you know 20 feet high but most of the time it's like pretty small and so you know I think in my path to trying to find something really fun and high performance that could fill that void or that gray area and high performance wave riding you know something kind of came out of it that you you know, inspired, you know, not just my friends, but, you know, people that are, you know, innovators in their respected areas to take it on and do it.

55:30And to me, that's the ultimate reward. I could care sort of less about, you know, if I'm known as the person that actually invented it to the wider audience, it's more like, wow, it's successful because everyone wants to do it. So it means I was right about my quest for wanting to have fun. I love this idea of always looking for like the third door or the back door, no matter the conditions, where can I try to find a way to innovate or find performance irrespective of the conditions rather than just sitting at home and looking at the weather report and waiting until it's ideal or perfect. And then innovating in that space and the impact, the kind of ripple effects to extend the wave metaphor, where like beyond just athletic performance, surfing and exposing new modalities to everybody else in the world, I think there's a broader conversation around just how that changes the lens through which people perceive what's possible.

56:34Like when they see you doing things on big waves that no one thought possible or would only be reserved for smaller waves or seeing you channel crossing on a hydrofoil or doing things that no one's ever done. I think it just shifts the whole culture in terms of how we look at our own limits in whatever our sort of respective field is. And that's part of, I'm sure, the allure or the magnetism for some of these like ballers out there who are like, yeah, I see the world in the same way. Like we do different things, but like what is possible instead of like, oh, you can't do that. that like, well, let's find a way how we can do that.

57:13Yeah, no, and I totally agree on that. And everyone kind of finds their inspiration in different ways. Like usually a form of resistance is a good thing for a while just because it kind of forces you to step out of your shell. And I've always been somebody that prefers to take the back door versus like walking in the front door because that's that beaten path, but taking the trail next to the freeway and might take a little longer to get to the destination. but what you learn along the way could be far more valuable. And as far as innovations go, and I can only speak on my experiences, it's a lot of the way the equipment has evolved for me over kind of my career is based on kind of going between different sports and learning from different sports.

58:03And then taking that and applying it over here and trying to not think like literally outside the box, like sitting there trying to think about it, but finding yourself in these situations that force you to kind of see something that might've been right in front of your face all along. So what would be an example of where you saw something in another sport and then lifted that and applied it to your world? I mean, on a tiny scale, but it actually evolves to a much larger one. Basically, for example, what I've learned through windsurfing and the technology that a windsurf shaper is able to make on a board has directly affected how my big wave boards have been developed that are very, very different to what the traditional, you know, design is.

58:53And there's nothing wrong with those traditional designs, but there's just a certain way you can ride them. And, you know, as the sport has evolved into bigger and larger waves and has moved further away from the traditional big wave breaks like Wyoming Bay, you know, to kind of the most intense heavy situations at a place like Peahi, aka Jaws, or a Nazare. You know, there's a handful of big wave breaks in the world that are kind of in a different league of their own due to the canyon and the bathymetry of the ocean that allows these swells. You know, it's kind of a perfect storm of, you know, coincidences that allow one place to sort of pop off.

59:32and on a small kind of something that's affected me largely is beyond just the boards is the fins. Like I'll take windsurfing concepts, which to explain like in surfboards, let's say you have four fins on a board. The front fin is typically larger than the back fin. That's a very good low end like speed producing concept. It's great for smaller waves, but as you put it into larger waves is where you're hitting speeds on a 10 foot gun. A 10 foot guns, basically that rhino chasing surfboard. You end up experiencing turbulence and the water starts to boil around the fins and that disturbance, that cavitation affects the rear fins, which is instability.

1:00:24And the funny thing about being a surfer is a big wave surfer in particular, but just a surfer that rides all equipment is you become a meteorologist, you start to learn physics, not through traditional methods of like math, but you start to learn the physics of how things sort of work, I would say maybe in more artistic form. And then you end up surrounding yourself with people who could put everything you're experiencing into numbers and you can quantify it and you could replicate it and you can adjust. And it's about knowing those dynamics. So to get to the point, having my fins from my wind surfboards that are completely opposite to a traditional four fin big wave gun, I put the bigger fins in the back and smaller fins in the front to basically have the way the water flows.

1:01:09I watch say formula one, you would think that formula one and surfing wouldn't coincide. And there's two ways of looking at surfing. It's the spiritual pursuit, which I still do. I would say most of the time, it's going with your friends, finding a way of having no one else around, no cameras, no nothing and living the dream, right? But then there's the fun part of the innovations. And with formula one, there's a lot of parallels aerodynamically. I mean, air itself is just a really light fluid, you know? And when you look at being in the water and I'm not sure my math is totally accurate on this, but like for every 10 miles an hour of water pressure that you're experiencing or that your equipment's experiencing that's like 100 miles an hour in air.

1:01:53So let's say I'm going 50 miles an hour on a big wave, my board or my fin's experiencing, you know, 500 miles an hour of, you know, atmospheric pressure around those fins. So, you know, that really fascinates me. So I'm always looking at the cars and trying to, they're always talking about aerodynamics and, you know, the parallel with Formula One and what I do, it's like taking technology and peak athletic performance and combining it and seeing what you get. As an innovator, there's the innovations that, you know, you're pushing as an athlete with your maneuvers and the aerials and how you ride a wave and, you know, turning that experience into some kind of, you know, some form of art.

1:02:32And then there's the technological innovations, which get super technical. And, you know, we see you with your shaper and your boards do look different than everyone else's. And obviously you're a Red Bull athlete. and I'm thinking about Formula One and I was at the Austin GP last year and we're in the Mercedes garage and we were getting kind of a tutorial on all the different kind of, I don't even know what you call them, the foils on the car, right? Like on the front and in the back, the wings and how they can pull them out and shift them by millimeters based upon driver feedback to achieve a certain specific result.

1:03:10And there's just a gigantic team of people and however many hundreds of millions of dollars behind the development of those cars. And there's so much that can be learned about that, aerodynamics versus hydrodynamics and you taking that into your discipline. But it's a different scenario because it's really this intimate relationship that you have with your shaper, right? How you communicate what you want, how that translate. You're not like, I'm imagining these Formula One cars and they're in wind tunnels and they got all these engineers and whoever else like dialing it in. I have a really good crew around me and it's pretty awesome because my shaper, he has his own factory.

1:03:50It's in the jungle of Haiku on Maui. In like a cannery or something, right? Yeah, in a cannery, an old pineapple cannery. And it's just, I mean, the crazy thing is, it's actually really cool. It's sort of like, you go out into basically into the jungle and you find this cannery and what they're actually doing technologically for surfing and for actually water sports, you know, he's been pushing the limits of like just carbon composites and just, you know, different innovations for the boards that I do ride that, you know all my boards are painted the same, but it sort of hides the fact all the hidden stuff that we've been kind of putting in there to make it work to allow me to perform better.

1:04:36And, you know, if I look at kind of, you know two different pieces, there's the artist and then there's the guy that's trying to, you're trying to engineer it. And you really gotta separate those two and have them in buckets. Because if you kind of try to go out and you're like overthinking your equipment and you're not allowing it just to do, you're not allowing it to be the paintbrush on that giant canvas of a wave. Sure. You can distract yourself and get away out of the feeling, you know, like it's about finding the rhythm. Head and heart, right? Like how do you just be present with what it is that you're doing?

1:05:10Because if you're in your head, you're not gonna be able to do the thing that you do if you're thinking about it. You gotta do, whether it's the physical training aspect, up until the day you have to compete or you have to perform on the 50 year storm or the 100 year swell, the lead up to that, you have to be able to let go. And Kelly Slater talked about it a lot when he finally won his seventh world title. and subsequently went all the way to 11 world titles, which is just phenomenal. There's a point when you gotta, and I think this applies to everything in life, is you do all the hard work, the heavy lifting, and you gotta know when to almost stop and let go and know that all that work is in your DNA now.

1:05:56It's all in your brain. You're not accessing it. And because things in the water, especially in big waves, happen so fast. If you're already thinking through the process, it's probably too late. It has to be like kind of ninja skills. It has to just come out of the blue. And for me, it's been really like the moment I can sort of let go and just have faith that all the training I've done, all the equipment development we've done, it's all there and it's invisible. But I just have to remind myself like if I can't see it, but I know it's behind me. Right, and do you have a certain like type of mindset training that you do to dial that in or is that just rote based upon your whole lifetime of experience?

