Digital Social Hour - Avoid This Deadly Surfing Mistake: 2-Wave Hold Down! | Billy Kemper DSH #642

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

🏄‍♂️ Avoid this deadly surfing mistake! 🌊 Dive into an adrenaline-packed episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly as we chat with big wave legend Billy Kemper. Discover the heart-pounding reality of a 2-wave hold down and why missing that 50-foot wave could be a surfer's worst nightmare. 🏄‍♀️   Join the conversation with Billy as he opens up about his wild journey from hard partying to chasing a legacy and embracing sobriety. Get inspired by his dedication to health, family, and becoming a multiple world champion. 🏆 Packed with valuable insights on the art of big wave surfing and life lessons, this episode is a must-watch! 🌟   Don't miss out—watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀   #SurfingTips #SurfInjuries #2WaveHoldDownMistakes #2WaveHoldDown #OvercomingAddiction   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:29 - Billy’s Wild Ride 06:38 - What’s Considered a Big Wave 13:05 - Growing up in Hawaii 14:38 - Injuries in Surfing 17:34 - Your Biggest Injury Story 20:03 - Motivation in Surfing 21:05 - How to Score a Wave 22:47 - Luck in Surfing Competitions 25:14 - Facing Fear in Surfing 27:55 - Time on the Board During Big Waves 29:07 - Impact of Social Media on Surfing 33:07 - Earnings from Surfing Competitions   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Billy Kemper https://www.instagram.com/billykemper   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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that's where um a lot of people don't understand how long 10 seconds is so if you fall in the first one most of the time you're coming up before the second one if you don't that's called a two-wave hold down and that's where things get uh sketchy yeah all right guys we got big wave surfer billy kemper here today thanks for coming on man no worries i appreciate it yeah we were hitting it off before. You got quite the story, man. Yeah, man. My life has been a pretty wild ride, to say the least. Yeah, because you're balancing the partying with the surfing, and then now you're on a health kick, right? Yeah, I think it's, I look at life as kind of like a map. It's like a monopoly map, and I'm just making my way around it and i think now i'm

passive partying and going into more of the health and uh just prioritizing the longevity you know like we're talking biohacking being a good father being present and uh just focusing on myself that's cool did you start seeing some health damage from all the partying and going out late nights doing drugs and stuff yeah you know i mean I mean, it's just not sustainable, that lifestyle. When you're single, you can do whatever you want. You can go out, stay up all night, go surf the biggest waves in the world the next day and don't really give a shit

because you have nothing to be really responsible about. You throw a girl in the mix and then you throw a couple kids in the mix and then things start to change. Yeah, I lived that lifestyle for a little bit of just not really having priorities. Even though I had a wife and I had kids, I was just a fucking lunatic. Wow. I was, yeah, I just kind of wrote my own way.

And I started to see that road really end fast and had to clean everything up and just give myself a reality check. I was never a drug addict or like an alcoholic. I was just an abuser and just a hard party. I just like having a good time. I wasn't a bad person. I just like having a good time. I wasn't a bad person. I just like having a good time. And those times had to come to an end, had to put my kids in front of me

and just really prioritize my career. I wanted to be a multiple world champion. I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to have a legacy. It was something I always dreamed of. And that was kind of when I was like, all right, this July will be five years for me. No hard drugs, no alcohol. Wow wow and no cravings for it definitely i mean fuck i'm in las vegas right now are you kidding me i'll just tell you one thing um it'll never ever get easier you'll just get a little stronger yeah the partying

thing and addiction for me it's like that shit's never gonna get easy you're gonna see it you're always gonna want to be there but you will get stronger for sure because you see it on social media every night right yeah the partying and people at the club so it's always in the back of your head yeah but what do you think caused you to like it so much you think you were just working so hard during the day on surfing that you wanted to cool off no for me i think it's adrenaline i am i really am addicted to like just uh being in the moment where you kind of black out like whether it's from being in a flow state adrenaline being high being drunk i don't know i felt like maybe partying i could reach those levels that i was reaching with big waves and that's a

