Archive for June, 2011
Is a 5 Mile Run Minimum Fitness?
Posted by: | CommentsThere is no true definition of fitness.
It may be in your own judgment or that of your friends. If you are in an athletic contest, fitness would mean you can finish in top form just the same as you started. Fitness would mean that your lack of conditioning doesn’t prevent you from displaying your maximum skills.
It seems to come to bear most noticeably in men’s professional tennis. As the hours wear on into a 5 set match, any let down in conditioning is the open door to a better fit opponent to polish off his rival.
In everyday life, you can set your own level. I have always enjoyed fitness and running. At one time I was running 5 miles, five days a week at a seven minute per mile pace. This led to joining a community track club where I was soon running 60 miles a week.
I was fit by most anyone’s standards until it came to running marathons. I trained and ran one and recovered quickly. If I wanted to compare my time to truly proficient marathon runners, I was not in the race.
Now I surf most days and spend extra time trying to support the necessary muscles and stamina needed to paddle. I do upper body work as well as core exercises and yoga. I often run the 40 stairs near my house and have recently started a little running.
One and a half miles seems like a lot to me now. I am running it each day this week since there is a lull in the waves. Last Friday I ran three just to see if I could do it. It seems that a mile and a half run is no sign of fitness.
I think I need to run 5 to reach a standard of fitness that any athlete that is not a runner would consider a minimum level. Of course, this is just in my mind.
We Can Have A New Life Style Instantly
Posted by: | CommentsMost people hate being bored. It is often a driving factor in our lives. 
I always suffered from fear of being bored. In building up real estate offices, I was much better at building than maintaining. In building, I had a goal that was unfolding. Maintaining to me seemed like the same old same old.
It can color how we view our jobs, our relationships, and our lives. We are adrenaline junkies. We need the caffeine stimulus in our activities or our mind starts wandering into areas we don’t enjoy visiting.
How can we adjust our lives right now to create more stimuli?
The one area that has no glass or other type of ceiling is self improvement. We can always be smarter, more knowledgeable, more widely read, more informed, more fit, leaner, have more stamina, have greater expertise, develop greater skill in our passions, pursue new passions, pursue new relationships.
If we improve ourselves, we will attract new attention to ourselves. If we become more expert in an area, people will notice and seek our opinions or want to involve us in more activities. If we pursue a passion, people will want to know how we are doing and vicariously follow our progress.
The day we engage in moving to a new goal, we start feeling better about ourselves and our lives. One of the ladies in my circle was bemoaning she had put on 45 pounds in two years as she became more sedentary studying for an advancement in medicine.
I suggested I could give her a new diet plan that could take off the weight in a reasonable amount of time. After she started the plan for the first week, she started feeling much better about herself. She even had her neglected hair cut and colored. She was starting to see a new possible person.
Our brain has plasticity which allows it to form new patterns to learn new material at any age. Our bodies are always waiting for more attention like anxious colts waiting to be let out of the paddock. Our organs respond quickly to better food and supplements and start cleaning up our past transgressions.
Our minds can connect with nature at the slightest opportunity. It is latent connection power just waiting to be awakened. Connecting our minds and bodies with nature means we have realized the oneness of everything. Our spirit is already connected, but we often fail to be aware.
Develop appreciation for your body, mind, spirit, and opportunity to be here and your spirit will connect. Start improving who you are and you will create a whole new life from the one you may be experiencing and at some point they may merge in a new arena.
The day you start with high expectations will be the day your life style changes.
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Read “The Healthiest 150 Foods on Earth” by Jonny Bowden
Visit SkateboardsOceanside.com
Is Fitness Worth the Sacrifice, part 2?
Posted by: | CommentsDo we have an “on” “off” switch where we feel fitness is important and worth the sacrifice or that fitness is important, but not worth the sacrifice?
Living sedentary lives in the city make the alternatives more important. Hardly any living thing on earth was meant to “not exercise”. Secrets of the longest living disease free civilizations on earth include several key nutrients and very strenuous labor. These people, however are able to work hard and have sex into their 80’s and live disease free to over 100.