1:06:43It's really, really hard to let go because when you want something so bad, oftentimes I think you could get in your way. I've had opportunities to win contests that I've dreamt about winning and you almost like, I wouldn't say it's like stumbling before the finish line, but you almost try to control the uncontrollable, which is this dynamic ocean, you know, and I always refer to big waves because I just think that's sort of the pinnacle of where everything is sort of like, like elevated, you know, everything is like to the hundredth degree of just insanity. Everything's moving faster. It's, it's, there's, you know, your life could be threatened at moments.

1:07:21The equipment needs to to be up to par, just the whole dynamics are just elevated, right? So it's like, but at the same time, there is this thing of luck, you know, the uncontrollable part of the sport, which is you're only as good as the wave allows you to be. And if you're not riding the biggest wave, you're probably not winning. And so it's like, okay, how can I like not have to necessarily rely on riding the biggest wave the whole time, but how can I perform? And, you know, in that method, you can be like, okay, well, I saw this last big wave break at this particular spot in the lineup. Cause a lot of these big wave lineups are hundreds of yards.

1:07:56And you know, you might be, if you're too stubborn and you're not allowing yourself to kind of move with the ocean currents since the waves are always changing. And in one day there might only be four or five massive waves. There's big waves consistently but there might be only four or five massive ones. So, you know, allowing yourself to let go and be in rhythm with the ocean and sort of like have a hunch, you know A gut feeling that I feel like I should sit right here. I can't explain to anyone why, but this is where I should be right now. And then the wave comes to you. And sometimes when you don't try to force anything, it just happens and you like kick out of the wave and you're like, I couldn't repeat what just happened because like a million things, like big wave surfing is a few things, but one thing is very spiritual.

1:08:44If you don't believe in a higher power, you probably would be quite convinced at the end of the day, since you're just facing walls of water. And so sometimes you do feel like, you know, you're gifted away from God and everything was meant for you in that moment. It was like this surreal experience that is unexplainable. And I think that's the draw to riding waves of consequence because, you know, you're connecting with yourself at such a high level that you can't hide behind a mask of any kind, you know? I sort of look at these giant walls of water as sort of a mirror of myself. Like, and you see who you really are in that moment.

1:09:23And I've been disappointed. And I've also been like kind of blown away of the person I've become. Yeah, it's a truth teller. It's not gonna put up with whatever you're fronting. It's gonna be this mirror that's gonna reflect back exactly who you are. So it's humility too. It definitely humbles you. But you also have to have confidence and enough ego to even approach that. and the experience and all of that. Like I wanna get into that, but you mentioned your relationship with the ocean and this feel that you have to kind of know where to be at the right time. And that's really what it means to be like a waterman, however you define that.

1:09:59And you mentioned at the outset that, had you been brought up in a different environment, maybe you would have excelled in some other field. And I think it's really hard to kind of understand or appreciate your career and the many things that you've done without understanding kind of how you came up. Because in so many ways, it's this unbelievably unpredictable, almost miraculous confluence of all these different variables that kind of came together to produce this individual that you are with the parents that you were born into and the location where you grew up and kind of what was happening in that area at that time and matched with this endless kind of energy that you had and enthusiasm and curiosity, plus talent and doing it as such a young person.

1:10:52I mean, it was a perfect storm for sure. I'm a product of my environment. I mean, it's sort of, to me seems like my life was out of a movie sort of thing, especially the earlier days growing up because like, you know, my superheroes were the guys that were, you know, winning world championships in my backyard at my local spot in multiple sports from windsurfing to kitesurfing, you know, and then just across the way it was, you know, pipeline and, you know, there was just, I was in the water sport mecca for the entire planet. And, you know, in the 90s and early 2000s, pre-social media, you know, that was just like, it was the DVDs and the magazines and it was always like right where I was living.

1:11:35And the fact that I got to see my heroes firsthand, like on a consistent basis where I got to even know them, you know, or I got to be introduced via my parents or friends of friends. And, you know, and then there was, you know, the Mount Everest of big wave surfing was in my backyard. And, you know, it was sort of, you know, our snow days at school was when there was a giant swell and our teachers would allow us to go play hooky and we'd go sit on the cliff and watch these guys ride waves of unimaginable size. And especially because it was so new back then, no one knew that you could survive some of these rides.

1:12:12So every wipeout was like a near-death experience for somebody. Technology hadn't quite caught up with the safety and it was all being invented in front of me. Sure. And so just in viewing that, it's like when you have Mount Everest in your backyard, eventually you gotta go climb it. and I went out there and it was at 16 years old and I realized, okay, this is like what I want to do. But I had the influence to do multiple sports because my idols all invented them or were innovating them. And my first experience ever riding Jaws, for example, wasn't by any traditional means. It wasn't on a tow board.

1:12:52It wasn't on a paddle and gun. It was actually on a hydrofoil board with snowboard boots. And I was out there with Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama. And it was only us, you know, palm trees being my fans, you know, swaying in the wind. And it's just like, you know, you see these kind of like as a kid, you know, they represented, you know, Superman and Batman and all those guys. And I'm like hanging out there, you know, I'm like the new kid that they've kind of brought under their wing. And, you know, one of the funniest experiences about that was the fact how I like, you know, almost, or actually I really embarrassed myself in the beginning.

1:13:28because I'd been hydrofoiling a lot, but the snowboard boots don't do too well in saltwater over a long period of time. And these guys take it, especially then they took it very seriously because this is pre-inflation vests, which we could talk about innovations and stuff. But you're taking a 16 year old kid out there at the time, young kids weren't going out there. And I waited until their blessing and their invite for me to go. But I got on the board and I was clicked into the clicker bindings. the old K2 clicker bindings. Those were like the ideal setup for the hydrofoil. And you needed those because the aluminum foil, every kind of the whole concept of the hydrofoil was extremely unstable.

1:14:08So you needed something very stiff to help control it through the board. And nowadays the foils are so good, you can just stand on it, no boots, no straps even. But I remember getting towed up and the soles of the boots cheering off and me falling. And this was supposed to be my moment, right? Like where I'm like, I joined the, you know, the justice league, I joined my heroes. You know what I mean? And this is the litmus test. And I literally the first five seconds I come up and they just, I'm like, the souls are off and I'm just free floating and I'm about to get towed into this jaws wave. And I'm like, so I just let go of the rope, you know like right before.

1:14:46And I could just see the look of disappointment on their face, you know, like Dave and Laird as they turned the ski around, they were looking at me like you could just tell they're like, why did we even take this kid out here? And then all I did was just lift my foot and they could see the ball on my foot and they just started busting out laughing. And they're like, oh my gosh, it's crazy. And so they threw me, you know, Dave Klamath threw me his boots, which were three sizes too big at the time. And I ended up like towed into a couple pretty big waves and didn't fall, got close a couple of times, you know, just figuring it out.

1:15:18And, you know, that was just getting a pat on the back from those guys afterwards was really special. and that just sort of, you know, that was the snowball that turned into the avalanche of where I'm now. It's hard to understate the impact of Laird and Kalama and the strapped crew and that ethos of innovation. Being exposed to that approach to surfing at a very early age, you know, and creating, you know, kind of a shared respect for that way of looking at the sport, I think was huge. And just like, yeah, like being Jaws in your backyard, those guys are the best in the world, pushing the envelope right there.

1:15:55You finding a way to ingratiate yourself into that. But also, they also represented a different kind of new culture in surfing because surfing is a very kind of tribal situation. You're part of this crew, you're part of that crew. This is cool, this isn't cool. But at a very early age, you never bought into any of that. Like you're windsurfing and you're foiling and you're, you know, experimenting in all these different ways on the ocean instead of, you know, kind of doing what most people would have done, which is like finding their kind of one affiliation and sticking with that. I think it's having the ability and the foresight to kind of see where things are headed to, you know, being able to understand, like, if I go down this sort of path, where is that gonna lead?

