134 - Josh Waitzkin

This is the Progression Project Podcast. Deconstructing oiling, flow, and the learning process with your host, Eric Ankinson.

What's up, folks? Thank you for tuning in to the Progression Project Podcast. Today's guest on the show is Josh Waitzkin. Josh is one of my closest friends. He's been a huge inspiration to me over the last decade. And probably the most meaningful thing is that, and I kind of want to use this opportunity as a thanks publicly for this while we were navigating.

what was going on with Sarah, which turned out to be a brain tumor. Josh was insanely helpful through the process. And that was actually at a time when we were good friends, but, um, you know, only a

few years in and um he just really stepped up and helped out which was awesome and there was a moment in that process a few months into the search where one doctor who is actually a very well-renowned doctor pretty well known um told me that he thought that Sarah was probably fine and that this whole thing was more about me, which when a supposedly brilliant doctor tells you something like that, it makes you do a lot of soul searching.

I called Josh, I think it was probably the next day, and ran it by him. And his advice was, there's nobody in the world who knows Sarah better than you. And on something like this, you have to trust your gut. which was probably my inclination as well, but it really helped to hear that because that doctor wasn't the only person who thought Sarah was fine and that this was, you know. just kind of more about me. And, you know, I had a family member who thought the same thing.

And so that compounds a little bit and you start to wonder. And that advice coming from someone like Josh was really helpful in then taking on that search for the next, ended up being about three months before we figured out what was going on. And so massive thanks for doing that, brother. But that's the kind of person that Josh is. He went really out of his way to help through probably three to six months of this whole thing.

And that's what Josh does professionally too. Some of the world's best in their fields rely on him in navigating complex situations. These are folks you've heard of, folks that you watch on SportsCenter, folks that move markets on a daily basis. Josh's background, if you don't know his life, he's been on the podcast before, first guest on the show. But Josh is a chess champion. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer is the story of his young life. Then he moved to martial arts.

Tai Chi push hands, where he became a world champion. And then to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where he became a black belt, I believe the first under Marcelo Garcia. Maybe one of my favorite things is that he wrote the book, The Art of Learning, which is about his journey in martial arts, mostly. And that's just an incredible book. It was one of the first glimpses into the mindset.

of what it really takes to be great. And he approaches it. There's some like... nuggets in there that are quoted all the time um he's a guest on the tim ferris podcast which is the only other place that he pops his head up he doesn't do he's a very private person doesn't do any real press he comes on tim ferris's show and

pretty funny he comes on this show but um it's pretty awesome um and about a decade ago he started a journey uh towards mastery and surfing and if i have to be honest like first couple times we surfed together i really didn't see what was going to happen and it's pretty cool because he's an incredibly talented waterman uh which i'd say he's probably always been a waterman he had a background in you know free diving uh spearfishing before surfing but

What he's been able to do in surfing in a relatively short amount of time and now foiling where he is as advanced as you could probably be in certain areas of foiling, especially bigger way of riding. He toes. pretty much every day a lot of times twice a day and it's just been incredibly awesome to watch that journey but then having been a part of this journey going back to reading The Art of Learning, it makes me appreciate his process that much more. Because he really is able to just...

conquer incredibly difficult things in a way that's very unique to his own funk, as he would call it. He has no social media. But he did send over some clips that I'll post along with the release of this podcast so you can see what he's able to do on foil, which I think will be really cool and helpful. So with that, this is awesome. And let's dive in. Josh, what's up, brother? Eric, what's happening, bro? I want to say thank you for coming on.

And I was just looking, you were the first guest on the podcast. And I was like, how long? That was seven years ago, man. Can you believe that? Man, that's epic. We've had a lot of adventures under the belt since then. Yeah. And we had had a lot of adventures before that too, which would be crazy.

So, folks will probably know you from the chess, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, tai chi push hands. But what they don't know is that since I've known you, you have been on a journey, this kind of waterman journey. And when I think back to the first time that we surfed together to where you are now, it makes me appreciate your body of work that much more.

because you have come a long fucking way. Like you're a brilliant waterman now. And the first time we surfed together, I probably wouldn't have put, put money on that. Yeah. Well, that's an honor, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, our first sessions were hilarious. Amazing. Near-death experiences. That was, yeah.

Beautiful days. Beautiful days. Yeah. Well, you guys are scoring right now. How's the surf been? Man, it's good. We have our first solid South of the year. And Andrew and I had an epic tow day.

Yesterday, the day before, the south was a little too long period for the outer break, the outer reef to handle. And then yesterday came down a bit from like 19 to 15, 16 seconds. And it was... pumping and beautiful and i yeah we'll talk about wings but i it's like i i love experimenting with all the different wings but the the big wave wing that works the best for me is this

Old 725 HA Armstrong that I chopped down years ago to probably a 480 or something. We were on it yesterday and just so good. Felt like being back on the horse that is just so reliable and in juice. Epic session. Epic session. Had a couple of beautiful underwater journeys as well. He sent me that one clip. Our buddy Enrique, who's filming on the drone, couldn't find you for a long time, man. How long was that hold down?

I don't think it was too long. I got a breath in between waves. It was just an extension of the ride. Sometimes, as you know here, when it's Big south that shuts down the bay. So once you get into the plats, there's nowhere to go. And so if you're going to take some of those bombs, you just got to eat the underwater journey at the end. But it's worth it. Beautiful. Awesome session.

And that one wave is going to be good, too. Yeah. So that one wave kind of in the middle there is the fastest wave that I've experienced on foil. And I haven't experienced it near. the size that you guys surf it. But I was the first guy to paddle into it, so just... I remember that.

You know, it's weird. It's because it comes in, I think, in deep water, unblocked. The South just comes directly into it and it keeps on pushing. And like I've clocked it on the Apple Watch when I was used to measure things back in the day. Same day, the right point break on the right would be eight knots or something slower on foil than that big ramps in the middle. And it's an epic.

Epic foil setup. We used to also call it... What did we call it? It was like... PB&Js? Well... We used to call it aneurysms. Because it's like a drop that doesn't stop because it just keeps on sucking beneath. And so people would be used to an intense one second or two second or three second drop. But the whole wave is like a 40 second drop. It keeps on going and sucking. It's just so...

Such an awesome place to train at high-speed toilet. Yeah. It feels like you can never get to the bottom of it until kind of more on the inside. It's really like a high-speed snowboard feeling. Because you can never really get to the bottom, your carves tend to be more on the face, but you're going Mach 10. It's a great place to test gear. Test the outer limits of wings and see where wings can turn, where they lock in.

And when it's big, it really exposes the weaknesses of even small, high-speed wings. I love it. I love it. I spent a lot. I've had some really interesting... years practicing heart rate variability hrv breathing while dropping down ramps at top speed it's a great place for hrv training as well i can see that let's start this

by talking about commonalities in the arts that you have dedicated yourself to. I mean, you and I are similar in one way, in which is tend to switch things up after a certain amount of time or a certain amount of accomplishment. But what is it that draws you into these arts? And are there commonalities between them? And foiling specifically, what's drawn you into foiling? Yeah.

So a quick nutshell of my journey was I started playing chess when I was six years old and I was for 17 years immersed in that world. It became my life's work. competing all over the world in national and world championships. And then I moved into a period of self-reflection and into the martial arts, initially Chinese martial arts. Again, I got into it for internal reasons, and then I...

inevitably ended up competing in world championships for years. And then from there, after winning the 2004 Worlds, I went into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And started training with Marcelo Garcia. And we opened school together. And I was training for Black Belt World when I broke my back in that art. And that's how I moved into stand-up paddle surfing after recovering from that injury.

And realizing that I had to, the doctor just looked at my back with MRIs and just was saying, like, if you keep on doing this, you'll be crippled for life. So that was the first art, the only art that I had to give up, not on my own terms. And that was a heartbreak.

I love it. Very passionately. I still do. Teaching the kids. And then when you and I had some epic adventures, you got me into stand-up paddle surf for my first trip down here in Central America. You and I... met and i was looking at this crazy dude paddling aboard like three feet underwater tiny sub shredding and we became best friends and then the standard paddle surf adventure began um

And then I'll never forget our trip to Hawaii when I was just barely standing on the bottom. You got Pat Rawson to make me this gorgeous custom board that I showed up and couldn't stand on. Sick board, amazing. I was like probably three years. early for me to ride it or stand on it and then we're out in the himalayas and i just getting throttled beautiful we had we've had some some and then into boiling so

And foiling, I've never loved an art more than I love foiling. It's just has captured my heart, my soul, my imagination. And it just keeps on getting deeper. One thing I love about arts that are so layered is that experience. The deeper you get into the tunnel of the art, the wider it becomes and the more you realize how little you know. And that's been true for me pretty universally in the arts I've taken on. And I guess to answer your question, for me...

The arts merge. They become interconnected. And the differences between chess, Tai Chi Chuan, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, foiling, are technical. They're obviously there. One, you're sitting in a... You know, on a chair looking at 64 squares and others, you know, you're fighting humans and, you know, riding ocean energy. But the essential principles that connect them.

experientially, psychologically, creatively in the learning process are much more fundamental to me. And so I kind of feel like all of my arts are present in any art that I'm practicing.

