If there’s one thing that’s more important than actually surfing, it’s the lead-up to surfing. The days before a much-anticipated swell require a dedicated, tried and true routine to ensure maximum enjoyment. While you may have a few different variations, this video from The Surf Rat will serve you well as a backbone for what everyone should do.
Step 1: Check your forecasts. Ignore the bad ones and focus on the good ones. This will keep you feeling positive and will in no way set you up for the inevitable crushing disappointment of an over-hyped swell.
Step 2: Keep your house. If you surf, you presumably grow all your own food and routinely funnel chia seeds directly into your rectum. Surfing, after all, requires a heartfelt love of Mother Gaia that can only be properly expressed through various social media channels and kale smoothies. Give your plants a kiss before you leave the house. #blessings #blessed #weareallone
Step 3: Hype the swell. It is of utmost importance that you tell all of your friends who cannot surf that you are going to go surfing. Their jealousy will directly influence the amount of fun you have: the more envious they are, the more fun you will have. This will also help in having a placebo effect on the waves. No matter how shitty they actually are, if you have convinced your friends they are great, you will think they are great.
Step 4: Document, document, document. There is no point in doing anything if no one sees you doing it. In today’s world, in fact, if it’s not on social media it never even happened. One shot will not do—lifestyle shots galore with as many filters as possible barely suffice, so when possible, edit together video clips that show you having fun. Of course, in the process of making these clips, you will miss out on actually having fun, but everyone will think you had fun which is much more important than having fun.
Step 5: Keep your stuff. Thieves are smart these days. They know how to do everything except drive a stick shift. In the event that you do not have a manual transmission, you will be required to hide your keys somewhere. There are a few options here. If you would like your vehicle to be stolen, put your keys in the gas cap or on the wheel. That way, the insurance company will pay you out and you can claim all the laptops and camera gear you may or may not have had in your car. Or, if you would like to retain ownership of your vehicle, take the advice in the video and hide them in plain sight. You can also hide them on the wheel of someone else’s car which will confuse everyone involved.
Step 6: Limber up. Stretching is an absolute must for anyone who moves their body in any fashion. Nearly as important is to ensure that everyone sees you stretching before your session—if the pros do it and you do it too, then you must be as good as a pro. Yoga, as you know, is the perfect complement to surfing because of the aforementioned chia seed butt funnel. It’s a lifestyle, you know?
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