1:16:44And you just kind of like, it's almost like playing a game of just wondering where it's gonna go or like how much room for innovation there is. But then the core of it is having that undying passion, that real love for it. Like I could wake up and go every single day without being fazed. There's never would feel like a chore. And I guess the traditional path of, when I was growing up, there was like two ways. It was like one path was being led as this kind of Waterman lifestyle, that Strap Crew Laird Hamilton sort of approach. and then there was the Kelly Slater, Andy Irons era. The pro world.

1:17:23You go into the, you only short board, you only ride a board that's a couple inches taller than you are. And you do the local junior events, then you do the state level junior events, and then you go to the nationals, then you go to the world juniors, and then eventually you qualify for the world tour off of the qualifying series. And there's like all these steps. And the only way to get sponsored or supported as an athlete, you know, is to do that. And there was so many times where like, I was, you know, kind of making a name for myself as like a multi-sport athlete, but I wasn't by any means, you know, a successful athlete yet, you know?

1:18:05Like I wasn't, you know, the sponsorship I had was like more flow, you know? It's like, oh, here's some clothes sort of thing. I mean, that started, but like to be fair, I mean, didn't you get your first sponsor at like 10? I did for sure. And it was all equipment. And Red Bull 13. Totally. Okay, so. But I mean, you know, it's like, it's the culture. It's not, it's, if you wanna be a pro surfer, you're on such an early path of how you're supposed to do it. It's hard because we're in this social media culture now where it feels like an easier lift than it was. You couldn't have exposure without kind of getting the blessing from, you know, the core magazines.

1:18:39Like you had to almost be buddies of a buddy or, you know, like just be in with their in crowd. I think the Europeans actually were the ones that really helped jumpstart my career as like a sponsored athlete because everything that I was sponsored for kind of pertained to go into Europe and visiting. And they were all into windsurfing and stuff and these alternative sports. And they liked, I guess, culturally what these innovators in Hawaii were doing. And so, I mean, I just remember like, you know, meeting with, you know, people of great influence or agents or whatever. And they're like, hey, you gotta stop doing whatever you're doing and just focus on shortboarding.

1:19:16And maybe they're right as far as I probably would be on maybe the world tour by now if I focused on that one thing. But it just didn't feel right for me. My parents had always instilled in me, you know, self-confidence and really, you know, taking a step back and relying on my gut feeling. And like, what's your heart really tell you? You can actually, you know, there's like kind of that, I would say it's not even a cold spot because cold sounds like it's not, there's no feeling there. but you can kind of feel that pit in your stomach when it kind of can direct you one or two ways, you know? And I feel like I'd always listen to that sort of like feeling and I'm like, I'm not sure how it's going to work out, but it is.

1:19:58And just like, I would sort of fall into competitively being in a certain sport for a while. And then it would just sort of take me, like I would, I was in standup paddle racing and standup paddle racing looked like it was going to the Olympics and we were going through waves and I was wave riding and I was winning world titles and the sport for a period of time was one of the biggest water sports on the face of the planet and everyone was talking about it. And then as it sort of declined, I kind of like without trying sort of just sort of drifted the opposite way into what I would consider the spiritual pursuit of my wave riding, which was riding big waves.

1:20:31And now there was a world tour for big wave riding. It's like cultures catching up. It cultures like this wave behind you or like, right, you're in sync with this wave as it starts to like, you know, break bigger as you know, the broader world begins to appreciate kind of the multi-disciplinary and approach that you were kind of innovating and perfecting. Yeah, it's like, you know, I everything, there's a lesson in everything. And when I do these channel crossings and I'm riding open ocean swells, you know, when people think of a rogue wave in the middle of the ocean, they think of this giant wave that's just breaking, right?

1:21:06But it's a chaos of smaller waves. and it's when two waves sort of combine and it creates something really big and that wave out in the middle of the ocean might last only a couple of seconds, you know? And then it just disappears but it turns into something else. And that's the really interesting thing is like, you know, energy can't be created or destroyed and you get to see that firsthand every single day with, you know, the way the ocean moves and sort of that, you know, being able to let go of that ride and move on to the next. that's kind of been like an approach. It's like, okay, like I rode this wave as long as I could, you know, what's piquing my interest now.

1:21:45And, you know, oh, there's like this sort of, you can sort of see the timing of how things are gonna evolve a certain way. It's like, wow, that sounds exciting. Like this could go someplace. And it's not about like, just trying to keep your career afloat. It's more like you are following your passion the whole time, but it's the ability to let go and sort of like allow yourself to kind of go, you go, this looks kind of fun over here and want yourself into it. And then you end up kind of looking back on how everything played out. And you're like, if you planned it, it couldn't have worked any better.

1:22:15Looking in the rear view at all makes perfect sense. Yeah. No, it's good to reflect on it and then like learn from it and like appreciate it. And it's a good reminder though on how you got there. It's like, wow, I actually was able to just kind of like get an opportunity, seize the opportunity, realize that, oh, there's actually some potential here and run with it. And then, you know, see another opportunity and just allowing yourself to sort of like in a way feel it out. I mean, like this feels right right now before everyone sees it, you know? I guess it's like trying to be on one of those early TikTok trends or something.

1:22:50You see it before it's big. Right. And then as it starts to decline. You're onto the next. Yeah, right. Yeah, well, it sounds to me like it's about holding things loosely. Like it's about like not being overly attached to any one particular thing. Cause when I think about you as a young person winning eight world championships in standup paddle, the obvious question, well, why didn't you just keep doing that? How many could you have won? But for you to then pivot to something else and tap into that neuroplasticity that you developed as a young person where you were like, you know, across the board, and start experimenting in all these different disciplines and trying to then apply that in new areas.

1:23:33That's a level of, on the one hand, it's a level of maturity for a young person to be able to make that kind of pivot. But with that kind of crazy success at, what were you like 21 or 22 or something like that? It had to also change your relationship with what it means to be successful or like the kind of importance of like winning in a competition context. Like after winning that so many years, then what else is there to do or where is the real nourishment coming from? Like what is the underlying purpose that's driving you beyond like victories? I'm sure, I mean, sure everyone experiences this, but it's like the constant pursuit of purpose.

1:24:18Like, you know, and you could think really broadly and you have a lot of time to think about it when you're floating out in the middle of the ocean between either islands or, you know, in between giant waves or anything, you know, there's like the great thing about going in the water and doing these sports is there's a lot of thinking time in between, you know, really intense, exciting rides and moments. And, you know, I think it's like having done so well in, you know, stand up paddling and certain sports and then all of a sudden kind of going into this big wave realm where I didn't feel like I was personally legitimate yet you know it's like it's like wow there's this real hunger to try to like I don't want to say impress others but there is that level of like proving yourself especially to the corest form of you know surfers you know culturally you know hardcore surfing I mean it's like it does feel good when you could paddle out to lineup and everyone's like oh yeah what's up you know what I mean versus being an outlier which I spent most of my life being an outlier because I was doing so many random like sports that weren't considered hardcore.

1:25:22You know, that a lot has changed now just in this next generation because so many kids now are, they just do everything. You know, it's just like, you don't just shortboard. You actually just, you foil, you pick up a wind sport like winging or kite surfing or, you know, you just kind of do it all. And it's really cool to see how that's evolved, you know, because for a while I was one of the few in my generation that was approaching it that way. and so and then it's like this seems like okay I've climbed this mountain over here you know this seems like the next big thing like I want to I want to continue to grow as an athlete but as a person and you know what's scarier than try to compete in big waves then you know you have to balance performance and self-preservation and in order to win you kind of gotta throw self-preservation out the door a little bit and that just comes through experience time confidence that you could survive whatever scenario you end up yourself putting yourself in and you know it was a bummer because just the landscape of being a professional athlete changed like it probably changed slower than this but it felt like overnight where you know there was all these like tours and and and you know magazines supported it and you'd see movies about the this and it was like the storyline and when social media really blew up it kind of like dissolved a lot of you know these larger entities of supporting a tour.

1:26:39So like the world surf league decided they no longer wanted to do the big wave world tour. And I'd come up runner up on the big wave world tour. And it was like, right when I felt like I had just sort of like found my balance and I was like, and be able to go on a, you know, a run of winning world titles and really big waves. All of a sudden it's like that opportunity just evaporated. It went into a puff of smoke. And, and that was like kind of shocking because I hadn't experienced that yet, you know, it was more like, okay, get really good in this one sport, be successful. And then it was like, oh, wow, look at this.

