The Tim Ferriss Show - #461: Kelly Slater — The Surfing Legend on Routine, Rickson Gracie, Favorite Books, and Overcoming Setbacks

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

“When you’re humble, you’re teachable.” — Kelly SlaterKelly Slater (@kellyslater) is widely considered the greatest surfer of all time. He holds nearly every major record in the sport, including 11 world titles and 55 career victories. He also has the amazing distinction of being both the youngest and oldest world champion in men’s history. His most dominant days were the mid-’90s, when he won five straight titles between 1993 and 1998.After topping Mark Richards’ previous record of four straight titles, Kelly tried his hand at retirement in 1999 but failed. He rejoined the tour full-time in 2002, and over the following five years faced his toughest rival in Hawaii’s Andy Irons, who got the better of him for three straight years. Their heated battles became the most compelling in the sport’s history, propelling it to new heights. Kelly finally reclaimed the title in 2005 and repeated in 2006. Kelly swapped titles with Mick Fanning in the years that followed.Kelly will also be remembered for the wave pool technology that he and his team of engineers at Kelly Slater Wave Co. brought to life in 2015, which has the potential to reshape the surfing landscape for generations.Please enjoy!Please note that this episode was recorded in late May 2020. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seen an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end-all be-all, that all good things,

good mood, good performance, good everything seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side and like a super soft bed, no problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock,

they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for 100 nights risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com slash Tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com slash Tim. That's helixsleep.com slash Tim for up to $200 off. So check it out one more time, helixsleep.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element?

It is a delicious sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike, and I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low-carb, or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water and you might not have the right balance, that's often when I drink it. Or if you're doing any type of endurance exercise, mountain biking, et cetera, another application. If you've ever struggled to feel good on keto, low-carb, or paleo, it's most likely because even if you're consciously consuming electrolytes,

you're just not getting enough. And it relates to a bunch of stuff like a hormone called aldosterone, blah, blah, blah, when insulin is low. But suffice to say, this is where Element, again spelled L-M-N-T, can help. My favorite flavor by far is citrus salt, which, as a side note, you can also use to make a kick-ass no-sugar margarita. But for special occasions, obviously. You're probably already familiar with one of the names behind it, Rob Wolf, R-O-B-B, Rob Wolf, who is a former research biochemist and two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. Rob created Element by scratching his own itch. That's how it got started.

His Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches turned him on to electrolytes as a performance enhancer. Things clicked, and bam, company was born. So if you're on a low-carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, all that's garbage, unneeded. There's none of that in Element. And a lot of names you might recognize are already using Element. It was recommended to be by one of my favorite athlete friends. Three Navy SEAL teams as prescribed by their master chief, marine units, FBI sniper teams, at least five NFL teams who have subscriptions. They are the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and on and on. You can try it risk-free. If you don't like it, Element will give you your money back, no questions asked.

They have extremely low return rates. So again, Element LMNT came up with a very special offer for you guys. They've created Tim's Club. Just go to drinkelement.com slash Tim, select subscribe and save, and use promo code TIMSCL's Club to get the 30 count box of Element for only $36. This will be valid for the lifetime of the subscription and you can pause at any time. So again, check it out. It's drinklmnt.com slash Tim for this exclusive offer using promo code Tim's Club. One more time, drinklmnt, Element. So DrinkLMNT.com slash Tim and promo code Tim's Club. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take

one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out.

Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. And my guest today, I'll keep this intro short, is Kelly Slater. Many people will know that name. Kelly is widely considered the greatest surfer of all time. He holds nearly every major record in the sport, including 11 world titles and 55 career victories. He also has the amazing distinction of being both the youngest and oldest world champion in men's history. His most dominant days were in the mid-90s when he won five straight titles between 1993 and 1998. After topping Mark Richards' previous record of four straight titles, Kelly tried his hand at retirement in 1999. He failed. He then rejoined the tour full-time in 2002. I suppose he sensed that he had many,

many good years left, and over the following five years faced his toughest rival in Hawaii's Andy Irons, who got the better of him for three straight years. Their heated battles became the most compelling in the sport's history, propelling it to new heights. Kelly finally reclaimed the title in 2005 and repeated in 2006, and of course went on to gather many more titles. Slater, that is Kelly Slater of course, will also be remembered for the amazing wave pool technology that he and his team of engineers at Kelly Slater Wave Co. brought to life in 2015. The technology has the potential to reshape the surfing landscape for generations. And you have to see video to really quite grasp and grok what that means, but I encourage you to do so. You can find him online

at kellyslater.com and on Instagram and Facebook at Kelly Slater. And without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Kelly Slater. Kelly, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks Tim. I appreciate you making the time. And speaking of time, I want to just sort of set the table for people. So you and I are on opposite sides of the planet, in a sense. And I wanted to start with something that came up when we were texting, because I know in scheduling this, I am in Texas, you're currently in Australia.

And so the choice was, do we do crack of dawn your time or really late at night? And we ended up doing late at night. So it's late your time. And you texted about taking a two hour bath. I actually do take a lot of baths just because it's kind of an easy way to just let your body detox in hot water. And I did, you know, for about the last two months, I haven't been working out or really even surfing very much. So this past week, I started working out again and kind of built up a lot of the lactic acid in the muscles. I was working out with a friend of mine who's like a brother, Tom Carroll, who was two-time world champ back in the early 80s. Fellow surfer, lives right up the street here from where I'm staying.

And we spent a lot of time together over the years surfing and training together but uh did a workout the other day and uh I've been surfing the last couple days yesterday I surfed pretty hard and the day before that I surfed a bunch and uh so you know those muscles are just getting kind of worked again that I don't usually uh sit and and uh let the lethargic side of me build up too much especially this time of year. I'm surfing almost every day, usually. Let's talk about, we touched on the baths for a second, and we can't believe everything we read on the internet,

but I did see, if we're looking at morning routines, I did see that in an interview with Huckberry, it seems that you start a lot of your mornings with a glass of your mornings with a glass of warm water with lemon. Is that true or is that not true? It is. Yeah. Just to get a little warmth going in the body, loosen up. Obviously, lemon's really good for you. It's alkalizing. Even though it's an acid, it's alkalizing in the body and it's got a lot of minerals and some vitamins and just a nice clean way to kind of wake your system up.

And to me, it feels better than putting something heavy in my body. Do you drink coffee? I do a little bit, but I'm 100% not like a coffee addict. I don't know really what good coffee is. I kind of like the smell of coffee more than I like the taste of it. Has that always been the case with coffee or was there a period where you drank? No, I've never been a coffee drinker. I intentionally have really kind of stayed away from coffee.

