How to Surf With the Crowds

Do you find yourself increasingly going out of your way to find an empty spot to surf? …so much so that you are sitting there at your empty spot but with no waves to surf. Do you get that sort of dread in your stomach as you get closer to your surf spot wondering how many will already be out in the water? Then you should definitely keep reading.

Some of this is natural of course, who doesn’t prefer it when there’s plenty of waves and only a few people to share them with. There’s nothing better than to start the day with that perfect balance between community in the water and waves enough that you can pick and choose and not feel stressed or pressured to catch everything that remotely resembles a wave. The fact of the matter is that as surfing grows in popularity the empty line up will soon be a legend, a myth only seasoned surfers will remember and speak of with longing in their voice. Ok, maybe it won’t be that bad but learning how to deal with the lineup is inevitable if you want to consistently enjoy surfing and being relaxed while doing so.

Your Surfing Mind Explained

First of all let me explain why surfing with crowds can be so uncomfortable. I am sure you have noticed that somehow crowds is a phenomenon that is bothering you more in surfing than it does in other social settings or public spaces. …and it’s not just because you love surfing and because it’s so important to you that it somehow affects you more. It’s also because surfing is a high adrenaline sport and it requires your nervous system to be alert, to be observant and ready for action. This means that your nervous system is in a low-level state of fight and flight. In this state we have a much higher likelihood of being triggered. We are more sensitive to and aware of “threats” and circumstances that can pose a danger to us. Crowds can be that for several reasons. First of all, someone might be in your way and you might have an accident that can cause pain and serious injury. A very obvious threat to be aware of. Then of course we have the other way around where you might be in the way and yourself cause an accident. This leads us to the idea of “doing something wrong”. This might seem like a less obvious threat, but the fact of the matter is that group acceptance is very important for our survival and hence this too becomes of heightened importance to us in this low level fight and flight state. In other words, the thought of not being socially accepted becomes a heightened fear for us in this state.

Other fears we have will in this state become more potent as well. If we have a tendency towards performance anxiety this too will be more activated not just by the crowd but by our heightened state of alertness in this low level fight and flight state.

Another important aspect of being in a state of fight and flight, low level or not, is that we have a higher tendency to rely on subconscious programming than active reasoning in these situations. Meaning that coping behaviors, we learnt as a child are more likely to come into play than they are in many other daily situations. I’m talking about things like, avoiding conflict, perfectionism, bullying, emotional shut down etc etc. I will clarify what I mean with an example.

As children, from newly born we have needs and we are dependent on our significant care takers to meet those needs for us. In a perfect world our needs are always met and we express a need and it’s instantly met. But as we all know the world is not perfect and we instead start to learn to adapt our behavior to quickly and reliably get our needs met.

We can do this in various ways but in this example I will choose avoidance. There are different theories on how and why early behaviors are formed, attachment styles being a major one and avoidant attachment would be one of those styles. You might think that I am referring to that, and in some ways I am but here I am using it more broadly. The important part is that we have learnt that avoiding confrontation is the best way to get what we want. We prioritize not voicing our needs instead remaining calm and quiet and hence get rewarded with love and attention for being such a good child. The model extends beyond how we interact with our significant caretaker. In the same sort of way we learned how to interact with our peers. To go more into detail about how these coping mechanisms and subconscious programing are formed and what they tend to look like is beyond the scope of this article.

Broadly speaking if our coping behavior is avoidance or avoiding conflict this would show up in surfing as dealing with the crowd by simply avoiding it through looking for an empty spot or just not surfing at all. A more subtle way it can show up is by you suppressing your emotions and causing a lot of inner stress. Because avoidance at the core is prioritizing peace over expressing your own needs, i.e emotions. Meaning that you will sit there in the crowd, wanting to catch waves feeling increasingly frustrated but trying to suppress those feelings to avoid having to assert yourself. Effectively you have incapacitated yourself because you won’t let those feelings of frustrations power you to act, take up space and go for a wave. …and the frustration just keeps building as you are caught in an internal conflict between desperately wanting to catch waves and avoiding having to assert yourself in the crowd. It’s not just the feelings of frustration that grow here but also resentment, the resentment of the self. Few feelings are so toxic as resenting the self and it is quite unbearable actually. …leading to either more avoidance or an explosion of anger in a misguided attempt to neutralize the internal conflict by directing it outwards. …and by the way this is what has happened whenever you come home or get to work after a shitty surf and lash out at an unsuspecting colleague or partner due to some minor detail.

Looking for an empty wave might pay off but more often than not you end up surfing less than mediocre waves and as surfing grows in popularity you are less and less likely to succeed. So how should someone who hates dealing with the crowd overcome that? Funny you should ask, I have just the thing.

The Solution

What is going to have the most profound impact is working with me and through hypnotherapy resolve the subconscious programing and rewrite your coping behavior to a more functional and adaptable one. This work would also retrain your nervous system to not react as much to crowds and effectively lower the bar for when the programming comes into play in the first place. This is also work that will affect your overall wellbeing in all aspects of your life. I am always available for sessions online through my practice, The Online Therapy Practice. You can book a free one-on-one with me to chat more about your specific needs and how hypnotherapy could be of help.

If you don’t have the option of working with me one-on-one here are my top three tips on how to deal with crowded surf. For in the moment help and small things you can do yourself to better manage your discomfort in the surf crowd I recommend the following.

Breathing exercises to calm the nervous system.
I recommend box breathing. You breath in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4s, blow out for 4s and then hold for 4s with empty lungs. Repeat 8 times (ca 2min). Best done with eyes closed. It’s important that your inbreath fully expands your stomach and press on the diaphragm as this will release hormones to calm your nervous system. I do this coupled with visualizations as I stand in front of the surf spot before paddling out. You can also repeat some breathing cycles as you sit on your board waiting between waves. Just maybe keep your eyes open then.

Surf visualizations
Do positive visualizations when you are in a calm state of mind. Visualize yourself calmly paddling out and absolutely crushing a session and getting lots of waves on a very crowded day. Repeat the visualization in detail at least three times. This exercise should take no less than five minutes, the longer the better and the more detail you imagine the better. Really let yourself feel every aspect of the visualization.

Before paddling out take some time to observe the crowd.
This might have to be in water if you can’t properly see people enough from shore. Usually, you can reduce the size of the crowd a lot just by identifying who is actually surfing out there. Quite often you’ll have some that are just sitting around waiting and chatting not really paying attention. Then there’s also usually some who don’t really know where to sit etc. Observe people’s behaviors. You’ll see patterns that will help you identify openings and how to get waves without being particularly assertive or aggressive in a way you are not comfortable with.

Hope my article helped. Happy surfing out there.

// Lisa