Ocean, Mind, Body, Equipment - Surfing to skiing parallels with Clayton Nienaber

Hello skiers, and actually surfers this week, because on the Big Picture Skiing podcast I sat down with Clayton Nienaber. Now he is the founder of OMBI Surfing, which is an online platform that helps people all around the world improve their surfing through video coaching and online coaching. Now what's really cool is you probably are aware that I also run an online ski coaching website that is very similar, so I've been following OMBI for a while and I'm a keen surfer myself. But I've started later in life. So, learning things later in life is a little more difficult. I really like to know the, the what, how, and why of things to do and simple steps broken down that I can work on, like bite-sized chunks that I know I can improve before putting it together. So, I wanted to get Clayton on the show because I really feel like if you can get an outsider's perspective on another sport, for example, surfing, and see how someone breaks down and views that sport that might not be your own sport, it will help you understand, break down, and improve your own sport that you really love, which is skiing. So, I really think you're going to get a lot out of this show and this chat with Clayton, because he's very good at using analogy. He's very good at simplifying things. He's very good at explaining why you want to do something. And so with this perspective on skiing taken more from a surface point of view, I think you're going to find you'll, yeah, approach your skiing a little bit differently and possibly also use more simulations and dryland training to help attack and improve those areas that are kind of lacking in your skiing. Now just before we get into the chat with Clayton and myself, I just want to leave you with my takeaway from looking at skiing through the eyes of surfing and also through what Clayton, how he views surfing. And that is looking at the energy you get from the wave. And so that would be the energy you get from the mountain and spots that you can increase or have more potential energy and spots in a turn on the mountain where you would have a decrease in energy. So these energy sources are what drives you're skiing or you're surfing. And if you understand where you can get that from, you're going to be far more efficient in your movements and you're going to, like, your intention of what you do will create different body positions and those body positions you see in great skiers and great surfers, because what they're really doing, they're adjusting their movements not to a particular technique or whatever so much, but more to get a reaction and an intention to say, get back up the wave, or get across the hill fast. So, I think that's a really key point, because as skiers, I think you can get kind of caught in the moment, especially because in skiing, gravity, you know, slopes, we're always taken to the top of the mountain, and you can just, there's this kind of unlimited potential there, but in surfing, you go down a wave, and then often you have to come back up again to get that potential energy again. And so my biggest takeaway from surfing into skiing is trying to figure out how on the mountain I can keep tapping into this energy and keep kind of bringing that energy up higher and then control it and then bring it back up higher again, instead of just like letting it go and like losing it all the time, or just only, you know, going down the mountain. I hope you get what I mean by this, but the analogy of up and down the wave and turning back across the slope and what great skiers do where they can convert energy from down the hill to across the hill is, I think, a masterful act. All right, I'm going to leave the, uh, the rest up to the podcast interview. I hope you enjoy it. And thanks for joining me on, uh, the Big Picture Skiing podcast. Now, it's funny, you're, you're a surf coach, you're a surfer.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, I've sort of only picked up surfing as a, as a something I do in later in my life, so I find the way you explain things and your site Ombe, O-M-B-E. Really cool and inspirational and just helps, I think, people learn something like complex like surfing more easily. So I was drawn to ask you some questions.

I get so excited about this because I remember going to the dentist one day, I had toothache, and I was— these golfers were showing you how to twist, and I was like, but hang on, when I surf, my top turn's a twist. and the longer I hold the twist for, the more power I have. So I just started like Golf Digest. I was just like, give me all the information. I was just stealing from these guys. And then I went to baseball to figure out how do you get the most power when you're batting. But then it's also about how do you get power when you bowl, and it's all about the spinal engine and how well you can twist. And then I had a look at surfing, and like, you see a surfer, he takes off, he wobbles down the wave goes to the top of the wave and the twist is broken, he leans, falls off, and the arms are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm like, oh my gosh, what's wrong with these people? And all it boils down to is that if you've ever thrown or pitched a baseball or swung a baseball bat, you've got a lot of reps. And in tennis, if you've hit a ball, you've done so many reps. And surfers don't have enough reps. And especially with the water getting more and more crowded. I mean, just through COVID alone, I reckon surfing numbers jumped up. It's like you couldn't work but you could exercise. And then the government gave us like $700 a fortnight, which is almost a brand new board plus a wetsuit and boardies and wax and new fins. It's like, wow, suddenly everyone is surfing. The problem is the wave count went down, people don't know what to do, it was confusing, and it's just a mess.

Yeah, so that, that's like, when did you start creating a site where you taught what you knew about surfing through videos and, and like an online community?