1:27:10This is like a new hot thing. It looks so fun. Like work on that, you know, win world titles over here. And so, you know, with that, it was like all of a sudden it felt like, wait, I'm supposed to be winning world titles in all these different sports. Like that was always the plan, you know, like in my own head, that was the plan. And, you know, when you don't have the playing field all of a sudden it just evaporates. There's nothing you could really do. So I definitely like, you know, felt lost, you know, competitively for a while. Cause it was like, I could go back, but then at the same time, I'm on such a, you know, I feel like I have to stick with this, like this, the approach that I'm going, you know, versus like kind of revisiting what I've been doing all along.

1:27:50It's like, I want to go more down that innovative approach. And then certain events would kind of come along, you know, and I would be able to ride a really, you know, big wave and win a contest. How important is it to you that you're at a specific event at a specific time where somebody is judging your performance versus just the constant innovation and the search that you're on to find, you know, bigger waves and newer ways of approaching those waves in general? Like, is that relevant or do you feel some frustration because you haven't, you know, been on enough podiums or had enough kind of other people tell you that you're a champion in this, that, or the other?

1:28:30I think it's just quantifying all the training you sort of do. It's like kind of like a contest is a great way to sort of like have everything come to a head and then like reset afterwards. And it's also like sort of proving to yourself that, you know, you can compete against the world's best. I think it's less about like getting the approval of others so much as like when I put on a heat jersey, I feel like I'm pushed to a level that I couldn't be pushed on my own in my backyard where there is no like heavy pressure. There's no time limit. There's like, you know, I guess the art of the game competing, I think it really pushes my mental capacity to innovate and to progress because like all like kind of the, yeah, you know, I just don't feel it today.

1:29:18it's like, no, you gotta perform. And the finals are always gonna be in the worst conditions. So you have to be able to, you know, as an athlete training towards something, you know, it's like, okay, the contest is in six months. And I gotta like, in that six month time, I'm gonna train every single day and I'm gonna be adjusting and you're already picturing yourself there, you know? There's a lot of visualization that goes into what I do. And I can speak on that, you know, in more depth in a little bit, you know, sitting on airplanes and like visualizing riding these waves that you don't get the opportunity to ride that often.

1:29:53But like the competition itself, I go back to the drawing board right after and I have all the answers. If I lose, I learn so much and I have like all these ideas and innovations. I'm like, oh my gosh, we got to change this about the equipment. I'm gonna train this way a little bit harder. I'm gonna like do a little less of this kind of training and a little more of that. And, you know, I'm actually going to do less of that sport and go on this other sport like kite surfing, so that I could actually get used to going fast all the time because I can't go fast enough. There's just like, it becomes sort of like a little game and that I think pushes my innovation.

1:30:31So I like competition because it definitely allows me to evolve really fast. And I think if you did it like so consistently, you wouldn't have time to be actually that innovative. You'd be kind of just sort of like trying to rest and recover between each event. And that's a different type of game. But like in the one that I'm playing now where the vents are so spread out, that's the draw, sorta. But that being said, you know, it's like kind of a teeter totter effect. You know, it's like, you know, the competitive side goes up and that kind of fuels the innovative side. And then it's like kind of, you know, you're kind of going up this ladder, you know.

1:31:11But it sounds like the animating force, like your motivation is really internal versus external. Like the competitions create a situation where you're trying to challenge yourself against yourself to be the best as opposed to I need to beat this guy or be better than this other person on this day. It's just an opportunity for, you know, a peak beyond the typical peak to, you know, reach a new level in what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, no, every world championship or every competition I've ever won, I don't even know what anyone else is doing. I'm like, look, so inward. And I just, I have my game plan and I do it or I have like ABCD.

1:31:53I have like a ton of scenarios that I could play with. And then you also have to let go at a certain point and allow things to happen the way they're gonna happen. But it's every competition, it's like, I don't even, I'm not even thinking about who I'm competing against. Cause I just figure if I can do my best performance, I train so if I do my best performance, I should win no matter what, whether it's a race, endurance style, or if it's like kind of fast twitch, high performance tricks, it's like if I do my best riding, I shouldn't have to worry about what someone else is doing. And so that's kind of like my training mentality.

1:32:34And when I do that, it seems to like, when I do it properly, I win. And it's like, it's almost going like, God, that felt kind of easy. And it's like, no offense to, let's say the other people I'm competing against, but it just means that I kind of did all the hard work the right way. Cause you can work hard and actually like just spin your wheels in the mud. So it's about being smart and working hard. And you know, for me working hard in my brain might be like, I'm gonna go surf 10 hours. I'm gonna just lift weights. I'm gonna, you know, do whatever it takes. And you know, that letting go is being like, like, okay, I'm only surfing for 25 minutes today because that's gonna drive me absolutely nuts.

1:33:13That's a heat. And in most competitions, you might only have a 25 minute heat in a day. And what can you do in 25 minutes? You come in with an appetite and the rest of the day you're visualizing it and your brain doesn't know the difference between doing it in real life and doing it in your mind. And so that appetite of actually doing the sport less, but then thinking about it all day, you actually get more performance benefits and you actually get better quicker than if you just went and came in sort of exhausted and the last thing you want to do is think about what you just did. It's like, I want to numb my brain with watching a TV show or something, you know?

1:33:50It's like, so always keeping that little bit of an appetite has been like pretty critical to like progressing really fast.

1:34:05you talked about like how much you learn when you fail and you lit up like a christmas tree like i feel that's a really healthy relationship with falling short or failing and and you know looking at it as an opportunity to learn and get better yes you win but if you if you do fail then that's the opportunity, right? Yeah, often winning feels like a relief. You know, it feels really good, but that moment, that euphoric, I mean, it's all worth it, you know, to win. That's the best feeling ever. But that feeling only lasts, I think that day for me, you know? It's like, you're in that moment and you're like, I can't believe I did this.

1:34:44I just, how did this happen? Like, you're trying to rerun everything in your head. Like, could I do it again? You know, like, especially something you've worked really hard towards. and that's like, you know, you look to, for me, it's like looking up to the clouds and you seeing kind of the sun reflecting off of it in the ocean and you feel very present in that moment and you feel very grateful, gratitude. It's like, okay, like I won this, like, yes, I'm on the right path. Like this is, everything's working out. And then the next day it's like, you almost feel dull. Like the dopamine has like dropped down, the adrenaline's gone and you're like, I think it's almost harder to kickstart.

1:35:18You know, actually you can kind of like rely on it too as motivation. Like, yeah, I won. So I can, I got to keep training to when I'm ahead of the game. But when you lose, the hardest is that day. It feels like a sharp knife, you know, between the ribs, you know, you're just like, it just stings really bad. And, you know, sort of that, I wouldn't say anger or anything, but just sort of like being sent back to ground zero when everyone was telling you, you're so great, you should win everything. And then you just don't win. And you're just like, feel like an idiot right now. And you're like, what can I do to not ever be in this situation again?

1:35:50because you wanna just avoid pain at all costs. No matter how gnarly you are, you have to sort of confront fear and pain. And so it's like, okay, like I just get really like analytical and I start writing things down and I start making plans and I overanalyze everything. And then my brain starts spinning out and then I like pull everything in and I condense everything that I thought I could do better. And I make it something that I can have an achievable win every single day. So it's like you have, I set a goal that's outlandish and maybe impossible or to what I think at that moment. And then I have like maybe a couple more goals in between like targets to hit.

1:36:28And in between that, if I can't, if those targets feel too grand and big, I work on the smaller ones to the point where it's like getting out of bed and just being like, I'm gonna take an ice bath this morning. It's the least thing I wanna do, but I'll feel like a champion. If I like force myself to sit in cold water, just mentally, you know, and it's not, It's just having like goals that you could sort of accomplish. So I feel like, yeah, if the losses have led me somewhere much greater than if I was just consistently winning, I think. But that being said, I'd rather consistently be winning. Who wouldn't, right?