And so everything I've done in the past feels present to me in Foreland. That said, I think it's really important to learn an art in its own technical language and not to begin that transfer of learning from... other disciplines into a discipline too early because then you're imposing your constructs or your dogma or whatever mental models you might have onto something before you've learned its technical foundation.

And so I'm careful about that as well. And so I guess my life's work is in the learning process. And when I wrote The Art of Learning years ago, which was about my transition from chess into the martial arts and the experience of thematic interconnectedness between... between those two areas. It's when I really started to crack open in myself that approach to learning. And now it's just become a breath cycle, just how I live. It's very natural for me to be reflecting on

chess principles or Tai Chi principles while I'm boiling waves and vice versa. It seems to me like, and it's something that I, truly love as well is that everything that you have focused on there's deep nuance involved And maybe that's everything. And maybe I just only see it in the things that I have been attracted to because I just don't see the layers in other areas. But, you know, the micro adjustments that happen now on foil.

I mean, I can get lost in that. Like right now I've spent a lot of time on foil drive in the last month, just something new. It's fun. Our waves haven't been good. And every session I'm figuring out little micro placement moves with, with feet that just. smooth out the whole experience. And I love that stuff. I think a micro example of that is just going from foil to foil and what you said there about approaching something without dogma. That's the way that I approach.

It's riding a new foil is trying to feel that out. And that's something you might be the only person who has more foils than me. And I was last time we were foiling together. I was laughing because you've got a lot of foils and I love it. How do you approach riding new gear?

I learned a lot from you about this back in the subsurf days. I remember when you had the progression project guys down and you had 15, 17 of the best spoilers in the world together. Our best surfers in the world, subsurfers. You had them all riding their own gear, then you had them swap gear. And the experience that you described to me, which maybe you could rip on a little bit here, of how the guys were learning new lines from one another's boards and when they went back to their own board.

what it opened up and then. So I'll answer your question, but why don't you say a little bit about, about that experience and what it taught you? Yeah. So that might've been the first time that I experienced this as well, which is, Gear teaches you, and that's one of the things that I talk about constantly. If you're open-minded to gear, you learn through feeling where the gear wants to go, where the foil, where the surfboard wants to go.

And it was crazy because on that trip you had, I mean, a bunch of heavy hitters in the, in the sup world, Fisher Grant, Zane Schweitzer, Mo Freitas, um, Kyle Vaz, and they all approached surfing. in their own ways. And what was interesting to watch was when they did switch gear, there were a couple of days when guys were just hopping on, you know, everyone else's stuff, you could see the lines that the boards naturally wanted to draw. And so like,

if Kaio was riding Zane Schweitzer, so Kaio had custom boards made from his shaper in Brazil and Zane was on starboards, very different boards, very different rockers, very different rails. You would see Kaio's lines. start to look a little bit like zane's as he started to learn the equipment and then you know the conversation after going back to their equipment was that there were areas of the wave or or maneuvers

that maybe had been opened up from that and then figuring out how to integrate that back into the equipment that they were riding. And it was awesome. And that's the way that I like to approach foiling too, is figure out. where the gear wants to go. And I model folks who ride that gear. So I say, you know, like if...

Kane is an example. For a while, I modeled Kane's foiling and the upright stance. Kane and Kiahi are very similar in both of those guys. The upright stance on my gear didn't feel right. But then as soon as I got on the gear that they were riding, so the Cab 800 modeling Kiai, it made sense. And then bringing that back into the gear that I was riding. I think it's an awesome way to learn because it feels very...

It feels very organic. Yeah, I totally agree. That Cabo 800 is such an amazing, amazing win. I've had epic experiences on it. Yeah, they did a great job with that line. Oh, for sure. Yeah, and it's so interesting. So I've experimented, as you know, a ton with Armstrong gear, lift gear, your gear a lot, which I totally love, the cab gear, and Takuma a while ago, but not so much recently.

One of the things I find fascinating is how you can feel the designer's mental models through their gear. They try to enter into their mind. Like one of the things that was so interesting when I was first dialing on the progression line. which I love. Your 125 and 140 are my favorite subfoil wings by far. I just absolutely love what you've done. And I love your creative process to get there, which we've jammed about so much. I know you've spoken about a lot on the podcast.

But the feeling of trying to set up your gear the way I would set it up was doing one thing. And then when I started thinking, you know... It was funny. Your old buddy, who's one of your best friends and who's my main toe partner, Andrew, he just said, well, how would Eric set this up? And we just locked it all the way forward. All front foot pressure.

And like how the wing, how that 125 came alive set where we were imagining you would want it set up. Because of how you stylistically love that front foot pressure and driving off of the reliability and how you can always feel that pushback through turns. Like just your style so manifests through those wings, which is beautiful. And everyone's does. And you can feel how people test their wings. You can feel who tests their wings on wing.

versus in wave or in flat water or in big surf or smaller surf. I also find it really interesting how many lines, to my taste, have a sweet spot, have like one wing and a line, which is just awesome. And the others don't feel to my taste as dialed in. Like, for example, the new Armstrong HA line I love. You know, I've spent a good amount of time on the 580, 680, 780, and 880.

But that 680 is just such, to me, it's just fire. It's so good. It's just like red hot, beautiful wing. And like the rest of... The rest of the wings, to me, don't handle breaches as well. They suck air through underneath the wing on little micro-breaches. They're really good, but that 680 has just got superpowers. Or like the cab line, the 550, to me, is fire.

and the others are cool i like them but the 550 is to me just a leap above it's it can rip it goes fast can handle good size the pump's amazing yeah your wings like your your wings have i mean you you've spent so much time dialing in all of your sizes. And so they're all really good. The 125 and 140 fit the energy we have here on sub more than the big ones. The big ones I was riding on the East coast a lot.

And man, I think the 100 Proto that you made, I can't wait for that one to come out because that thing is fire. We had a blast together on that thing. And really, really stoked for you guys to put that one out.

Thanks. I mean, the drawback of that, though, is that the design process ends up being so long. And that's something that we've had a lot of conversations about is, I mean, it's pretty easy to scale wings linearly. You just explode the diagram or shrink the diagram, and then you've got a new size. But we found that it isn't exactly apples to apples when you do that.

But the downside of that is that, you know, how long has it taken us to nail the 100? And, you know, I still have a prototype in the mail right now. of, of that, because I'm not sure what we rode is a hundred percent done, but maybe it is. And that's something that, I mean, this is probably a different conversation for us, but saying when, when good is good enough.

And, you know, it's something that I think I struggle with a little bit and maybe, you know, push this process out too long. But then, you know, once something's out, it's out and you can't tweak it anymore. And so that's hard. I mean, where should companies... In your mind, where should they land on that process? Expediency into the market or making sure that it's absolutely right, but then it's delayed?

folks are jones and for that size i mean the 100 we wrote is great like maybe that's not going to be as good maybe that we should have just said yes on that but well yeah i mean it's tricky i would i mean it would be good to challenge the assumption that we can't that it can't be tweaked

I mean, it would be great if people were always tweaking things and not locking into cycles of, you know, a line every year or six months. And that will happen as as foiling evolves. I think one of the challenges is that as foilers get better.

They want to ride more and more refined gear, but that gear is super hard to ride if you're not really dialed in, and so it won't sell a lot of... we'll sell a lot of gear like for example like the lift 70 high aspect is probably my favorite line on the lip wing on the lift line by far i think it's just like set up well it's such a fucking amazing

subtle interesting nuanced explosive foil i love it but it's also one of the hardest foils to ride so i can't imagine they've sold a lot of those and so you have this thing where as as as foilers get better and better. They might want more and more nuanced gear, but that will have a smaller market and people aren't so inclined. So I think that's why people are experimenting with custom gear. People are chopping so much.

Yeah, but that Lift 70 is a great example of this. It's funny, I texted Nick how much I loved it, and he told me he'd already... He already had all these ideas to make it better. And that's the other thing that happens is that by the time someone comes on market, it's already outdated from the creator's perspective if the creator is dynamic.

I love this Robert Persick term of dynamic quality, this idea of never being static in one's relationship to what one is doing. And so if the same gear that we made six months ago is optimized in our mind today, then... there's probably something a little bit static about our learning process. Yeah. I think that's, what's hard about saying yes to release gear. If you are in a dynamic mindset is that then it's been stamped and it's there.

And you've probably moved on, but that's what everyone is experiencing, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think that's one of the major problems with...

external eyes being on an artist or a competitor in general like people get into a perfectionist mindset they stop experimenting as much as i'm taking risk i as you know i have i i don't i'm not on any form of social media and i feel that Social media has that effect on people. They start living life from the outside in. They start planning foil sessions based on how it will be perceived or what their posts could be based on that session, as opposed to being purely.

As experimental maybe as they might otherwise. And also we can have our creative process be driven by our internal compass, by our internal muse. or we can have it be driven by what will get the most external approval. And they lead to wildly different outcomes creatively, artistically, and in life.