So an interesting thing is, um, I am originally a surfboard shaper, so I made a board for a guy the once and he said the board went crap. So I was like, uh, where's the crap? On the bottom turn where you want to hold or on the top turn where you want it to release and to be loose? He was like, I don't know, it's just not a good board. Can you take it back and make me a new one? I said, let me see you surf first. Mate, the guy surfed flat, so in snowboarding or skiing terms, never put it on edge. So he had no control. He didn't understand how to use the wave's energy. He moved his body poorly. Therefore, the board responded to the poor movements and not any good movements. So I showed him a few tips. He came back 3 months later and said, this is the best board I've ever had. So he went from saying, Clay, you're a shit shaper, to, this is— you're a guru and this is the best board ever. And the only difference is, is I taught him how to use the tool better. So it got me then thinking, if I can just educate more people on how waves work, how the body works, how the board works, what's going on in your head through the learning process more people will enjoy surfing and they'll get more small wins. And after each win, you get a dopamine hit, which means you want more. And after all of that, it's kind of like your glass which is full empties itself, and then you can add more information to it. And that got me excited, which made me want to do more online education. I ended up traveling around the world trying to host, um, these 2-hour seminars where I spoke about the ocean, OMBE—Ocean Mind, Body, and Equipment—and I tell people how boards work, how your mind works, and, and people loved it. It's just I was only speaking to like 50 people at a time, and it was a trip to Spain and Canary Islands and the UK and, um, Japan, and I felt like I was making little dents and little inroads, and I was just like, oh I get frustrated when you go surfing and you're seeing everyone doing it wrong. And when you know what's right and wrong, it's almost like there's this lens that you can't unsee it, and all the ugliness just stands out. But when you see good surfing, you're like, oh wow, that, that's like a fine wine, it's, it's amazing. Um, so I just wanted to pick up the level of surfing. Yeah, cool.

And so Like, did you come from a background— you're a shaper, but did you also compete? Like, were you quite—

yeah, so yeah, good. Funny little story. Um, when I was about— oh, I used to be a soccer player, um, in my pre-teens up till about 13. And then my dad got a new job and he moved to the coast, and my brother started surfing. And being a younger sibling, I started following his footsteps. And then round about the same time, I became diabetic. So back then, it was in the '80s, I had to get a vial of insulin, get the injection out, like draw it out, get the bubble out, and stick into my arm. And all the classmates are going like, oh, what are you doing? That's like— and straight away you just feel like, uh, I'm a weirdo. So whenever I went surfing, I was in my own environment, so I quickly became the best surfer in the school, and then I surfed for the state, which was Zululand, and I became like the state champion. Then I moved to the city and got sponsored, um, did try to do 2 years on the world tour, and it was a harsh 2 years because I made so many mistakes and lots of regrets from the mistakes that I made. But those are the things that taught me everything that I now know, because I had to try to figure out why I wasn't successful, successful on the pro tour. Why was I losing heats? Why did I lose speed on the turn? Um, how come some guy goes and parties the night before when I had the healthy meal, had the carbs, the pasta, went to bed early, did my stretches, paddled out, tried really hard and sucked? He got to the beach hungover got through the heat, made the final event, and made money, and I went home with no money in my pocket. So there was like, oh, frustration, and I had to kind of feel all the stuff out. And I just want to make sure that the mistakes that are made, other people don't do the same mistakes. Yeah, okay.

Like, one thing I would say stands out with how you get messages across, like how to fix mistakes, is simulations. Yeah, uh, do you want to talk on the importance of simulating? So not actually surfing, but doing something similar, or breaking it down so you get the feeling?

Okay, so they say surfing is only about— only what? Surf? Only a surfer knows the feeling. But if you've never felt it, how do you know if you're doing it wrong? And how do you know what that feeling is? You could be chasing your tail and you're chasing the wrong thing. So if you go to the set, if you go to someone, it feels like this, or if you're cooking a dish and it should taste like this, suddenly you've got a reference and you have an idea of what you, what you're chasing. But the, the weird thing about the body is when you've done it right, you know it's right. It's like, I don't play golf, but if I suddenly hit the ball correct there's that dunk, and it sounds right, it feels right, and you know that it's going towards the hole. But if you hit it wrong, intrinsically, before the ball's even traveled the distance to wherever it's going, you know if it's wrong. So we've got this inbuilt mechanism whereby we try to find the, the simplest way to do something, because our brain's amazing. Whereby it uses a lot of energy. So if we don't have to use our brain and it can just simplify movements and patterns, um, it's like, okay, that was right, that's the easiest way to do it, let's stick with that. But the other thing, our body learns slow, but once we've developed a habit, it's really hard to break a habit. So with surfing, if you learned from beginner to do it wrong you're going to take those bad habits into your intermediate surfing and you're going to compound your bad habits. And by the time you get to a surf coach, he's like, oh my gosh, how do I go about fixing years and years and years of bad habits? So then you have to start, um, teaching people the fundamentals. And when you win them over through simulations and explanations It's actually like this, and you show them the easier way to do it out of water, and they go, wow, that was good, I can see the relevance. Then when they take that relevance into the water and they have fun with it, you'll see results. But if they take that into the water and they try really hard with it, that will cause stress, tension, anxiety, and it'll probably elude them. So it's this weird thing, it's like golf. If you want to really hit the ball well, don't try.

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with the, the like linking. Like if you've never felt like in skiing, you've never felt what it feels like to rip a really nice carve turn, then yeah, where, how do you know where to start? But if you know, if you can parallel that to if you are a surfer, it is like this, or if you are a bike rider, it feels similar to this, it's a much easier leap for the brain to make.