recipe for disaster yeah that's tough how long you been catching those waves I got introduced surfing big waves at a pretty young age that's kind of how I um really got my foot in the door as far as a professional surfer always grew up competing I just didn't really have the natural talent that a lot of my other friends did and right around the age 16 years old i towed into like a huge wave that put me up for like one of the biggest barrels ever ridden wow and got me a bunch of publicity but uh i was just partying 16 17 18 19 20 years old like really enjoying myself partying and then i kind of bloomed later with my career right around the age 24 25 i got a wild card into the first ever big wave paddle event at jaws which is like jaws is the pinnacle of big wave surfing like it's

that's the super bowl of surfing it's the biggest arena it's the biggest Bowl of surfing. It's the biggest arena. It's the biggest wave. There's nothing bigger. There's nothing better. And to be a local kid, like born and raised there, and I get a wild card just surfing the first ever paddling event, I went on to win that event. That got me on as a wild card onto the world tour. The following year, I won the world title.

Damn. At 16? No, this was 20. I was 26. Oh, 2016. Okay. 2015 was 26, 2016. Okay. 2015 was the event. And my career just like skyrocketed.

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something that I needed to raise up to the top priority. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a couple of those injuries. We'll dive into that. So what's considered a big wave? Is it by feet? For me? No. For you? Yes. Okay. What does that mean? W that mean waves are different man it's hard to explain like somebody who skates their surface never moves my surface is it you can never predict it it's always moving in different directions got it it's mother nature um where i start to consider waves getting big is like in the 30 foot range. Holy crap. Once you get in that like 30 foot range and then upward into the 60, 70, 80, that's like really fucking big. Dude, they get up to that big?

Yeah. Holy crap. Like that wave in, that would have been 2006 2006 i rode it was up for ride of the year um that was when i was 16 that wave was probably like easily 60 feet oh my gosh yeah my parents didn't even know i was surfing that day you didn't tell them no fuck no did you know it's that big from your point of view or you didn't know till after it doesn't really feel that big when you're out there i don't know especially towing in you're using a jet ski now i i rarely use jet skis we're morally um more so doing paddle and surfing so toe and surfing basically you're using a jet ski those things go 60 miles an hour you got a rope

like you've seen a wakeboard or hold on to that rope behind same kind of rope but you're on a surfboard with foot straps it's very made for speed heavy like high performance and you get whipped into the wave by a jet ski going 50 miles an hour you let go the boards are easy to ride you're strapped in where they're now i'm doing paddling. I have to ride a 10-foot board that's huge just to match the speed. And I can barely match 15 miles an hour with my own two arms. There's no jet ski. It's just you and Mother Nature. So that is where the performance in big wave surfing has just leveled. We're at a place that nobody ever thought this was possible like what we're doing now it's it's so

far out of anything people thought was really at reach so it requires a lot more skill because you're not tied to the jet ski definitely 100 there's people towing into like 70 80 foot waves right now who can barely surf on a normal paddleboard what yeah like if you gave me like a month can you swim decently have you ever surfed no if you gave me like three to four months i could tell you until like 60 foot wave no yeah dude i can't even stand on a skateboard i'll get you there that's crazy it doesn't take that much skill okay yeah so when surfing yeah so on a skateboard. I'll get you there. That's crazy, bro. It doesn't take that much skill. Okay. Yeah.