I feel like I drink it a little bit now just to be ready for it. But this one time I went to, this is the reason I really don't drink coffee. I went to France and we spend sort of the two months prior to going to France to compete on West Coast time and Tahitian time. And those are the events prior to going over to Europe. We get to Europe and we compete within like a day or two of getting there. And it's a nine hour time difference going east. And that's the hardest thing when you fly east. You just, I don't care if it's from west coast to east coast i just even three hours is tough to get back

on track but when i fly over to europe it's really hard for me it takes me almost a month to feel like i get into like a morning routine and uh i was going for a world title in the early 2000s over there and i drank a coffee one morning to wake up and I got the jitter so bad. I fell off on every wave I was, I caught in this heat. It was a really crucial heat for me to try and win. And if I won that heat, it was pretty much a shoe in for the world title that year. And I did everything possible to lose that heat and somehow won it. But it was because I drank a big coffee in the morning, didn't have any food. And so it really kind of scared me away from coffee. Now, this might be, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I had asked you for, and I appreciate you contributing to my last book, Tribe of Mentors. And the question

was, how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? And you mentioned, I narrowly lost a world title in surfing in 2003 after basically having locked it up the month prior. And then you went on to talk about how it felt terrible, but drove you to clear up a lot of things. Was that the same competition or a different competition? That was a different competition. Could you speak to that loss in 2003, since we're on it, just how that came to be and what it drove you to do afterwards? You had to bring that up, huh, Tim? I did. I just dehumanized the immortal superhuman Kelly Slater.

No, I'm kidding. Actually, I do look back at that. I mean, obviously, there's no world title that is sitting in your hands that slips through that you're not upset about on some level. But if I could go back and change anything, I really don't think I would because it was a real, very clear indication of where things were going wrong for me. And also, to sort of charge the battery back up, make me dig deeper and competitively speaking and skill set speaking with my surfing and motivation, all these things. It was just kind of a reset for me. It was rebooting the software in my brain in a lot of ways. And those are tough lessons.

I lost that world title to Andy Irons and I was in a relationship that was just wrong. I literally didn't sleep the night before that competition in a fight with my then girlfriend, literally the whole night. She was fighting with my mom. It was just a nightmare. So that's terrible. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible. I woke up the next, I didn't even wake up the next morning. I didn't sleep. Maybe I got 30 minutes, 40 minutes of sleep that night. I walked out of my house the next morning, walked behind the house and I saw two friends of mine. And I believe my little brother was there, too. And I just started bawling.

I just broke down. Everything felt wrong. And I knew in my heart I was going to lose the world title that day. And if you're in the right frame of mind, I think as a competitor, if you lose, it hurts. But you know it's not life. It's just a loss. But that was deeper because I had all these other things. It was such a clear indicator that I was off in a lot of different areas, and I had some work to do.

And those things are painful sometimes, and it was one of those days. Did you find that that loss took you a while to climb out of? Or was it waking up the morning after and immediately deciding on changes that you were going to make? Could you just perhaps describe what the days or weeks were like following that? It definitely wasn't the next day. I would say it was the next year, maybe. It took me about a year to sort of, you know, get my act together and straighten a lot of things out. I remember going into the next year, my father died in 2002. And then I'm pretty sure it was his birthday the following year that I lost the world title actually on his birthday. I was still a little bit down in the dumps about that. And the loss hurt so bad that I kind of just went into my shell for most of the next year, competitively speaking. And at the start of 2005, I remember we went to our opening. It's sort of the end of the year, beginning of the year banquet and where they crown the world

title officially, but they also start the year. And I remember walking out of there and at that point, Andy Irons had won 2002, 2003, and 2004. And I remember walking out as we were leaving and I saw Joel Parkinson, who was also a world title contender. And I just said to him, I said, who's it going to be this year, me or you? One of us got to take this guy out. And I remember in that moment, just feeling like I'm ready. You know, I'm not scared to lose. And I really felt like I could beat Joel and would beat Joel. And I felt very confident that, you know, with no fear and just going out and feeling it that I would beat Andy.

So that year was a huge turnaround. And Andy and I had a lot of head-to-heads. The rivalry really peaked that year. You know, like Andy and I had a lot of head-to-heads the rivalry really peaked that year you know like he won a contest in Japan and then I won a contest in South Africa and then he won a contest and I won a contest we're going back and forth and I was thriving in it I just it was exciting me you know I just thought in my head you know I've already lost to this guy before it's not going to hurt any worse this time. So I might as well put everything into it. I can. And I just took a totally different headspace than 2004 when I just kind of shied away from the whole thing. And then it just all,

it all just fell in my lap, really. It all, it all just, everything just kind of lined right up. It was almost unbelievable because it felt like the matrix kind of thing where you just see it playing out. Even if you make a mistake, it plays out in your favor somehow. And that whole year went that way for me. What did your self-talk or prep look like that particular year when you're seeing the matrix unfolding, say in some of the more important competitions? How did it differ from years before, if at all? I don't think it differed necessarily. I think it got back into the groove. I think I felt out of that confident place and out of that. When you get in the flow and you get in the zone,

you don't question it. And if you start to question it, you start to fall out of it. But then you get to a place where you're really you know i feel like if you're really mastering that feeling and that that place for yourself that you can kind of step back and watch it also and it even gets stronger you you kind of embolden yourself into that so i i felt like my surfing was there my competing was there i felt unstoppable and i just built on that confidence and i never questioned it you know i knew it wasn't going to be easy to be andy because you know i really did have this light and dark, good and evil, kind of love-hate, all that kind of rivalry between us. And we're very different kinds of people,

but we also identified with each other a lot. And Andy grew up watching me and saying I was kind of like his inspiration. And then when he became my rival, he said he hated me and wanted me to die you know so it was like it felt real personal like he just he had made no bones about it he was like the first person i ever competed with it i felt was really on that level and just said i'm you know he just goes i want to just smash all his dreams and he would say that in interviews and stuff and it's intense you got to step up to that or step away. Yeah, it was the first time I ever felt someone that way in my face before. And in the end, I think it was really

good for me, but it was tough at times. If we look at 2003, if you're willing to go into it, one of the things that popped out, because I think that the wins and we're going to talk about, obviously a lot of the successes, people are aware of a lot of the successes, but how you have maintained and honed your skills with such longevity, I think, is one of the more impressive things. And so I like to talk about the bumps along the way. And in 2003, coming back to that, you mentioned your dad died in 2002. I was reading an outside magazine interview, and I'll just read this, and then I'd love to hear you speak to what it means. But losing his father paved the way for

what Slater described as an expanded awareness. Then, while taking an early season break in 2003 between events in Australia, his adopted second home, a close friend challenged him to lead his family's emotional recovery, not be victimized by it. The words were penetrating, and Slater, with his friend's encouragement, enrolled in a series of local therapeutic workshops that helped him identify troublesome behavior patterns and emotional sand traps. Now, there's a little bit of context we need to fill in here, but could you speak to, I guess, a bit of your childhood for those who don't have any context, and then what happened in 2003, if what I read is any way to lead into it? You know, my childhood, I think, as for most kids, it feels normal.