1:37:04Yeah, like I love that very strategic approach. You know, when you think of surfing, you think about, you know, the soulful kind of relationship with the ocean. and you mentioned spirituality and a higher power and like being able to kind of feel your way into what you should be doing. And all of that is absolutely crucial, especially when the stakes are as high as they are with what you do. But on top of that, you're bringing a whole new like level of like structure and conscious intentionality and strategy to like how you're approaching not only, you know, what you do every day, but the broader picture of where you wanna take your career.

1:37:47And then bringing in like a level of athleticism and training that I feel like is new or somewhat unusual in the world of surfing. Like to try to elevate it, you're approaching it as a professional athlete in a way that maybe isn't part of the full history of surfing. So, you know, how did that kind of come about and what does that like look like on a day-to-day basis when you're home in Maui? Well, I think when I'm home in Maui, it's a perfect balance. There's like kind of a harmony between like the, going to the places you're not allowed to sort of film, and you just go with your buddies and you're like in this beautiful place that people save their whole entire lives to go visit.

1:38:29And you pinch yourself, you're just at this remarkable place. But then at the same time, I got like, I got the motivation to go to the factory, to go work on the equipment with my team, go design hydrofoils, go work with my sail designers, go to the gym, break down everything that I need to do physically to become something. And a contrast would be like here in Los Angeles right now, there's no waves or real conditions. And I just came from Maui. My point of being here is obviously like sponsorship related, but then also training related. And when I get here, I get so excited and motivated, like, oh my gosh, this is, I wanna do this.

1:39:10I wanna do that. And like, how can we do it? And it's the real technical side of things. And then when I, like I'm in Indonesia, you end up like sitting there and it's just so quiet and just perfect peeling waves. And it's like, like, I don't wanna worry about anything else. So it's like those two contrasts. I think it's really important to have a healthy balance of like going someplace where it's just about like innovation, progress, pushing yourself like here in LA and then going to somewhere like Indo where it's the exact opposite, where it's about connecting with yourself so that you can, you know, I guess it's like being less of the designer and more of the artist, you know, like allowing things to happen, not forced because it'll look, it won't look right on the wave, but allowing it to come naturally.

1:39:53So you're like in a barrel, it's like instead of grabbing my rail with my right hand and I'm backside, I'm gonna grab with the other one. I'm gonna look back in the tube, you know, it's like thinking Jerry Lopez, thinking Zen sort of thing. And then when I come to Maui, I feel like it's the perfect place in the world for me to live because it's like Indonesia in the sense that we have amazing conditions, beautiful landscape, all that there's like the spiritual aspect to Hawaii and all that. And then there's also, the highest tech equipment that I could possibly ride is being made in my backyard.

1:40:25It's all there, like space age materials are there and it's in the most, so it's like those sorts of things like finding that just finding balance is really important obviously. so and that's hard it's like it's always shifting and most recently you know I've kind of challenged myself daily because there's the hardest challenge for me you know throughout the year might be like you you know you're at your most relaxed this is when it usually happens you're at your least prepared you know because there's like training is never a constant rising line it's an up and it's a down you're tired and then you know it's a kind of fall on a chart if you just picture that And, you know, then you get a call and it's like Nazare in Portugal is going to be the biggest swell ever.

1:41:09And you're thinking, God, the biggest swell ever means like 100 feet. And, you know, in order to go play the game at Nazare, you're going to get absolutely obliterated no matter how good you are because it's a beach break. It's a wave that's unrelenting. And, you know, there's no safe place. There's no channel. You're in the pit. you know you feel like a gladiator in thunderdome and they release the the lion and you have to like not you kind of got to just try to survive the entire time you know and perform in between so that being said you get on an airplane from hawaii it takes 24 hours to get there no matter how good you sleep on an airplane it's not good enough you get there jet lagged the day before the entire flight you were thinking about could this be my last airplane ride i've ever been on you know so you're like trying to enjoy the amenities and uh and so you land get in the car drive to Nazarene and you like look out and it's already like 50 feet and it's like it's gonna be twice as big tomorrow and you're just trying to like just so loopy you know pound a Red Bull and be like okay let's do it you know and just like take like the jet lag doesn't exist you know you almost like will it out of existence and you go out there and ride it so like um sort of get to the kind of the meat of what I'm trying to say it's it's about being I'd say adaptable in in the moment.

1:42:25And so I come home and you can't, you can find those sort of challenges, but then you're at home too. So like I have two kids and I, you know, have two homeowner responsibility. I got to work in my yard, you know, I got to do stuff for my wife and stuff. And so I can't go climb my 10 ,000 foot Haleakala mountain for all day. You know, it's like, all right, I'm going to go do my training for a couple of hours, come back, hang with the kids, take some weight off my wife so she can go do stuff and, you know, that sort of thing. And so it's like, how could I like challenge myself. And it's like, what am I most consistently comfortable doing?

1:42:58Or what is almost feels like a habit? And can I break that? Breaking it, yeah. Just breaking the habit. Like the ice bath example, just to do a pattern interrupt. Total pattern interrupt. Where it's like - To be out of your comfort zone. It's like, you're tired. You wanna just put on the TV and watch something, you know, at the end of the day. It's like, no, I'm gonna read Striking Thoughts, the philosophy of Bruce Lee. You know what I mean? Which is like very philosophical and very like, it's very interpreted by your own perception of where you are in your life. And so it's like doing stuff that's gonna like, and that's not hard to do, but it's like breaking that something that's easy.

1:43:39So the idea being that you're kind of preparing yourself mentally to be adaptable because you have to, in surfing you have to rise to the occasion and you never know when the occasion is gonna present itself. It's very different than being an Olympic athlete. Okay, I know the Olympics are gonna happen on this day. Everything goes into being as ready as you can on that day. And that day for you could be any day. So you have to be in a constant state of relative preparedness for when those opportunities arise and to navigate the discomfort of it not being ideal. Exactly. And I hold my standard mentally to be like, like if I were to fall off a boat in between the islands, like where I can't see either island, but I know a general direction.

1:44:28I wanna always have the confidence that even though I'm not like an Olympic swimmer or anything, I could easily just swim to shore. Like the, it's like not even a question. So it's like holding yourself to a standard. And when I sleep, that's when I get to relax. And then when I wake up, It's like, until I'm not trying to do something that, you know, could be death defying and I can really relax. But I find my purpose and my happiness really comes from kind of being on that edge constantly. I really feel centered and I feel confident in myself and feel like I'm a better husband and father and a better friend when I've really feel like I've, you know, I am scared of something but I'm on the quest of accomplishing it.

1:45:14Right, so the edge, how are you defining the edge then in that? I think it's like just in anything you can probably overstep. My biggest training problem is overtraining, where you just like zap yourself flat and it's the most frustrating thing because then it takes like a week to come out of or a couple of weeks maybe to come out of like training too hard. So it's like the fear of not being able to do enough in a short amount of time. Like I'm 30 and I'm in the prime of my career. and I'm still super young, but I realized that life is super short and every single day I wake up, I feel like I need to, I have a responsibility or not even responsibility, but maybe an internal pressure to just wanna be accomplishing things.

1:46:00And there are all those times you gotta just like enjoy the little things and just relax. And the kids, my one-year-old twin daughters have really taught me that, being able to just come like all the way back down to the core of what's important and just playing with them on the carpet and like just making stacking little blocks and having them knock it over. It's like, it's so easy to get so wrapped up in the career and the ideas and where we wanna go and how big we wanna become. And you don't wanna stop because if you like you stop, you're not gonna get any better. And I've had times where I've taken like three days off just knowing that, okay, I'm kind of on that edge of overtraining and the less, the farther, the longer I ended up spending away from what I was trying to accomplish, the easier it came shorter.

1:46:49And I was like, what? Is it because I'm just thinking through it and my body's not being taxed? It's weird how it works that way. And it's just like so counterintuitive to me. It's like, my thought is like, work hard, get there. But it's like, there's intricacies. And it's like racing a car around a circuit. It's like, you're not pedal to the metal the whole time. you know you're lifting and you're pressing and you gotta know when to do that. And somebody who can dance the dance is gonna be able to get around the track the fastest. Yeah, you can't, it's not a, success isn't a function of pure will, you know, applied forcefully, like it is that dance, right?