Because if we're being guided by a socialized sensitivity, then we will always be adapting to what the masses or what our tribe will approve of.

versus if we are like when i when i think about the cultivation of a martial arts mindset when i've been training for world championships in in like the last three months of training camps before worlds one of the things that i found so beautiful is that when you're When you're in a training camp, you're training with other world-class people who are around your level who know you.

technically and psychologically as intimately as anybody else. They know your game, they know your personality, they know your psychological foibles. And so they are very good at neutralizing your repertoire. And so you have a lot, it's like two huge rams smashing into each other. in very complex technical ways but then there are these moments like one two three moments in a in a session where you catch somebody or they catch you where and

You study those moments on video and they usually came from some creative leap above your technical foundation, but it was spontaneous. Or like, for example, you triggered a throw during the blink of an eye or.

Like you, you triggered a sweep in the moment, like the millisecond that weight began to leave a foot and maybe you caught up, you were able to. trigger into that timing based on understanding someone's breath pattern relative to their weight redistribution or something really subtle and you do it, but then you study on video and then you start to understand what it was that you did. So you deconstruct your moment of creative inspiration.

And then you turn it into your technical foundation. So I think of it as like, imagine a pyramid of knowledge that you're building layer by layer by layer. And you have a creative leap that's above the top of your pyramid. But then you deconstruct the relationship between that thing that's floating in the ether above.

your pyramid and you form a relationship between you raise your pyramid to it and so now you understand technically now you can do it every day so the thing that was a moment of creative inspiration is something that you can you can replicate And then that becomes your new foundation from which you have higher and higher level creative inspirations. And then your repertoire emerges from those moments.

And then, so then you go to compete in the world championships or the Olympics or whatever, like, you know, the top tier event is in your, in your discipline and your repertoire comes from these moments of personal leap. And almost from like your dream state. And no one can play your game better than you. Because if you train harder and more brilliantly and creatively than anyone, you can have a sense of inevitability of success because your repertoire...

It comes from the core of you. Marcelo Garcia, who's, you know, one of my dearest friends and he was my, for years, my Brazilian jujitsu coach. He's nine-time world champion, thought by many to be the pound-for-pound, the best grappler to ever live. And that was his first black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which was an incredible honor. And he's had a...

He's an amazing human friend and father. He's had a husband. He's had a heartbreaking journey in recent years. He lost a child, and he and his wife came back from him. that and then he's had a huge cancer battle last year which thankfully he's in the clear now after an epic fight just an amazing amazing man and he's competing all over the world ww adcc which is the submission grappling world championships were all

Grappling arts come together to compete against one another. He won four of those, which is unheard of, and five Brazilian jiu-jitsu mondials, world championships. And we started years ago this program called MG in Action when we opened a school together in New York.

where we were streaming all of our classes we were streaming marcello's sparring sessions we were deconstructing it down into principles techniques everything tagged you could study in action clips of you could watch something taught and then

by him and then watch him doing it in live, sparring 50, 100 reps. You and I have talked for years about it. We should make this performance. It was so epic for the learning process for everybody. But he was basically live streaming his repertoire in the months.

weeks days before worlds and people could study it and the brazilian jiu-jitsu world is so private like no one will show anything or because of their a of their top repertoire like they'll show their b game their c game but not their a game

Marcelo's attitude was, I'll show you everything. Because if you study my game, you're entering my game and no one can play my game better than you. So it's essentially like you're entering into my terrain by studying my game. It was such an abundant, incredibly confident mindset. And he had this unstoppable way as a competitor when he was competing. And a lot of it was because of that. Like his compass came from within, from his own experimentation.

And I think that's really important. So when we think about the design of gear, we think about the design of our game. It's really important to be sensitive to what is driving us. Is it internal or is it external?

Well, there's a lot to unpack in that. One thing that you mentioned there within the martial arts is that those moments of growth happen through spontaneity. I think that in surfing, and this would be an interesting thing to get your perspective on. I think that those moments happen through air a lot. So for me, I mess something up, but it feels good. And then I explore that feeling.

over the next while. And hopefully sometimes it gets caught on video and you can see what happens in that moment. And it's, it's not random because it's time on foil and it's, it's, there's just a percent chance that you're going to do something a little bit different. But then capturing that feeling and then exploring that feeling is where I think that my big inflection points in growth have come from. Are you finding that too?

in water sports versus martial arts because you don't have the opponent in the same way it's funny when you ask that question the first thing i heard you say was learn through air and then i think you said learn through error right yeah Yeah, so it's funny. While you're asking that question, both of those questions were really interesting. I spent half my time while you were speaking, reflecting on each of them. Because we do learn from empty space.

So much, right? Like we learn from what is, but we also learn from what is not. And there's often much more meaning there in terms of learning from error. Absolutely. And you and I both are, you know, are avid students of video. feedback on our training sessions because connecting what we felt to what happened from like visual visually is really interesting and there are times for me where like i want video every day

And our buddy Enrique is awesome for both safety, one's huge, and also drone footage for my training here. And there are also times where I feel like I don't want video for three days or five days or a week. I just want to embed.

somatically in my relationship with a wing that i'm that i'm dialing for example or a technique that i'm working on so i think the question of like feedback is so critical feedback to ourselves feedback visually feedback from gear from the ocean, the timing of feedback. I think that we could spend 10 hours talking about the nature of feedback from coach or from oneself or from a mentor.

which is a huge subject of conversation. I think it's... But yeah, error. I mean, pushing oneself to one's limits and seeing what is revealed there. And then... Like living at one stretch point is I think that's where the feedback loop emerges from. A lot of what I do professionally for the last 15 years is train world-class thinkers. I work with some professional sports teams as well. But a lot of my work is with great creators in realms of

business, finance, science. And when you're training a mental athlete or a physical athlete, so much of what the work is, is getting to them, getting them to their stretch point. Understand, for example, what the most important questions are on their mind.

Which are questions by definition that one doesn't have the answer to, right? Because great thinkers can slice, like their minds are like a knife through warm butter, through most things. But then they hit an obstruction point. They hit something they can't slice through. And that's their stretch point. And then brainstorming there.

That creates the game tape over time. If you can look at the last three months or six months of someone's MIQ, their most important questions, and their brainstorms on them, for a thinker, that's like the video that we use as spoilers. to creating game tape. I think so much of the art of training is in creating game tape for our discipline focused on the things that matter. Yeah.

creating those feedback loops. I mean, that's something that I used to talk about a whole lot, which I don't as much anymore with foiling, but the being able to accurately feel what you were doing. from mapping, video mapping essentially to feel. So getting video, coming back, breaking it down and thinking, this is what that felt like.

And this is what that looked like. And the closer you can get that map together, then you can basically give feedback to yourself while you're participating in whatever the activity is, in our case, foiling. That's paramount, I think, to being able to kind of self-coach. I feel like there's a lot like internal versus external coaching. Like I think you can be a coach for yourself, but then I feel like sometimes it takes a separate eye.

Sometimes you have blind spots. Oh, I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, for me, let's talk about a few things you just said there.

I think as we get deeper into arts, video feedback becomes more and more important because what we're doing is more nuanced. And so, like... As you know, since you came down here, I watched you make this one turn, and I decided I just wanted to dial this in.

more and more interesting conditions and i started working on these 360 entries and then these five front side and back side and also these 540 entries where you're holding the 360 all the way through into the kickout into the next connection and just the feeling of it but like and playing with that on different wings. And feeling the breech patterns of all the different wings, like what goes wrong?

And so, for example, you're doing this on the, on like the Armstrong, doing it on the year 100, doing it on your 125, doing it on the Armstrong 580, 680 and 780 is so interesting because like all of those and also the cab 550. They all breach differently when you lean over a turn hard. They all make different responses. But if you're not setting video, it's really hard to, at least for me, to understand why.

something happened but then you dial in your understanding your sensitivity to the wing like for example on the 680 now i feel like like the sound of the breech like the armstrong wings suck a little bit down on the breech your wings don't in my experience Your wings handle breaching better than anything I've ever felt, which is one of the things that's so epic about them. They just hardly impact the line or the weighting or anything. The Armstrong is a little suck.

and that's 680 but like you can identify like how much you need to back weight mid-turn by the sound of the suck and i think that a lot of that comes from somatics and a lot of it comes from understanding like just really studying the video of it and then connecting it right after you and i differed i remember back in the day you were always talking about how you like to study video immediately after a training session to connect the what you experienced to what you

to what you see. And so they're, they're well tuned. They're, they're like synced, which I is, I think is, is brilliant.

