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The emotional return on investment of surfing

Surfing: there is an intangible emotional return on investment in every wave we ride | Photo: Shutterstock

If you ask longtime wave riders what the magic and appeal of surfing is, they might struggle to give you an exact, clear reason.

Surfing is profoundly addictive.

It makes you want more and more waves and to surf more and more regularly - every day, twice a day, and even at night.

You rarely find someone who learned to stand on their feet and glide across the water who has quit because it wasn't fun.

Surfing is surely one of the sports with the highest retention levels, with its influence transcending the boundaries of the physical activity itself.

If you explore some of the surfing's most memorable quotes, you'll notice that many of those timeless references feature some sort of unexplainable, intangible descriptions.

Duke Kahanamoku once revealed that, "Out of the water, I am nothing."

"Surfing is almost a way to fly," stated Jeff Hakman.

Shaun Tomson said that, "It's joy, fear, and accomplishment all rolled into one experience."

Kelly Slater put it from a very interesting angle: "It's like the mafia. Once you're in - you're in. There's no getting out."

"I've always thought surfing is a reflection of who you are."

Surfing is everything we read above and another million things on top.

Someone once said, "There is nothing, nothing, more sad than a surfer who used to surf," and it couldn't be more true.

But now comes the tricky part of this reflection. Why exactly is all this fuss about sliding on the surface of the water?

Surfing: despite all the pre-, during, and post-session chores, it's still profoundly addictive | Photo: Shutterstock

There Is Nothing Fun About the Before and After

Doesn't surfing have many pre-, during, and post-session chores, worries, cons, and setbacks? How do you measure the return on investment we get from a few seconds riding head-high max waves?

To try and answer these questions, let's first list the most powerful adversities embracing surfing (and liking it) has upon us.

In other words, ten reasons that would make us walk away from even giving surfing a go:

  1. Swell Dependency: Winds create swells that form waves, but picture-perfect conditions are rarely aligned;
  2. Tide Time Dependency: Timing tides with swell periods, sandbanks, and availability to surf is a complicated equation;
  3. Traveling to The Surf Spot: If you're walking to your home break, you're one of the few surfers with that privilege - most people ride a bike or drive to the waves;
  4. Putting On a Wetsuit: It takes time, and it sometimes takes place in cold environments;
  5. Learning Curve: Everyone has to start somewhere, and it could take a few weeks before you can stand on a surfboard and ride a broken wave;
  6. Crowd: It's one of surfing's worst enemies, and it can easily bring your wave count to zero or one;
  7. Paddling: Getting out the back and duck diving drains your energy one wave at a time;
  8. Wipeouts: They're inevitable and could get you injured;
  9. Adverse Weather and Low Temperatures: Rain, wind gusts, and cold waters might lead you to re-evaluate your options;
  10. Rinsing and Drying Wetsuit: You feel tired, but you still have to rinse your wetsuit with fresh water and put it to dry;

All for a few perfect waves. How unusually odd is that?

In a time when we tend to move to instant gratification, fueled by endless social media feeds that control what we like and don't like, surfing could be the exact opposite of that.

It's time-consuming, waves are rarely perfect, the hassle for a good wave is stressful, and the fun per everything-else-you-need-to-do-to-get-to-the-lineup ratio is outstandingly low.

The green room: a couple of seconds in the barrel seem like an eternity | Photo: Shutterstock

Measuring the Stoke

Figures matter. Let's do some simple math to know exactly what we're getting every time we surf, focusing specifically on the riding time per session:

  • Session Duration: ~ 60 minutes;
  • Crowd: Average;
  • Paddling Time: 3 minutes per wave;
  • Waiting Time: 6 minutes per wave;
  • Waves Ridden: 7;
  • Average Riding Time Per Wave: 10 seconds;
  • Total Riding Time: 70 seconds;

So, on a fairly crowded peak, we might able to catch seven waves and enjoy a total of 70 seconds of net surfing time in an hour.

That is around 2 percent of pure fun - we spend 60 minutes in the water to ride waves for around one minute.

And we're excluding from the equation driving time to and from the spot, getting in and out of the wetsuit, the potential frustration with the conditions we meet, harsh weather conditions, etc.

Unforgettable days? We might have a couple per year if we surf at least once a week.

Then, why do we get back to it? Why do the endless cons never beat the apparently fragile pros?

Why are we willing to get out of bed early on a freezing Saturday morning to get 70 seconds of gliding time over cold water?

Surfing: all for a few perfect waves | Photo: Shutterstock

The Intangible Allure

The answer lies in the brutal intangibility of the feeling of riding a wave.

Surfing is one of the few sports that rely on Nature's will to take place.

And every day is really unique in the sense that you could be enjoying a 100-yard-long, one-foot, longboarding wave today and nearly running out of breath after a two-wave-hold-down tomorrow.

There's a constant renewal, an ever-changing level of unpredictability, and deference toward a bigger-than-us entity that keeps surfers coming back, on and on, sometimes to unreasonable degrees of healthy addiction.

Surfing has the largest emotional return on investment of all sports.

There's almost nothing rational in the scale when you simply list and weigh the cons and pros of paddling out.

Yes, science can explain part of the feel-good connection surfers talk about, but there's more than just endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, norepinephrine, and the ocean's negative ions.

But the impalpable, undescribable, ethereal, and abstract allure of surfing is all anchored on human emotions, that part of our lives we tend to belittle or even eradicate from our daily lives.

What's really interesting is that we are mostly water and emotions, two ingredients fully present in the ocean and stoke.

And every time we downplay our emotions, we are actually acting emotionally on them.

Surfing is priceless.

For those who were blessed to embrace it full-on, it's the only variable that will keep you grounded and sane and will never let you down.

The trick is to keep it optimized through time, always watered and scratching addition levels.


Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com



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