1:47:26And you have this restlessness and relentlessness and focus and all of that, like you're very committed and driven. But then there is that letting go part. How do those two things like interact with each other? And also, because what you do involves these insane peak experiences, it's almost like a special forces operator being deployed into some kind of very intense overseas situation and then coming home where life is really calm and normal. And a lot of those people have difficulty kind of adapting or adopting or trying to merge those two worlds like that hedonic shift. So does that come up for you?

1:48:11Do you have issues with like, you know, always feeling the pull to be out, like going to the next level and achieving that, like dopamine rush that you get with those things? And how does that work when you're just at home and it's flat and you got kids waking up in the middle of the night? It's like, sometimes I do feel like a wild animal being domesticated, but it's like, I think the greatest of all time have always been know how to like, they're so confident in how good they are and what they do that they're able to step in and out of that door like a light switch, be able to turn it on and turn it off.

1:48:53And that's something that I'm learning and navigating, being powerful enough internally to be able to turn on when you need to and then turn off. And I think that's just, that's the ultimate, that's kind of the quest all warriors go after. And we live in a different era where being a warrior, isn't necessarily going to war and battling. I mean, that's the gnarliest thing I think you could do, but it's not like you're a samurai somewhere or a gladiator. It's a little different, but I mean, I would say the kind of like that tribal nature that's built into our DNA, you can still feel that. And so you find different ways to sort of cope with it.

1:49:34Like to me, it's like riding that big wave. And I never understood it because like when I was first getting into big waves, it took me about like 13 years to get over my fear of riding big waves where it was like by the, in summer, I would be like, yeah, I'm so excited to ride big waves. But the big waves weren't there. So it wasn't scary. And then the big waves would come and I'd be like, oh, I can't wait for summer because this is too scary. This is so gnarly. Like every big show. You were like, you barely had reached puberty at that point. No, no, for sure. but I mean, literally it took me from 16 years old, like, you know, 13 years, like only a couple of years ago, did I really feel like it was more of a canvas and less of like, oh my God, I'm gonna die, you know?

1:50:16And so I, you know, I remember, you know, Laird had some very sick movies back in the day, Riding Giants and they were always very dramatic. And I loved it because it felt like you were, you know, living in a movie. And he was like, you know, It'd be like if you were a dragon slayer and there was just no more dragons to slay. And that was like, so it was a sick quote. It was pretty dramatic. And I kind of get it because like, now I get sort of get it because like, just as you get momentum in riding big waves and the opportunity is there, if you see a big wave, the chances are it won't be there tomorrow and it might not be there for a year or maybe in 10 years, it might not be the same way it was.

1:50:53So you gotta take those opportunities as they come. And all of a sudden you go through the entire winter and on land I'm five foot eight, but on a wave I feel six foot six, I feel like I can grow. Like that's just my place where I lock in. And that being said, you have all summer and you just feel like, where did it go? You know, like all of a sudden that you can't get anything that's close to that. And I think - Yeah, and if you can't find a way to process that in a healthy way, you're gonna have problems. Yeah, and I think a lot of people like, like, you know, can get, I think arrogance can get, you know, kind of misinterpreted with them not being nice.

1:51:32It's just more that there's just this grumpy old bear, you know, and, or like in the past, you know, people turn to, you know, substances and, you know, abuse that because it was like a high and you're just like this adrenaline junkie. And to me, it's like always been channeled. I've been very lucky. I channel it into my other sports, but now that I've had an entire year to like really become a father and stuff I'm just channeling it into my kids and like, and it's a different way. It's not the same way. It's like being just there and just being a good father and being a good husband. And it's like striking that balance that ultimate balance but then still being able to find things throughout the day that are gonna allow me to kind of like sink my teeth in something for a second.

1:52:20And it's like the little challenges. And that's why it's like, what's a habit that's, some habits aren't bad habits. It's just is what it is. And so breaking those is just a challenge. Like I so badly wanna go, what do I ever, what this thing? I wanna look at my phone at this time, whatever. And that's something everybody could do. We all have our little ruts or our habits that we know, like they're not necessarily bad, but they kind of just keep us stuck in a certain mode, right? And to like develop that muscle or that habit of, oh, here's an opportunity. I can like not do that and do this other thing that isn't necessarily hard, but that interruption, like if you are in the process of always doing that, I think that's really powerful to kind of help rewire your brain.

1:53:05For sure. There's a lot to work on constantly. You were talking about like, you know, the various kind of roles and responsibilities you have. Like as a surfer, there's the technician and there's the artist and there's the performance piece. But there's also the, there's the family guy, but there's the business of Kai Lenny, right? And capturing everything on video like is part of that, it's part of your job. So on top of trying to innovate and go to the next level in the sport, you're also, you know, managing cameras and being your own kind of like one man production crew. and then behind you, you've got Red Bull Media House and the Life of Kai series.

1:53:49And how does all of that, the kind of the entrepreneurial side of what you do, how do you compartmentalize that or make all of that work so that it's not infringing on the core of the performances you're trying to get out of yourself? Yeah, in the sport, it's all about the feeling and having holding a camera or filming something takes you out of that which can take away from your performance so like you said compartmentalizing it is really key like knowing being able to essentially like be really into doing the filming and like being in front of the camera and like filming yourself you know because it's part of the job like being really good at but when you put it down being able to just forget about that and just get back into like the pureness of what you're doing that is like it's a hard balance to because a lot of times like I might be going out and if we're filming something, I might be thinking, oh, I gotta do this because this would look really good versus like doing something that I would naturally do.

1:54:49But that being said, you know, the third thing that I forgot to explain earlier, you know, it was like three things that I always wanted to do as a kid was be a multiple world champion in sports. I wanted to be an inventor. And so I've kind of accomplished those two things where it's like innovating what I ride and inventing new ways to ride the ocean. And the third thing was filmmaking. Like I always loved film and like, you know, my life felt very cinematic as it was, but like I loved movies. It was always inspiring. And to me, it was less about like trying to brag about what I do and how great I am.

1:55:27You know, I find that sort of irritating. It's more like sharing what I'm doing and the experience I'm doing it. And hopefully if someone can be inspired by what I'm doing to do anything, you know, they are, because I'm heavily inspired by a lot of people that do incredible things. I'm like, oh my God, that was so sick. Like, that's a great idea. I want to do that just to do it. But like, that's like the whole idea behind the Life of Kai series and, you know, to have the support of Red Bull, it definitely is like capturing what my life is like in this moment. And, you know, hopefully people find it entertaining.

1:55:58But I think most importantly, it's like, I want to share the crazy experiences I have that, you know, no one would be willing to capture by myself. And we have this conversation with, you know, all the time and with my brother, especially who also serves really big waves, Ridge Lenny. He, we talk about, it's like, we want to film on these big waves stuff that no, you know, cinematographer would ever go to. You'd take an athlete, but no athlete would ever want to take a camera. So it's like finding another grayer. It's like, gosh, I, without, you know, 99.99 % of people will never ride a big wave.

1:56:35so bringing that feeling and experience to them that's like really exciting really fun and then at the same time like it's not all about riding big waves it's like most of the time you're not riding a big wave being a big wave surfer you ride less big waves than you know you ride small waves i'm probably i would say more accurately more of a small wave surfer because that's what i surf most of the time that's just what the ocean produces right but um it's sharing all aspects you know, the ups, the glorious wins to, you know, the record, like the bottom, you know, ground level. And I've always been interested in seeing how people can build themselves up.

1:57:15And if I can share how I do it, I'm not afraid to kind of share what I've learned along the way. So people can, you know, maybe skip a step or two, you know and like go to the next level. Yeah. I think all about going to the next level and whatever we're doing. Yeah. Well, you do such a great job with it. I mean, it is, you do feel like you're kind of tagging along for you and especially through the Life of Kai series. Like, I mean, Red Bull Media House does such an amazing job. Like everything is so high level on a production level, like the cinematography, the editing, the music, the storytelling, it's pretty captivating.

1:57:49I mean, everything that I do, it's like, you know, I guess I'm the one that gets, I'm the one doing it. But at the same time, like I am where I am today because I've had so many amazing people, you know, starting from the beginning, like my parents, they're like my original heroes. They help me get on the path that I'm on, the greatest support. And then it's like, my friends and family, my sponsors, but like a team like Rebel Media House, being able to do something, they allow me to actually go out and really try to set my level up and focus and perform and innovate and do all these things. Because otherwise my brain, you only have so much bandwidth in a day.

