- Hi, my name is Bruna Zaun. [upbeat music]
I'm a professional surfer,
and I'm gonna take you through everything
that I do in a day.
What does it mean to me to be an athlete?
I think it's to be active,
to be always working towards a better version of yourself.
For me, I channel that into my day-to-day life,
forever trying to reach that better version that I can be.
I just woke up. It's about 7:15 AM.
My alarm goes off, I'm up.
My husband snoozes and it kills me.
The first thing that I do is I drink a big glass of water.
I wake up super thirsty.
I do put quite a few products at night.
So I like to wash that stuff off.
I use this guy, it's a Tata Harper.
It feels like it moisturizes a little bit while cleaning.
And so I like that for first thing in the morning.
I have very oily skin.
I like washing my face with a little bit of warm water,
a very gentle, softening cleanser.
I don't know why I do this, but I just always do it.
I like to mix a little bit of a moisturizer
with my sunscreen.
Sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen.
Even if I'm not gonna leave the house, even if I'm sick,
and I'm gonna sit on the couch all day today,
I put sunscreen on my face. I have to make the bed.
Our wedding vows is "I make the bed every morning,
and he makes the coffee."
We've been married for five years,
and we never broke our promise.
While Dane's making the coffee, we check the waves.
On this particular day, lucky you guys,
the waves are full. So I'm gonna go surfing.
That first sip of coffee is always the best.
These are my wet suits.
Think I could get away with just a 3:2.
The thickness of the suit changes.
So winter time I'm going
between a 3:2 millimeter to a 4:3.
Where summertime, the spring suits are like one 1 mil,
or like 2 mil wet suits.
I'm gonna take my short board and my long board.
I grew up in a really, really small town in Brazil.
There wasn't a lot to do, but there was the beach.
My brother got into surfing and he signed me and my sister.
I absolutely fell in love.
Obviously, when I started, I was obsessed.
I would be in the water like eight hours straight.
My mom would come down to the beach.
She would be like in the sand, like, "What are you doing?
You need to come home. You need to eat."
And so I did my first professional event
when I was 13 years old.
I won a ticket to Hawaii.
And I think that that's when it became really real to me
that like this was gonna be my career.
So I turned pro when I was 16.
I remember my mom telling me,
"Listen, if you get really good at this,
you will travel the world."
That's what got me going.
I wanted to experience more
than what my tiny little town had to offer.
It brought me to California. I met my husband.
So there's so much in my life that I owe to surfing.
The sun is out. It's absolutely beautiful.
And we're gonna have a blast.
So I bounce back and forth
with short boarding and long boarding.
I sometimes pack both of my boards,
'cause I don't know what the weather's gonna be like.
Today, I'm gonna long board
because the waves are a little bit smaller.
If I go out long boarding, I'll catch a lot of waves.
I just catch anything that moves.
So I would say, I dunno, I could catch maybe close
to 30 to 40 waves in one session.
I have my pre-surf warm up.
I do this like up and down with my knees
just to get that feeling out.
And then I like to stretch my shoulders.
I mean surfing is like 80% paddling.
Surf sunscreen routine is super thick stick on sunscreen.
'Cause I feel like those just stay the best.
And water. I probably drink like five of these a day.
I feel like I'm a very thirsty person.
So, when you get out to go surfing,
the first movement you're doing is you're paddling.
And that is a lot of shoulders and back muscles,
and actually your core as well.
So you're like getting that cardio going,
and then when you catch a wave,
I think most of it is core and legs.
Even your feet.
'Cause like you're trying not to fall.
So like your feet, it's just like hanging on,
right, at all times.
The most rewarding thing about surfing
is definitely the feeling of disconnecting.
It's you and your surfboard. Everything else is on land.
You paddle out and then you look back,
and all of a sudden the land looks different.
Like I think that's so magical.
There's no other place that you will get that
other than the ocean.
Every day I see dolphins.
It's like the craziest thing ever.
And I feel like that has only happened to me
ever since I moved to California.
So there's a lot of seals too,
and there's a lot of stingrays.
Which I don't love seeing those
because they can sting you and it could hurt really bad.
And then the occasional sharks,
which those I'm trying not to see,
because if I do see them, then I am out of there.
I think the biggest lesson that surfing has taught me,
and I think a lot of people would agree
with that is humbleness.
The ocean, it's just not something to take lightly.
When I found out that I was going to The Ultimate Surfer,
I'm like what can I do to make myself
feel a little stronger?
So, I would ask my husband to park up the street
so that I could run downhill, surf,
and then I would run the hill back up.
The first few times I did it, it was awful.
But then I just kept doing and then like a week goes by,
two weeks, and then all of a sudden,
like it just feels like you can do this thing.
And we also have one of those bikes
that are like for your cardio.
So I was using that a lot.
The first time that I went to the Surf Ranch,
I remember feeling very like out of my element.
It's definitely like a very different feeling
than being in the ocean up until I stand up on the wave.
And then once I stand up on a wave, I'm like, "Oh my God,
this is the best wave that I'll ever ride today."
And you're just riding that perfect wave over and over.
So it's like, it's crazy.
The stress of competing is definitely one
of the reasons I stopped competing.
When I started, when I was really young,
I didn't have that fear in my stomach.
And then as I got older, that started happening to me.
Probably the last three years that I competed,
I was pretty heavy.
