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Track’s 2019 New Year’s Resolutions

Forget dry January, let’s make 2019 a wet one.

With now the time of the year to set both personal and squad goals, it is the perfect opportunity to hit the reset button. Change your surfing world for the better with these New Year’s Resolutions that you can make your own. 

Up Your Water Time

Currently averaging one surf once a month? Then aim for two. If you are surfing once a week, push it to three. It might mean prioritising surfing over other pastimes (such as work and family) but it will be worth it (unless you get the sack, get divorced or find out your kids don’t know who you are). If you are surfing more than once a day already, maybe it’s time you got a job. 

Book that holiday

Nothing improves your surfing like ten days surfing quality waves. So early on in the year commit to that Indo boat trip or that Red Bluff camping mission. Pay the deposit and book that date in the diary. It will incentivize you to surf and train more in the lead up, while the mere thought of a future, already-booked holiday, will get you through the long days at work or the shitty surfs at your homebreak. And if you have a spare 50 grand laying around in the ashtray of the car, there’s always the Surf Ranch. 

Exotic locations and bending walls beckon. Photo:Ord

Start Doing Jumps 

We are assuming of course that you aren’t doing airs already, which you probably are. A few years ago former pro Brad Gerlach started to learn how to do airs. He was 48 at the time. “I just wanted to prove that you can learn to do airs and that it just takes practice,” Gerlach told Tracks. Now the former World Number 2 has more talent than most, but he did prove a point. “Sure they suck,” he said of his un-Toledo like boosts, “but at least I can do them and it’s great to have a new part to my surfing.” Failing that you could always incorporate the two-stage cutback into your act.

 

 

Expand Your Craft

“There are still so many equipment options to be explored and re-explored,” legendary shaper Bob McTavish told Tracks. “A surfer can use his quiver to maximize his enjoyment by mining deeper into where unique designs can take him and have options all the time. Day-to-day surfs are more fun now as the boards react and deliver better than at any time in the past.” Basically what Bob is saying is don’t get stuck in a rut with your equipment and having a fish, shortboard, longboard, SUP and Foil means you can always have fun. We might have to draw the line at a bodyboard though. 

The Diverse Surfing And Quiver Of Harrison Roach from SWELL on Vimeo.

Do a Freedive course

Apart from eventually being able to get some (legal size) lobster for your dinner, a freedive course will teach you how to hold your breath for extended periods of time. This is both good for impressing your kids in the bath or if you are ever forced underwater by a big wave. With expert tuition, improvements can be rapid. You can go from a quivering, panicking mess after ten seconds with no oxygen to comfortably completing a 50-metre lap underwater. Check out this course for an example.

Youi could be this relaxed after a two-wave hold down at Waimea.

Give someone a wave

In these dark, modern, selfish times it’s hard to giveaway something you love. However if in 2019 you surprise a fellow surfer by giving them a wave you will be rewarded with good karma for the rest of the session, if not the year. Of course it doesn’t have to be the wave of the day, even the Dalai Lama wouldn’t give away a set wave on a classic day at the local point, but this simple, rare act might just change the tilt of the surfing world in a better direction. 

 

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Your portal to cultural events happening in and around the surfing sphere.
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