Yeah, so that next thing in surfing, we've got an issue, and it's kind of— there's a, um, I'm trying to think the right words and the right terms to use, but there's a finite number of waves because you're only surfing for 2 hours, only X amount of waves come through. Generally, the best surfers are getting the pick of them, and then it's crowded and they're breaking different spots. So it's almost when a surfer gets a wave, he doesn't want to stuff it up because he doesn't know when that next one's coming. And if you get a good one, it's just— it's more pressure. So what we need to do as coaches is to take the pressure off surfing so that you can have fun. Now, there's, there's proven results if you ever watch Andrew Huberman and guys like that, that when we start having fun, it starts to develop more neural pathways. And we can start to see, um, a challenge from, from different angles and different possibilities. But whenever there's fear, anxiety, stress, we just revert back to what for us might be the safest thing. But that might not always work, and it might put some, some blinkers on as to our peripheral, as to other options that we could use. So What we endeavor to do in Ombi is to set up challenges and try to get you to go from freeze to flight to fight mode. And every time you do a challenge, you level up to the next challenge. Because it's a challenge, you almost go straight into freeze, like, oh, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to do this thing. Then you're almost going to over-try and you go into your flight mode. And then when you relax and do it, it becomes effortless. So we set up multiple challenges and the last one would be skating a 3D simulation in a bowl, which you don't want to fall, you don't want to hurt yourself, so the fear is there, but when you don't focus on the fear, it becomes fun and then you start doing all your learning and by learning all that simulation stuff, when you take that into the water and it starts working because you've worked through all the issues and the problems, Um, ah, the results are amazing.

So yeah, that's cool. It seems like you focus a lot on, on how someone stands, that fundamental of, of the stance. Yeah, it's the same in, same in skiing. I see that as the, the main issue on the mountain when I look at everyone. People are standing on their equipment in the first place wrong. Yeah, same in surfing, like So again, I—

like, none of this is my stuff, I steal from everyone. So, um, if you balance your bones, you can hold a great weight on them, but as soon as you, you bend over, your muscles have to support the weight. So that's not the right way to stand. So when you stand on the surfboard, if you just stack all your bones— so from your ankle to your knee, from your knee to your hip, and your hip to your shoulder— if those are in a straight line you're going to have great balance. It's the same as if you do a handstand, you stack everything and you can kind of balance. As soon as the legs go funny and the back bends, the handstand's done. So, um, the only time you really want to compress and extend is if you're going to do something explosive. Like if I want to jump onto a table, I will compress and extend. But if I keep down in compression, I I actually make myself heavier. So let me give an example, Tom. Let's say I wanted to pick you up onto the table and you didn't want to have a bar of it. You would make yourself heavy and I couldn't lift you. So in surfing, you're trying to go up the wave to get your speed to go back down and play with the speed. But so many people are in this very low down, um, heavy, heavy flat foot posture where they just drift to the bottom of the wave and they lose speed and the wave runs without them. Whereas if they stood up and made themselves lighter, um, almost like a ballroom dancer— straight back, chin level, nice and light on your feet— and you see all the pros doing it all the time, um, they would actually move better. There's less stress on the body. The, the lighter you are, the more you start to feel what's happening on the wave underneath you. But if you're heavy and you stretch, you don't get to feel any of that. You don't feel your equipment because, because you're heavy, the equipment sits flat. But when you're lighter, it's, it's able to move.

Um, so I would say, yeah, that's, uh, in my surfing journey, because I have a guy that helps coach me sometimes, I've seen video of myself. And one thing I'm more recently working on is trying to use my range a bit more so I make my— myself again lighter. Like, I'm not trying to get my whole weight up the wave, but if I can get my board at least up through from that compression and like almost throwing, you know, getting momentum to go up there. I'd say that's like very similar in skiing. A lot of people like that, they're just like, oh, this is the stance, great, I'll just stay right there and do everything.

But this up and down is a Where it's so similar to skiing, and I've often had customers come to me and ask me for surfing, and I'll go, what, what sporting background have you had before? Like, ah, ski. And I go, great, point your knees where you want to go. And they get that. And like, take both your hands, look and point both your hands where you want to go. And suddenly they can start sort of controlling where they're going on the wave. So I use other sports to teach them how to surf. I don't try to teach them surfing. And, um, I'm trying to think of another example. A lot of people when they surf, because they're trying to balance, it's like their feet are rooted and then the arms are going all over the place. So it's kind of like a tree, like the tree's moving too much and the body's rooted to the board and the board won't move at all. But if you watch someone on a bicycle, it's almost the hands are quiet and the knees are doing the pedaling. So when you surf, it's kind of like your legs are compressing and extending, and you're almost pointing your knees where you want to go. That will open up the hips, and then all you got to do is fine-tune with your hands. So, um, if the bottom half's locked, like, the arms can flap around, and that, that, that movement doesn't get transitioned into the surfboard. But if you kind of move toe, knee, hip, uh, shoulder, um, you, you will flow through those turns really well. Yeah, cool.