You know, like what you know seems like the normal thing. But looking back now, my dad was drinking a lot. My mom, it really made her crazy. And, you know, when you have alcoholism or gambling or whatever you have in your family, if you have, you know, some kind of big issue like that in your family, everyone else kind of falls in line, you know, like some people are enablers, some people are mediators, some people are, you know, become aggressive, some become, you know, you react to it different ways. And, um, and it kind of creates this sort of maze and puzzle that all sort of makes sense in that, in that environment environment but there's a lot of unhealthy survival skills and that kind of thing right you know but there were other families that were worse off than mine

that were friends of mine you know so it didn't seem that outlandish or anything but my mom probably harbored us from a lot of the stuff and we didn't know maybe you know some of the things that were happening like kids shouldn't but you know a lot of my feelings are a lot of my memories are pretty good you know I don't feel like I grew up in like any kind of a physical abuse situation like some people have or whatever but getting on with it I also didn't learn a lot of skills that helped me evolve and mature emotionally at a young age so I was at times really shy when I was younger in my teenage years. For me, I was a strange mix of, I knew I had talent. So like, you know, surf wise, it was kind of a place for me to show that. But at the same time with people or with media, that kind of thing, I was

really kind of shy to the point where I didn't like to take pictures in front of people because it embarrassed me and that kind of thing. You know, I didn't like to take pictures in front of people because it embarrassed me and that kind of thing. I didn't like signing autographs because I just felt silly. I actually remember my first autograph when I was 10 years old. How'd that go? My mom worked at this little cafe on the beach that we grew up surfing in front of called the Islander Hut. And the owner's wife, I won this contest, the East Coast Championships. And when I got home, she was like, oh my gosh, you're going to be a famous surfer one day.

You're going to be a professional or whatever. She's like, you won this big competition. You need to sign something for me. And I was so embarrassed. It took me like a half an hour to sign this piece of paper. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to sign an autograph. And I remember like 15, 20 minutes later,

she's like, you got that autograph for me yet? And and i was like i don't even know what that means you know um you know fast forwarding to you know the context of taking i don't know there's a book i read as a kid that was adult children of alcoholics or something like that and and uh i read that probably when i was like my early 20s and i was experiencing a lot of um I was going through a breakup and as you do you get really emotional during breakups and experiencing a lot of things you you want to you want to evolve you want to learn and and grow quickly in this situation so you can maybe save the relationship or you know not blow it by making stupid mistakes. It should be natural to get right. So, you know, at that age, I started identifying like, oh, there's some weird stuff going down in my family.

There's some really unhealthy dynamics around money and around communication, all those sort of things. And as I got older, because I did really well, you know, I obviously started winning world titles and making money. And, you know, in some ways, a lot of the family pressure or focus was around me. And I think if someone stands out as doing something extraordinary in a family, that's kind of natural. So my godson, he's 13. I have two godsons, and one of them's 13, and he's a really good surfer. And his dad's one of my oldest best friends.

And I heard him saying the other day on an interview, he said, you know, the thing about when you have a kid, he has two kids. And he said something about when you have a kid who's doing really well at something, it takes so much time up for the rest of the family. And so much of the focus of the family might be around that one person as opposed to equally amongst everybody. And it made me, just in the past week since I heard that, it's made me think about that a lot because I have an older brother, Sean. And I think as we got into teenage years, that was probably kind of funny for him that I started doing so well and he didn't keep on that same trajectory as when we were kids. You know, I think it was tough for him. I know it was tough for him. He recently said something to me to the effect that he wished he wasn't a pro surfer. You know, he wished he had done something else at that time, which was really sad for me to hear you know

because we grew up just loving surfing so much and it created a life for us it created all our travel and friendships and and uh all these memories on the around the world and work and you know it just became everything and uh as as a lot of the pressure i think was on me you know i bought a house when i was 17 and I was paying for a lot of things, you know, for everybody and that kind of thing. So there's a certain control that happens for someone in that position and it needs to be handled with care and it needs, you know, might need some help. And we didn't have that help or understanding. And so all of us, I think, suffered through that time.

So, you know, in 2003, if we're going to fast forward to then, when my friend said that to me, my friend Trevor, he said, maybe you're the one who needs to sort of handle this because you're aware of it. You know, all the problems that are going on in your family. And, you know, there's things you can see about your mom's struggle that you could help and your brother and blah blah things with your daughter and i really kind of resented that because in some ways i took on a fatherly role in my family but i was the middle child right and um i think i kind of longed to be put back in that place of like, I'm the middle child. I'm not the oldest. You're my mom. You're my older brother.

You're my dad. I'm probably getting ahead of myself here because, you know, some of these conversations haven't fully been aired out. But, you know, there's just a dynamic that happens. And I'm not placing blame on anyone for this. But, you know, just trying to kind of objectively look and understand because i'm still growing through this stuff and you know wanting to understand it from from all perspectives i i did become like a mediator in my family you know i was scared for my parents to break up as

a kid and i just imagined in my head i i think i lived in this dreamland where everyone got along and it was a movie and it was a happy ending. And, you know, that's not always the case. You know, the happy ending comes when all the lessons are learned, usually. So when I was confronted with the fact that I might need to be the person to kind of help mend a lot of these issues in the family, I resented that because I was longing for someone else to do it and I wouldn't have to do the work and I wouldn't have to come up with those answers. And it's easier if it's not you why why did why did Trevor say that to you what was it about that

point in time or the the surrounding conversation or background that led him to say that to you well because Trevor you know he was one of my best friends or you know still is on a deep level but we just don't spend a lot of time together these days we've been kind of off in different directions but trevor was like a six-time um iron man champion in australia and uh he'd been through a lot of the sort of emotional and and uh financial and stardom if you will pitfalls that can happen you know he on his own level he he had had a lot of that stuff happen to him and he was able to get through it. He, you know, he, he had, you know, and I, I wouldn't say anything that he hasn't stated publicly or whatever, but, you know, he, he went through divorce and, uh, money problems and all sorts of things.

And he was able to eventually work it out and He got married again. His current wife and his ex-wife are best of friends. All the kids get along. He really has a happy, healthy situation. Coming out of some things that were not so pretty at the time, I think he saw that with me. He saw that I was learning quickly. We were doing these courses together and he was helping me a lot. I was able to talk about things that I couldn't talk about with anyone else before in my life. So I think it wasn't so much a challenge to me as it was, hey, I see something special here that can make you feel good. And I think you can fix these things up, and it'll make every other aspect of your life better and more coherent and happy. So it's kind of one of those things. What type of courses were they? Were there any particular will. I don't know, just where you spend a lot of time with other people and do these processes of being the listener or being the person who has problems or overseeing those things.

And doing these little exercises and then just talking about your feelings, just like simple stuff, like really simple stuff. In the course, they kind of ask you to not really talk about it too much outside of it, but we would just do these exercises. And then afterwards, you talk about how you feel and you relate those feelings to the rest of your life and the way that you as a person approach and experience life. So you just kind of look at all your filters and it's just an experiential kind of exercise. And I started realizing that even in the simplest things that you do every day, the way you wake up and think about them and approach them is how you approach life. And so everything's kind of a metaphor of another thing. Yeah, the sort of filters and stories that we might not even be aware of. You mentioned metaphysics, and we don't have to get super metaphysical here,

but I think metaphor and... We'll just get quantum physical. We'll just get quantum physical here for 20 minutes. Hold on to your panties, everybody. There were two books that you mentioned in Tribe of Mentors. I'd be curious to know when either or both of them came into your life, just in terms of influence and sort of shaping your thinking. The first,

it's actually the second one you mentioned, but The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, which I also have. That's a beautiful little book. It's a great book. And why don't we start there and then we'll get to the second one. But how did that enter your life? God, that's so weird. He just brought that up. One of my best friends is named Khalil. And I met him about, I don't know, eight years ago, seven or eight years ago. And he's just become such a big part of my life. And he's an ex-drug addict who was nearly dead and homeless and penniless and got himself together.