Not that this is your ideal life style, but what is it that tells each of us to get fit or live without being fit? For me, it seems I have never had the choice. Like breathing, I have always felt that exercise, not necessarily good nutrition is important. For me it has been the flexibility to do any sport or any activity whenever I so choose.
I have always loved the outdoor life style so not only do I love all sports, I love to get into the mountains and hike. Being active seems to put me in connection with my body first and then what ever I do outdoors puts me in connection with nature second.
The feeling of exercising my body to its potential makes me realize what a gift the human body is and how great it can feel when treated properly. If I have the choice of feeling great and inspired or feeling sluggish and moribund, I will take the former. I have learned that the harder I can exercise or the longer the activity, the more inspired and gratified I feel at the end. (After I have had time to catch my breath.)
Putting the right food into the system and keeping the body stretched allows me to accomplish more in a day if I choose, places few restraints on my activities, frees me from worry about sickness and disease, and makes my high quality life style a guarantee for more years.
Maybe the reasons people don’t treat their life with more respect is that they don’t have high level goals. Satisfying their body’s cravings is higher on the list than ignoring the cravings and giving the body what it should have. After a while, the body craves what it should have.
Once you reach the plateau that the body wants what it should have, you have arrived at the plain of synchronicity with nature.
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Calorie Counting on Menus Slowly Delivering the Message
Posted by: | CommentsRestaurants with over 20 locations are now required to post the menu items’ calories. Calorie counting is not the best long term process for getting lean. It is, however, an alert to a growing crowd that what they eat has more calories than they anticipated. 
The best process is to eat natural foods because the body recognizes them in the digestive process. They tell the body it is not going to starve and causes the body to release the poisonous food it has kept encapsulated in fat. The body knows unnatural food is highly acidic and will damage the organs.
Does avoiding calories for a fast food hamburger mean the diner is going to take a piece of chicken in pita bread? Does avoiding pasta mean that they will eat a salad with chicken? The restaurants now are scrambling to serve healthier food with lower calorie counts.
Calorie counting is the wake up call but not the direct message needed. The direct message is that fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, lean meat or plant protein, and good fats don’t have many calories. It means you could eat as much as you need and not put on weight. The reason you don’t put on weight is that the body will expel the surplus.
You could have fruit, grain cereal, or eggs for breakfast. You could have salad, chicken, tuna, fruit, or omelets for lunch. You could have salads, soups, chicken, rice, beans, avocado, fish, and other lean meats for dinner. No one would starve while getting very lean.
Exercise would be a bonus. Late night snacks are fine if they stick to the same foods. What you eliminate is as important as what you add. Eliminate sugar, grease, white flour, fatty meats, and dairy. This means sodas, chips, desserts, Danish, processed foods in boxes and cans, bad fats, and excess salt.
Eat the right foods and you can eat them when ever you want and pretty much as much as you want. You need to take over control of your mind because it is the devil’s playground.
You Only Get a Few Great Opportunities Each Day
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I surf each day, I know that I may only get a few opportunities to get a great wave. I try to go when that best window of the day opens up. It is frequently in transition between low and high tide and in the morning when there is no wind.
I prepare each day by adding yoga, upper body work, and aerobics to my routine. I read how the experts do maneuvers and I watch video. I picture which new maneuver I want to accomplish on the right waves that I catch that day.
Not only do I have to hit the right window when the best waves are breaking, I have to get my place in the line up with the other eager surfers and then get the right timing when my wave appears.
Our work, careers, and passions can have the same pattern. There are a few windows when the timing is right to excel. Do we hunt for those windows and are we prepared when they open?
Big wave surfers say it takes years to prepare for the biggest waves. One has to have the experience, the courage, the stamina, and the strength to catch the wave but more importantly to survive a wipe out.
When pursuing our work or our passion, we might picture that each month there may be a few great opportunities to advance. What would that window look like? What kind of preparation would it take to make that advance? What could I do each day to be in position to make that advance?
