[dramatic music]
- He was on a tow board.
And you can tell because he's in the wave so much earlier
than the wave breaking behind him,
and he's kind of going really fast and skipping across.
And when you're on a tow board,
you get towed in by a jet ski
and you're on a really small board.
And then it shows him switching back to a big board.
I thought that was interesting.
They kind of switch in and out of that.
Hey GQ, I'm John John Florence, and this is The Breakdown.
[hip-hop music]
First up, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall".
[dramatic music]
- Oh God!
[water splashing]
- His timing for catching the wave wasn't too bad.
It looks like someone learning to surf
on a pretty small wave.
Until the point when they just showed the other wave
that was like three times the size
of the wave that he was on.
So they definitely switched waves there,
but that's actually not far off of like
someone learning to surf, taking off on a wave,
and running someone else over.
In certain areas where people are learning to surf,
that definitely happens often.
There's definitely ways to avoid running other people over.
And that's just going to where there's less people
and going to places where the waves are fit
like more your talent level.
In Hawaii, we have a place called Waikiki
where a lot of people learn to surf when it's smaller.
It's on the south side,
and the waves are really, really weak,
and you can kind of just go straight.
When you're learning to surf,
you rent a really big board.
Bigger boards are harder to control
especially if you don't know how to surf.
Longboards are the best boards for beginners to use,
because they're just bigger, they have more of an area,
and they're easier to stand on.
It's kind of more of a platform,
so the board kind of directs where they're going
and they have no control over where it's going.
[dramatic music]
That's another thing is he stands up, well,
we call it goofy footed
where your right leg is forward on the board.
On the next clip, all of a sudden,
he's going the other way which we call regular foot
where your left leg is forward on the board.
Unless he got really good
and he's switching stance all of a sudden,
I don't think that's what happened.
There's definitely kind of a, I guess,
unwritten rules in the ocean among everyone kind of surfing
especially at certain places
where there's a lot of localism and things like that.
Some people have more priority over other people.
At home, one of the most
famous waves in the world is Pipeline.
So many people out there and it's one of the biggest,
kind of scariest waves in Hawaii.
When you're out there,
the people that have kind of been surfing there the longest
kind of have the most priority.
So there's the Ho Brothers, which is Derek and Michael Ho,
who have been surfing out there for
the past 30 years or so, maybe more.
They have the most respect out of anyone.
And so if they go for a wave, like everyone just stops,
and they get to go on the wave.
And it kinda trickles down like that
through the generations.
All the waves that my brothers and I,
and so like through the generation above us
like we try to stay out of their way and so on.
But then other places in the world,
if you just show up somewhere in the world,
for the most part it's
if whoever's been waiting the longest gets the next wave.
[water bubbling]
If someone was unconscious in the water like that,
it would probably be a much bigger scene.
With that many people around,
it wouldn't just be one person carrying him along the beach.
Especially in Hawaii, it's like a really big thing.
If someone is unconscious then
there's the lifeguards and jet ski
and there's a lot of people kind of coming in to help.
It wouldn't just be the one person kind of
diving underwater looking for him.
- Oh, wow.
You got coral right there in your leg.
- Koonu, can you call the front desk for me please?
- I don't think that's the first place you would call
if you had a big cut like that is the front desk. [laughs]
You'd definitely be calling the lifeguards
or probably anywhere but the front desk.
Coral injuries are pretty common.
Maybe not so much in Kauai
where you have like a big piece of
almost live coral sticking out of your leg like that.
But in other places in the world like Tahiti and Fiji,
places like that will have live coral on the reef
and so that's possible.
I've never had anything this is bad,
or there's a big piece of coral sticking out of my leg,
but throughout my life, I've definitely hit the bottom
and had pretty bad cuts.
Next up, "Blue Crush".
[melodic music]
Rock running is actually kind of a thing.
When you're holding your breath
and kind of running at the same time,
it replicates surfing and getting worked by the wave,
because you're holding your breath
while trying to swim up to the surface at the same time.
There's a couple of really good places in Hawaii
where this was filmed to go do that.
You can go down and you just pretty much
hug a big rock and then can run on the bottom.
[melodic music]
We don't normally have people trailing us
when we're rock running.
It's more of a thing you do just for fun.
I don't do it as a main part of my training
and I definitely wouldn't have
a trail of people pulling on me.
All the different waves in the world
have different bottoms to them.
And so the bottom of, say, Waimea Bay in Hawaii,
is partially like big stones and then some of it is sand.
Whereas if you go to Pipeline, which is in Hawaii also,
it's a lot of really big kind of reef caves.
