Laird Hamilton: A Surfermag.com exclusive interview

SURFERMAG.COM: Exactly. Okay, changing directions a bit, what about portable oxygen canisters?

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LAIRD: We thought, "how can we make this safer, what do we need to do to be safer?" Oxygen is great except compressed air is dangerous because you have to continue to breathe. And the first thing you learn in surfing, from the very beginning, is 'suck and hold.' That's our number one thing we learn surfing, since we're two years old. And so in the moment of disaster you're going to resort to the most primitive aspect of you, you're going to go to a totally subconscious behavioral pattern. When you suck and hold compressed air, you're going to get the bends. Or if you break your arm, can't get your oxygen tank; get knocked out, can't get your oxygen tank. So, all of the sudden, we have all these things that oxygen doesn't really help. We have all the oxygen we need on the top of the surface. Now, there is a one in a million or one in ten million chance that when you're down thirty feet you'll pull your spare air out and take a breath. But, the chance that you have all this other stuff happen are a lot greater. That's why we went to flotation, because you get knocked out, you float to the top; you break your arm, you come to the top. It helps you swim to the top faster because you're more buoyant so when you do swim, you're stronger. The more buoyant you are, the more power you have and the sooner you get to the top (points up). So, there's all these things that make flotation more important and, obviously, the more correct way to go when it comes to this particular thing.

SURFERMAG.COM: Interesting. Lets segue into your training, a lot of people on the website are interested in your training. Off-season I know that you do the standup-paddle surfing

LAIRD: Well that's all year round, standup-paddle surfing.

SURFERMAG.COM: Yeah, all year. Is there an off-season/on-season training? Is there one specific thing for off-season and one training? Whereas on-season training, just surf?

LAIRD: We talk about training for off-season and on-season, for me I just go training for life. Just to live, to be healthy, to eat good, to sleep well, to have all these things. Training is just an essential part of sanity. So you have training for sanity. Training to be sane. Like no training, you're in trouble. There is just going to be one thing after the next. Before you know it you're not doing the right things, you're unhealthy, mentally unhealthy. You know physical health – strong mental health, there's a relationship between those two. Variety of training is important because it keeps it interesting. Doing things that you enjoy, very important, because you do it more. And then also working on your weaknesses, working on your faults. Also sports specific, what really do you need? Don't go out and get giant arms if you're doing something that involves running.

SURFERMAG.COM: Well, what is your routine?

LAIRD: In our sport the weakest thing surfers have, we have weak legs, unless they are genetically already born with strong legs. It's just surfers in general, we have weak legs because we run on our arms. We are all about arm strength because that's where our power comes from. In our sport you don't run down the court, you paddle down the court. And then the ride is 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds; it's a short ride. So your legs really don't really get pumped. I can remember going to Rincon when I was kid, and you know you catch four waves there, at the end your legs were shaking and it was because we didn't really have the leg endurance, so leg strengthening is great. Biking is wonderful for that, any kind of sand work – sand dune, sand running.

SURFERMAG.COM: What about standup-paddle surfing for you legs?

LAIRD: The best.

SURFERMAG.COM: Because you're standing all the time...

LAIRD: Yeah...arches, toes. A lot of people think it’s upper body because it's with the paddle, but that's actually the least of it.

SURFERMAG.COM: I see it as kind of a core area, middle body training.

LAIRD: Core, abs, rotational, legs, arches actually, feet, toes. It's complementary, you're in the water, its fun to do, you can go surf when it's small so you're surfing too. So again, here you are, before you know it, its three hours in and you're like, "Ohh I've been doin' this for three hours." Instead of going to the gym, and you're like, "How many more minutes is there?"

SURFERMAG.COM: I can relate to that.

LAIRD: That's not good training. And then of course diet is a big part of training. You know, and that's the hardest thing to do. It's easier to go do physical activities for an hour or two everyday than it is to change the way you eat, you do that three times a day plus everyone likes to eat from their taste buds not necessarily from their body's needs. So there again here we have another thing, it's harder to eat correctly and not eat breads and not eat pastas and try to stay away from processed foods. Probably Burger King, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, Taco Bell is not the greatest place to go. You can get away with it when you're young, that's great. You can eat Oreo Cookies and a glass of milk and still grow and still have a lot of energy. But in the end, I say "potato chips in is potato chips out." You eat potato chips, you're going to perform like a potato chip. It's just the rules. And if you're able to get away with it because you're that talented, you're still just deceiving yourself because in the end you're either going to have a short-lived career or you're just not going to be performing at the level that you could. So either way you're shortchanging yourself. But there is balance of course. You need to be able to enjoy certain things too. It doesn't mean you can't have coffee, but you need to have balance too. Everything in moderation, even moderation. There has to be a certain balance.

SURFERMAG.COM: I've heard that somewhere.

LAIRD: Or just no balance and be fully extreme about everything (throws arms apart), but that's balance too. So either way you carry it, either you're being mellow about everything or you're being extreme about everything, but at the end things are offsetting the other.