For toe-in surfing. Yeah. So on a 50-foot wave, if you miss it and you get caught in the wave, how long are you underwater? Like how many seconds? That's where a lot of people don't understand how long 10 seconds is. Oh, it's only 10 seconds well in between waves when they're normally at that size it's like 20 seconds roughly in between each swell that's breaking yeah so if you fall in the first one most of the time you're coming up before the second one if you don't that's called

a two-wave hold down and that's where things get sketchy. You got to take into consideration, imagine standing across from Jamal Hill and this guy's bouncing at you. Your heart rate is probably going, and then he hits you one time as hard as he can in your body and drives you under a waterfall that's 80 feet and you are trying to swim to the surface as that waterfall is driving you to the reef right that's kind of your situation so that being said after that body shot from jamal holding your breath for 10 seconds feels like five

minutes wow yeah yeah because the pressure you're fighting it so you're the pressure and also just the adrenaline your heart rate that's what doesn't get people is the waves are so big while you're out there that your heart's just going douche douche douche douche you try to hold your breath after getting the wind knocked out of you or taking one of those waves it's really really hard yeah and i saw one of the waves actually physically knocked you out right yeah i've got unconscious a few times now. So what happens in that situation? Someone has to be on standby to save you?

Yeah, when we're surfing these waves, I have a complete safety team. I have, like, two jet ski drivers, spotters on the cliff. Everyone's on radio. Like I said, I got kids. I take this, I mean, I look up to people like Kobe Bryant. Yeah. I look up to people like, you know, Conor McGregor, people who are greats, like obsessed with their craft. And that's what I've become with what I do, like complete obsession down to nutrition. I it's weird what I've invested into out of surfing compared to where I was 10 years ago.

It's so much different. I've just become obsessed with the entire realm of it and looking at myself now as a professional athlete rather than just a surfer. Yeah, I feel like you're changing the whole stigma around the term surfer. Yeah, I've wanted to. I've always had a interest to martial arts to physical training like um just strength training and i was kind of one of the first ones who was pushing it in surfing and then it was kind of weird and now it's like that's the cool thing that's what everyone's posting now like oh i just got done my training session i'm like

all right yeah um but that's a that's a thing i heard kobe bryant say this and this is why i always use his name is the gift of of giving back and seeing other people win is way more rewarding than winning yourself like getting a trophy yourself is cool but seeing somebody who hasn't ever felt that and helping them in some way get them there like that's the ultimate feeling. Inspiring, motivating. Like if you can, that's the goal of life. That's cool, man,

because you could have just kept all that information to yourself. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, I mean, what are you going to do? Take it to the grave? I mean, that's what OJ did, people are saying. Yeah. I don't know.

If you got money, spend it. Enjoy it. If you got passion and great knowledge share with people love it you grew up in hawaii right born and raised is that sort of the mentality around there just to be sharing and yeah the hospitality yeah the community there it's um it's like coconut wireless it's uh it's real small but it's real grounding and down to earth. We're kind of all one family. Yeah, that's why I was surprised you're a big partier, actually, because you grew up there, and I feel like that's a different...

There's a lot of distraction there. Yeah? Yeah, I mean, like Max Holloway's fighting on this UFC card tomorrow. Yeah. Talking about that. Where he's from in Hawaii, it's ghetto. Really? It's beautiful, but there's a lot of distraction it's really hard for kids to get out of there and a lot of people when they think of hawaii they think of vacation blue water sunny skies hawaii waikiki fuck waikiki is ghetto too

damn yeah there's a lot of drugs there's a lot of violence there's a lot of like there's shit goes down i didn't know that yeah i always assumed hawaii the murder is lately like the shootings in in hawaii especially on oahu it's like it's been way too high holy crap i don't see any of that in the news that's interesting yeah i always just assumed it was a paradise for tourism yeah people see that but i think when the tourists get there too they also see the other side of it as well i mean but it's just like everywhere you know you can find trouble if you look well that's true yeah are you still there right now full time nice yep so that's home that's home that's cool um so injuries are pretty common for surfers? Yeah, very common. And what are the typical injuries?

I would say pretty similar to most action sports. ACL is the big, I mean, that's kind of all sports. That's the big bad one. I've done my right side ACL, MCL, meniscus, all completely restricted. Damn. Left side MCL two times. Broke my pelvis in half. Collapsed my lungs.

Broke my arm three times. Stitches everywhere you can imagine. Torn labrums both sides. Bulge C5, C6. Broken tailbone. Oh my gosh. This sounds worse than rugby. I thought rugby was the worst. It's bulge, C5, C6, broken tailbone.

