In my surf journey, I touch on 4 types of surf coaching: 1. Friends who give tips 2. Self-teaching by watching content and going out 3. Local (cheaper) surf instructors and 4. The professional surf coach.

After all my years of surfing, I still felt like a beginner sometimes, even though I had the impression I should be at least intermediate. I want to pause here as to how I got to my current ability in surfing. This entails watching a ton of YouTube and Insta videos about how to work on the take-off. The things I incorporated from that are: Paddle with intent, as hard as you can; Kicking your feet sends a signal to other surfers you mean business to catch the wave; Chin down, look down line of the wave, not to the bottom; Doing a 2-step pop-up is how you begin, ideally you want to explode up. Be explosive both in paddle and pop-up.

This sounds great right? Well, this actually is exactly what is/was holding me back in my progression. Doing this sends my stress level when trying to catch a wave to 10 out of 10, stopping my body and mind from picking up all the signals around me.

The Turning Point: Fetch Surf Concept

So, I decided to reach out to Israel from the Fetch Surf Concept. The first session I did with Israel was at Jimbaran where I got myself filmed. Surfing there, on the left side looking from the beach, was sketchy as fuck since it felt like knee-deep reef—I don’t understand why anyone would surf there. Yet, there were many beginner classes out as well catching shit waves and a reef cut per wave to prove it. This is probably due to the contrast with the rest of the spot; while the left side is sharp reef, the middle of the bay is a gentle beach break that is much more forgiving for beginners. Nevertheless, I caught quite a few small waves on the left to show Israel where it lacked in my surfing. He told me to just go out and catch as many waves as possible for the footage.

That already gave my coach some insight into my surfing. He told me that my pop-up was not at all my biggest area of improvement; as a matter of fact, the pop-up was something that would be very easy to fix. My biggest room for improvement was the whole sequence and my mindset in the water. He gave the following summary:

First of all, the guy is amazing, very friendly and knowledgeable. But you have to say, this is an amazing upsell right? How could I say no? Now I was intrigued and decided to move forward with the package before even analyzing the video with my coach.

Cost: $630 (what the actual fuck) for a 10-hour package. But I was going to do my guided surf sessions in the Uluwatu Bukit peninsula. The package included 3 in-water sessions and 2 theory sessions.

Putting Theory into Practice

As of today, we did 2 theory sessions and 1 additional session at Impossibles to put the theory to practice. (The first in-water session was the video analysis, the second session was at Impossibles where we applied the theory.)

The theory got me to learn a new position for lying on my board which will allow me to develop my 6th sense to feel when the waves pick me up. This, in addition to paddle technique and intensity coaching, should help me become more relaxed and lower my stress level when trying to catch a wave.

My coach explained how you should paddle to get (back) out to the line-up, saving your energy, and how you should paddle to catch a wave, and why these differ. Reducing paddle exhaustion, opening your entire being to feel the wave push you forward, and then slowly and controlled movement through the pop-up movement is what I need to do. This clicked with me sooooo much, I finally understood why Rob Machado’s pop-up looks so smooth and controlled. He knows how to do all these things and went through all the learning phases for this when he was a kid: Unskilled / knowingly unskilled / knowingly skilled / automatically skilled.

I am now moving between knowingly unskilled to knowingly skilled. I practiced all this with my coach in the ocean and when I did everything right it was a world of difference. My pop-up was clean and smooth, my stress level a lot lower than 10. And there are still many areas where I can improve, but now at least I know what I need to do and where I need to put my focus. And besides this, there is still enough to learn about positioning, working the line-up, understanding other surfers' skills, and each of those things will allow you to catch 1 more wave every hour, eventually getting me to 10-15 waves per hour easily. Seeing catching the waves as a game, same as managing the line-up. The mental room that is made available by relaxing more in the water and while catching the waves is immense here.

Q&A

Is a professional surf coach worth it?

Short answer, Yes. From my point of view going into this, my perception was that my pop-up was the part that was blocking me from progressing my surfing. I thought I needed to perfect this in order to feel more secure on bigger and steeper waves etc. However, after working with a coach, that turned out to only be a very small (and easy to fix) part of my bigger issue, which was the immense stress level I was creating for myself when catching a wave.

What is the difference between a professional surf coach and a local surf coach?

Short answer, Local surf schools sell the experience of catching your first wave, while professional surf coaches give you a tailor-made way to actually learn how to surf and keep improving on your own.

There will be exceptions to this, but in general there is a big gap between what the local surf schools can teach a surfer and what professional coaches can do. They have a lot more technical, biomechanical and physiological knowledge to get you to the next level in your surfing. In my opinion, most local surf schools can’t even be considered coaches; they are more there to make money selling the experience of surfing. They will push their customers into waves and that in itself removes everything that a new surfer needs to learn.

So go do this, if you only want the experience of surfing—I know I did and this definitely helped me get hooked on surfing. After getting that experience you can teach yourself to catch waves by massively improving your paddle strength, only to remain a beginner after surfing for 7 years just like me. It only took the described 5 sessions with a professional coach to give me the tools to launch myself to the next level of surfing. Upper intermediate here I come!