Wishing and hoping does not make it happen. Peak performance occurs when we are in the flow or in the zone. These two states require that we have practiced the mechanics until they are automatic. They require that we actually enjoy the activity that we pursue. They require that once we begin, we can bar distractions. Living in the flow creates the brain chemicals that are defined by neurologists as happiness.
I am reading an autobiography on Tony Blair, previous Prime Minister of Great Britain. He prepared for years for an opportunity to be in leadership. He did not know if he really wanted the responsibility although he pursued the philosophy he felt the long suffering Labor party needed to adopt to beat the Tories.
When he saw the opening, he knew it was his opportunity to seize his moment. Everyone can seize their moment if they have also put in the preparation and lived with the expectation that someday they would reach their full potential.
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See Resources for reading books on preparing for your minutes in the sun.
Most People Suffer and Eat to Feel Better
Posted by: | CommentsI think it is a sign of the times that people are not realizing their expectations.
Yes, we have had a meltdown that affected everyone. We are a prosperous nation and as poor as people think they are in relation to their rich Ferrari driving friends, most people are eating and have shelter.
People are often more poor in not reaching the expectations they have for themselves or their families. It has continuously cost more to do everything and labor does not buy what it used to.
Even a man with four great children, a beautiful wife, a nice home, and a good job has pressure. He has to provide equal to the most affluent examples his family is exposed to in their circle. He has to provide cars and higher education. He will have to pay for some weddings and eventually save enough for a golden year’s retirement.
Having enough is not clearly defined. It is always more than we have. Getting there is never easy. There is always lots of resistance. Everyone we know wants to do and have lots of things. Every budget is strained regardless of the level of income. More income means higher aspirations.
One of the few pleasures we can have is eating. No one judges the silent secret pleasures of satisfying the mind that creates so much yearning. Food is the one thing that buys respite for a few hours.
The mind is devious. We know what is healthy food and what is not. We have all sorts of excuses why we can’t create good meals instead of the often fast ones. We know that certain desserts and snacks are not what makes our body strong, but they make our mind happy.
It begin with the fact we are not happy with what we have. We do not have enough connection with nature and gratitude that we are here to celebrate the bodies with which we were born. There is more pleasure possible in the yield of our minds and the strength and stamina of our bodies than in any great car. Things are temporary and lead to the desire for more things.
Gratitude is happiness and leads to the desire to make other people also feel happy. This creates a circle of eternal feed back. The better we can make ourselves feel, the more likely we are to be gratified that we have been blessed with all we need.
Eating healthy and exercising to make our body fit, makes our mind happier than any other gift. If we also have a few passions that require peak performance leads us to living in the “flow” as defined most recognizably by Daniel Goleman.
Pursuing activities that we love and that create a challenge, but because of our practice are not above our capabilities, we and enter into “flow” or “being in the zone”. So if we find and pursue passions, we have a target for our minds.
If we want to reach peak performance in these passions we often need minds, bodies, and spirits that are developed to our greatest potential. Seeking to push ourselves requires vision, ambition, courage and discipline. Nothing speaks discipline and courage like self control in eating and exercise.
So a nation that wants to flee the culture of obesity and pursue productivity with passion and discipline must learn not to use food as a drug. Develop a love for our body and minds as gifts to be developed for the pursuit of achieving our highest potential and leave the Twinkies behind.
Can Food and Exercise Substitute for Alcohol?
Posted by: | CommentsI certainly enjoyed my alcohol through college and as an adult until I was 35. The continuous hangovers started to wear on me and becoming a husband and father gave me new direction and incentive to change my life style.
I am very concerned by the amount of alcohol consumed by college students and even by adults to any age. The point of alcohol is to change our mood by blocking our left brain thinking.
It has the same affect as pot and other drugs. We feel the need to get out of our logical, calculating, organizing left brain thinking and into our comical, intuitive, creative, loose brain thinking of the right brain hemisphere.
Some of the side affects of so much abuse is deteriorated thinking capacity, narrower range of interests, less exercise, more weight gain, and poorer performance the next day. It is as though we have gotten locked into the ceiling of our professional life and no longer see the need to learn more about what has proceeded us in the world and what is happening that is new.