Oh, my gosh. That sounds worse than rugby. I thought rugby was the worst. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I started surfing big waves at a really young age. And I'm 33 now, so I'm deep into it. And, I mean, play hard, work hard. It comes with it. But yeah, injuries are fairly common in surfing. I think the way people treat them is very different though.

Surfing is really like behind in just like interest of biohacking and just the technology of speeding up recovery. You know, it's like I have a hyperbaric chamber at my house and people are like, what are you doing? I'm just like, you know, nothing. I'm healing. This is part of it. I love that. Yeah.

And there's so much like, you know, we're talking about it from just injections, avoiding surgeries and going with things like stem cells and just, uh, looking into the other ways of healing. That's where I'm transitioning. And I feel like a lot of surfers are starting to follow, which is a really cool path because of just the success rate and all the, you know, feedback that all these athletes are coming back faster and stronger. It's, um, it's really changing the game. And I love to see that the surf industry is starting to follow that path i love it i think surgery should be like a last resort instead of like the immediate fix yeah my surgeon mossy reynolds um orthopedic surgeon sports medicine like guru this guy probably or he does do i think around six to eight ACLs a day. Damn. He will like beg to go the injection route before surgery if he can,

if he has a chance. And to me, that's like, that's how I met him. Big time famous doctor that everyone goes to told me my labrum was torn in half and it was going to be five months till I was surfing. Unless I did the surgery. This guy, Mossy Reynolds up in Silicon Valley tells me, let me try the stem cells and PRP ozone exomes. If I can't get you back in 20 days,

I'll, I'll do a surgery for free. I was like, I'll see you tomorrow. Wow. 27 days later, I won, um,

a big wave world title in like 60 to 84 waves so you won a month after getting less than a month holy and my right labrum was like completely in half and that surgery probably would have taken a year to recover from if you got it torn labrum yeah labor not a year but it's it's long it's uh it's not an easy one yeah i broke that pelvis a few years later and that labrum stayed intact. Like his work was proven. Wow. Yeah. And with these waves, if you're mistiming by a second,

is that when the injury happens? Like just one little slip up? It all depends. You know, honestly, a lot of, I think most commonly in surfing, injuries are coming from like the torque of the body at like doing a turn or landing like compressed and knees buckling something snapping and ankles rolling yeah my injuries have came mostly from impact and i i train a lot like i invest a lot of my time into my body and like being really strong fit and just mobility like not just strength like full wall rounded

and i haven't knock on wood wherever it is um i haven't had too many injuries as far as like torque or compressing might have come from impact on big waves wow i hit a rock in morocco in 2020 jeez a rock yeah huge rock like big six probably like a 10 foot by 10 foot rock underwater it was actually almost out i fell in the wave got slammed hit on the right side of my body broke my pelvis in half that was acl mcl meniscus in half geez um lungs collapsed that was really bad i had to get medevaced out of there during covid locking down shutting down borders it was like a private plane they medevaced me from morocco bordeaux bordeaux greenland greenland canada canada us when i landed in canada they declined

me my entry into la because of covid this was oh my god ending of of February, 2020. Somehow by the grace of God, we got led into Van Nuys, went straight into surgery in LA and started my recovery through COVID, which was really rough. That was my biggest injury. Yeah. That sounds crazy. Cause you're like flying for what? 18 hours probably. Yeah. I kept having to stop because I was like, I couldn't breathe. My lungs were filled with water. Like, I was fucked up. Yeah. They would check every stop.

Ambulance would come on, check my vitals. Okay, he's good to go. That is scary. What's going through your head? Did you think that might have been it for you at that moment? That was the only time in my life that I ever told somebody, like, I'm kind of giving up. Wow. Yeah.

