No matter how many times I encounter it, I’ll never quite get used to the sensation of drowning. I don’t mean actual drowning, but rather the feeling of going up to take a breath after being worked by a wave, only to realize that you’re not actually at the surface. Even if you know you aren’t really in danger, there’s inevitably a brief moment where your primordial lizard brain tells you that you need to get out now. Afterwards, you remember that nobody ever drowned from not being able to breathe for ten seconds because of a three-foot crumbly garbage wave.
I did not expect to be forced to confront that feeling when I was invited to attend a press event for Laird Hamilton’s health food brand Laird Superfood. I initially imagined trays of samples and a pitch about the importance of organic ingredients. However, when I got to the end of the invitation, it promised an “intense workout” and warned me to bring well-fitted swim trunks and a water bottle. I started to wonder exactly what the hell kind of food promotion event this was.
That’s how I found out about XPT, Laird’s other business venture. It’s a workout program with promotional videos showing Laird casually doing weight training exercises on the bottom of his pool, surrounded by a bunch of crossfit-types. “Oh great,” I thought, “I’m going to die.”
I sent a quick message to my editor, telling him that I’d be out most of the day and that if he didn’t hear back from me, he must avenge my death. He did not take the request seriously. I felt slightly betrayed.
The event took place in the backyard of Laird and Gabrielle Reece’s Malibu home. We started with a breath work session, where Laird stalked between the supine reporters and instructed us in the art of hyperventilation. Then we were put through a brief proving ground where they sorted us into groups based on our ability to do laps in their pool without taking a breath.
When the workout began in earnest, it was a series of variations on a theme: weighted underwater exercises that didn’t necessarily push us to the limits of our physical strength, but rather our ability to endure discomfort. We’d hold a dumbbell and sink to the bottom of the deep end, then push back to the surface for a breath (a maneuver they call a Reece jump, after one of Gabby and Laird’s daughters). Later on, we added laps across across the pool while holding a dumbbell, then squat jumps in the shallow end with heavier weights.
When the only opportunity to breathe is a brief moment breaching the water’s surface before a dumbbell drags you back under, each rep starts to carry with it a sense of urgency. It was that same feeling I’d felt dozens of times before while tumbling in the middle of a foam ball. As it was then, the solution was to stop and tell myself that the sense of instinctual dread wasn’t really impending doom, but rather temporary discomfort. I soon realized that crouching on the bottom of the pool in between reps was actually a chance to rest and reset. I learned to balance the urge to breathe with the need to pace myself.
However, the feeling would later return in one of Laird’s ice tubs. Hamilton is a sauna and ice bath devotee, emphatically proclaiming the benefits of extreme heat followed by a cold plunge. For the first 30 seconds after stepping into one of the ice-cube filled tubs, an involuntary response in my brain was telling me that I had to get out. Once again, I reminded myself to ignore the feeling. The internal panic was eventually replaced by a dull sense of unease, the same feeling one gets halfway through a transatlantic flight. I’m not sure if I came out of the tub with a shared love of ice baths, but hopefully the Pacific ocean will seem like a cake walk from here on out.
We did eventually get to the food samples and a pitch about organic ingredients. Laird and Gabby explained the origin of Laird Superfood, a story that echoed Paul Newman’s journey from screen to salad-dressing bottle. Laird started by making his own concoction of a coffee creamer designed to fuel workouts and big-wave hunting expeditions. Later on, they had the recipe converted to powdered form, which allowed Laird and Gabby to sell it to friends. Eventually, it would become the cornerstone of a growing stable of food products.
I noticed how often they finish each other’s sentences. They do it in a way that’s less like a rehearsed sales routine than a natural function of two people who are so deeply ingrained in each other’s lives that their thoughts start to emerge as one. It makes quoting them directly almost impossible.
As I watched Gabby and Laird volley the conversation back and forth, it started to dawn on me why they had decided promote a health-food brand with a grueling underwater workout and an ice bath. In a way, it speaks to their all-in approach to seemingly everything. The surfing, the workouts, the food, the family life – the lines between them blur into a gestalt. Laird literally prepares for big wave surfing with a workout program he developed with his wife in his backyard, doing weighted pool exercises named after their daughter. Even the fact that the banner product of their company isn’t a workout supplement, but rather a coffee creamer Laird drinks every morning, speaks to this ethos.
“To do anything the full way can be harder, but at the end both of us feel good about it,” said Laird at one point. In this case, he was referring to his and Gabby’s quest to bring to market a vanilla creamer without using artificial flavoring, but it could also be taken as a motto. It seems like it’s working.