I often want to do that. I often also don't want to do that. And I want to sleep on the somatics and then study it in the morning. Or maybe I want to look at one wave on video and then sleep on it and do it in the morning. It's really interesting. I've grown to trust my... compass in terms of where i am in my moment of the learning process in the decision of like how to utilize feedback loops for every session that's interesting my new

kind of approach right now is that i will break it down immediately but then i will break it down the next day and it's interesting how much different i relate to it the following day versus immediately after generally after i think everything's terrible and i think i just blew the session and i'm really hard on myself

Generally the next day, I feel like I served really good and it was awesome. And I don't know what that means, but I'm like hypercritical, immediately following, nitpicking every little detail and seeing all of the errors. the 24 hours later, whatever it is, generally I'm looking, I'm much more positive in relation to it. And I think both are helpful in the learning process though. I think it's helpful to be like,

kind of your best, your, your biggest critic, but then I think it's also helpful to, to appreciate what you were able to do. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's really interesting. I do think, I mean, in the chess world,

We, you know, we do postmortems on games. And like, if you play a six hour game against someone around your level at a high level, there's going to be one to three critical positions and you could spend 20 hours. after the game studying that one position or two or three positions and i mean the layers that you get into it and what often happens is that the

You had this feeling during the game. For me, playing chess was often about having a sense of harmony and finding hidden harmonies inside of chaotic scenarios. But often like I would play chess with this sense for like, almost like there was a musical strain to the game. And I was like following that, like almost like smelling my way through it. And.

In extremely complex positions, which would be one of those one or two or three critical positions of the game, I'd have a certain intuitive understanding of it, but I'd also, after the game, have a feeling that my level of understanding wasn't quite there. And as I would study it...

If I was like four hours into studying it, I'd often have a very different view from what I had during the game. And then it's almost like you're spiraling over like the 20 hours or whatever it would be. Maybe 15, 18, 20, 25, 30 hours. Who knows? but like you're spiraling deeper and deeper in your understanding of it. And what you usually end up at is someplace which is like very similar to...

the intuitive sense you had in the game, but a layer or two deeper. But halfway through that session or a third of the way through that study surge on that game, like 10 hours into your study, you might have a wildly different view than what you had during the game.

And if you stop there, you would think there was a much bigger gap than there actually was. And so I do feel that it's important in these postmortem sessions or in these analyses of our critical decisions or critical performance moments to travel the full journey. but not be lazy about it because we'll we'll discover we'll discover different things yeah so

We focused a lot on the training aspect so far. And a lot of our conversations are around training too. Do you have a different mindset in sessions when you go out? completely focused on an objective and just going out to have fun how do you differentiate the two if you do you know i i one of the the core principles for me is was years ago and now just for the breath pattern is just learning to love training. I love training. So I'm most stoked when I'm

going into a, into a session with something technical on my mind that I want to dial in more deeply and experience everything in that context. So for me, like, I don't, to me, they sort of merge. I'm always refining things. And I find my best sessions are ones where I go in with one or two.

core things in mind that i'm going to work on now i might totally change my mind in the middle of the session if the ocean is different or something changes internally or externally but dialing something very deeply i've always approached training through learning the macro to the micro deep deep immersion in the micro into something and then coming to a level of insight in that thing and then translating that level of insight into other things that was what my experience was

That transfer of level initially from chess into the martial arts. And then from martial arts back into chess. And then everything I've done into everything else I do. It's like deep immersion in something. And then... transfer so like similar to you with gear like i'm often like i'll experiment with a lot of different gear like i'll for example play with a bunch of different wings around the same size like maybe i'll play with like your 100 with the cab

you know, 550 and 700 with the Armstrong 580 and 680 with this chop of mine. And like I'll play with all those different fields. And then there's one that I will want to go really deep on. And then I'll just be on that for a long time. And so there's this sort of, there's sometimes you're diving really deep into one thing and sometimes you're experimentally playing with different fields and there's that oscillation. Yeah, I rarely go into a session without...

a thing or two in mind that i want to dial in but i don't feel any way that undermines the love for me to amplifies the love or the stoke or there's the pure joy of the thing and sometimes it might the thing might just be flow like relaxed body mechanics just giving myself to

like releasing tension in my, in my back shoulder or my back arm. And that would just be a flow session, essentially working on deeper and deeper relaxation while flowing, but I'm often, but I guess for me, I'm framing that around that as a training plan.

I tend to focus on skill, technical, on days when it's not quite as good. And then on days when the surf's really good, I tend to try to just blank slate. And I feel like I surf a lot better without objective with blank slate and just really being, and maybe it is, maybe it is a focus training because I'm trying to be much more present to the wave instead of myself.

frigate i exist and purely just focus on what the wave is offering and and be in the right space at the right time versus with the will to you know do something that maybe is not on offer it's funny in some way i might do the opposite of what you just said because in some ways like when it's super clean is where i feel like i can work on on like really pushing technical turns harder because like

because of breach dynamics etc and when it's when it's like rowdy choppy if or if it's like big and a mess here then i'm essentially then you're just like giving yourself to the chaos and riding

It's funny. It's interesting to say that. Like I might, I might actually frame that for me in the opposite way. And it might also have a lot to do with our conditions. Yeah. You know, because I mean, we have basically. opposite ends of the spectrum as far as conditions go on the daily.

Yeah, it's funny. You and I have had such hilarious spirited debates about gear over the years and like what we like, what we don't like. And so much of it is that we're living in such different places. I'm living in Central America. We've got a lot of really consistent long.

period swell and you're in Florida most of the time. And, and I think it's been cool for us to, but I spend a couple months a year on the East coast. And, and when you take trips down here, we get to tow together here and paddling together here.

So it's been really cool for us to get on the same gear together in the same condition sometimes. And I feel like our language has come much closer. Like, for example, for years, you would use... you talk about what a fast wing was and i and i relate to a fast wing and as super differently than you because like i relate to a fast wing and an efficient wing is really differently like

Wings that go fast in small conditions to me are efficient wings. But wings, often what I consider a fast wing is a wing that can go super fast, which often is super inefficient. Right. Because I often like lower aspect wings and bigger surf because they don't get locked in. You can lean them over harder. They can handle those upper ranges.

while maintaining aggression. You and I have had some fun times trying to figure out common language and I've been really stoked on us sharing same waves together and also riding your gear, man. Your gear is awesome. I'm so loved. Last summer I was on your bigger wings on the East coast and then been subfoiling your 125 and 140 here and like in conditions that are like on the smaller days here and like feeling, feeling your creative process through your.

Those two wings to me are fire. Those two wings in particular, the 125 and 140. I understand smaller wings much better than I understand big wings because of what I'm normally riding here. So like you're 25.

is just like, yeah, beautiful creation. So you have been, and I know there's probably a lot that you cannot talk about with this, but maybe we can talk in broad strokes working with. you know, a professional team right now that's at the pinnacle of what they're doing and spent a lot of time with the athletes in that world, you know, SportsCenter stars. What are you bringing back from that?

I've found that after those trips, you are incredibly inspired. And those have been awesome conversations. Can you talk through that mentality? I think it's similar probably to what I love about doing the podcast, which is I get to speak with people that have accomplished something that's amazing. I leave inspired.

How is the process for you of being able to work with some of the folks that you're working with right now? And what are your takeaways and what is it bringing back to your life? Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I love most is deep immersion with just crazy all-in fucking humans, you know? And I love... I don't work so well with people who need to be motivated.

Or people who aren't all in. I'm not terribly interested in convincing people to be all in in what they're doing. But when people are just so fiercely committed to what they're doing, they are passionate about it. They have a love for it. And the cultivation of excellence, creatively, artistically, and performance-wise, it's like the air they breathe and they translate to everything they do. That's my sweet spot. The higher level somebody is who I'm working with, the more I'm in my virtuosity.

as a thought partner as and collaborating with them training with them etc and and like for me like the foundations of that are in When I was playing chess back in the day, I started training at what was then called LGE and then became the Human Performance Institute run by Jim Lehrer. And it was this place where it was my first real immersion into cross-disciplinary dialogue in peak performance.

And, you know, I was the crazy chess player there as a teenager and there were, you know, FBI SWAT team members and SEAL members and professional tennis players and golfers and like people who are at the peaks of all these different fields come together. Like I remember having that. conversation in the gym one of my first days there I was working out and I had a conversation with Jim Harbaugh who at the time was the quarterback of the Colts as you know he's gone on to become a

you know, world-class, just brilliant football coach. Such a brilliant guy and the dialogue that we had on peak performance. And we realized that, like, I was playing chess and he was an NFL quarterback, but we spoke the same language. He was a kindred spirit. And the differences in what we did were much, much smaller than the similarities in what we did. And over the years, that's become kind of my way of life. And my tribe tends to be people who are...

Whether they're at the top of the hockey world or the basketball world or the fight world, MA or Jiu-Jitsu, or the water sports that we're immersed in, or the mental arenas of chess, business, finance. I mean, the minds in science and artificial intelligence today, the similarities between a world-class scientific mind and a world-class hockey player are amazing.

But people don't realize that. And so, yeah, working with top-tier professional sports teams, one thing that's fascinating is how different the cultures are at like... in like one of the best teams in a professional sports league versus like number 10 or number 15 or number 20. There's such wild cultural differences. And so a lot of that is in the team orientation versus the individual orientation.