Healthy eating and exercise can change our mood. Eating the right foods gives our body nutrition it recognizes and can digest easily. The body then does not need to store food and will release fat that has been used to encapsulate food it did not recognize.
When the body does not recognize food, it thinks it is going to starve so it starts storing more food. This encapsulated food is prevented from visiting and destroying our organs. Most of this stored food is acidic in nature which would rapidly deteriorate our important body parts.
Natural food is alkaline and creates optimum performance of all organs including the brain. The more natural alkaline foods we eat, the leaner and higher performance we get from our muscles, brain, and organs. Athletes will reach peak performance consuming an optimum diet.
Exercise can change our mood just as easily as alcohol. It is more subtle.
Exercise can create heavier breathing which then leads to the production of endorphins, oxygenation of the blood, and exhaustion of the muscles. The result is a relaxed body that feels more mellow. Tension and anxiety produced by the days events are substituted with a relaxed nervous system that places the events at a distance.
The affect is much the same as alcohol, but with a healthy conscious feeling instead of a distancing consciousness losing track of who we are and our surroundings.
Everyone loves to meet people after work and alcohol is the leveler that brings everyone to the same consciousness where acceptable conversation is given more latitude. It gives us an excuse to say things we wouldn’t say in a conversation at work and we can give people more latitude for the intelligence of their conversation.
But when it comes to drinking after work to put the day away, exercise could certainly be a good start. After exercise, we don’t need to drink to the same mind numbing extent because we have already released the anxiety and tension. Now we can have a few drinks to be social and not to kill the pain.
Good food and exercise makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes feel gratitude for the opportunity to perform at higher levels both physically and mentally. As our desire to feel better naturally grows, our desire to engage in destructive behavior starts to lessen.
Can we make this transition in our daily lives?
At the college and work place level we certainly take the edge off our competitive advantage by numbing pain and releasing all our tension with only alcohol. In college we don’t learn what we could. In the work place, we might stop growing.
The world changes every few years and what we are doing and learning may be obsolete soon. We shouldn’t be complacent, we should be preparing for a new tomorrow. We should be building our personal capacity on a daily basis.
Eat All You Want
Posted by: | CommentsOf course there is a caveat.
Everything you eat has to be something your body recognizes and has to be natural.
Then, it’s pretty true. Most people won’t over indulge on natural food because it doesn’t satisfy cravings like chocolate cake where you are trying to settle emotions as opposed to just fueling your body.
Emotional eating can even be satiated if you eat natural food like carrots. After dinner and TV eating can be satiated if once again you eat something natural like another salad or homemade vegetable soup or oat meal.
You could eat all the apples you wanted each day and your body would not store the extra like it would do if you ate a Twinkie. In fact, your body will encapsulate in fat most anything that it doesn’t recognize. It thinks you are trying to starve it so it wants to save everything in case you approach death.
If you want your body to release everything stored in fat including the fat, make it feel like you are going to supply it with all the nutrition it needs to run your body factory. If you eat fruit, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, protein, and good fats, your body will be so happy it will start releasing everything in storage.
People on raw diets have reported incredible fat loss amounts rather quickly, but I don’t recommend extreme change. Change should occur over a long period of time. If you don’t change gradually, your mind will win the battle and make you binge or quit. Most people don’t have the will power to battle their mind.
Start by eliminating the most harmful foods. Start by eliminating one harmful food. Test your ability to battle your mind. See if you can eliminate one unnatural harmful food a week. In its place, put anything. If you are addicted to something like a fast food hamburger, you might have to use something else harmful to break the addiction.
Once you have made the first change, change the food again. At a certain point, your mind will have forgotten both foods. For example, I live close to a Dairy Queen and needed the soft ice cream most nights. I changed to Snickers bars. After awhile I changed that to a granola bar. Now I had forgotten the ice cream and the Snickers so I could change to most anything and I was cured.
As you eliminate foods, start adding vegetables in the way of salads and soups. Start adding fruit as a bowl in the morning for breakfast. I even put a scoop of peanut butter in it. Peanut butter has protein, good fats, and potassium. It is better than a sweet role or donut. Have an apple after lunch or in the afternoons.