Now he's more or less a health food addict and owns a bunch of smoothie stores in LA called Sun Life Organics. He just really like this guy's a success story in his life, you know, but the book and I'd never known a Khalil before, but I just flashed on that because my mom gave me that book, The Prophet. And I think I want to say I was in my early twenties, maybe late teens to early twenties. And she gave me this book. And I don't know how she knew about it. It was, I don't know, it just seemed like an extraordinary book. To me, it became like my Bible because I felt like I could read a little piece of it and it would hold me over for a month, you know, maybe one or two pages. Yeah, you might just

open to some aspect of life that you're questioning or whatever and you read you know they say all the great things are simple things and you that book really kind of is a cliff notes to life in a simple way but i just felt it really was a really inspiring book and it didn't take a lot of effort to get something from it. Yeah, this book found me in a very tumultuous period of my life, and I ended up reading, like you mentioned, one or two very short chapters, two pages perhaps, each day. And it had the effect of taking what could seem like an overwhelmingly complex world and distilling it down to something simple

that you could reflect on and use for the next few days. The second book, I'll bring it up, is one with a longer title, and that is The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity by Daniel Reed, R-E-I-D. Could you speak to this book and same idea, how it came into your life and what you take from it? What are some of the takeaways or impacts in your life? Yeah. I started reading that book in the early 2000s, maybe 2003, 4, 5, somewhere in there. And I just found a lot of the, well, if I were to rewind a little bit, in the late 90s, I started to learn a lot about the Gracies, jiu-jitsu. I didn't start practicing, but I was reading a lot about them and reading about Hickson, who I later became friends with. And they talk about a diet, a food combining diet, where you don't mix proteins and carbs together in meals. And you don't mix fruits with either together in meals and you don't mix

fruits with either and you could have greens with sort of anything that's essentially what food combining is I had read a book in the mid 90s around 96 or 97 called fit for life which was kind of the same thing and I think I'd been inspired by the Gracies to read that and then I don't remember who gave me the Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity, but I started reading that and got really, really into the diet aspect of it, getting into the food combining thing and started following it kind of religiously. I think I read it in 98 originally, and I kept, I sort of kept it with me for about 10 years is what it was. And in 98, I was traveling with Shane Dorian. That's whose son is my godson. And Shane and I were traveling around the tour together that year.

And I became kind of like the chef for both of us. He just told me, just tell me what to eat because he knew I was super into diet. And so we got really into our diets. And I felt like he was helping me be a guinea pig to see if this thing worked. And I found myself sleeping like six hours a night and feeling like I was totally rested. My body just felt much more relaxed and energetic. And, you know, there's other things in the book that were helpful, too. There's a lot of breathing techniques that I tried to incorporate myself. Didn't really do them practicing with anyone else and it gets into all sorts of things around you know obviously it's the title of sexuality too um so it dives

into all that kind of thing too but like they just using everything in your life in a healthy way and um i don't know it's one of those books i just i had to travel with it for years i just would always keep it it was like just in case i need to I had to travel with it for years. I just would always keep it. It was like, just in case I need to read something, I'll have it with me. You know, it was always in the bottom of my bag for a long time. And I probably recommended that book literally at this point to tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions even. After this, it'll be millions for sure.

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Dry Farm Wines. I'm a wine drinker. I love it. Love a few glasses over meals with friends. That said, I hate hangovers. It kills me often for multiple days. Right now, all of the wine in my house is from Dry Farm Wines. Also, for my last two book launch parties, all the wine has been from Dry Farm Wines. Why is that? Because in my personal experience, their wine means more fun with fewer headaches. Dry Farm Wines only ships wine that meet very stringent criteria. Close to sugar-free, so less than 0.15 grams per glass.

Lower alcohol, less than 12.5% alcohol. Additive-free, there are more than 70 FDA-approved winemaking additives, the fewer the better, in your wine, lower sulfites, organic, and produced by small family farms. All Dry Farm wines are laboratory tested for purity standards by a certified independent enologist, and all of their wines are backed by a 100% happiness promise. They will either replace or refund any wine you don't love. Last but not least, I find delicious wines I never would have found otherwise. So it's a lot of fun, saves me time and research, and I have fewer headaches. Other fans of Dry Farm Wines include the incredible Dr. Dom D'Agostino, who's been on this podcast, very popular guest. You remember the guy who did a 10-day fast and then did 10 repetitions of deadlifts with 500

pounds? That guy. he drinks their wine, even when on a ketogenic diet, which can work. Dry Farm Wines is offering you an extra bottle in your first box for a penny because it's alcohol. It can't be free. Find all the details and collect your wine at dryfarmwines.com slash Tim. Check it out, dryfarmwines.com slash Tim. And one more time, I love this stuff, dryfarmwines.com slash Tim. And one more time, I love this stuff, dryfarmwines.com slash Tim. You mentioned a name that I'd love to come back to, and that's Hickson Gracie. So I know quite a lot about Hickson. I've only met him in person once very briefly, so I don't think he would remember me. But he has, now that I think

about it, an incredible physical practice that in some ways, if I had to guess, share some similarities with your physical practice. I remember long ago watching a documentary largely about Hickson called Choke, which was about, I believe, his initial competition in Pride, the early, early iterations of Pride, and watching his yogic practices, his abdominal work, his breathing, cold exposure, etc. How would you say the two of you are most similar or different? What similarities and differences do you see? It's so funny because remember years ago ago everyone was doing that ice bucket challenge

you pour some cold water on your head and that's like a big thing right and i remembered back watching choke and that was before i knew hickson and watching him go into like basically a ice cold temperature water and in japan and training for these fights just getting his mind strong and you know physically mentally emotionally totally prepared for war. And his breathing techniques are just like out of this world, you know, like Wim Hof's the guy who's famous for his breathing stuff, but Hickson was doing that, you know, 25 years ago or more. And, you know, I had heard that Hickson could move every muscle in his body independent of any other muscle. He had such control.

And for people who don't know jiu-jitsu, the Gracies are learning jiu-jitsu by the time they're two years old in that family. Kids wrestle. All boys wrestle. But they were wrestling at a young age, tiny kids with technique and learning the skills and learning how not to hurt each other. And so it was as natural as breathing or anything for them and um i always had real admiration from afar for hickson before meeting him and then we became friends i i'm not quite sure the first time i met him i met him at ring con surfing i think it was the early 2000s or late 90s met him one day in the car park and. And then a few years later, a couple years later, I got invited over to his house to go do a private session with him and taught me and my friend Travis some jiu-jitsu.