In professional sports today, you have so many forces pushing athletes to focus on themselves, focus on their own stats, not be team players. You have sports scientists who are telling. coaches how much of my little players can train because what matters most to the individual entourage of a player is how much money they will make, not how well the team will do. And so a professional coach in these...

at this period of professional sports is balancing so much and so many forces that are moving in the opposite direction of excellence. And so to feel what a world-class sports culture, professional sports culture... is like from a training from like the embracing of training as a way of life from the entire the amount of coaches like the coach to to player ratio is so interesting to observe like the amount of preparation that world-class coaches will do getting

just preparing like a three minute video to show a player, or maybe a 10 second video to show a player, the utilization of game tape, the quality of... of virtuosity on the practice course. The playfulness, the love that's cultivated, the ways that team cohesion

are cultivated versus neglected in top tier versus lower tier teams. I remember one of my favorite cultural transformations that I've been part of was when Marcelo and I started our school, our jiu-jitsu school in New York. I had an old friend who I had been training with before, who it was time for him to move on from Jiu-Jitsu. So he transitioned, he moved to Texas, and we took over in a way that was really mutually abundant for everybody, that academy.

And started with like 80 students who had been, you know, in a mid-tier jiu-jitsu school and like then built it up into, you know, 800 students, hundreds competing at a really high level for the top competitive school in the world. And to observe the way Marcelo led the cultural transformation was so beautiful and had such powerful principles embedded.

Because he took a group of people who were used to training at a mediocre level and he created a culture that was a world-class training culture. And it began with the little things like people like show up to practice on time every day, tie your belt well.

Sit up straight. If you're resting, sit up straight on the mats. Don't rest. Don't take off. Don't take off rounds. When you're doing your warm-ups, fall into formation. Do them completely. Do them technically beautifully. Precision and everything. Quality. in everything as a way of life if you catch somebody taking a breather before going up against a tough guy he would would you know he would

urge them to push themselves more. If you go into a jiu-jitsu school and you watch the black belts at a high-level jiu-jitsu school, And, or, or the up and coming, like the up and coming purple and brown belts who, and jiu-jitsu, by the way, belts are very hard to get. They're not like other arts. So you can train for, you know.

years and maybe get your blue belt and then another three or four years maybe get your purple belt and then another five years maybe get your brown belts if you ever you know getting a black belt from a series from a really high competitive world-class jiu-jitsu instructor is a something it's a decade to decades long investment of training six days a week, twice a day, really intensely. And like, if you go into a jujitsu school and you watch, like if you're a four out of six, eight minute.

sparring rounds into the session and the mats are just drenched in sweat and blood and everyone just if you're coming from outside in it just reeks but if you're there training it just smells like life and awesome and grit and excellence and like watch

You watch the players or the fighters in the 30 seconds between rounds. Watch their eyes. Notice that they're looking for the toughest guy to match up against when they're most exhausted or they're looking for a guy like a blue belt to take a break on. someone to rest on like you can see so little in you can see so much i'm sorry in like the little micro choices people make about how to how much to challenge themselves when they're on the edge of broken when their tank is on the edge of empty

And so building and observing world-class training cultures has been a big focus of my life for a long, long time. And it still is.

And it's interesting in the surf and foil world, because in my observation, surf culture, you and I have spoken about this a lot, but surf culture to me, especially like if we... back up into the pre-wave pool era. Most great surfers, in my observation, are brilliant low rep learners. They're people who are phenomenally gifted at learning from a small amount of reps.

Because it's super hard to get reps, right? It's hard to, like if we're, it's hard to get, you might have not see a section, the same section again for years. And so it's hard to get 15 reps of the exact same thing. Well. in an art like jiu-jitsu or like chess you can get reps like you can be a high rep learner and become excellent i'm much more of a higher learner or at least i used to be and so like if i if i if i was training jitsu i might

want to do the same technique, just drill it hundreds and hundreds of times, while a great low rep learner can do it once or twice and just somatically integrate it. And so I don't really find that surf culture... has its foundations in training in the same way that arts, which are more conducive to higher ed learning, has its roots in training process. And I think that's very interesting when you cross over to foiling, because foiling...

has so much technical complexity, and there's so much to dial in. So in some ways, one could argue it's more complex than surfing because it has more dimensionality, speed, etc. But it's much more trainable. Right. We can replicate conditions. We can get much more flight time. And so in some ways, I find that foiling is more conducive to my approach to the learning process.

than it would be for people who are more gifted low rep learners because it's so much more trainable. Yeah, it makes sense. I completely agree with all that. And I think that...

You know, things like foil drive, jet skis add to that abundance. That's the one one of my big takeaways from the last month of playing with this is just I'm able to operate. The amount of waves that I'm getting, the low heart rate that I'm able to maintain during that... is allowing me to train in a different way to take things on. I feel like I've approached foiling more from a training mindset in the last month than I have in a long time because of the abundance of flight time.

How would you right now, if you were going to take someone who has just started to learn to foil, they can fly a little bit and we're going to put them through a training course, essentially map out the next year. of sessions. How do you think that you would do that? Taking someone who can just fly, maybe catch a wave and fly to getting as good as they could get in a year saying, you know, maybe five days a week in the water, five sessions a week.

Do they have a surf background? Probably a little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. I mean, folks coming into foiling are coming from either the wind sports world or the surf world. There's not a lot of coming in. without any board skills it's you have to have the on-road right i believe so as you know when i when i fell in love with standard paddle surfing i i was in my

What was that? Mid thirties. And I had never, I had no background in board sports. I'd never snowboarded or skateboarded. So I'd never gone forward in a sideways stance. It just, which is so, it was really funny to think about. And so, as you know, like the, and I was living in New York at the time. And so I got a one wheel back in the day, like first generation one wheel. And I just.

One wheeled thousands of miles through New York, all around New York City. I mean, man, the wipeouts I had at 20 miles an hour on, like between taxi cabs, over taxi cabs, through taxi cab. Yeah. Like they were really, that was my foundation. So I do feel. All right, let me think about how I'd answer your question. So when I got into foiling, as you know, I began on an e-foil, on a lift e-foil, which for me was just an incredibly...

awesome training tool for my way of doing things. Cause it was, I just got up and flew 50 miles a day, two sessions a day for like three, four months on the East coast. I was in Massachusetts and just flew everywhere. and for me like that getting like so to me like if i if i had if it was a resource abundant setup

I have never felt the foil drive yet. You've been raving about it and it sounds epic. I don't know about it. I haven't felt it. I'm stoked to feel it. So maybe it would be a foil drive or for me, it was an e-foil. I think that, you know, I've taught a lot of people to foil behind the jet ski.

And it's, I think it's much harder unless someone is, is, is really has a certain amount of like lower up learning talent and they're really good surfers and he feels so much easier to learn on. So I do feel that like someone getting. Like learning how to get up on an eFoil for a few sessions and then spending 20, 30, 40, 50, or 100 sessions flying around an eFoil. That experience, if someone hasn't foiled, that's the stoke. They're thrilled. And if they're doing that on...

And I don't know the new technologies of eFoil. I haven't built them for a while. But I think an eFoil is an awesome way to do it. For me, it was to lift eFoil. Then, as you know, I moved into... into then the crossover into waves. I got Nick's first folding props. I had put a prototype on and I was riding a folding prop in small waves and then bigger waves and then bigger waves and huge wave.

It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was so scary to me, man. I did some things that were probably pretty stupid, but I loved it. I was so stoked. So I was like entering waves on power, depowering, and then just bombing down big. Central America, swell. I went over the falls on big waves. At one point, I blew up the battery. There were some disasters. You almost got Andrew killed.

That was because Andrew wouldn't break fall training. That wasn't... I mean, Andrew chose to fall in Superman and suck out his chin and took the e-poil to the face. But that was... We should talk about break fall training. I do believe that if someone is foiling... From a martial arts background...

it makes no sense to me to not break fall training if someone is is boiling like because like if you're training judo or wrestling or jiu-jitsu or anything like the first thing you're going to do is you're going to learn how to fall

Then you're going to train at falling. You're going to learn to fall more and more softly. And then you're learning how to fall with someone throwing you on your head. And then you're learning how to fall with someone trying to make you fall in a really violent, unexpected way. And then you learn how to fall.

with a world-class fighter trying to break you on their throw. And you learn to just blend. To me, break fall training, and you and I have debated this for years, and we don't have to now or we could, whatever. Like break fall training is a way of life technically, physically, also frankly, psychologically in, in, in different forms of risk. And so like,

I think, so what, so what would I do? I'd have somebody get up, learn to get up on e-foil. I'd have them break fall trains. They learn how to fall safely on foil, which in the beginning, you know, largely means kicking the board forward and falling backwards, teaching them not to taco, teaching them not to overcorrect on.

