Why Surf Lessons California Instructors Say Control and Calm Are the Foundations of Good Surfing
Surfing is a thrill-seeker’s sport, most people say, and they would be right: most of the joys of surfing have to do with the sheer rush of adrenaline one gets whenever one takes a roaring wave of water head-on, the hissing sound of all that surf under your feet, and the pounding of your own heart in your ears, louder even than the ocean itself. But what all this literary expansion misses is the fact that at the heart of good surfing is calm—a veritable ocean, in a way, of calm.
Ask surf lessons California instructors or ones from any other state or country, even, and they shall likely say as much to you. The secret to great, thrilling, blood-boiling surfing is in fact calm, much though the concept may seem alien to the sport. But every true sport has a discipline, after all, and at the center of every discipline is a sense of calm bolstered by control. This is something all students of surfing have to learn, one way or another.
This is not just philosophical abstraction either: learning calm is actually one of the first things you are required to do when you take on surfing lessons. Consider the basic act of getting on your board and learning how to stay on it. In order to stay put on the board, you are expected to learn how to be calm enough on this instrument that you do not interfere with its balance—for surfboards are naturally balanced. It is the surfer’s fault when they tilt, pearl (when the board’s nose sinks), or cork (when the tail of the board sinks). This continues all the way to the point where you learn how to paddle—it must be done slowly, in a cool, collected crawl—and even to the time when you learn how to sit and stand on the board.
There are many things you can do to get calm, of course, and your instructor may share some of his own preferred techniques with you. Either way, the trick is all in accepting what happens: learn to let go and have fun and let the surf take you where it wishes. The calm of surfing is in its ease: this is no rigid sport, not one so fraught with rules on form that you forget how to have fun.