And then I kind of think he gave me a few one-on-one sessions. And I sort of sponsored him for surfboards and would pay for his surfboards. And like an informal kind of you know you scratch my back i scratch yours but i always had this huge admiration for him and i was just really you know happy to know him and get to pick his brain sometimes but in about 2008 it was about 2008 i was i saw i saw him one day he came to the surfboard factory where i was who i was sponsored by and we're up in santa barbara and he he's like, you know, man, I think you should stop now. I think you should quit. And I said, why? And he goes, you know, you're going to give all these

young guys a chance to beat you. And you, you're not going to be as sharp. You're going to, you're going to lose your desire. You're going to get a complacent, you know, and then guys who shouldn't beat you are going to beat you. And when you look back, you're going to be upset about it. And about three years later, I saw him and I had won two or three more world titles in that time. And I said, you know, if I listened to you, I wouldn't have this many, you know, if I listened to you, I would only have eight. And now I got 11, you know, and he's like, oh man, you're right. You're right. And, uh, there is always that question for athletes, like when you stop and what's the right time. And you go out at the peak or shortly after it.

And, you know, it's a weird thing because it depends on your purpose. You know, it depends on what message you're sending. And that message can change, too. And I feel like mine has. But that message, that doesn't have to be so centered around your ego. It can be an evolution and, um, people who say like, guys, people need to go out on top. Why? So, I mean, yeah, that's great too. But obviously if you're at the top of your game, you're still, you're still beating people. You're still beating everyone. And, um,

passing the torch sometime is you know somebody's got to take you out and uh you know that can be a respectable and respectful way too and uh i've always kind of welcomed that uh in my later years here on tour i've sort of welcomed like i want to see the level be what my mind imagined when i was 15 20 years old not somewhere behind me you know i wanted to just keep going and and i want to be part of that evolution to push that and you know at 48 years old i know nobody takes me lightly in a heat when they compete against me and you know that's i think that's an honor in itself you know that they still you know, that's, I think that's an honor in itself. You know, that they still, you know, the best guys in the world are still worried when they get in the heat with me and I'm not dumb. No, I know where my level is.

You know, there's certain times that I'm, I can be the best guy and there's other times where I got to work on it or, you know, or I'm not right there, but if you're enjoying it and you love it and it's your passion and surfing is a different thing. Kind of like, what would I compare it to? Strangely enough, golf, they're both sports you can do until you're old. You can do way up late into your life. You're not going to be doing that with football and baseball or basketball so much.

Not hardcore anyways. I'm going to ask you about the evolution of surfing in a moment, but I want to come back to Hickson just for another minute. And that is, what were some of the things you learned from Hickson or that most impressed you? You mentioned picking his brain about things. Is there anything that you picked up from him or that really astonished you about him? You mentioned that individual muscle control, and I had referenced the abdominal exercises, which kind of makes it sound like crunches. But what I'm talking about is what you saw, and you probably remember this in Choke, where he's in this freezing cold river, snow everywhere, and he's also moving independently as he breathes his abdomen, where it looks like his

guts are just moving in every possible direction like an octopus under his skin. It's one of the strangest things i've ever seen uh but what are some of the things that you picked up from hickson if anything or took note of funny enough probably one of the simplest things is the first thing that swings to mind and that is efficiency because when he anytime he's given me a jiu-jitsu lesson he's given me a few privates. And he did the same thing for my little brother one day with me. And it was all about efficiency of movement. You know, he said, look, you know, I can fight a guy. I'm like 170 or whatever, 175.

He's like, I can fight a guy who's 250 pounds and I'm stronger than him. Not because I have more strength, but because I understand leverage. I understand how the body moves and the efficiency of trapping someone's joint and using leverage instead of just energy, you know, instead of just wasting my energy and using strength, I'm using superior method and technique. One thing I really have always respected about Hickson is how disciplined he was especially like seeing that that footage of him knowing that the level he got to with his breathing and his stomach you know his muscle movements and his mastery of jujitsu and his arts the amount of time it took to get there and he obviously had something special you know he had

a certain way to look at it that no one else did and that's why he was the greatest so it's taking all the best techniques all aspects you know from diet to breathing to you know understanding his body understanding his opponents and what they're good and bad at and using all that it becomes an equation that you you know when you get to the highest levels, you don't think of the equation. It just, you understand that, you know, the answer. And, um, so you, and you just trust that and use it. And so in the simplicity, there's a mastery. And, um, I think that's what I've picked up from the times I've spent around Hickson. I promised I would come back to the evolution of surfing. Where do you think the evolution of surfing might be going? Is there anything that

would be inconceivable for most people today to imagine that you think is coming down the pike? Where do you think things are going? I've said to a few people in the last few years, last five or 10 years, that I would hate to be a young surfer right now because the levels you got to go to whether it's going to be just competing like just small wave performance and technique or it's going to if you're going to be a big wave guy like the stuff guys are doing now is so crazy that young kids who have any fear of big waves right now must be just like having no understanding of what they can do to get to that level. Guys are surfing, regularly surfing 60, 70, 80 foot waves. And, um, you know, you need to do a lot of preparing for that ahead of time. A lot of, a lot of putting yourself in unsafe not unsafe um unfamiliar territory you know pool work underwater

work breathing breath holds you know water safety classes big they have these classes called uh big wave rescue there's an acronym for it bwr ag anyways it's all about big waves and practicing and practicing all the water safety so there's these courses you know they're really good for young guys to go to actually they'd be good for they could translate to anybody even people that don't surf you know but they're they're kind of built specifically for like being able to be comfortable in big gnarly situations and also go save people in the middle of you know the surf and i'll link to that in the show notes for folks yeah all aspects of water safety and it's really like a passion played by

the surfers who do it you know everyone's kind of looking out for each other and you know i've had a number of friends drown and not make it and i've had a number of friends drown and be saved and a lot of those most of those who were saved were because all these kind of techniques that everyone's been learning from divers and lifeguards and all sorts of water safety people. In fact, there's one friend of mine who drowned and was saved. And then about, I don't know, a couple of years later, he actually did CPR on another friend of ours who drowned and saved him. So there's a real tight fraternity community in the surf world, especially in the big wave world. And guys are looking out for each other because they know it's a life and death thing all the time. And if you look at the evolution, just size-wise, performance-wise, technique-wise, over the last, say, five to 10 years? I mean, as it seems to be mirrored in

many other places like MMA, there's this almost exponential curve that seems to be persisting. And I'd be curious to know what you think things might look like in, say, five years' time. And you've been part, of course, of innovating with technology, right? The Kelly Slater Wave Company producing the longest man-made high-performance open barrel waves. I remember the initial videos making the circles and just blowing people's minds. What do you think the state-of-the-art training will look like for people who do want to hone their skill, given how intimidating it can be now if they want to compete, as an example? What do you think it might look like five years from now? I kind of wonder. I think this last five years was really a fast evolution in wave pool technology, man-made wave technologies. I don't know if it's going to speed up or slow down right now. I feel