Turns, like when they start to lose balance, to fall proactively instead of fighting the fall on tacoing, which definitely is a good way to cut short of oil life quickly when someone has their first taco.

getting that feeling of the foil and then and then I'm getting on lighter and lighter gear then moving maybe behind a again I'm answering your question in a kind of blue sky abundant resource abundant like utopian setup right then getting then moving from that into maybe i had to ski on a lighter board on a big wing but one i have a a new toe partner I've been teaching how to foil recently who we've just been doing it behind the ski and one thing that's been awesome

It's been a cool way for someone to learn is just, I've been teaching them on some Armstrong gear, but with that massive tail they had, they built that like 220 tail, which is crazy wide. You can give people the feel of better and better wings, but with a huge stabilizer. And that's a cool way for them to like feel the progression of different wings. And he's like eight or nine sessions in now and now riding, you know, ride like you're 125 now or.

or like the army 880 and 780 but with that huge stabilizer and i i do feel that that's a good a good way to and so giving someone the experience of flight And then giving them very soft waves and teaching them how to respond to waves with frontal pressure and how to like, and feeling what someone's stretch point is. I mean, a big part of, of teaching someone to foil is feeling what they're ready for.

And some people are ready for a lot quickly and some people need to go very, very slowly. And you feel where someone's fear patterns are, how much they can take in and how much... They're blocked or unblocked. I mean, one of the most beautiful things is to watch what happens when a student is unblocked, like watching my little boy, Charlie, who grew up in the water and grew up.

boogie boarding small waves and bigger waves and then bigger waves and tumbling in waves and but then when he was like when it was time for him to learn how to to surf a mutual friend of ours named Fredo who was just a beautiful wise local surfer here we talked years ago about him taking on charlie and like fredo is an unblocked teacher such a non-dogmatic teacher and charlie is such an unblocked learner and watching that like charlie's growth curve in surfing

has been so beautiful to see when you just played in that realm where he was not obstructed. And so finding a way for someone to learn how to foil where they'll be less obstructed by their fear patterns.

or their relationship to the unknown, etc. In learning anything, man, I don't have any prescriptive way. I wouldn't say there's one way to learn chess or one way to learn jujitsu or one way to learn foiling. I think we need to understand the student really deeply, understand what their path should be. So that might not be a satisfying answer. But I do feel it's really individualized.

And like, what should someone's personal locus point be in foiling? What do other things that they've taken on open up as a way to begin this art in a way that will feel most familiar and then build from there? And I feel like if you translate that metaphor into, for example, the jiu-jitsu world...

If you think about like a pool of water dropping a pebble in a pool of water, anywhere you drop that pebble in the pool of water, the expanding concentric circles will touch the whole pool, right? But the personal locus point is where we should drop that pebble. So like when I took on jujitsu...

I was already a world-class stand-up fighter, but I had never trained on the ground. And so I began with side control because my throws were often in side control. And that was a place where I knew how to get to. And I knew, and I spent a lot of time like landing there. So I started to learn jujitsu and the technical realm of jujitsu from that personal locus point. And then I took on everything from there. You know, I started training, you know, I learned.

the pool of the full body of water of jiu-jitsu but emerging from that personal locus point and i think if i were teaching someone to foil i would try to feel them that way and and customize the learning process based on who they are and where their patterns would begin with least obstruction. Yeah, I actually think that that's reflected in the tuning of gear from where people start. So surfers coming in and I talk about the other.

the phases, the stages of, of foiling surface coming in like a foil back in the box, like a lot of tail shim, because that is the closest to the surf feel. And some people never leave there and you can be an incredible foiler. with that setup and that tuning. But I feel like folks who spend more time in the sport who come in with first principles gravitate towards a very different tune and setup. That's an interesting way to look at what you're talking about there.

from a comfort standpoint, from a locust standpoint. Yeah. I think that's a practical layout. Yeah. You speak about Kane that way. Like his style is not, it's like at a high level is he's playing so exquisitely, but it's. least guided by the dogma or that he might have been holding onto if he'd been coming from a deep surf background, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So something else you were talking about there with the break fall training is so Stacy Peralta was just on the podcast. And one of the things that we talked about was his ability to spot talent. I mean, he, you know. Brought on Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero. And I was asking him what he was looking for in athletes. And the first thing that he said, or first or second, but I think it was the first, was an ability to fall. He would just watch guys wipe out.

And if they were falling brilliantly, he knew that they would have longevity in the sport, but that they also understood the demands of the sport. I thought about you in that moment, actually. Well, I think the ability to fall is so important and it can be cultivated. It can be trained, like psychologically falling, failing. Like so many chess players, young chess players are talented and they're told how brilliant they are. And so they won't take risk.

Because they develop a perfectionist mindset. And they associate their level of intelligence with something ingrained versus hard work. And so they develop it. a fixed mindset in the language of, of Carol Dweck as a brilliant developmental psychologist. They don't have like a mastery oriented approach, which is pushing your limits, exposing your weaknesses, falling, failing.

And then learning from what happens, right? So if you're afraid of falling or afraid of failing, you cannot play at your outer limits. And so you're fucked in the learning process. So I think that cultivating the art of falling is hugely important.

physically, technically, psychologically. And I agree with her. Absolutely. Let's talk about flow states for a little bit here. Something that you and I have spent a lot of time discussing over the years. And, you know, We have a friend named Chris, and actually, I don't know if he sent you this too, but he sent me something the other day that I've been thinking about for a while, and everyone talks about like...

how you cultivate a flow state and where that is in relations to your psychology. But he sent me this drawing that he had done or painting that was flow state in the middle and it was flight on one side and fight on the other. So kind of holding the tension between fight and flight was flow state in Chris's mind. Chris is a brilliant dude. And I've been thinking about that's a really interesting take on flow. I don't, did he send you that too? I don't think so.

But like, so how do you relate to flow state? And I feel like that's a pretty good, like holding the balance between fight and flight is kind of a neat way to think about it. I don't think it encompasses all of it, but let's talk flow for a little while. Yeah. Well, there's so many different kinds of flow, right? Right. I mean, I can think about extreme experiences I've had where I've gone into like deep. deep flow states that became beacons for what I trained at being able to enter into.

every day so like for example like when i described the like the idea of having like a creative leap that's above your your pyramid of knowledge like your technical level and then reverse engineering its relationship to that pyramid and then and then making it every day accessible like i remember experiences i remember one time i was playing a world chess championship in india

And I was deep into a calculation and I was lost. I couldn't find the solution. And then there was an earthquake. And so I was like, isn't Calcutt, India. I was a teenager. I was.

in a you know every country sends their national champion i was a u.s national champion i was playing against a world-class opponent i was stuck mentally like 35 minutes into a thought process there was an earthquake and the earthquake jolted my mind into like experiencing the shaking earth from within the chest position and it was really interesting it was like my you know sometimes when we're thinking very deeply about something it's like our hand is reaching deep into a cupboard but the

Like the cup we're reaching for is like at the front. So we're reaching past it. It was like my mind got jolted over to the solution by the earthquake. So I was experiencing the earthquake.

for like probably 30 seconds or 20 seconds before i got up and left the playing hall because it was actually an earthquake um from within the chess position and i and the and it gave me so much insight and i just solved like all the problems of the game and then i ended up leaving we evacuated we came back and then i gave to you and i the insight that i had like i i ended up playing and won the game based on it or like the experience of i remember i was

I used to compete in the stand-up martial arts against different weight categories. So I was middleweight, but I'd play up against light heavyweights and heavyweights and super heavyweights. And I was just to challenge myself. And I was competing against a guy who was 60, 70 pounds bigger than me. competition leading up to the nationals and i broke my hand in like 45 seconds left in the fight and the moment my hand shattered the time slowed down

And it was such an amazing experience because like what had been like a neck and neck battle became so easy. Like his hands were moving toward me like in super slow motion. And I was just able to just dominate it.

with real ease but then that became a beacon that i trained at like how can i learn to slow down time in but through training and i came to understand that so much of that relates to having more frames So if you're working with an illusionist who's done the same magic trick thousands of times and you've never seen it before, they have 100 frames where you have none. And so they can play in the frames that you don't have. So it's like they can do magic.

It's not magic, it's the art of illusion through cultivating frames. Or in the martial arts, if you train in transitions, so many people think about martial arts as positions, but what martial arts really is, is the space between positions. And if you train at the in-between, you expand the space in between. And so what for somebody might be a position and another position at a high level might be the 100 or 1,000 or 15 frames between those positions. And that becomes your playground.

And when you're doing that, it's as if time has slowed down because you have more frames. Imagine like in a same body of time in like five seconds for somebody, there might be X amount of frames. For you, there's 10X those frames times a little more slower for you.

And so a lot of my foundational experiences in flow came from concentrating very deeply and experiencing, you know, I guess what people would think of as flow, but also... amplified flow states from things like extreme things like I described happening to me and then learning how to make those my new baseline, how to enter into those with a new baseline.

And I also did a lot of work with meditation training in recent years with biofeedback training. Heart rate variability is a very potent way to get into different, into deep states.

You can also tap olfactory triggers, smell-based triggers when you're in flow state. So if you're in a deep flow state and then you smell a specific smell, that smell can be associated with... with a flow state same with songs as you know like you fucked with me on this one like one of when i was in my 2004 training camp as you know i like the whole m&m lose yourself became like in the last one like before every training session i was

listening to that and it just put me in such a beautiful state and that became the state that was associated with me in peak flow during my training and then in the worlds in taiwan i listened to before every fight and then before the before the semis and then in the finals and then in in the space between the finals and the sudden death playoff at the end was like in the wildest state of my life where i was physically so fucking wired and broken and busted up

And like in a place where everyone was screaming for me to be destroyed in the big spite of my life, I was listening to that. So it's like, now, as you have done for me, like someone plays, lose yourself. And man, I am fucking triggered and ready to fight 20 dudes like immediately. And so connecting.