Very different looking than that underwater.
If it's sand like that,
just from the constant movement of the water,
it creates this perfect little form of waves
in the sand on the bottom.
[woman gasping]
- You could've stayed down longer than that.
- I'm tired of holding my breath, Eden.
- Breath training is really important as a surfer,
especially as a big wave surfer,
because you get caught in situations
where holding your breath is your key to survival.
And when you're under that amount of stress,
when you're paddling and a big wave
is breaking in front of you,
your heart rate's really going pretty quick,
and holding your breath with your heart rate high like that
is really hard to do.
Next up, "Point Break".
[dramatic music]
We definitely surf in storms,
but I don't think you're surfing in a storm like this
on a boat by yourself somewhere on the ocean
about to jump off and tie the steering wheel of the boat.
[dramatic music]
That wave is like a hundred feet compared to the boat.
It's definitely so far from reality.
[dramatic music]
We call it step offs.
We usually do it with jet skis.
And so you'll jump off the side of the jet ski onto a wave
like that and kind of paddle into the wave.
I don't think it's possible to do it on that size of a boat
especially by yourself with no one driving the boat
into a wave that big.
When the waves are big like that,
they're moving incredibly fast.
So in the movies, the waves look like
they're in slow motion.
In reality, it just depends on
the size of the wave, I guess.
When the waves are really, really big
like when it's as big as it gets,
it's so big that it looks like
it's moving in slow motion actually,
like just there's so much water moving.
There's some waves in the world
that are pretty far out there in the middle of nowhere.
There's a wave off of California that's,
I think it's a hundred miles out or so off the coast.
That wave is pretty extreme,
but you're taking like a big boat out there.
But for the most part, the waves are
relatively close to the shore.
[dramatic music]
So I think this is actually goes into a real surfing clip
from Jaws and yeah, people do this.
I mean, my brother spends every swell
at where this wave was filmed.
It's amazing what some of the guys do out there.
They really push the limit of our sport
kind of in these big waves.
Jaws or Pe'ahi it's called
is a place on Maui in Hawaii
and it's on the north shore of Maui.
And so it's probably one of the most
perfect big waves in the whole world.
There's not really anything else like it.
[dramatic music]
He was on a tow board and you can tell,
because he's in the wave so much earlier
than the wave breaking behind him,
and he's kind of going really fast and skipping across.
And when you're on a tow board,
you get towed in by a jet ski,
and you're on a really small board.
And then it shows him switching back to a big board.
I thought that was interesting.
They kind of switched in and out of that.
[dramatic music]
When you're surfing big waves,
it's really scary when you're watching it
and it's scary to think about going on the wave,
so when you're sitting there
in the position to go on a wave,
your heart rate's going, and a set is coming.
You're getting ready to like,
"Okay, this is the one.
I'm gonna go on this."
I know that I sit there and I have to like
work up into going on a wave,
like sitting in the lineup for a second,
getting comfortable with it
and seeing the bigger sets come in.
And then finally working myself up to go on a wave.
Next up, "Orange County".
- Hey, bro, there's a tropical storm three miles off Laguna.
Let's go, dude, surf's up!
- What about next period?
- 20 footers, man, screw your period!
- I don't think I've ever brought my surfboard to school
and I don't know anyone who has.
But skipping school to go surfing
was definitely something I did when I was younger.
[waves crashing]
- I don't know, you guys.
- Dude, face the fear.
- I don't think anyone's rushing out of high school
to go surf 20 foot waves like that.
Usually when people are surfing 20 foot waves,
there's a lot of preparation that goes into it
and a lot of safety kind of revolving around that.
I think those boards are meant for
learning to start paddling on maybe
and maybe start to learn to stand up,
but definitely not to go surf 20 foot waves.
[angelic music]
- Righteous.
- That's maybe the biggest wave I've ever seen.
Waves like this exist, but waves like this
aren't very often and usually when people are surfing,
and there's jet skis, and all kinds of stuff going on.
You're not just paddling out from the beach
and going by yourself like that.
[waves crashing]
In Southern California,
the waves do not get that big either.
Southern California gets some really big storms,
but it will never look like this.
[angelic music]
I don't think he should approach it like that.
People kind of get caught in that position
quite often when it's really big,
but it's not really the position you wanna be in.
If you're in that position, you're usually
at this point diving off your board
and taking your leash off of your foot,
and letting your board go,
and trying to get through the wave to the other side.
Next up, "Chasing Mavericks".
[upbeat music]
Mavericks is a wave in Northern California.
It just holds some of the biggest swell.
The water is brown.
