Surf Cat

Gerry Lopez is a man of many talents. Most notable, and most likely seared eternally into your cerebral cortex, is his tuberiding prowess at Pipeline. Elegant and smooth, calculated yet casual; like an archer discharging an arrow, letting it fly directly into the bullseye.

But his days of threading Pipeline pits with more style than McQueen have since ended. Gerry has retreated to a quiet life in Oregon, where he snowboards and practices yoga. Both of which he does extremely well (because of course he does). And although he still finds time to surf – like flirting with Oregon’s river waves, or riding the first-ever lefthander at Kelly’s pool – Gerry’s more well-known today as a Zen Master amongst yogis.

So, who better to explain the complementary benefits of yoga and surfing? We caught up with Gerry over the phone and in between sessions at his new surfing muse, the Bend, Oregon river wave.

Surfline: How’d you first get into yoga?

Gerry Lopez: I was going to college at the University of Hawaii in 1968, and I saw a bunch of girls checking out a bulletin board. Pretty sure I went over to check out the girls. I saw they were looking at a notice of a yoga class being offered that night at a spot nearby.

So, I went to the class, probably hoping to see those girls again. But I found something that was entirely unexpected. Now, after I’ve had a lot of time with this, it’s been my experience that yoga comes into a person’s life exactly when it’s supposed to. A lot of people circle around it, maybe it smacks them in the face a couple times, but the timing isn’t right. Until it is that time, the interest isn’t going to be there. At least not completely.

That first class must have been my time. I remember looking at the instructor, she was a young hippie like we all were, and she just moved so fluidly. I wanted to translate that smooth movement to my surfing. That’s pretty much what hooked me.

When it is the right time, you’ll know.

“Surfing requires core strength and flexibility,” says Gerry. “These are two of the primary aspects that yoga improves in a person almost immediately. It’s pretty basic how the two complement each other.” Photo: Ben Moon

In what ways does yoga complement surf performance?

First off, you can’t surf all the time. You can only surf when there’s waves. On the other hand, you can have your yoga practice anytime and anywhere you want. It’s always there.

Surfing requires core strength and flexibility – these are two of the primary aspects that yoga improves in a person almost immediately. It’s pretty basic how the two complement each other.

And that’s just the physical side of things, but there’s also the mental aspect. Yoga is all about breathing. You learn to understand, and eventually control your breathing. During a wipeout, when you’re underwater and you can’t breathe, sometimes that can be a little longer than is comfortable. Yoga not only teaches you to understand how long you can hold your breath – which is a lot longer than you think you can – but it also teaches your mind how to relax in those situations.

Even for me, after all these years – my surfing practice has been 60 plus years and my yoga practice has been 50 years – yoga and surfing has been a yin-yang balancing act my entire life. I’ve always thought they were parallel paths that complement each other. But at this point in my practice, I’ve come to the realization that they’re maybe the same path. They’re both headed towards the same thing, just in a different way.

Specifically, which yoga practice or yoga poses can help with your surfing?

Everybody is flexible in some way. The thing that defeats people about yoga, is they get frustrated. They see someone else and think, ‘there’s no way I can do that.’ But if you give yoga a good try you’ll find poses that you can do well. It’s important to let the success of those poses help you maintain the struggle and persevere through the difficulties of the other poses. It’s not about perfecting the pose, it’s about experiencing the process. That way, the pose your struggling with doesn’t become a dead-end of unfulfilled perfection. It just becomes an ongoing evolution. Embrace the process and your yoga practice will blossom.

I’ve been doing yoga for a long time and there’s some poses that my body just won’t do. You have to accept that. But there’s other ones I can do, and people go, ‘how can you do that?’ And I tell them, ‘because I’ve been working on it for a long time.’ Look at surfing – how much work do you put into surfing? And there’s a lot of frustration and wipeouts that go into that. That’s part of the deal. And yoga is maybe even a little more difficult than surfing in that sense [laughs].

How can yoga help prevent or mend surf injuries?

A regular yoga practice – and especially Pranayamic breathing – strengthens your immune system. It will also generally help mend whatever kind of injury you have a little quicker. Control of the Prana is the secret of healing.

“How many times have you go to the beach and the waves are shitty but you paddle out anyway?” asks Gerry “And what happens? You feel good afterwards. Yoga is the same way; you go to a class and you always feel better after.” Photo: Ben Moon

What about as surfers age…how can yoga help surfers remain spry into old age?

Generally speaking, as we age our bodies retain less moisture. Our range of motion diminishes. If you look at any career-ending sports injury – whether it’s a professional athlete or recreational guys – they are usually joint related. Ankle, knees, hip, shoulders…these are areas that yoga has a very deep, but subtle, influence on. This is what yoga was originally designed for – not only to keep us alive longer, but to keep our bodies and minds strong.

I can touch my toes a lot better now than I could before I started yoga [laughs]. It’s just like surfing – you gotta paddle that surfboard, otherwise you’ll lose that paddling power. And yoga you gotta practice it otherwise you’ll start to lose that flexibility. Look at how much work you do in surfing – how much paddling you do, how many times you go to the beach and the waves are shitty but you paddle out anyway? And what happens? You feel good afterwards. Yoga is the same way; you go to a class and you always feel better after.

How often should surfers practice yoga to really notice an impact on their surfing?

Daily. [Laughs.]

Aside from remaining calm during a wipeout, surfing, in general, can be such a mental practice – how can yoga help with that aspect?

In order to surf successfully – and you can be an average surfer, but as long as you’re having a good time you’re surfing successfully – your mind has to enter a state of deep meditation. If you’re not focused on what you’re doing while you’re in the water, if you have anything else going on in your mind while you’re on a wave, generally you’re going to wipeout.

That focus is the same focus that anybody who meditates deeply is trying to achieve. The beauty of surfing is that you can slip into that focus instantly. It comes the moment you see that wave and you start to go for it. That focus becomes very deep, very acute. That’s all that’s going on in your world at that moment.

That’s why surfing is such a gift. It’s a free ride to a state of higher consciousness. And most of us take that for granted. The yogis have to work a lot harder than we do to get to that state of mind.