Things like that, two flow states helps one enter into them, and they become the new baseline from which you can enter into deeper states. So I've done a lot of work with playing with and cultivating the ability to enter deep states of concentration.

And I also think that there's, I think that there's a bit of a lack of understanding when people talk about flow, about the reintegration of the technical mind into the flow state.

tend to relate to flow as something that is pre or post-technical. The deepest flow states that I've been in had that but allowed a reintegration of technical language so i can be speaking both languages at the same time and that's a beautiful thing to cultivate yeah so that's like the way i begin to describe my own journey and relationship and cultivating cultivating flow there's a lot in there and i love all of it a couple thoughts let's start in reverse order i guess the

last flow state you're talking about there, integrating the technical again. I think either Josh, I just lose you. Yeah. Okay. I started weird noise. I feel like that, that is a beautiful place. I call it overwatch.

i don't i just just the name i've given it which is where it feels out of body in a way but you're like the captain of a ship instead of being the ship if that makes sense that's the feeling it's like everything is happening but it's like you're you're giving almost third party direction to a being that's operating on its own is that the same feeling that you have that's i like that language that's cool like you think about about like

Reggie Miller or Michael Jordan, right? These were guys who could enter so consistently into deep zones as basketball players, but who could also look at their zone and smile at it and then without leaving it.

Like a lot of people, like when they enter into it, the moment they recognize that they're in it, they're out of it. Or you think about like Jordan running down the court, shrugging and just shaking his head, you know, and just being like, look at this, this is wild. But he's not leaving it. He's in it, right? Or you think about like being in that deep state as a fighter where like time is moving slowly for you. And you're also able to see the technical weakness in what someone is doing.

And think about the technique that will capitalize on it, but without losing that like wild somatic presence where for the basketball player, the hoop is the size of a room. And so like there's, yeah, I bet that's an interesting language report. I dig it. Yeah. That moment with Jordan there, I almost feel like I've watched it so many times. I almost feel like he's appreciating the moment along with everyone else.

Like, this is what happened. Like, wow, this is crazy. Which almost always rips people out of it, but didn't rip him out of it. Yeah. We could stay on that for a long time, but I'm not going to. The...

moment of transitions, which you were talking about there in fighting. I actually think that's where the beauty in surfing comes from too. If you think about, I feel like a lot of people can throw down an incredible carve on a foil. I mean, once you're banked over and you're pushing hard enough and you've got your weight in the right place, you can draw an insane line. It's how you unwind and reset and redirect where I think 85% of the magic comes from.

in foiling. And so I've spent a lot of time trying to understand that, trying to understand the unweighting, especially because I ride a lot of bigger foils. It's almost a little bit more nuanced on a bigger foil to unlock from a really heavy turn and redirect and then be able to engage again. It's kind of like where the flying the foil came from, which is modeled from watching predominantly.

Kane at the beginning. A lot of folks do it now. Are you finding transition game a big part of your foiling? Are you approaching it in the same way? Or do you see it the same way as martial arts? Yeah, so first of all, on the boiling...

Manifestation. I love your principle of unweighting. I think it's so important. And I've learned a lot from it. You made that point to me a while back looking at some videos I sent you. And especially riding higher aspect foils, like the way they lock into turns. So I think unweighting...

is such a huge part of foiling. And it's a huge part of everything, right? Like people think about doing, they don't think about undoing. When they think about filling space, they don't think about empty space. Like think about pumping. So many people relate to it as pushing down versus lifting up, right? And so I do feel that the idea of unweighting a foil to unlock it from a turn, and then it's something I learned a lot from you.

um actually the in in at higher speeds i find that i just love lower aspect wings like towing if i'm not connecting if i'm paddling in and connecting or if we're towing and connecting it's one thing but To me, the ability of a wing to come out of turns at higher speeds is that unweighting principle is more difficult.

and it and like lower aspect wings like one thing i love about this this we call the chop blaze it's that 725 chopped down to a low aspect wing is how it can how you know it's the best foil in the world i should say that i think like josh is kind of a closet foil designer himself and every every new foil that he tests he tests in relation to what he calls the blaze which is a

Like a crazy good foil. Well, ask Mike what he thinks about it. It's not just me. Like, I mean, honestly, like, yeah, ask Mike the next time he comes on what he thinks about Blaze and Big Sur. It's fucking good. Also, I'm riding his little board. Mike's made... I've been riding his board's tone for a long time. Initially, it was like a 3-3 and then a bunch of 3-6s. Now, it's a... now or 310 which which we call the fireball which is like a

Man, it's so fucking good. I heard you knocking it a couple weeks ago. I didn't knock it. I said I loved it. I just said it's hard on your body. I was stained by that, dude. I was destroyed after five, seven days of that, whatever it was. Oh, my God. It feels so good. good like I just like the just the completely to me like it's board to boardlessness and the direct connection to the wing without any I mean there's you know no give

I also love, I love foiling telling on boards that you can't see the board. There's something about the experience of just relating directly to water without, without relating to water in the context of board, which is really different. Yeah. A whole other conversation.

But what was your question before we got distracted by the fireball shit giving you were doing? I'm thinking about the fireball and shit. Transitions. Transitions. That was a long time ago. Yeah. So transition. So yeah, I absolutely do. I think.

I'm really, it's really interesting. Like I, a hole in my, I don't prone, I have so many shoulder injuries from, from the fight game that, you know, I'm prone foiled about like a bit with you. But it's not something I've really taken on. So I tow and I subfoil. And the subfoil, like I ride, I love... I just, you know, I love Kalama's Barracudas. I was riding, like, you know, in...

Because it can get into bigger waves here. I have an 80 at 19, which I ride when it's big. And the sweet spot, the one I love most right now is that... a 6'6 at 22, which I love the feel of. I think his cooters are so interesting. He's been making me different designs for a while. And so it's kind of weird. So I'm riding like a 310 that weighs like four pounds.

for towing and that was like 14 15 liters and then i'm riding a hundred liter board on stuff and i spend very little time in between right and and it's a so it's an unusual thing so i'm riding and i'm mostly now something you were 125 and 140, and then towing on small gear, on small wings, on that small board. So I don't spend as much time on... like the kinds of wings that you ride, like the, like the 170 or 200 and the like, but I find it so amazing to watch how you.

how you whip them out of turns. It's beautiful to see, and it's an art. Small wave game, you know, if I ever have to live away from my bliss place down here, that will become a huge part of my life. But the theme of transitions is everything to me. It's like I live in cultivating in all my hours in transition. So absolutely. Yes. How are you doing on time?

Good. Go a little longer. Okay. This is a lot of fun, man. I'm enjoying our jam. You and I are used to giving each other so much shit that this is amazing. It's like jamming with Eric without fighting. This is awesome. Well, it's also interesting in that it's like you're much more introspective now. I mean, normally when we talk, we're pretty fired up. And this is, I mean, half the words per minute right now. I love it.

No, it's good, man. What are some things that you might want to talk about? You're always thinking about incredible stuff. What's been on your mind? Oh, man.

Well, a lot of what's been on my mind isn't so related to boiling. It's related to human consciousness. I'm quite concerned. Do you want to talk social media AI a little bit? Because I think that your thoughts on this are worth sharing. Well, my thoughts on social media, I opened up a little bit. I'm deeply concerned about the impact of social media on human consciousness.

I think that the pull toward narcissism, the pull toward an outside-in perspective on what one is doing as opposed to the internal experience of it, the group think. The pandering to groupthink, the cultivating one's life in order to get external approval or to gain more followers in whatever form that takes. I think that that is extremely dangerous because introspection. and tapping into one's internal muse is where we can really learn to cultivate our compass.

And people are becoming increasingly compassless. And so I'm really concerned about that. Like one thing that I think would be beautiful to give to the world would be some kind of immersive environment where we can train at the art of decision making. how we decide, how we change our mind, how we filter information, how we identify our thought constructs, how we identify our patterns of misjudgment, how we understand how our bias patterns are.

driving our perception of the world every day, how our socialized mind is directing what we choose to do and choose not to do. And I worry that social media... is increasingly pushing humans away from that and i agree with you and i've heard you talk about this publicly and also like you and i have spent hours talking about it dozens of hours talking about it like i

I agree with you that social media can be a super useful training tool. And that, for example, in boiling, being able to tap into what everyone's doing around the world is awesome. And like in chess, like when you had the ability to, like when I grew up playing chess initially,

If you played a chess game in a certain opening, you had no idea who else was playing that opening. You had to wait every six months for the informant to come out and study games manually for what the best players in the world now are.