And it's really rare. Like, if anyone knows me, there's, fuck, I've had, my upbringing to say was rough. I mean, you know, I'm really lucky. I grew up in Hawaii. I surf for a living. I have a beautiful family. I'm married. Beautiful wife. really lucky i grew up in hawaii i surf for a living i have a beautiful family i'm married beautiful wife but that being said i had a really rough like parent situation starting at five then

at eight years old my older brother overdosed on heroin wow a year after that my stepsister got shot holy um years after that some of my two of my best friends passed away just five years ago my mom died to cancer um i don't really have anyone left in my family i got one brother left and he's like my dad he raised me um so that being said that that childhood just like grooming was um was pretty rough i would would say. Yeah. But it's really kind of molded me into kind of the person I am. Wow. I really believe that upbringing has kind of created me to be who I am and really, yeah, I don't know.

Hawaii's home for me. To have that upbringing the way it was and surfing that culture the community always supported me and backed me and i think that's kind of where where i've kind of groomed from damn that's so traumatic man i'm sorry to hear you went through all that yeah i mean it is what it is i think adversity is kind of my reason of sobriety it's my reason of success like i nothing i had ever came easy but i think that's when i perform my best is when things are hard yeah it's like literally gives me a reason to fight that's massive did did those incidents kind of desensitize you kind of numb you did you feel like your emotions you were putting to the side going through all that yeah i kind of reacted

differently to all of them and more recently i've i've learned that I needed to like, I think so. Like just stopping partying was part of a like way of me healing after my mom. I handled my mom's passing very poorly, like very poorly. Just drunk, high, just numb. And I think trying to heal with a bunch of band-aids is just a cover-up you know you're like you got to heal from the inside out and that that's what it was for me i was just being surrounded by people like laird hamilton and um yeah just really inspiring people who motivated me more on like the family side of things and the surfing of like be a solid man

yeah and just don't be a pussy like fuck look yourself in the mirror and be a man you know be a man of your words stand true to who you are to your kids to your wife and that's what it was to me i think i was hiding from a lot of demons and just bullshit and i think just having clarity and sobriety it really like it let me heal and understand my mom um just a lot of things in life that i needed to let go of and just move forward with yeah and i think a lot of professional athletes they they give so much of their craft that they put aside family and friends sometimes you do and that's like you know i'm 33 i don't want to be surfing 80 foot waves in my 40s and there's still couple of people that who are doing that.

And I'm like, fuck I'm when I'm like, when it's my season to compete and put a Jersey on, I'm not who I want to be. Like, that's not, I'm not a good person. It's not who I want.

Like, that's not the person I want you to meet. That's not the person I want my kids and my wife to be around. It's just like to be a champion is one thing to like to want to be the best in the world and to like literally nothing else matters but that but you and your legacy but it's a really selfish way of living wow but that's the only way to do it and um yeah for me it's just it's i'm trying to figure out a balance with the mental health of things and trying to position those moments. If I can control that switch where I can put that in a window of my year,

that's the goal for me. Yeah, there must be a lot of pressure because there's also a lot you can't control with the surfing, right? Because how do you know if the wave is going to be perfect? Is there a lot of luck involved in those competitions? A hundred percent. There's a ton of luck. It's just mother nature.

Obviously now there's wave pools popping up all around the world. I think now that they're like in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, who knows, maybe they could make like a 60 foot one to where every wave is repetitively the same. Yeah. Then it's giving like an equal playing field.

When you're out there you know there's 10 20 30 sometimes 50 of us like in like smaller area than a football field wow and we're all fighting for one wave and you don't share waves like you don't that's a rule you don't want two people on one wave that's like yeah no no so how do you signal to the other 20 people the person the farthest to like the breaking part of it has priority oh got it it's kind of like that that's scarier it's heavier gnarlier to surf like deeper yeah so the deepest guys always kind of has the right away interesting yeah i feel like they should make it more fair somehow but it's kind of impossible right now yeah well that's just like free surfing when you're surfing competitively you're normally there's just like it it's either

four man or two man so man on man or four man and the playing field's a lot bigger got it yeah and they just score you on your top two waves and you get to pick the wave or they tell you when oh no you get to pick them it's kind of your job of of yourself in the lineup. So when the wave does come, you have priority. It's kind of like a little bit of a dogfight to get priority, and that's how you establish how the heat runs. They're normally 45-minute heats, and they judge us on our top two highest scoring waves. Wow, so it's like a game within a game.