like it's going to slow down a little bit because there's a number of different technologies and now it's about perfecting them, just innovating on what is already there, and then having surfers ride them and give feedback to what else they would like to see. But there's quite a lot of good waves being made by machines at this time. There's, I want to say, three distinct different technologies with different kinds of waves. Five years from now, I just expect there will be more of these made. You know, there's probably six or eight around the world that have become sort of destinations for people to go ride there's one in abu dhabi or dubai there's there was two in texas now there's one but i think the other one's going to be

rebuilt there's one going in at least one going into florida if not two um there's one in england there's one in us down in melbourne australia and i think another being built on the gold coast right now and then potentially we're building one on the sunshine coast as well so five years from now i don't think there's going to be a time where surfers are completely stumped for waves you're always going to have somewhere within your access you can go get a wave on any given day the wave pool that they have in Australia right now is down in Melbourne. And I was talking to a friend recently. He goes, oh, yeah, like a bunch of my buddies have gotten a flight from Byron Bay, flown all the way to Melbourne in the morning, surf two sessions at the pool and get home by dark or get home like just for a late dinner.

And that's a two-hour flight each way and he said they're happy to do it again next month or in two months or whatever so these things are becoming you know destinations for people and it's a it's just like a supplement to your surfing just like a vitamins would be to your diet it's just another way to get get your fix of uh getting in the water and getting something done but now you see people advancing evolving their surfing a lot quicker and that's going to be the case that's going to be the thing like my godson jackson like i'll probably just keep talking about him but he's 13 and he's one of the best aerialists at his age in the world if not the best at his age in the world right now.

He's really only been surfing about four years. I've grown men all the time just going, oh my God, how's Jackson? He's unbelievable. People watch his edits and see the things he's doing, but he's spent a lot of time in these different wave pools already, practicing the airs over and over again. Shane was saying how he's like, man, the first time we went, it crazy to see jackson's evolution over the course of like two days or three days and how much better he got in that amount of time because there's a real crossover now between skate and surf so you see all the guys who are really good at airs i would say 90 of them anyways are good skaters and um so they they understand the rotations and the grabs and that kind of thing.

And when we were kids, we didn't really have access to skate parks and ramps and stuff. And now there's a skate park in every city. Almost all these guys have a bunch of friends who are great skaters or pro skaters, or even someone in their family, you know, it's a great skater.

So there's a real solid crossover there. It's just more access, more time on the mat, you know? At the wave pool, I feel free to chime in, but he said with a wave pool, it seems like you get a density of repetitions of surfing that is difficult or impossible to replicate elsewhere, just in terms of number of reps per hour in that sense. I heard you made a sound. How would you respond to that? No, totally. I mean, because in the ocean, you might search. All my years, I've thought about certain waves that look good for a certain maneuver, and I might go and surf that wave once every few years. And it might have that section I'm looking for only once every couple times I go there. And I might get that wave, you know, even less frequent than that. So the point is that the sections we need with the right speed and size and all that thing to do certain maneuvers is so rare to find in the ocean.

And now we can start to design those into man-made waves so that if you ever have that situation in the ocean, it's not unfamiliar. You can master that before you ever take it to the ocean. So then you go out in the ocean, you go into competition or whatever, and you've got something in your back pocket that nobody else has or that you're not unfamiliar with. If you were, say, 20 years old and had the level of surfing that you had when you were 20, if that were today, what advice might you give yourself about the learning process? It doesn't have to relate to technology, but is there any advice you'd give your 20-year-old self about honing the craft, improving the learning process?

Gosh, I mean, I would probably just say go skate a lot. Skate. Get on a skateboard because you can go carve and you can do airs. And those are the two things you need in surfing. You need to really understand and differentiate the two. In surfing, most guys are either a power surfer or an air maneuver trick surfer. And it's almost rare to see somebody who's really great at both. We're starting to get more and more. There's like John, John Florence, and there's Gabriel Medina, and there's Jordy Smith.

And there's quite a few guys now. But when I was on tour and when I got on tour, when I got on tour, I would say there's nobody. And as I was on tour, there were very few over the years that were good at all those different aspects. I mean, my mind almost draws a blank until just this modern era now who have been able to understand there's a real difference in the approach of doing those maneuvers. The base of power surfing where you're just carving up and the air stuff where you kind of have to be more horizontal and lateral and stay over your board unless you're doing grabs. And then when you start doing grabs and rotations and inverting stuff then it's the air thing goes to a little different level and you you have to be schooled in some other skill set you know like skating or gym

you know gym work if you if you were to go work with a gymnast specifically with a gymnast who understands flips and rotate and spinning and that kind of stuff and landing back on your feet if If you're really going to dive into it all, you can't discount your diet. You can't discount body work. You can't discount doing yoga or Pilates and staying supple, getting some extra strength and bone density, but not getting too big from using weights. So there's always this kind of balance for surfing. You don't want to be a giant strong dude, but you don't want to be a little weakling either. You just kind of need this nice balance and blend between all those things. You mentioned bodywork. This seems to be an important component of, I suppose, just physical practice for you or regeneration. There are a million and one different types of

bodywork. How do you use bodywork? What are the types that you have ended up focusing on for yourself if any i've gone through most everyone you can imagine from shiatsu thai massage swedish deep tissue biosync um i mean all sorts of different you know i've tried everything all the chiropractics and osteopaths and all that kind of stuff. But in general, I do need a little bit of adjusting some chiropractics because I have scoliosis. I have a pretty big curve in my back. And from that, my muscles get really imbalanced. So I kind of need a blend. I mean, my neck will go out and my lower back will go out. So I need to get adjusted and kind of put that back. I sometimes throw a rib out.

Sounds painful. Yeah. It's different than breaking a rib. It's just more annoying. You can still kind of surf through it with adrenaline, but it is annoying. The way I usually do it, it kind of pinches something in my neck so I can't turn to the left.

I feel like Zoolander. I can't turn to the left. I feel like Zoolander. I can't turn left. I really like Thai massage because it's deep. It's almost like lazy man's yoga in a way. I've been disciplined for many years. I've spent over 30 years being pretty disciplined with my body and what I put into it and all that kind of stuff. But in doing that, I'm never too obsessive about any one thing. I'll go through binge periods where I'm really obsessive about my diet, but I don't love to

work out. So I like to kind of consistently get some body work. I like to surf enough because surfing is fun. You know, I just love to surf. So it keeps me fit. And if I surf enough, I'm at a level that's pretty good for my cardio and for my strength. But I generally always need a little bit of extra, you know, I should spend more time stretching, especially my hips and my hamstrings. If you can picture a surfer paddling, we got our back arched the whole time. So I can actually bend backwards.

Amazing. I can put my feet on my head and that kind of thing. But bending forward, I'm stiffer because I spend my whole life with my shoulders back and my back arched. A blend for me is just if I feel like something's out, if my back goes out or something, I got to get adjusted, let it relax. Get some anti-inflammatories once in a while because the stress around contest, if your body's out of whack, is annoying too. And then, yeah, just get that body work,

get those muscles worked out that are imbalanced. If you're a little too tight there and a little too weak there, the ones that are built up too much, you got to kind of like stretch out. And just for folks who don't know, Thai massage, I'll do my best to do a quick description and then please add anything that we're missing. But you described it as lazy man's yoga. A lot of it is done on a mat. People will often stretch you. This is the one form of massage I've explored quite a bit.