1:58:32I'd be the one trying to put something out much more subpar, like that I'm editing at night, staying up late and it's taking away from, the actual act that I'm trying to show everybody. So that support and be able to share it in the best way possible is like huge. And as long as people find it interesting, I think we'll just keep on doing it. Yeah, yeah. In terms of casting your gaze like into the future, you're, you know, there's this idea like, okay, you're innovating on a new level. You're doing things nobody's ever done before. You're doing it in all these different disciplines. But I get the sense that you feel like you're still in the starting gate in terms of what's possible.

1:59:12Like we look at Nasir, oh, biggest wave in the world. You know, end of conversation. No need to look anywhere else. This is where it's all happening. Or what you're doing is really, you know, at the edge of what's possible. But how do you think about that? Well, it's really fascinating because Nazare is the current probably tallest big wave in the world. And it was only surfed by Garrett McNamara 11 years ago. Yeah. And big wave surfing has been done since the 60s. So the fact that a giant wave like Nazare has been under the noses of every big wave surfer in Europe, which is like - And after it was discovered, people were dismissive of it for a long time, right?

1:59:57Mushy and - Yeah, totally, yeah. Like it's just, which is bizarre because, well, it's not bizarre. It's just what I always find just super interesting is that like, it's a Western country. It's in the European Union. It's like - It's not like in the middle. It's not like you're going to Africa or something, you know, like it's, you know, it's really like, why did it take so long to there's literally a lookout point that's been there there's a literal like lighthouse and a giant harbor i mean when it comes to big wave surfing it doesn't get any more convenient you know we leave the jet skis on the ramp like on the and you just walk down and get on the jet ski and in two minutes you're the harbor is completely flat super smooth because the trench is so deep and then i mean that's one reason why they put the harbor there but then then you're straight out in 80 feet waves, like that in two minutes.

2:00:51And it's like, what? There's no wave on earth that's that convenient, that easily accessible. But it took like, you know, so long, it took someone like Garrett McNamara to like, go poke around over there. And so it makes me think that, you know, the hardest thing about finding a big wave is knowing when to go. You know, you can track a storm, you can be that meteorologist, be like, okay, this world's gonna hit here. but it also means as a big wave surfer, you're gonna miss out on the other big waves that are in that region, the standard places. Like think about how big the Pacific is and how many islands there are.

2:01:30There's a Jaws swell and there's like, the waves are 80 feet. There's gotta be another place out there that's as good if not better. Like, I don't doubt it, but it's like, you gotta go look for it and you might just get skunked. It might take 10 years And then that 10 years of looking for the mythical better big wave, you may find it, you may never find it, but that was 10 years of not surfing the best big wave in the world. So it's like. I think there's absolutely as big of waves as Nazare or Jaws somewhere. And I'm just, I just, any locals just hit me up. How do you, yeah, like how do you begin the hunt?

2:02:12You know, like how do you, how do you narrow it down? Well, I think, you know, a lot of surfers have found some of the best waves on planet earth via Google earth. You go on Google earth and the problem with Google earth is like sometimes when the photo is taken via the satellite. You have no idea when that photo, yeah. Well, it has the date. The hardest part is like the timing of it because it's the, you know, in surfing, it's like, oh, you show up to a surf break. It's like, you should have been here yesterday. It was twice as big. That photo could have been taken the day before the day after a giant swell.

2:02:43What if it was just 10 seconds before the swell came in? Totally, yeah. So it's like, but what you end up looking at is sort of the, you end up trying to look at how the the the coastline is is uh sort of set up you know you look at kind of like the the the modeling of um the bottom of the ocean in that region and you you got to kind of get pretty tech you know you gotta you almost gotta imagine it and sometimes the most perfect setups are there but they don't get the swell so you get there's like a window you know it's like the swells come perfectly to Hawaii every time. And it's like the perfect distance, like everything sort of lines up.

2:03:26Um, and so it's like the South Pacific, the Southern hemisphere is very active, but the waves don't tend to get vertically as tall as say a Nazare or a Jaws. Um, but that being said, it doesn't mean they don't exist down there. It's just like finding the setup, you know, it's, it's, it's really, it's really interesting. Um, but I think the, there's the big waves out there I think maybe bigger waves, you know, I don't doubt it. But when we were at Surfrance, you were talking about the possibility of exploring the open sea, like finding those rogue waves or just going out, you know, into the ocean, like in the really uncharted areas.

2:04:05Is that still something that you think has potential? I think it has total potential. I mean, you think about every time I fly in an airplane, I look out the window, I'm flying back to Hawaii from just California, you know, 2 ,500 miles I mean, that's like just a short area of how big the Pacific is or even the Atlantic, right? And, you know, I looked down there, I'm like, it is so vast. It's so big. The ocean in some sort of ways is like a desert, you know, like a lot of the life is kind of towards coastlines or if there is life, it's very, very deep. But there's like a lot of like deserty area.

2:04:39And like, what could you find in a desert? These big sand dunes, you know, so there's giant swells out there. but like in order to ride say a rogue wave or to ride a giant wave it's it's like you have to be at the right place at the right time and you'd probably have to find yourself in the middle of a storm you know and and i think it's there's totally doable it's totally possible i think you know the the first step in the final frontier of big wave surfing which i think is riding open ocean in monster waves, the stuff you see that big ships are on, you know, it was going to Cortez bank, which is, you know, one of the channel islands right off here, the coast, a hundred miles off of San Diego.

2:05:22And that's like on a seamount underwater, it's just underwater and the waves get big and you can't see coastline anywhere. And it feels like you're in the middle of the ocean, but there has to be other seamounts out there that can produce - Like a shelf, like a, so it's a shallower part of the ocean. Yeah, and I think, I mean, you know, if you had all the time in the world, you would just hop on those big, you know, maritime ships that, you know, bring all the goods from, you know, Asia over to America. Yeah, big cargo. Just sit on it and be like, you'd see the swell to be right and be like, okay, see ya.

2:05:54And then you'd have to get extracted somewhere else. But I think that's like the only way to like, you almost have to like wander into it. Because if you try to like find it, I don't know if you could ever find it. You might get something, but you know, it's most of the time it's like that movie, The Perfect Storm, you know? You kind of like end up in the middle of it and you just gotta make use of what's in front of you sort of thing. So every time you're a movie buff, every time you see a movie where there's waves, you've gotta be just thinking, just realistic. Should I be, should, could I ride this?

2:06:25Could I not ride it? Watching Interstellar, it was just driving me nuts. I'm like, we gotta go, you know, extraterrestrial here. Where does the gravity work a certain way that's gonna create a wave like that? Yeah, like, I mean, that way of watching it, you know, one of the characters in that film and, you know, spoiler alert, dies, you know, gets sucked over it. I'm like, bro, that was, you could surf that. Like the speed it's moving, you know, and everything about it, like - Slow moving, it doesn't, we don't see it break, right? No. But I mean, I could understand if it's like 5 ,000 feet high and if you've ever been on the top of a 50 foot wave, the amount of wind could probably send you high enough where you'd fall, like you'd fly through there and you'd maybe land on the other side and like die from just falling a severe height.

2:07:11But one trick to not getting flung in the air is at the last five feet of the wave, you dive through the wave. And so you don't feel that atmosphere pressure on your ears. And you stay in the solid state of water because water doesn't move. It's the energy that's moving in the water. Water ends up moving once it breaks, you know, it's like this kind of, that's why it turns white. And it's like this like avalanche effect, but the swell, the literal swells out there, you know, it's like, it basically you could stay in the same place and the swells aren't moving you. The current might move you and the wind might move you, but it's not really the swells unless they're kind of breaking.

2:07:50So it would just be like an infinite ride. Well, I think you'd have a long time to try to figure out how to get off. Right. You slowly work your way up or I don't know. It's, but yeah, watching that, watching movies like that is always fun. And most of the time, you know, I think like they CGI waves to make them look bigger. And I'm like, oh, like I've seen waves that big. You don't need to CGI them. It's just gotta be in the right place to film them. Right. You should do that. You know, that thing they do on GQ where they have you watch movies and talk about like how realistic this wave is, that wave, this surfer.