Hey, I was wondering, as a, as someone that spends a lot of time coaching and thinking about what can I do to help this person get better at surfing, is there something more recently that you've had as a bit of like an epiphany? Like, oh wow, I've always taught it this way and, and get— gotten frustrated. And is there, has there been a breakthrough? The latest one is—

yeah, tell me. So I've got some shoulder injuries. I've, I've been surfing too much, so I almost feel like I'm getting stronger here and my shoulders are rounding too much. And then I sleep on it and I wake up and I got sore shoulders. So I've been doing what's— well, actually, 2 days ago started um, the WEC method. And basically, he's the guy who designed the Bosu ball, and I do some surf simulations on an upside-down Bosu ball. But, um, he's all, all about moving in a figure-eight pattern and with the ropes. And yeah, so you start swinging ropes and it starts pointing your knees, and as long as your head's over your lead foot you've got control. And when you're surfing, it's about weight distribution, it's about, um, you're getting inverted. It's a 3D simulation. And as long as your head's over your lead foot, you're going to have control no matter what angle you're at. So, um, what the WET method started to teach me is an easier way to simulate how to get the bottom half to talk to the top half where they're working as a unit. Whereas a lot of people, when they surf, the bottom half, they've got no control over it, which means no control of the board. And the top half's just swinging lassoes or winding down car windows. And, um, yeah, it's, it's great.

Have you found it's helped your shoulders at all, a little bit?

I literally just started 2 days ago. Um, okay. But I am liking it. Um, so that, that's one thing. Um, I tried Muay Thai kickboxing and that was amazing. It just hurt. And because I did it late in life, I did it like my late 30s, I did 2 months of it. Like day 1, I hurt my big toe. Day next day was my ankle. Then it was— I threw an elbow wrong and hit my shoulder. I threw a punch wrong, rolled my wrist. And I was learning so much, so it was exciting. But because I was old and trying— I was so excited, I was almost punching too hard with bad technique and hurting myself. And the coach was going, you're a dumbshit. Punch with less power, but punch more accurately with the right technique. Over time, you'll build up power and strength. So you're not impressing me with a really strong inaccurate, bad technique punch or kick. So if you're hurting yourself, you deserve it. So I was like, wow, okay, that, that kind of makes sense. And I also took away from that, so when people surf, try to do the turn at 60% rather than 100%, because if you overcook the turn, you've got nowhere to measure it or nowhere to go to. But at 60%, you've got 40% more where you can up your ratio, and you got 60% where you can dial it back. And at that 60% ratio, it's, it's a really nice place to surf. And often when you're there, you've got this flow where everything looks effortless.

So, um, and, and do you feel like— so back to like the coaching other people thing— do you feel coaches get in a trap of not having enough steps to get to a point. Like, it's very— we're like eager to jump ahead.

And I, um, I can talk from my experiences. At first, I think I was a horrible coach because stuff that I could do, someone else couldn't do. So I was literally like, look, if you want to go up the wave, lift your hands above your head. But someone's so worried about falling and their back's bent that they got really bad posture. Now, looking back, I know what the problem is. So imagine if you and I were to try to coach firemen. So there's a burning building, you've got people running out of the building, and you're going to go, okay guys, run into the building. So some people are going to freeze. Now, if that person's frozen, you're going to go, you're Yo, yo, talking to you, run in the building. They're not gonna move. So in surfing, there's a lot of information, the wave's changing, they're going fast, they don't know how to move, they're just trying to balance. People freeze, they're uncoachable. Okay, now if someone's in flight mode, like if someone's running out of the building, they got one thing on their lives, like I wanna save myself, like building's on fire, you could go, hey, there's a swimming pool, go jump in the swimming pool. They go, okay, great, into the swimming pool they go. They're going to feel safe. So someone in flight mode, you can potentially only give them one bit of information. It's like if you're a paramedic, someone's, um, fallen down with a heart attack, you might tell the crowd, go call 911. The person's going to be more comfortable leaving that uncomfortable situation, running to get help, than they would feeling uncomfortable and trying to drop down and do something that they're uncomfortable doing. So someone in flight mode, one bit of information, but the people that are in fight mode, the person doing the CPR could go, "You, 911, you, you're gonna take over, I'm fatiguing," and they can start delegating. Okay, so pretty much we have to make people aware of where their mind's at. And if they're tense, tension will show themselves in the body. Um, you have to get rid of tension out of the body, and then you've got to teach them how to move. Now, the funny thing about movement is that you have to set an intention. So let's say if I want to jump up onto a table, I look at the table, I kind of in my head, I'm, uh, imagine how much energy and power I need. I'm I set my intention, and then when I move, I move with attention. Did I get it right? Now, if someone doesn't like the way they look on a video analysis, what that means is that moment before they jumped up onto the table, if you took a photo, you should be able to look at the second photo and imagine what that second photo looks like and the outcome. But if you look at that photo, and through their potential, you don't know what the hell it is they're trying to achieve. They're not photogenic, and that's why the people won't like what they're doing. So you have to then teach them to set their intention, think about the outcome and the potential needed for that. So up is up, left and right is right, down's down, and forward and back. Simple, but people don't do it when they surf.