And use pressure, right? The feet, lots of, they might use blood stops, lots of walking and also traction. I mean, depending on the style. So it's a, it's a really comprehensive system. Uh, I've, I've also found Thai massage extremely helpful. How often do you get, how often do you have body work done? Well, I'd like to get something done every week, but you know, sometimes I'll get it a couple times a week. If I'm in one place and I got somebody I like to work with, I'll go two or three times in a week sometimes. And then I might not go for a month once in a while. If I'm

competing though, I like to try to get something at least once a week. Once a week. And, and, but if I'm at the contest, sorry to jump in there. If I'm at a contest, we usually have massage therapists there. So each day I'll get a little bit of something during contest days. Just a few more questions, Kelly. I know it's late. What time is it over there at the moment? It's got to be on the late side. I don't know. 1.30. Oh my God, 1.30 a.m. Hey, we're partying, man. We're partying. And yeah, this is another surprise in the Kelly story is your history as a night owl, which is pretty astonishing, at least was unexpected for me. But just a few more questions for you. This is one on behalf of a friend of mine who is, if you haven't ever met him, I'd actually love for you guys to meet at

some point, but his name is Josh Waitzkin. I don't think he'd mind being named. He was the basis for searching for Bobby Fischer. So he was considered a chess prodigy as a kid. He hates that word prodigy, but nonetheless, very, very, very successful chess player. And then was a world champion in Tai Chi push hands, the first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, who's sort of the Michael Jordan of grappling. He's one of my all-time favorites. Yeah. So Josh co-founded a school with him in New York, and now he is spending his time on the water, and this is his new passion. And he's fascinated by all water sports. And I'd love to, and this is a question that he posed, ask you about foiling. What is your opinion of foiling or e-foiling as a supplement or

adjunct to surfing or otherwise? That's my add-on. But really, what he was wondering is, does it connect or not connect to surfing in your mind? Well, the best guys in the world are surfers so yeah it connects when i was a little kid there used to be this sort of slogan coco beach the small wave world in a small wave capital of the world for whatever reason there was like you know a big emphasis of surfing in coco beach and it was probably a slogan from ron john surf shop or something but somehow it became known as like a small wave capital and then in the last 20 30 years coco beach is not on the surfing radar at all no one comes to coco beach to go surfing uh from anywhere else in the world they do from like orlando and they might from down south florida but they don't it's not like a destination for people from other

places in the world you're going to go to Hawaii or Indo or Tahiti or France, for that matter, Portugal. But with the foiling thing, so for people who don't know foiling, just Google it. Go on YouTube. It's like a surfboard on a

hydrofoil. So you don't have the resistance of the board on the water. Yeah, you're riding under the water and you're riding, like it's probably the closest thing you can imagine to flying, but being in the water. Just think of all the America's Cup boats now, the ones that lift off or those ferries, those super high-speed ferries that ride on a foil and all the energy,

all the weight lifts up off the water. So there's just so little resistance. And the bigger the energy all the weight lifts up off the water so there's just so little resistance and the bigger the foil the more the more lift you have so the faster you're going the less foil size you need i can't really speak to it because i'm a complete kook and novice i've done it like three times i've done the e-foil once and i think the e-foil is a little goofy i'm just going to throw it out there i think it's really good for learning it's kind of training wheels for for foiling in my eyes um you do it to kind of get the feel of being lifting up off the water and not having not relying on your board edges and stuff to create the turns and it's

foiling is a little counterintuitive when we surf when you lean into a rail into a turn you're pushing all your energy and weight down into that rail, and you're getting a lift back from that rail. When you foil, when you push on one side, wherever you put your force, it lifts back against you in a way that kind of throws the board the opposite way you think it might. So if I'm surfing and I lean my right rail down in the water, that rail goes down. Of course, I'm getting a pushback against it. But in foiling, when you lean to the right, if you lean to the right and then put your energy down to the right, the foil kicks the board back up against you and you kind of fold in half. So when you lean right, you almost got to put equal amount of pressure on the left at the same time. It's hard to try to explain because I am such a novice.

So there's a little bit of counterintuitive. It's almost like if you're riding a bike and you're turning right, you have to turn the steering wheel left a little bit to go right. It's the weirdest sensation. But it's so cool looking, like the amount of speed you can get. And what I was saying about Florida being like Cocoa Beach being the small roof capital of the world, I'm just starting to think that Florida might be a good destination again for people that want to go foiling. Because we have these really shallow offshore shoals off of Cape Canaveral, basically where NASA Space Center is. And my friends have been getting like mile-long rides out there. You can just catch these open ocean swells and they don't break and you just you can go so fast back and forth on the

things and it's so cool looking it's completely silent and um there's just no wake and i don't know it looks like nothing else in the world i kind of want to get into it but i'm scared once i do it's going to mess my surfing up. So I'm kind of waiting. I was telling you, I was working out with Tom Carroll the other day, and Tom foils almost every morning. And he says, as soon as I'm done foiling, I got to get back on a surfboard so I don't forget that feeling or else my surfing goes downhill. It is a beautiful and eerie visual to see foiling. If people haven't seen it, we'll put some links in the show notes.

But it's unlike anything you've ever seen, particularly if you're not familiar with water sports at all. It's kind of hard at first, within the first few seconds, to even compute what is happening. Yeah, you can see a tiny wave. Somebody can be on a tiniest little wave and they're can see a tiny wave. Yeah. Somebody can be on a tiny little wave and they're going 20 miles an hour. Yeah, it's... You know, or whatever, just flying. It's really wild.

Just a few more questions, then we'll break here. Are there any really great moments in the water that come to mind that were not captured on camera? Any, obviously there's all of the practice and lots of sessions on the water, but does anything come to mind? Not that you regret that it wasn't captured on camera, but like a standout moment for you

that has just been kind of locked in the amber of your memory? I went on a trip down to Central America one time, and there's this really great wave that was happening years ago. Funny enough, strangely enough, it got ruined by the 2011 tsunami which wasn't huge when it hit there but it was really powerful and small and

it changed this break in particular that we were surfing um but we went down there and i brought my friend to shoot like thousand frames a second on a phantom camera like the best footage you could ever get at the time and we shot the best day i've ever seen at this place like a day you get very few times in your life i maybe the best day i've ever had and he filmed the whole thing and we flew from there to tahiti and we got to tahiti and i said hey um let me know when i can see that footage and like the next day i called him and i said have you looked at it yet? He's like, oh, there might be a problem with it or something, but I'll let you know later.