2:08:25Yeah, for sure. That'd be pretty cool. Is there one movie that has nailed it well? I've, you know - Not documentaries. I mean, culturally surfing's so different that trying to put it to film is very difficult if you're trying to have like a wider audience understand it. I don't think it's impossible, but, you know, when it comes down to just how waves are approached, there's a lot of like looking into someone's eyes and knowing what they're thinking sort of thing. You know, it's like, you know, There's like this unspoken language in a way. And so that's hard to put to film. You kind of got to obviously carry the audience and stuff.

2:09:00When it comes to surf editing, it's like 15 different waves put together and the wave lasts three minutes long. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I think there's a potential to, if Hollywood made a movie and was able to put a camera in my hand in front of a 50 foot wave, I could capture everything practically. But the hardest part about, you know, making these movies about big waves is no one's willing to be put in the spot practically. And so a lot of times they end up, you know, needing CGI and, you know, CGI just can't capture water the same way and it just doesn't look right. And I think you would need somebody in the editing room or with the director to like the nuances, you know, maybe like when you're looking at something really like, tight, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but over the length of a film, the little nuances kind of like are very striking and like very obvious to those that look.

2:10:01And I think it would just enhance the experience of others that don't see those nuances. They wouldn't subconsciously they would see it, but maybe like they wouldn't know what they're seeing. It just would be, it would just, I don't know what it is, but it just looks so real. I can't help but ask, you mentioned that you're always reading, you got a bunch of books that you're into right now. Like what are some of the books that you're into now and that have kind of impacted you the most in terms of how you think about, how you're pursuing your life? I think everyone should read this book, The War of Art, not the art, or The Art of War is great too, but The War of Art.

2:10:35Yeah, Steven's been a multiple guest on the show. Yeah, I think that's like, to me, that's a book I should read probably every couple of months. It just keeps, I think - Couldn't agree more. Keeps you so in tune. And I think it's good for everyone deals with resistance, and I don't know if anyone that I've ever read or have heard speak has put it clearer to kind of the indescribable. Yeah. Like, it's hard to describe an emotion. It's hard to describe a color to somebody if they've never seen one. And that's sort of like that inner force that we have. It's like, how do you just, you can't describe it.

2:11:14It's like, you know, it's there and he was somehow able to capture it. So that book is, I highly recommend it to everybody. And then another book that I recently read, you know, I like to read a lot of fiction too, but like on the nonfiction, it's like how to build a car, which is Adrian Newey from Red Bull Racing. That was really interesting. He's the most prolific car designer. And it's just really cool to hear his journey from building, going into Formula One and how he's been able to make the fastest cars with maybe not the best engines, but aerodynamically. And it just was really interesting.

2:11:49I'm so into Formula One that was like, it was a really good read that he made. And yeah, it was cool. Yeah, that's cool. And then just maybe some final thoughts for people who are kind of trying to shake things loose in their mind and find a fresh, perhaps uncomfortable new approach to their life to kind of deepen their relationship with whatever moves them or, or to get a little bit more mastery into their craft? Like what is the guidance that you can give somebody to get out of that comfort zone? Purposefully doing something that is uncomfortable. Like it's like knowing that, cause some people equate, I think being uncomfortable with doing something sort of wrong or something, it's like doing something that you know you should do for sure.

2:12:41but it's like, ah, like I'll do it tomorrow or I'll put it out, I'm putting it on my calendar. It's like, no, the moment you think about it, you just gotta do it. Like just then that's the hardest thing. And, but I think really important is having, and not everyone's like this, but like goals, you know, and putting, literally putting it like just somewhere visually where subconsciously you sort of see it is like a goal that you think is like too large to obtain. But then you break it down into smaller goals. and smaller until it's so, so small that it's like, it's the most easy task, like making your bed in the morning, taking a cold shower.

2:13:20I don't know. It's like doing your dishes right after you eat, not just letting it sit in the sink. Like that is the discipline that leads to whatever bigger goal you have. And like, that's what I, if I'm overwhelmed, I just go back to the basics, back to the basics. And then I remind myself, everything's baby steps, baby steps. and then all of a sudden I end up where I was supposed to go. I'm like, this isn't that hard. But it's because I did all the right things along the way. So, you know, most people get stunned by too big of a goal, but that's like, that's your future self's problem. Yeah.

2:13:54And right now - It's the progression. You don't drop into the big wave. You surf the baby waves and work your way up until the big wave, you know, for you, you're like, I'm bored by this. Yeah, no, you ride. Like when I was nine years old, I rode a 15 foot wave, face wave. and I used to be really meticulous, like how big was that dad? Oh, that was like a 20 foot face wave. Yes, like I'm stepping it up slowly. And so it was like, for me, it was in riding waves to go to the really big stuff. It was like a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Okay, this is, I can't go there yet, but I'm gonna get there.

2:14:27I'm gonna keep practicing at this level. And when I'm like hungry, I'm gonna be able to go there. But I didn't give up. I didn't take my foot off the gas, even though I might've like been like scared and nervous. I was still putting the gas on and where I was. It just maybe took a little longer to get to where I needed. So allowing yourself time to, you know, not really putting a date on the goal. It's good if you feel like that helps you, like I say in competition, you know, training. Focus, like I got this much time. But sometimes it's like having that goal and having it just be there existing and knowing you're always working towards it, but you're not sure when it's gonna sort of happen.

2:15:07and before you know it, all of a sudden you end up being there like, you know, a year goes by and you're like, I'm already here. That thought, I thought that would take me 10 years, you know? So it's being, having the ability to play with yourself too. Not being locked into like what somebody told you on the internet or what I'm telling you now, being able to like constantly adjust. Like my training regimen, everything, like my, if I find something that might be better, I'll just adjust a little bit. You're just constantly adjusting. and then eventually you have like such a good plan that works for you for like a couple of weeks or a month.

2:15:41You know, it like works really good. And then you're like, I'm ready to move on from that. I got to find another way to sort of like navigate. You just keep adjusting your little plan. You know, I just keep a ton of notes on my phone or reminders, you know. It's like just organize it in a way that, yeah, it kind of like just kind of cues. I can just look at it real quick and be like, oh yeah, okay, like set me on this path. Right, got it. Your mind goes a million miles an hour, man. You're able to sleep at night. You can shut it down. It's the hardest part for sure. Yeah. I sleep best probably on an airplane because I know that's all I can really do.

2:16:17You know, I got, okay, I gotta get my rest. Life of Kai season three is up. How many episodes is this gonna be? So right now we have one episode. There's only the one. Yeah. And so we're gonna have a total of five and the next one's about to drop, which is really exciting because it goes back to, you know, the last one was that big shift. We sort of talked about me having a family, navigating, riding really big waves and kind of like a catch up for where I'm at right now. And the next episode is about me going to the Proving Grounds, the Mecca of surfing, the North Shore of Oahu and having the opportunity to surf in the biggest, most prestigious surfing event in the world, the Eddie Icao and, you know, trying to accomplish a dream of riding pipeline the way the most hardcore pipe specialists do.

2:17:05So, you know, it's really cool to see that episode. And then, you know, kind of where it evolves from there, there's a bunch of other exciting things. And I think each episode keeps getting better and better. So I'm excited for everyone to see it. They drop once a month and they're around 20 minutes long. And then what's next for you? What's top of mind? I mean, we're working on a lot of innovations here in Los Angeles that I can't speak on, but it could be the game changing thing that could take my surfing to another level. So I might have to come back on the show and discuss all about it once we dial it in.

2:17:43But there's a lot of really cool innovations that I'm really digging into with a lot of really smart people, a lot of really motivated people. And it's about going to the next level. So doing that for the next month or so, training as hard as I can back home. I'm already, you know, the next winter swell at Jaws or Nazarene or the Northern Pacific is not until probably November of this year. And so I'm training every day like it's tomorrow. And then after that, you know, I'm taking the family down to Indonesia and we're gonna reset and go serve perfect waves and then come back just, you know, firing.

2:18:23Good to go, man. Awesome. Well, you got an open seat here when you're ready to come and talk about your big Manhattan project. I wanna hear all about it. Maybe you'll tell me when we turn all this stuff off. No, for sure, yeah. And that was super fun, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Mahalo.

2:18:47That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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2:20:10Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:20:52Oh, my God.