Yeah, so yeah, that's it. That's a really great example, that intention one, because it's, it's so right. If you have that intention to jump 2 meters in the air, you will look like you're this coiled spring trying to get down to jump as high as you can. But if, yeah, if you're just like, just jump.

Now a lot of people play surf, that they, they're coiled like they want to jump 100 foot in the air and they never release the coil, and they surf the entire wave tense. So it's like you're on a wave, you're not even enjoying it because you're tense. Stand up, relax, start moving, like move your body, do some figure eights, have some fun. So as soon as they do that, they really start to feel and enjoy and understand surfing.

That, that probably brings us to the bit— so in Ombi, ocean mind, And I'm not sure if you specifically put them in that order for the sound of it. Oh, you did. Okay, so there is a priority. No, no, no, your environment.

Yeah, you go, go for it. Okay, so pretty much the first thing you're trying to do is just ride a wave and ride the energy in a wave. So when a wave breaks, it draws water off the bottom and throws it off the top. Okay, so if you're on the shoulder, you're not going to feel the draw, you're not going to feel the throw. Now, because water is going down and up, right, if you compress and extend, you will go down and up. Okay, so think of you going snowboarding or skiing, right? You've got to get to the top of the mountain, but you've got to go to the ski lift. And then it's sometimes funny watching people jump on the ski lift because there's a technique. A lot of people get it wrong and they fall and stuff. But once you're on the ski lift, you ride the power to the top And then at the top, you use gravity and you go downhill. A wave is no different. At the bottom of the wave, it draws water up. Now, if you stand flat on your surfboard and I weigh 72 kilograms, that wave has to pick up 72 kilograms, makes it really, really hard. And then, oh, if I squat and there's tension, that 72 kilograms becomes even heavier. But if I lean over, I become weightless because I'm leaning, I'm turning, and then the board is buoyant and light, and that wave can lift the board up really easy. And if you just lean in and lift with it, and you set your intention and your potential to go up the waves, so damn easy. But then you've got to twist to pick the line that you want to take down the wave again. So the very first thing in ombi, you've got to look at the wave, you've got to read where's the draw, where's the throw, where's the energy in the wave, and how do I tap the energy.

Can I jump in and let you know what, what, what's helped me with my skiing and coaching skiing and seeing things a bit differently via learning to surf is what you just talked about there. Because in a ski turn, like say you just take a, a a run that is 30 degrees, it's flat, has nothing, it's just 30-degree slope. When you're turning on that, the, the angle you're actually riding changes through the turn. So the first half of a turn is like dropping in on a skate ramp, and then it's the steepest when you're pointing down the mountain. And then as you go all the way across, by the time you're back across the slope, you're on a flat slope again, relatively speaking. So there's this down and up, down and up. And so I don't think I paid enough attention to like being a good skier. I, I feel all that, but then other people I don't think notice and feel that. They're just letting— same with surfers, they're just like going down the mountain, all they do is the down bit. And the best— yeah, yeah, yeah, it's easy, that part's like, that's a great feeling bit. But then how do you get it back up again and like continue momentum and get that great feeling of like, it's some arcing?

And yeah, I'm a surfboard shaper, right? So Surfboards are engineered to turn, so they've got rocker in it. So even if you try to make it go straight, it just slows down. So the less friction on the board, the faster the board goes. So even your rail is round, it's, um, so if you lean, basically the rail rolls, and then, then your rocker kicks in and it'll help you turn. But the more rocker your board has, the the board turns, the better it goes.

The flatter you lean it— yeah, if you lean it.

Yeah, if you stop stand— standing on the damn thing. Okay, but if you're flat, that rocker just sucks. They're going to go, okay, this is a crap board because you made it high performance and you put rocker in it. So you can understand my frustration when people don't know how to surf and they're ordering boards from you and they lie to you about their, their ability because they want to a more performance board that responds to technique, whether it's good or bad.

Yeah, but, uh, yeah, I just think it's been cool when you talk about like that. That's one thing surfing has so taught me, is you've got to be like, there's, there's this energy from the top of the wave down, but then you've got to help it to get back up there again, ride the chairlift to come back down. And that part is, is the tricky part that gets— but when you get it right, is, is really flowy. Okay, I'm going to run an idea past you, Tom.

People in beginner surfers surf flat because they're frozen and their boards are too wide so they can't go on rail. They're too thick because, um, they've got no paddle power and posture.

So same in skiing, same problems in skiing.

But when it's really thick, you can't bury the rail, so it's unresponsive, and then it's so long that it can't turn. So they go, volume's your friend. Yes, it is if you want to stand on the thing and go in a straight line from A to B. But if you actually want to enjoy the wave, then volume's not your friend. Now, intermediate— so what happens with the beginner, they take off these really big boards and they slip down to the bottom of the wave, and the wave leaves them, or the lip detonates on them, they get blown up, and they don't enjoy being there. So then they want to figure out how to move, so they're going to flight mode and they run for the shoulder. So they start to use their bodies to create speed rather than drop into the wave and create speed. So then they rush out into the shoulder and they've got to kind of bounce their way back, and they surf lateral and left to right. The pro surfers, they go down the wave, up the wave, and they're not using their bodies, they're using the wave they're minimizing friction on the board, and all they're doing is fine-tuning turns. So if you probably watch the best skiers, I'd probably say the same thing. They—

yeah, you know, it's like this conversion of energy. They're really good at harnessing every bit and not losing it through friction or, yeah, timing of when, when it's released. It's, it's refining all those bits. That's, yeah, that makes them elite.