Yeah, and you can go on to surf four or five times in a day. Damn. So fatigue, like the training stuff really comes into play with that. Yeah. And how does the scoring work when you get on the wave? Through one through 10, 10 being perfect, one being horrible, 10, you know, you got to complete the wave it has to be perfect crazy exciting style comes into play power there's a lot of different things that come into play when as far as when you judge it have you gotten a 10 before yeah nice yeah that's cool man i gotta see some videos this is really exciting it's a whole new world for me yeah i'll send you a couple videos online of some tents

yeah show the people watching you ever get nervous or scared? Yeah, I mean, for sure. But I think that's what I'm attached to are those feelings of like, what is this discomfort? Yeah. Like I thrive for not knowing what's going to happen. Wow. Most people hate that shit. Yeah.

I just think my decision making is so much better unplanned. Just like bang, bang, bang. Anything in life. I'm like, don't tell me what we're going to do. Let's just go. Interesting. But then I'm a super routine person. So it's really weird, but I like being on the fly with like, as far as like interview or competing or just like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not an overthinker you just like to yeah i i mean i maybe i will i'll yeah i don't know i'll over evaluate something for sure but as far as just like being in the moment i just like reacting on the spot just like boom boom boom filled up you got plans after surfing of course that's good to start now right because a lot of athletes finish and then they they get lost surfing is so bad with that and that's like where start now right because a lot of athletes finish and then they they get

lost surfing is so bad with that and that's like where i note on is like i don't want to be in my 40s trying to surf 80 foot waves like i want to be enjoying it and i see you know i'm even starting now with coaching some younger kids and helping give back i just want to help give back like that's what i really want to do is um i've studied a lot of stuff in fitness with pool training with strength training just about everything i think with uh my world my life was definitely going to move towards like the health and wellness and coaching side of things nice that's a big market i love that which uh area is your favorite to surf other than hawaii i love fiji i love tahiti morocco's where i got really injured but i love it there too i've traveled everywhere with ocean okay yeah and

which country has the biggest waves i mean i think hawaii okay i mean country u.s um i mean you know there's tom people are gonna watch this and be like he's fucking full of shit nazaré portugal okay that might be the tallest wave consistently but it's not a top to bottom wave like for you i could show you a wave there and i could show you a wave where i like jaws and you'd be like jaws is jaws it looks like jaws got it nazra is a huge standing like teepee that stands tall and then just fades away so you can't really surf it you can you can tow it got it but it's just there's so much risk for such little reward yeah where jaws so much risk but for the wave of a lifetime so if you catch a jaws wave how many seconds are you on the board on that wave?

That's a good question. I might have to look that up or watch one of my clips. It is a fairly long, big wave. But yeah, it's really not about the length. It's about the intensity. It's just a strong... Very strong and like top to bottom. It looks like a shark jaw. Wow, that's crazy. That's why it's about the intensity it's just a strong very strong and like top to bottom it looks like a shark jaw wow that's crazy that's why it's called jaws so you're just focused on balancing and

staying on it you're not even worried about anything else i mean for me i'm focusing on riding the the ride of my life like a barrel i'm sure you've seen as like a surfer riding in the curl of the wave that on a big wave is like that's how you get a 10 yeah yeah and it's weird like to tell you that one wave could change somebody's life but it really could like if you ride a wave nowadays i guess you say it goes viral it goes viral you end up on a couple magazines it gets on a commercial nixie you know this kid's got half a million followers and wow yeah he's blown up so one wave can change a way like somebody's life yeah i mean that's pretty much what happened to you right you said you

