How To Be A Better Surfer In and Out of the Water According to Gerry Lopez
There’s no way to shortcut the path–whatever yours may be–to becoming a better surfer. You just have to go through your own motions, whatever they may be, and take offered tidbits from elders when they come your way. Lopez, who turns 76 this fall, recalls Jock Sutherland instructing him to try angling into waves after watching the young teen tank wave after wave at Pipe. That little nugget opened up the kingdom to the budding grom. He began his shaping journey a few years later, finding rail designs that would allow him to take deeper and higher lines than anyone else–and change surfing forever.
“You’re going to have to go to crowded spots,” is the first thing Lopez has to say about taking on surfing in any serious capacity. Some of us are good at that, others not so much. I liken it to serpentining through crowded subway cars and platforms and New York, and dislike the act fervently. But, as with navigating the subway system, you sharpen (or grow) your fingernails and teeth and dig into it. Elbows out.
“If you’re aspiring to raise your skill level as a surfer, then you certainly have to deal with crowded conditions, because you want to surf at the better spots where the good waves are, and so does everybody else. You know, I was a dick. A lot of surfers have to go through that. That’s part of the process of becoming a better surfer. I guess that’s just the yin and the yang of it.”
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Not to say that one ought not to have remorse, or that Gerry doesn’t–he does. But he’s not delusional: Snaking waves is, in his view, objectively part of what made him a better surfer, for better or worse. Not that he does much of that anymore.
In fact, you might say that both in and out of the water, he bears humility first and foremost–and in droves at that. He met his wife while learning to windsurf. She then convinced him to try snowboarding in Oregon, and then move there, where they’ve now been for the better part of half a century.
These days, Mr. Pipeline prefers surfing relatively quieter point breaks on the Baja peninsula over the mob scene of Pipe. Some might balk at him leaving his stomping grounds, but how many times can you make the same exact drop and thread the same exact tube? He’s got nothing left to prove, and a quick chat with him will leave you almost certain he probably never did.
“It’s okay to be a kook, you know. When we were doing the Yin & Yang movie, Stacy [Peralta] came down to Mexico and we went surfing one day and I was trying to learn how to ride that foil thing… I was, like, totally kooking out, and I come in and he’s just dancing on the beach, he’s just ecstatic. He goes ‘I just shot solid gold!’ You know, that’s it. I mean, everybody’s got to be a kook sometimes. So when you’re a kook, accept it.”
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Call it keeping your ego in check, call it growing up, or maybe call it evolution: “I remember just being intimidated with all the guys that knew how to surf and knowing you didn’t. But at the same time…I was reveling in the being-there part. Because you’re up close, and you can see it happening, and you knew that’s where you wanted to go. It was a lot of work, but that’s life, man. Start down that road, and it starts getting a little easier.”
“Yoga’s going to help you do it a lot longer than if you don’t do any yoga. I’m 75 years old now. I still wanna surf. I don’t know how much longer I got, but I think if I keep standing on my head, I can go a little more.” As in surfing, as in yoga, as in life.
Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a weekly series of pearls of wisdom from Gerry Lopez. Look for the next one to drop next week and the series to run through mid October.
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