That was better said than, than I just said, but yeah, it's the harnessing.

Now on to the— so ocean, M, ombi, mind. Okay, that part, that part is, is really critical. I mean, you've sort of talked about a bit, but maybe like as a topic, do you want to speak to the mind part?

So it's simple: freeze, flight, and fight. If you're frozen, you're not going to be able to move. If you're Generally, okay, so think about this. Water comes in 3 states. There's gas, there's ice, and then there's just the water. In water, we need to be like water, okay, to move well and to flow. But your beginners are frozen, so they just go boom to the bottom of the wave and they get stuck and left behind. It's like if you ever try to push an iceberg through the water, it doesn't travel well. And then you have your intermediates who are freaking out and they're just trying to create speed. They don't know why, but they're in flight mode. So they get boards that are too short, too flat, and high volume, and they're— so they're like gas, they're just bouncing all over the place. It doesn't look stylish, they don't use the wave well, they run hot and cold, and generally those— they're the guys who don't like how they look on camera. And then you get guys that are like Bruce Lee. It's like, be like water. You put water in the cup, the cup becomes water, becomes the cup, whatever it is. So if you flow with water and you take the lines that water flows, which is top to bottom, and you just follow it, um, surfing's easy and looks amazing and it's effortless.

And what have you found? So then, like, the— if you're that in, like, fight, sort of, like, flight person, like, saving myself— I had a surf actually just before we were chatting now, and, uh, there was a lot of people out. Surf wasn't great, but yeah, I'm there. What, what do you say to people or focus on mentally? Like, how do you help them? I'm there. Okay, yeah, so go for it.

So in boxing, kickboxing, any contact sport, you have a strike zone where you can— and normally a jab kind of tells you where that is. Okay, so I could not punch someone 5 meters away from me, and if I try to, it looks ridiculous. So someone in flight mode is trying to hit the future which is the shoulder, which is where it's flat, and they're always chasing the future. And then the timing's off, and then they've got to come back, and that— they're just doing this the whole time. Okay, but on a wave, generally, if you go straight down the wave, that's where the most energy is. And then inside of maybe a 1.5 to a 2 meter radius is your surfing strike distance. Okay, and you need to stay as close as you can to the foam ball to be able to strike the lip, to return to the foam on the cutback, to get your bottom turn in. Most people in flight mode are not surfing the wave where the wave has the energy, and they're outside of that strike zone.

So, so part of that is like the answer for those people is it goes back to understanding how the water and the board works first. Very important thing, the O in OMBI. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And so, so that understanding is how it all works, like, that's a key part. Whereas, you know, say if you just told someone, like, you told me, you didn't explain all that, you just said, Tom, don't go to the end of the shoulder, just go up to here. Chances are I'm probably going to be like out there and go, no, doesn't make sense, I'm going for the safe zone out. So like, you've got to have, I guess, really good, like, in our mind, we have to have like a good reasonable answer for why we are trying to change something.

If you're comfortable, you will try something. If you're uncomfortable, you'll play it safe. Now the thing with surfing is the more uncomfortable you are, the higher that fear factor, and the more risk you are, the greater the reward. So like John John is doing these like almost under the lip, and they almost look like snowboarding carves right down to the bottom. He holds his turn longer he throws more spray, and when he does a turn, you can almost feel the turn that he's doing. Now, if you compare that to, say, someone on the WQS who's trying to qualify for the WCT, all those guys in flight mode, they're trying to post scores, um, they're normally riding smaller waves, they're trying to create speed all the time. But the ways that John John's surfing, he's trying to control speed. They're two completely different scenarios. Um, so it does take someone in flight mode time to actually calm down and pay attention to what the wave wants rather than try and enforce their will on the wave, um, because that never really pans out well.

Yeah, that makes me think of like, like the word expectations. Like, I think Like, ski season is just starting around the world, and, and, you know, some, some of my, uh, clients are just starting to ski again, and they're messaging me like first day, and they're like, oh, I didn't do very well, I couldn't do this and that. And like, it's, you know, it's like the expectations part of, okay, you may be in the off-season, have learned some new concepts and everything, but then you need to give yourself time to, like you're talking about there, get comfortable and go through the process of feeling and learning these new things before you expect, you know, just because I understand now, oh, don't go to the end of the wave, just go up and, and hit the lip like John John. I'm not go— I'm probably going to go out tomorrow and go, I expect that to happen, and then I'm going to be even more pissed off because it's not going to happen.