It's really cold, and it's dark, and it's scary.
It's a really challenging wave to surf
and a big part of kind of our surf world.
A lot of people dedicate their lives to surfing that.
There's a lot of history in big wave surfing there.
And even still to this day,
people get some of the best rides
in big wave surfing out there.
[upbeat music]
Jumping off into a wave like that as well
you kind of wait for a wave to come
and it puts more water under you.
And usually you're jumping off trying to land
kind of right on the back of the wave, timing it like that.
This just allows you to be in the lineup really quickly
without having to paddle out through the waves.
[upbeat music]
We kind of call like a air reverse,
because you're doing an air and you're landing
and then kind of reversing around.
This is a pretty standard maneuver in surfing now.
You see a lot of the young kids doing it.
It's like their first kind of aerial maneuver.
It seems like the easier one to go to.
This is also one that you see in competition a lot.
I spent a lot of time there
when I was younger doing contests.
He's taking off right next to the cliff.
Oh, you can see all that kind of wobble,
all the bump in the wave there.
That's kind of all their refractions
that come off the cliff as the waves go by,
and it makes it a really challenging wave to surf.
Next up, "Lilo and Stitch".
[bright Hawaiian music]
Some of this is sort of realistic, you know?
Like I think growing up in Hawaii
is kind of similar in the sense of like
going surfing with your friends and family.
It just, it does it, it makes you feel good,
it makes you happy.
And there's turtles and things like that, for sure.
But going into the air with someone on your board,
maybe not so realistic.
[bright Hawaiian music]
Most people can ride on a board at once
and it's kind of a fun thing you do
called tandem surfing.
Yeah, that's totally possible.
[bright Hawaiian music]
Hawaii can have really clear water sometimes.
Almost exactly like that to where you're surfing
and there's, you'll see a turtle or you'll see fish.
It can be really clear, crystal clear like a swimming pool.
[bright Hawaiian music]
There's definitely reasons when we're
getting into the barrel, we put our hand in the wave.
A lot of the time it's to slow down,
'cause once you're in there, you get a lot of speed
and it really starts pushing you through it.
And kind of the goal is always to stay in there
as long as you can.
Another thing sometimes too is when you're just in there,
you kind of just naturally do that, I guess,
for feel, I guess it is.
I'm not really thinking about it though.
[bright Hawaiian music]
I think the idea behind "Lilo and Stitch" is good.
Going surfing and relieving stress
and being out there with friends and family.
Some of the surfing was probably a little bit unrealistic
and getting waves like that
with that many people on a board,
I don't know if you could do that on a wave that big.
Next up, "Surf's Up".
- [Announcer] Final wave.
- Yo man, this is it.
This wave wins it, huh?
- Yeah, man, woo!
[wave crashing]
- [Announcer] This wave is stacking up
to be a beautiful tube.
- You wouldn't have multiple surfers on one wave.
You could if one person was going one way
and the other person was going the other way.
So there's a priority system within competition.
And so the person that has priority
gets to choose which way they wanna go on that wave.
And if the other person interferes with them at all,
that's when you get a penalty.
They'll take away half of your score or a whole score.
[dramatic music]
At a really small level, some of this does happen.
Sometimes you're on a wave,
and you're kind of going around rocks,
and maybe surfing with someone else,
but you could imagine it like a video game,
what you would do in a surfing video game
like dodging rocks and being with
kind of other people on the wave like that.
[dramatic music]
Breaking boards happens quite a bit.
And I think every surfer goes through like
different phases of it.
And sometimes you'll break a lot of boards
and sometimes you won't break any for a couple of months,
but definitely have gone through winters at home
where I've broken 30 or 40 boards.
[dramatic music]
I think he had died if that happened.
And you know, lifeguards I think around the world
and Hawaii, they have these kind of big yellow boards
and they'll paddle those out to get a surfer.
I think depending on the wave size though,
and for the most part though,
the lifeguards have jet skis now.
And so they can launch the jet ski within minutes
and be in the water and go out and save someone.
- Let the wave carry you, Cody!
[dramatic music]
- Z! [dramatic music]
[wave crashing]
I don't know that letting the wave carry you
and someone catching you, that's pretty unrealistic.
But the part of like sitting behind a rock
kind of when a wave comes, maybe not on such a big scale,
but on like a much smaller scale.
It's kind of something like we even do at home for fun
is like there's a big rock by my house that's on the beach,
and you can run and stand behind it,
and the waves will kind of hit it and go way over you,
and you'll be totally fine behind the rock.
Thanks for watching these clips with me
and we'll see you next time.
[hip-hop music]