SURFERMAG.COM: Ying and yang type deal.

LAIRD: Positive and negative makes a battery.

SURFERMAG.COM: Lets move into the tow surfing sessions themselves. How many tow sessions do you log each year, roughly? Is that a fair question or is it too hard to quantify?

LAIRD: I could say off the top of my head at least 30 to 45. If you include foiling it starts going to up. You all of the sudden start to get into 60, maybe more than that. 60, 75 something like that.

SURFERMAG.COM: So lots of tow sessions.

LAIRD: And foiling is part of that too. Foiling is a big part of that.

SURFERMAG.COM: You mentioned in The Ride / The Day after you had the big session in November you said, and I quote, "The day brought relief to me,". I'm wondering, do you ever feel chained to this existence. In other words, could you walk away and be happy with yourself?

LAIRD: Now probably more than ever before in my life. I could say, yeah I could. Walk away from surfing (perplexed look)?

SURFERMAG.COM: Yeah

LAIRD: It'd be hard to walk away from surfing because that's part of who [I am]. That'd be like walking away from my wife, or walking away from my daughter, or walking away from food, or walking away from an essential element of my life. It'd be difficult (slight laugh). Surfing for me isn't something that is a job. Because it's different, for some people what they do is a job almost or it's become a job for them to the point where they're not going to go do it on their vacation. Like if I go on a vacation, I want to go somewhere where I can do an activity. But it's also because I do a variety, a bunch of stuff. But could I walk away from it and feel satisfied, I mean yeah. If I said 'I'm going to walk away and not ride big waves anymore and no problem" would I feel like I'm missing something?

SURFERMAG.COM: Yeah.

LAIRD: No. And that happened a few years ago because I think a couple things: When you first realize things are out of your hands because even if you're dedicated to it and going everywhere and chasing it you're ready for everything you could be sick. You're sick and its 35 feet - 40 feet, the biggest swell, and you've got a 106 temperature and you can't move, you're just on the floor sick, you're hurt. It's out of your hands. And once you really, really realize that it truly is out of your hands, then you kind of relinquish that you are in control of it. Because as long as you think somehow that you are in control of it, that you can always have it when you need it and all that, then you're always going to be striving, trying to get it because you think you're in control of it. Versus you know what, this is really out of my hands and if I have the fortune to be prepared, ready and healthy to go on the day that it happens and not hurt or whatever the circumstances then that changes it a little bit. Then you go, "you know what I'm not supposed to" (throws arms up) versus "how come I can't" (lets out a big laugh).

SURFERMAG.COM: What's the scariest moment, Laird, in your surfing career?

LAIRD: (Contemplates) Scariest moment in my surfing career (contemplates more). Well you know, it's hard for me to have one moment you know. I've had enough broken ankles that I started to wonder if I would be able to surf again. Enough time goes by and you start to think you know…

SURFERMAG.COM: But has there been a wipeout or a situation in the water?

LAIRD: Well, I've been lost at sea. That was scary.

SURFERMAG.COM: That sounds pretty scary. How did that happen?

LAIRD: I was jet skiing between Maui and the Big Island and had really bad visibility from the volcano. I got pulled off course by the current, it was like triple the normal current strengths and it drew me way off course. I was like 60 miles north of Hilo and it was getting dark. I had been in the water since like 5: 00 a.m., and I just wasn't sure if I was going to make it back to land. That was scary.

SURFERMAG.COM: How did that turn out? GPS or…

LAIRD: EPIRB, it worked. It was older one, I was glad the batteries were working (smiles). They found me with a chopper. The Coast Guard rescued me and plucked me out of the ocean but I had a lot of time to think.

I mean I've had some bad wipeouts. You know people ask me a lot, I've been asked a lot, especially touring around talking about this movie, and they ask me, they always want to know about the wipeouts. Of course I've had some horrendous wipeouts. For example, the one I got with Pete Cabrinha in Endless Summer 2. I straighten-off behind him and I get mowed by a big one and that's all pre-flotation. Guys always say "they wear flotation," but in the beginning all we had was surf shorts on. And, you know, I got wiped out pretty bad on the foilboard with boots on, but a lot of my most traumatic stuff happened when I was so young that I imagine those were…You know you're 30 years old, you're at the top of your physical strength and you go through these wipeouts, they're nothing like when you're four or five years old and a four-foot wave gets you and pounds you and rips you out with the current and you're out there getting sucked out to sea as a little kid. So it's all relative. I think I've had so many of those that I've had less ocean related traumatic experiences than I would maybe if I had started later. I'd remember these other ones better if I hadn't had non-ocean or non-surfing related ones. But I think maybe for me the worst thing was having my friend down. I had a couple situations where I had people that I cared about that were below and they weren't coming up. For me that was way, way, way, way worse than me being down there. 'Cus if it's me down there, it's me. I'm down there, I gotta deal with it. But when it's someone else…

SURFERMAG.COM: Kind of not being in control of it, if it's somebody else.

LAIRD: The worst. Those were scary.

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