So if you try to take John John's line at 60% to get a feeling of what he's feeling and an understanding then you can start to, all right, like level it up. And just a 5% difference is huge. Like, but if you go out there and give it 100% with an expectation to nail what, what's taken him his lifetime to figure out because you've seen it on a clip, there's no ways you figure out a lifetime of work in day one. Be realistic.

With your experience, what do you find like people at that intermediate to even intermediate, advanced level, the time it takes, say, with like this one goal they're trying to do, would you like— do you have some rough times you kind of, if you were to give them an expectation?

Okay, so, um, I went down to Urban Surf a couple of weeks ago and some guys were having a hard time.

Um, just so people know, because there's people all around the world listening to this, that's a wave simulator, a pool with a, with a man-made wave. So, so keep going.

So we held a course, um, first session I was teaching people how to catch waves, and what I was telling them is paddle less. You're not allowed to stress paddling because as soon as they start creating stress on the paddling, they're either going to go into freeze or flight, in which case I can't coach them. So some of them had pop-up issues, but what I said to them— and you mentioned this with a 30-degree slope— so on a wave, when the wave gets to about a 20 to 30-degree angle, you can start slipping down. Okay, so only paddle when you feel the wave lift the tail up to the 20 to 30-degree angle, and then it's almost like boom, and you slip into the wave. But to try paddle before the wave's got to you in the flats and to try and match the speed of what the wave's traveling, it's physically impossible to match the wave speed. And normally you're back to the wave, so you don't know when it's breaking. That means you're— oh, you're not paying attention to it, you're inside of your head, you're freaking out. If you're freaking out, you're going to freeze, then you've got a pop-up issue. So when I saw people how to catch the waves easier, it fixed up the pop-up issue. And all that happened is they created more space and they had more time. And when you look where you want to go, your body naturally just defaults to doing what it needs to do. Um, and it's, it's that looking that is the win.

So sorry, yeah. So then with it, so there's people doing that course, the Expectations Podcast, like Yeah, so then like, okay, say I get it a couple of times. Yep. You'd probably need— I'd need to be thinking, don't run ahead now and go, it's all good.

Not really. No. So what I did, the guys were having a hard time, so they made the takeoff and then they want to do a turn. So they all try to rush the turn. So what we did on the video analysis, I showed them John John, and John John goes 1, 2, 3, and he connects the power and the wave. All our guys were going mid-face and going 1, forcing a turn where things didn't fit. And the spray, when you force it, it's like— I was like, hey guys, that turn was really cute. And then all the guys like, oh, just like cringe. I don't even make cute turns. And I said, the difference between you and John John is John John just holds the turn longer and he rides downhill to the power source where there the wave lifts him back up again. So if you want to do man turns rather than cute turns, you need to hold your turns longer. So all you got to do is look at the foam, pass the cup of coffee, done. But hold it for 3 seconds. And next session, guys are passing coffee to the foam, coming out of the water going, that was the best surfing I've done in years, best turns I did. And all they did was take the time to pass a coffee cup all the way to the foam. Not one bit of surf advice given, but the result was amazing surfing. Nice, nice.

And then like with that, do you think like how long would you think that person should probably or would spend working on that before they're maybe ready for the next thing?

Like, in your experience, you need to play with it now. So along with passing the coffee— so my hand's flat, okay? So this will give me a great twist, but I'm flat, okay? I'm still turning flat. If I took my pinky and I raise it up, I'm going to want to fall over backwards, which means I'm going more heel edge, which means I'm displacing more water. But I'm falling over backwards, which means I'm kind of leaning. So I've got to lean and throw the twist. So there is— you can give someone a bit of information, but they've got to play with it and get comfortable, and then you can top the glass up some more. But if they just try to go big on that and they go 100% the information, their learning curve is going to stop. Yeah, you kind of need to go make the mistakes, you need to figure it out, like how much is too much, how much is not enough, and then let them grow it on their own through play.

Yeah, that play part I think is, is really important with it, because if you're, if you're playing with it, it's going to be more fun. You're going to probably naturally spend more time practicing it, which is going to allow you to get the repetitions and, and that sort of stuff in there.

The difference when I say the word play is it takes expectation off, and I know that you mentioned expectation Um, but it also gets rid of tension. And the interesting thing, if you've ever watched a kid play, they're so entranced in the moment that they're present. Um, when people try too hard, they're thinking about the technique so much that they're thinking about the future. And then if they get it wrong, they beat themselves up for what they've just done in the past, and then they've lost the moment.

Yeah, cool. You know what, I think if I was to sort of, for me, like if I'm taking like what our conversation has kind of reminded me of and given me more clarity on, it would be, well, one, just make sure the person you're teaching knows, like, knows how the environment and the equipment works and interacts. Like, that's, that's straight away if they don't realize that. Like, even you talked about like the shape of the board, if you just tip that thing on its side, the same with the ski, it's got built-in turning, it goes like—

so the best example of that, sorry for jumping, is wakeboarding, because the guy's going, the boat doesn't change speed, but as soon as your board goes on rail and you go out, you're covering twice as much distance, which means you had to have gone faster and the speed is just next level. And all it is is they just lean it over.