Have a fruit smoothie without sugar and add some protein. My smoothies have protein, a banana, some peanut butter, and a little chocolate syrup. It satisfies my sugar need and gives me protein and carbohydrates.
If you have carbs and protein in each meal your hunger will be staved longer, you will stay awake, and you will have energy. The next big secret is if you eat just a little, you will find in ten minutes, it was more satisfying than you would have thought.
I have dinner in several courses. I only add another course if I am still hungry. The courses also take me through the evening so my after dinner eating is just another healthy course. I might have salad, then soup, then spaghetti or chicken and rice and then oat meal. My dessert is a banana walnut muffin that is mostly natural. I might also have some peanuts and I drink lots of tea.
You can eat just about as much as you can hold if you give time after meals, eat natural food and eliminate foods your body doesn’t recognize like processed foods, sugar, bad fats, fried foods, and white flour.
Fitness Can Be Squeezed into Any Day
Posted by: | CommentsThe fact we say we don’t have time is untrue. 
Everyone has 24 hours and how we use it is up to us. If we feel fitness is not important, we will do something else with our time, like sleep. I stretch several times a day by assuming different yoga poses. It can be done in any clothing and doesn’t work up a sweat.
If you sit all day there are certain yoga poses that can help loosen up your back, shoulders, and neck. Usually we have to counter the positions we use in a sport or in sitting; most of the time this means opening up the back and shoulders. We can stretch our arms behind our back, lay backward over a stability ball, lean into a door jamb with our hands and fore arms against the jamb.
We also get tight hamstrings and calves which can be stretched by pushing against a wall, touching the floor, stretching our legs front to back and leaning over the forward knee and so on. Stretching is the first important part of fitness.
For surfing I warm up in the morning when I wake. I go into more poses after I have exercised by running or using the stability ball. I might also do some quick poses in the afternoon and definitely before I go to sleep. Five minutes a day can make a big difference. For great stretches see http://surfstronger.com/tips/
Diet is an important part of fitness. I don’t mean to eat less, I mean to eat right. Counting calories is the wrong way to lose weight or get fit. Fitness is consuming the right foods and eliminating the harmful foods. When I tell calorie counters to eliminate sugar, processed foods, most flour, and bad fats, they groan. What do I eat? You eat fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, eggs, vegetable proteins and meat not served in a bun.
I lost 25 pounds this year eating right and exercising and it is weight that will not come back because my diet changed. I never starve. I can eat continuously and as much as I want because I am never eating something my body doesn’t recognize. When it doesn’t recognize (unnatural food) something it encapsulates it in fat.
Aerobics are an important part of fitness even if you participate in a sport. As I surf and use a lot of upper body, I also run every other day to build my stamina for those paddling sessions. Aerobics are most effective as intervals. 15 minutes before or after work or on the weekends can have the same affect as 90 minutes walking or on the treadmill.
Attitude, discipline, and commitment are the core of better health. Do you really want to be fit or just wish you would wake up more fit some day? Anything worthwhile requires what some people think of as sacrifice. For me, there is just no alternative so I am not sacrificing.
Fitness means you can participate in more sports longer and feel better everyday and even perform better mentally. The self esteem that comes with lean and fit gives you more confidence in social situations. Other people respect people who seem to have a high regard for being healthy and fit. It might lead to a promotion or a romance. It improves leadership potential.
Start squeezing in a few minutes everyday and if you are an athlete, squeeze in more supportive stretching, aerobics, and nutrition.
Can You Be As Healthy and Happy as Surfers?
Posted by: | CommentsSurfing is a physical and emotional celebration.
When the waves are not good, surfers often say they are going in just to get wet. The first stroke is like that first drag off a cold beer on a hot day. There is an ecstatic feeling about being in the ocean on a board to challenge and blend with the energy churned up by Mother Nature.
