We’re championing a new identity for surfers and outdoor enthusiasts. Photo: Alex Frings
“The key to real happiness is health, because health is a state of body, mind, and spirit that when all put together leads you down the right road. Health is the presence of a superior state of wellbeing – a vigor, a vitality, a pizazz – that you have to work for every single day of your life.”
The words stick, because they’re true. The late Doc Paskowitz impressed this pearl of wisdom on us in his last filmed interview when asked about the key to happiness. Without flinching, the word “health” escaped his lips. Doc was an evangelical advocate for health, and he managed to ride waves with a giant smile split across his face well into his 90s. Paskowitz also wrote a book called Surfing and Health, and if you ever had the honor to speak with him, he almost certainly mentioned it. If not the book, then the concept of health.
And he’s right.
Prosperity is good health (along with friendship and love). And it’s something within our control.
In beginning a brand new year, we couldn’t be more excited to announce a more intentional commitment to building The Inertia Health. We’ve included health-centric content since the day we launched more than five years ago as we’ve always intended to address surfers and outdoor enthusiasts as individuals with interests and passions that extend beyond their boards. We’ve been fortunate enough to build a large and talented community of credentialed contributors – from trainers to nutritionists and beyond – and our contributors’ work has always resonated. Today, we’ve reinvigorated our desire to aggressively champion a healthy lifestyle through the lens of surfing and the outdoors.
And in some ways, it’s personal. Aside from taking a keen interest in my health from a young age as a result of Type One Diabetes, I’ve always resented surfing culture’s middle-school-cliqueish insecurities around being perceived as “cool” and how that relates to health and beyond. It’s that attitude that champions apathy, target-less angst, and substance abuse as a form of thoughtful rebellion. While drugs might have an inextricable tie to the development of surf culture and better understanding that relationship presents a worthwhile task, it’s not something to glorify. If you want to see surfers smoking cigarettes and doing drugs on the cover of magazines, you can find that. Just somewhere else.
We’re championing a new identity for surfers and outdoor enthusiasts. And it’s a lot cooler than cigarette-induced lung cancer. It’s one that might enable you to ride waves and speak with tack-sharp wit well into your 90s. Kind of like Doc Paskowitz. Doc was something much better than cool. He was great.
We want to be the very best version of ourselves. We want to help you be the best version of yourself, pursuing that that vigor, vitality, pizazz – that happiness – Doc knew and spread so well. We’ll be here working for it every single day.
Welcome to 2016. Welcome to The Inertia Health. See you bright and early tomorrow.