Yeah, yeah, using that, using, using that equipment properly. The other thing I think is really cool that you mentioned is the, is the intention part. Like, that next time, you know, I do it in, in, in my ski turns, but next time my surfing, I'm going to be like, make sure, like the intention is right for the size of the wave, what am I going to have to do to get back up and not go to the shoulder but go back up to the top and get some energy to come back down again? So that's going to determine how much I can press and then extend.

My, um, Skateball, which I've developed, I have lines. I have got a yellow line at the bottom, orange line in the middle, and a red line at the top. And, um, I make everyone start on the yellow line, and then I ask for 10% more effort in compression and extension that gets them to the, um, the orange line. But when they get to the orange line, they freeze. They look down and arms go weird. And I go, okay, when you go up there, just look where you want to go. And then, um, they go into flight mode and they try to rush it. And then I go, okay, imagine if I took a hose pipe and I flowed the water around the orange line. How long would it take for the water to flow? It's like 1, 2, 3, I was like, okay, now flow through your turns. And then they get the orange line and said, okay, so if the orange line is 20%, drop it back 10%, go to the orange— to the yellow line. And I make them play with that. Okay, now red line's probably 30 to 40%, so give me more pop from the legs to get me higher. And then when they pop up there, they freeze, and then they go flight mode, and then I gotta remember the hosepipe, and they're like, oh yeah. Do that again. And then when they hit the red line, they go, okay, now give me red, orange, yellow, red, orange. And it's just about leg extension, how much pop, so how much potential for the move. And then, then you just look at a wave because the wave could take off from the outside, it could be standing up. You've got to go red line. And as it gets smaller and the wave dissipates, you might want to go orange line, and then you might want to go yellow line, in which case the amount of effort you're putting into the surfing It's a bit less.

I wish it was much easier to build a pretend ski slope in my backyard. It's not as easy as you can build this pretend wave simulation. That's really cool. Hey Clayton, thanks very much for joining us today and just sharing, you know, what you do and what you've built with Ombi and this site. Like, anything more if people want to find out more about it? Uh, where would they go?

And so we've got an app called Train at Ombi. Um, if you hop onto the app, I'll send you the link later. Um, basically there's a 2-week free trial, and the way we've gone about it is you could literally type in pop-up, and it's almost— we call it Netflix for surfing, and everything that you ever wanted to know about a pop-up will be there. Um, there's different types of training Um, there's beginner courses, there's psychology, there's visualization, there's how to catch waves course, which you call compared to how to catch a bus. So everything has got analogies, um, and then analogies make sense. And when you apply simple logical thinking to the ocean, you'd be surprised how the stuff works. So yeah, trying to keep it simple and logical.

Yeah, yeah, awesome. No, I really, I really like that. And that's why I wanted to— I know because people will be listening to this going, but this is a skiing podcast, like Tom always talks to like skiers from around the world. But I think it's again like having a different sport like surfing, which has physics and turning— it's a very turning-oriented sport, like, like is skiing. I think if you can look at something that's similar but not the same, it actually can help you go back to your original thing. Like, step away. Like, you tell people, don't think about the wave, think about the golf swing, or what— whatever— the skateboard ramp, the other thing that's, that's not the thing. This is really like, like you— I've just found there's really great, like, insights people get. So having this discussion about surfing and kind of like relating to skiing, I'm hoping that that's what happens with with people's thinking about skiing as well.

So you're 100% correct. Um, you kind of— people get blinkers on with their way of thinking and they just get into habit and do the same stuff over expecting a different result, and then they try to force it and they get a worse result. So by looking outside of the box and looking what maybe someone else is doing and then applying it to your sport, you start to see evidence um, of how to do it properly. And then it just— it makes sense and it gets easier.

Yeah, kind of like the fundamental truths of, I guess, just, you know, the laws of the universe, like when— how things move around, up and down. When you understand that and see it, oh, it's the same skiing and surfing and skateboarding and this and that, and then it's like, ah, there's, there's this one core principle here. If I can understand that and also get it in these other sports, it'll, it'll make my, you know, the ones I love way better. And I think that's why, you know, being an all-rounder as a kid, doing lots of sports, is I think always going to help you. Yeah, in picking up and taking on different things.

Tom, a little bit of a parting word. I think as we become older, we forget how to play, and then our bodies start kind of seizing up because we don't move our joints a lot. So it's very much about greasing the joints. And if you move your muscles, move it with intention. Don't— and think about how you did move with attention. So, um, use your bones for balance, use your muscles for movement, and then your attention should be on the feeling. And if it felt right, you're doing it right.

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Totally agree with that. I'm not a fan of the gym per se anymore. I used to be. I'd much rather keep my joints lubricated and keep things moving through a fun, playful activity. So I, uh, it's really nice taking a message. How many parallels there?

You just— yeah, yeah, that's it.

All right, thanks so much, Clayton.

That was a great chat. Thanks for being, uh, on podcast. Really enjoyed it. And, uh, to all the skiers out there, um, Good luck with surfing.

Yeah, hopefully this chat helps them again open their mind, see things from a different perspective.

Fantastic.