4 Tips on how to keep progressing fun and not kill the fun

As we improve, our focus shifts and changes, so do our expectations. This can either make or break a surf.

Do you ever head out for a surf expecting to surf amazingly, work on yout turns and come out deflated feeling like your surfing is going backwards?

With a lot of people going through the 12 Week Program, it's a good time to dive into this and how you can manage the expectations and keep the fun, while still having a focus on progressing.

So here are 4 tips on how you can keep the surf fun while trying to progress quickly.

SET JUST ONE FOCUS

I spoke about this in depth in this guide here, "The easiest way to improve your surfing", but this also helps with keeping it fun. If all you are doing is focusing on one improvement, it's easier to keep it fun. Improvements make us happy and one change is easy to determine if we nailing it or not.

Doing everything and anything will also just end up frustrating. Hard to know if you are going forwards or backwards.

MAKE A GAME OF IT

Set an objective, set something that will push you or feel rewarding and set no negative effects on how you perform.

For example, if I want to do this, I'd try to see what's the longest floater I can do, or how deep can I take off, or how far can I wrap my cutbacks around and how high up the foam can I hit.

The focus is not on completing the manoeuvre, it's a plus if you do, but just make it fun, just try to reach somewhere higher. You either succeed, surprise yourself or have a learning experience by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. That learning experience on a mistake is golden. Fail forwards.

BE THE COACH

Take the pressure off you and give something back to someone else. By coaching others, it forces us to deeply understand the concepts, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to explain it to someone else.

So, try coaching someone else, bring a mate, try to make a change in their surfing. Start small and just get some quick wins. You'll be surprised how rewarding it is and how much of a learning experience it is to help another surfer.

You can do this to a stranger as well, just be casual and ask if they want feedback before-hand. Otherwise, ask someone else for feedback and then just try to work on that one thing for a whole surf and get their feedback each wave.

JUST SURF AND FORGET THE REST

Wait, what? Don't practice anything? Yep! If all else fails, forget the rest and just focus on having fun. The idea is that you will go into the surf with no expectations and not overthinking anything.

This will result in you being less tense, anxious and not overthinking it. The goal is fun and will allow you to enter flow so much easier.

When you're in this state, you'll be surprised how much your surfing changes. It's like the difference between competitive and free surfing. There's just no pressure, the only thing you have to do is surf. The land-based training will show up even when you're not thinking about it and not overthinking will allow you to be more aware of what you do and what the wave is doing.

SUMMARY

Overall, these all have one thing in common, relax, remove tension and try not to overthink it all. It's meant to be fun, improving and doing new things is the best feeling but forcing aint fun.

What do you do to keep things fun while trying to improve? How are you managing it? I'd love to know!