wanted those competitions back to back off one big wave yep exactly that's cool have you seen social media change the surfing space yeah for the for the good or for the worse there's two sides of every conversation you know um i fucking hate it but it's fucking awesome too for some of these kids man but then again like it just really sucks that we lost like magazines like print yeah nothing like i was fortunate enough to land a couple covers there's only two three magazines in all of surf and like back then it's like that's huge it's like winning an event right and um yeah that that's a really bummer without print anymore um it's taken away and also there's just something about like with action sports when somebody lands a trick or rides this wave or you know does this crazy line in the snow

not seeing it and like that like build up to like a movie part coming out is so rad like when somebody's holding up all their footage all these crazy waves or these crazy tricks and they release it that anticipation and build up was so rad as a kid that now it's like a rush like land it upload it like oh oh he rode the wave he made it oh wave of the day post it right now boom everyone's looking at fiji it's going viral yeah it's just taking away some of the prestige which is a bummer but then again i guess it's good for the fans it's good for people to see it kind of while it's happening yeah pros and cons because it probably does attract more. It attracts more people.

It brings more crowds. Right. Which kind of sucks. Yeah. Oh, it sucks? Crowds in surfing, like spectators are fine. But for like when we chase like, I mean, for instance, we call them strike missions. Let's say tomorrow like my phone could go off and I could get a text from a forecaster saying,

South Australia is going to be 60 feet in four days. The winds look great. The tides look great. Get on a flight. I'll tell my wife I got to go home right now, which this could happen. Yeah. Like, it has happened. Really?

Oh, yeah. And you'll fly all the way there? I'll drop everything. I'll go to my house, boom, pack my bags and just leave that day. Like I've left day of like getting calls, fly across the world.

You have four hours to get ready and pal out and perform. Wow. So there's a way of doing it like that. And you bring a film crew and that's all your content and there's no competition. Right. But there's a handful of these guys who are doing like strike mission content trips for for me it's like a brand tenori um my sponsor right now like you know reef shoes like some of the my sponsors i do content

trips for them where i take a film crew i bring all their product for holiday or whatever it is shoot it i bring it back to them they give They give me this monthly salary for a few years, and I'm contracted to them, and I'm basically a billboard for them that continues to flow them fresh content of all their new product. Wow. I didn't know it was like that. So that's the other side of pro surfing to competitive surfing. Yeah.

And that's where I'm in right now is like, yeah, I'm a big wave world champion and i do compete but i'm also in this like free surfing content like strike mission situation yeah which is great with social media and that's smart because the money in competitions is hit or miss you have to win to make money right exactly and then i have like with social media you have these companies that reach out and they want to do this okay perfect yeah i'll we'll send you here shoot this for one day send it back and you know here's a stack of cash yeah a lot less stressful right oh running your own show is the best like and that's what it's taken a while for me to get here but the fact that i can kind of call my own shots and and drive my own ship now it's it's it's really an honor like i'm very

grateful and i got a great team of people around me from my coaches my trainers my family my friends everyone yeah it's it's awesome that's great so when you win a competition because i know you won some big ones is the money pretty sizable yes i've won i mean definitely not like dana going with 300k i saw that freaking bonuses he's never done that though yeah my biggest win was 100k okay that's pretty good yeah it's 100k but you do have four kids so i do have four okay can only last so long exactly um you know what it's it's more the longevity like the long-term contracts that we make our money in with surfing yeah um i just signed on three years with tenori new brand that's launching and those are the things it's like annual or monthly pay yeah and you're just kind

of like a walking billboard supporting them doing stuff and that's where the money comes got it that makes sense yeah dude it's been uh fun learning about the surfing world anything else you want to promote or close off with uh no fucking enjoy life and uh yeah at some point you got to get healthy yeah but enjoy life i recommend it to everyone enjoy it and um thanks for having me out here and uh yeah if you guys ever come out to hawaii come check me out awesome thanks for coming out man no, man. No worries. Have a good one. Of course. Thanks for watching, guys. See you tomorrow.