Someone plays in every tournament that's played around the world, everyone can access it instantly. And you can have databases to study everything. And you can have, you know, world-class computer engines that are stronger than the world champion tell you the correct solution to.

everything immediately and it makes human players better for sure what it does to human consciousness i'm not sure like if you think about it in chess the ability to like when i played chess tolerance of cognitive dissonance was at the center of being a chess player or tolerance of cognitive and emotional dissonance, sitting in the unknown, the ability to hold competing truths, to sit in tension. You could study a chess position and not know the solution for three months.

Now you study a chess position and you can look to your right and hit a button and the computer will tell you the solution. Boom. Immediately. Every time. And we'll tell you the solution better than Garry Kasparov could or Magnus Carlsen could. Much better. Like the ELO is 3,800 versus...

of the computer versus 2,800 of humans. That gap is so massive, it's just absurd. And so you have chess players now who... don't have to live in the unknown in the same way that they used to and if we expand that to society or to humans humans have access to so much information but they don't necessarily know what to do with it Because they're not cultivating the art of decision making in the ways that they could.

And I'm concerned about what these changes in human consciousness could lead to, because we're also in a place where it's more and more easy for people to do extremely destructive things. And it's not like a few nation states can. Hundreds of thousands of individuals could individually choose to. And so I feel that maybe... The moment to cultivate human consciousness and human decision-making and human wisdom is now more than any other time. Like the stakes are so high.

That's something I think about a lot. I'm not sure if that's the topic for this conversation, but that's really on my mind. How would you do that? How would you suggest that folks can create... cultivate a better decision-making process and maybe to see the world more clearly without the internet filter. Yeah. I've.

I've thought about that a lot. And I think that it would probably have to be some kind of immersive environment that was as compelling as the negative programming that's happening in the immersive environments. Things like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook before then, all of the manifestations of social media, they are so seductive. And they play to our... our needs, our hormonal needs, our needs for approval, our needs for pleasure, so brilliantly and addictively.

That unfortunately, the solution might have to be something as immersive and compelling as that, but one that is trying to cultivate wisdom and cultivate good decision making, cultivate. Good filtering skills and critical thinking and cultivate feedback loops and the ability to take on one's bias patterns, et cetera. I don't know. Hugely, hugely. Unfortunately, it is much more easy to destroy than to create.

or to undermine consciousness than to build it. And so it's a big challenge. It's something that I think a lot about and that I plan to take on. So I don't know if I've shared this with you yet. I kind of wake up a lot.

early in the morning with some really out there thought that my subconscious has been ruminating on and kind of like an aha. And a couple of weeks ago, I woke up with a thought that. I'm a believer in manifestation, whether or not it is just human creativity and our physically create what we can dream you know everything started out as a as a dream first the airplane the building whatever it is it started out or even deeper the ability to you know if you think about some aware you know quantum

physics is going right now, the actual ability to create the world. So I don't know which one of those is true. I do believe that humans have a capability of manifestation. And if you think about what social media is doing, it's like

a huge manifestation engine where it can shape what millions of people are thinking about and then spending mental resource on which is going to shape physical reality and i i know that seems like obvious but i think there's another layer to it there to where our world is possibly being shaped by this algorithm much more tangibly than we probably think does that make any sense i haven't really spoken that idea out loud i don't think too much

Yeah, I mean, you know, this idea of manifestation, one can relate to it really abstractly. And, you know, our mutual friend, Tim, who's a real brother of mine, beautiful, beautiful. Searching Soul, he put out a book years ago called Tools and Titans, and he had an interview with Scott Adams in it, who spoke about manifestation in a really interesting way, in a way that was really somewhat practical.

which was essentially if we're visualizing something, that's going to become our filtration process. And we're going to filter in humans who are consistent with it or ideas that are filter out ideas that aren't. So we're essentially building our ecosystem. around that filtration process. Sorry, my dog is going bonkers outside. How's Osa? And Osa's great. She's crazy as ever. She's like a beautiful, crazy soul. Pause this for one second, man. And we'll just, and I'll come right back. All right.

Okay. Yeah. So just to finish that thought. And so I think that if, if we are like what we're visualizing is informing what we're filtering in and what we're filtering out. And I think that social media is essentially creating that filtration process. But unfortunately, what is driving the filtration process is a profit desire, a profit motive, not a...

yearning to deepen human consciousness and that is something that i i'm really really worried about hey dude before we jump off because i i gotta i gotta go in a second i wanted to say one on this the steam of social media

in relation to foiling. And I wanted to make one suggestion, which is that I think one thing that would be really awesome, because so much of what we're talking about is training and the feedback loop and like the search for truth versus like getting caught up in... in obstructions or in illusions, I think it would be a really cool thing for people to, and some people are doing it, but for people to get into the rhythm of hosting the gear they're riding.

And honestly, the swell that they're riding, the size and the period. And also agree not to speed up subtly or slow down. but more importantly not speed up their videos because i think there's so much going on and of course as you know like the kind of wing that can operate in like a six foot at nine seconds swell is so different like like then like a two foot at 15 seconds well so period is just such a massive part of the game and

I do feel that there's a lot of Jedi mind tricking going on, illusion, and especially the speeding up and slowing down of videos. And I think it'll be really interesting because I feel that social media, like in related to foiling, would be much more potent in driving the progression of the sport, the gear, etc. If people were consistent and honest in sharing that, because there's a lot of apples to oranges to grapefruit to elephants.

comparisons going on and a lot of bullshit in the air which i noticed and i i think it would be really cool in the in in the progression of the art that we both love and because as you know like the kind of wing that can flourish in like 11 second period versus nine versus 13 versus 15 percent it changes so dramatically like feeling i mean like i i had such it's so interesting for me like feeling

like the other day like what the 680 could rip in Armstrong 680 could rip in and then suddenly it just became it felt like it was just a little bigger a little faster and it went from feeling just like fire to Just like super sluggish. And then the 580 came alive. And then the 580 gets overpowered. I do feel it would be really helpful for people to understand, most importantly, the period that people are riding.

Yeah, I agree. It's huge. We've just had long periods while here for the last week and everything feels different. Yeah. And I know that's not the same as what we have down there, but...

Absolutely agree. Well, dude, this, I know this is, you don't come out much publicly and I really appreciate it. Hopefully in seven years we can do it again. Dude, it's beautiful jamming with you. And seven years, we got a date. I think what you're doing, I want to say, is awesome. I think what you're doing for the art of foiling is so exquisite. And what you're doing on the water is also such virtuosity and beautiful to watch your progression.

in every way and i love you brother you too brother is is it okay if along with this podcast release we can post some maybe a clip of you because i think people aren't going to understand how much you have accomplished in foiling and what you're doing right now. I think that would be pretty cool to accompany the podcast with that. And I can pull this out if you don't want it, but...

Yeah, sure. I have, I'm down. I have, as you know, tons of training footage, which I never post. So I have no idea how to edit anything other than training. Yeah. I'll set you up an Instagram account. Oh yeah. Don't do that. We will not do that. I guarantee we will not do that.

So what do you want to leave folks with? You have the last word, whatever it is. Oh, man. I think this has been a great gem. Yeah. I think this tribe of... of foilers who that you that you have played a huge role in cultivating it's such an interesting group of humans and like what it takes to be a foiler is so different from what it takes to be

a surfer not just different not better not worse just different kind of mind and i do feel that maybe one thing i'll say to the foil specific crews i do feel that as these technologies come on and as you know i'm all for utilizing training tools to get better. I do feel that we have to be super responsible about how we utilize those tools in the ocean with our fellow watermen because boiling is so beautiful.

and abundant and awesome and but some people love to surf and and foiling can like can it can operate alongside surfing so beautifully or it can just destroy it especially when we have these different forms of powered vessels. So I guess one thing I'll say is let's all drive our progression and be super responsible in the water with them and not destroy foiling culturally.

Because our stoke gets the best of us and we just ruin it for everybody else. I agree 100% and actually have some plans to talk about that more. I'm seeing the possibilities. And I think with the hybrid era coming and it's so good, it's going to be, it's going to take an effort from all of us to not fuck it up. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's true.

broadly with technology i mean like when technology entered the chess world you know i've been deep in that world for a long time initially i'm a romantic initially i was quite resistant to it. And then I realized we had to embrace computers and chess because they were not go away. How could I utilize computers to bring out the human side of the game, which is why I started.

developing the chess master series, which I did for 10 years and built a whole academy that was focused on the beauty of chess and the human side of chess with computers as the vessel for that message. And, you know, artificial intelligence is not going away. And it can be utilized like what can be done in science with AI is so thrilling. And what could be done perhaps to enhance human consciousness with AI could be thrilling. We also could become totally disempowered.

All the catastrophic things aside, like just in terms of the incremental change to human consciousness, it could be enhanced or it could be destroyed. And so on a macro level, I'll make that point. And with technologies and hybrid foiling. I'd make the same. Let's utilize them brilliantly with responsibility, with conscientiousness. And let's do it with a real sense of responsibility. I love it. Josh, thank you, man. Awesome. Eric, love the jam, brother.

This is the Progression Project Podcast. Deconstructing oil and flow on the learning process with your host, Eric Ankinson.