Like my mind was pretty messed up just
from being nervous and not knowing how to deal with it.
So when I stopped competing,
it's almost like this whole weight went off my shoulders.
I did do therapy for awhile,
and I loved going through all the emotions,
and dealing with everything.
I started traveling when I was really young,
I was on my own.
So there was a lot of that stuff, heavy stuff,
that I was carrying with me of like,
I didn't allow myself to feel a lot of fear
because fear was gonna stop me from getting
to where I need to be.
I think yoga was another thing that keeps me very grounded.
I think it's the breathing aspects of it.
It's like a mindful thing.
Going into The Ultimate Surfer was a different experience,
but it wasn't easy.
It definitely, all those things came back,
but I felt much more prepared.
We are back home from the beach,
and I want to clean the sunscreen off.
What I use to clean off all of the zinc
that I put on when I go surfing,
even like all of my makeup, is coconut oil.
And I just smear it all over my face.
I find that coconut oil cleans everything.
So look at it, all the sunscreen just comes right off.
We use wax on our surfboards because it helps with traction.
It helps you not slip.
Some wax, like some different brands,
tend to give you rashes.
So I do get a lot of rashes on my knees, my legs,
like the inside of my legs, and my belly.
So if I feel like I'm starting to get those rashes,
I do like to wear the one piece because then at least
that protects from the belly ones.
And then the leg one and the knee ones,
I try to use Vaseline or something after I'm done surfing.
I moisturize everyday.
I am definitely very into moisturizing my entire body,
but I don't like moisturizing my feet
because I feel like if I do that,
then I'm gonna slip when I go surfing the next day.
So I would say that the part of my body
that is most neglected is my feet.
And also we never talked about lip care.
This is phenomenal. It's called Lucas Papaw.
When your lips are super dried,
and super burned from the sun,
this stuff is probably the best.
I love to cook. I'm always hungry after I surf.
Today, I'm really craving an acai bowl.
Acai bowls are very much a Brazilian thing.
So I take a lot of pride on making a really good bowl.
Everything I do in the kitchen, I just eyeball.
And that is why I'm not a good baker.
And ta-da. We got ourselves an acai bowl.
I do love eating my meals outside.
It's a beautiful day.
At this point in my life,
I am not really focusing on the workouts
that are gonna help me perform better
because I'm no longer like a competitive surfer.
I just need to make sure that I can wake up
in the morning and go surfing.
I think Pilates is like really targeting small muscles
that I don't normally use so
that I'm always like engaging my core,
and I'm protecting my back,
and I'm working what I want to work.
- Good. [Bruna cheers]
Now you can do your happy dance.
- So I just finished my Pilates class.
I always pack snacks, and things like that.
Little bars. I really like this one.
I also really like kombucha.
So, these are my car snacks.
So the sauna and ice.
It's been honestly one of the best investments,
health-wise that we've done.
If I have stress that I need to manage,
I put myself in that little hot room and I'm calm.
And then I go in the ice and it totally
like shocks my entire body.
It's so cold.
Oh my God.
Two minutes in the ice bath,
and then 10 minutes in the sauna.
Back and forth, maybe like three to five times.
Oh my God.
I think it was all my husband's idea.
We built it in our backyard,
and we ended up moving three months later.
So we had to disassemble the whole sauna,
bring it to our new place and then reassemble,
which was a whole ordeal.
And after I sauna, I love to take an outdoor shower.
Naturally as a surfer, I have dry hair.
I think I'm always gonna have dry hair.
Doing masks is what I find works best
with keeping it hydrated and then leave in conditioners
right after I shampoo and conditioner as well.
And oils for like the ends and stuff,
I find that that helps a lot.
Also something that I love to do after I sauna
is just walk on my little foot massager.
It feels really good.
It's 6:15 PM, and I'm really hungry.
And so it's time to make some dinner.
I love cooking with my husband.
We do like veggies and a grain and some greens.
And we just like mix it all together in a bowl.
And it's like, that's dinner.
I'm not vegan, but I do eat plant-based a lot.
And then on the weekends we eat pizza, and we eat burgers,
and we drink wine and we have cocktails
because that's fun too.
I love doing masks.
I love the feeling that your skin just feels like so soft,
and hydrated after masks.
I absolutely love these ones.
I recently discovered this brand of Tata Harper.
It feels like it's hydrating my skin,
but also cleaning my pores at the same time.
It's also just fun because it's green,
and who doesn't like green?
I'm gonna leave it on for like eight minutes.
And then we're gonna rinse it.
Summertime, I'm in the sun all day, every day.
And I do have melasma.
So at the end of the summer,
I'll start using these little discs at night
before I go to sleep because you can't go
in the sun afterwards.
It just like evens out some of the dark spots
that I end up getting.
Even though I literally just showered,
the disks are always dirty.
Now I'm ready for bed.
I'm a very much like no phone once you enter the bedroom.
I try to actually like stop using my phone,
like around dinner time.
Just so you can disconnect from the virtual world,
and connect with the physical world.
My husband makes fun of me,
but the minute that I lay in bed,
it's almost like I'm a machine,
and it's just like, "Okay, shut down.
Like disconnecting, goodbye world."
Just like ah, gone.
I'm here to say my goodbyes.
I wanted to say thank you Self,
and thank you guys for following all the things
that I love to do that keeps me active and keeps me going.
And see you next time. [upbeat music]