I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I don't know. I just like trying to go through the hard drives and stuff. So I go down and I go and see him the next day. And I said, all right, well, what's going on? And he goes, there's no footage. I go, what do you mean there's no footage? Like you miss some waves or like he goes, no, there's there's no footage at all. And I was like, what do you mean? And he goes, there's mean there's no footage like you missed some waves or like he goes no there's there's no footage at all and i was like what do you mean and he goes there's just there's

no footage like he goes i think when we were going out on the jet ski something came loose from the hard drive to the camera and it just never even got one frame of footage so we we don't have any footage at all of that whole day i was equally like upset and thought it was funny and i actually in a way i i kind of i'm kind of glad that it didn't happen because this was this place was so magical and um i felt cheap filming it and showing it to the world and uh and and it's renowned for people like dropping their cameras that have filmed good sessions like there's like kind of this mystique around this place and like a whole bunch of people, my friends that have been down there and filmed and stuff like my friends that live down there and, and they,

they drop cameras in the water after a whole day of filming. And like somehow somebody erased the footage, like all these things have happened. So like the footage of this place has never really gotten out. And, and, um, and then the this height then the

tsunami hit and ruined the sandbar that had built up for you know who knows how long decades and um so it's kind of funny it sort of hit itself and and uh although i wanted to see that footage we didn't have it yeah the bermuda triangle and then the beach was like enough of these people with their cameras let Let's change the landscape. It happened. Yeah, that's amazing. Kelly, last question. What are you most looking forward to in terms of goals for yourself? It doesn't have to be related to surfing, but really, it could be, of course, over the next handful of years. Obviously, this period of time with the COVID thing has been a, I hope it's been a time of reflection for everybody. I think it's a time for all of us to sit back and think about our health, think about what's important, put some money away. You know, I think about all the people who lost their jobs and who live on credit and who don't save for a rainy day.

And, you know, people are in far worse situations than that, that don't have a roof over their head. I think it's, it's one of those times to really think about kind of everything that's important in your life. And strangely enough, if you look at my YouTube feed, I would say half of the stuff that I watch is converting vans to a home. And I have this sort of, after all these years of like wanting to, you know, make money from when I was a kid, so I could buy a house to then buying homes in different parts of the world, and now I'm looking forward to either living on a boat one day or living in a van that I can just live anywhere. Making it kind of simple. The only problem is I have too many surfboards and too many golf clubs. You could have a caravan.

You could have the first van be the home. Well, and too many countries I'd like to be in. But yeah, I think just taking some time after being on this whirlwind for 30 plus years i mean nearly nearly 30 years on tour but you know another 10 years on top of that chasing waves from when i was a young kid to just scaling it back to you know who i like to surf with and where what else i want to include in my life or take out of it just looking forward to enjoying the next 40 years of life and and um 50 years 80 years i don't know how long can we live at that point but tbd yeah looking looking forward to that and and um you know more more i think more personal uh growth uh the surfing has become real crowded and you almost

have to become spiritual to enjoy it sometimes because there's so many people in the water um so you know learning to to enjoy and enjoy what i have and to be able to share it you know a kid that i surfed with yesterday wrote me a message today online and he said hey you know I really want to like be a pro surfer I really want to get as good as I can and try to be a pro and make a career and he's like any advice and he's like sorry for bugging you and I was like no like it's it's sort of it's probably strange how much I enjoy sharing all this stuff that I've learned with younger guys if they want to ask me you know i think maybe sometimes people are intimidated to ask me or don't think i'll want to talk about it or something but i'm really happy to kind of share any of those things i can

with younger surfers who are hungry for it and i thought it was cool that he kind of had the balls to just say hey can you help me out here? So I gave him a nice long rundown, do all these things, go all these places. Don't fake it. Put your heart into it and give it your best try. And if it works out, great. But there's a long road ahead to get to that point.

I don't totally know how good this particular kid is. I saw a couple of clips of them and, you know, in all honesty, there's some work to do there, but, you know, somebody who has the desire and is willing to say, Hey, this is what I want to do all the best to those people. You know, it sounds like somebody like that's willing to, to work and to be humble. And when you're humble, you're teachable, you know, you're, you're able to learn. It's like, you know, even someone in my position who's, you know, I've won a lot of contests and all that stuff. And I, I still, a lot of times I need to just sit back and be willing to learn and be humble and not think I

know something and, or know it better than somebody. a lot of times just they say teaching is the best way to learn because you know going back to that theme we started with early on with that 2003 when i lost that world title when you when you teach you mess up you know and and you learn something from that and uh you learn better and better how to understand and comprehend something and be able to share it with somebody not from a place of righteousness, but a place of like, you've lived it. Yeah. Well, we'll try to track down the comment and the where to go and what to do to put in the show notes. But Kelly, this has been great. I look forward to watching the next 50, 60, 80, 150 years, depending on where medicine takes us. And really appreciate you taking the time. I know that you have lots of demands on your time. So I appreciate you carving out a bit of it

for this conversation. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. And you can find show notes, links to everything at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, don't be righteous, be open-minded. If you think you really understand something, try to go teach it to somebody who's an up-and-comer. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me?

Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to

receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike. And I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low carb or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water, and you might not have the right

balance. That's often when I drink it. Or if you're doing any type of endurance exercise, mountain biking, etc. Another application. If you've ever struggled to feel good on keto, low-carb, or paleo, it's most likely because even if you're consciously consuming electrolytes, you're just not getting enough. And it relates to a bunch of stuff like a hormone called aldosterone, blah, blah, blah, when insulin is low. But suffice to say, this is where Element, again spelled L-M-N-T, can help. My favorite flavor by far is citrus salt, which, as a side note, you can also use to make a kick-ass no-sugar margarita. But for special occasions, obviously, you're probably already familiar with one of the names behind it, Rob Wolf, R-O-B-B.

Rob Wolf, who is a former research biochemist and two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. Rob created Element by scratching his own itch. That's how it got started. His Brazilian jujitsu coaches turned him on to electrolytes as a performance enhancer. Things clicked, and bam, company was born. So if you're on a low-carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, all that's garbage, unneeded. There's none of that in Element. And a lot of names you might recognize are already using Element. It was recommended to be by one of my favorite athlete

friends. Three Navy SEAL teams as prescribed by their master chief marine units fbi sniper teams at least five nfl teams who have subscriptions they are the exclusive hydration partner to team usa weightlifting and on and on you can try it risk-free if you don't like it element will give you your money back no questions asked they have extremely low return rates so again element element t came up with a very special offer for you guys. They've created Tim's Club. Just go to drinkelement.com slash Tim, select subscribe and save and use promo code Tim's Club to get the 30 count box of Element for only $36.

This will be valid for the lifetime of the subscription and you can pause at any time. So again, check it out. It's drinkelement.com slash Tim for this exclusive offer using promo code Tim's Club. One more time, drinklmnt element. So drinklmnt.com slash Tim and promo code Tim's Club. Check it out. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me in the last few years. I've come to conclude it is the end-all be-all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything,

seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side and like a super soft bed.

No problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty. You get to try it out for

100 nights risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com slash Tim. These are not cheap pillows either. So getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com slash Tim. That's-X, sleep.com slash Tim for up to $200 off. So check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com slash Tim.