There is the minimum requirement entrance fee of having health and some physical prowess. The fact that you can paddle for half an hour, duck dive some forceful energy, time a fast moving energy ball in order to get a ride that is natural and free, and then to test what you know as you read and react to your totally unique wave.
Surfing is never the same from day to day. No two waves are the same. When a wave expels its energy, it is gone forever. It travels thousands of miles and in one last breath as it mixes with the ocean bottom, it releases its energy through the water that man has learned to harness for some free fun.
What can you find in life that can give you the same mix of challenge, accomplishment, and connection? There are other things that can provide the same anticipation and then the same experience. I have always loved mountain biking. You have a contraption that only moves with human power and can tackle what nature has provided given your own capabilities.
It can’t get more simple than skateboarding. What fun could you have on a board with four wheels? How about a BMX bike? Both have pretty simple man power while riding around the city and finding natural objects to test your mettle. But then what happens when you get into designed parks and half pipes? A whole new world of challenge and ecstasy opens up.
These are easy ways to find and express passion. You don’t have to be physical to have fun. People get just as stoked taking pictures, cooking, writing, beading, sewing, filming, and even building businesses.
The idea is to live a life that as surfers say is “stoked”. To not have something that stokes you is to miss out on the most basic connection to who we are.
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Working Toward Worthwhile Goals
Posted by: | CommentsI am sure at least once a day we have a vision of some aspect of our lives being better.
My daily passion is fitness to improve my surfing, vitality, well being, appearance, and attitude. i set my next step in surfing and when I go out most every day, I try to practice that next step. Where it will lead, I do not know. It might depend on how many days i have left.
To enhance my surfing and physical abilities, I look for the support activities that create better athletes and surfers. I know yoga or stretching is important for every sport. Upper body strength is important for surfing so I add push ups and pulley work outs to increase necessary and support musculature.
Core strength is key in every major sport and I have an exercise ball that allows a lot of core exercise and balance practice. Stamina is important for both safety and execution on days when the surf is rough. I like to run stairs and i have started to add longer jogs that create aerobic and anaerobic conditioning.
Nutrition is extremely important to have the energy and recovery necessary to perform everyday. I balance my diet with fruit, salads, grains, beans, and protein. This practice takes as much discipline and concentration as my exercise.
Attitude is very important. i like to build everyday, not just when I feel like it. My long term goal is part of who i am. I feel gratitude to be here and have the opportunity to develop my human potential. We all have the ability to be better and enjoy nature and our physical gifts to maximize our nature experience.
Nature is my connection. I know we all have the same building blocks of gluons and quarks found in everything on earth. All people are basically the same. Blending with nature to feel the unity is an addictive activity that surfers cannot live without.
Passion is also a universal connection. We are most alive when we live to experience or work on something that expresses who we are.
Do We Set Our Own Ceilings?
Posted by: | CommentsAs a newer surfer, I have worked hard to learn the skills and build my capacity to surf more waves.
I observe most of my surfer comrades even in their 20’s who are excellent surfers but do little extra to build strength, stamina, flexibility, and mobility. It means they are in excellent condition to surf the waves they want, but have to be selective because they want the best waves, but have limited amount of paddle endurance.
On great days they will be extremely satisfied with their four or five waves, especially if there is a big line up, but reach their endurance limits before maybe they would like to.
My participation in recreational sports has always been an effort to get stronger and play longer in addition to learning sport specific skills from practice.
Do we do the same in our daily lives? We work at our craft by putting in the expected hours and trying to make the most of them. What would it take to go the next two or three steps? What would we have to learn and what would we have to practice, or what classes, lectures, online seminars, books would we have to engage to get the next step learning?
For surfing I improve my diet, my supplements, do yoga, core work, upper body exercises, and stretching as well as watch videos, read books, and watch other surfers.
I don’t remember this extra curricular activity when I was engaged in a career, but in the pre melt down, industries didn’t disappear as fast. With greater change and disruption in the current horizon, I think it behooves everyone to be more and to start forecasting the emerging and dying trends.
It will take more fleetness and preparedness in the future to remain viable. .
Winning in the Surf Line Up is Like Life
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a lot like life.
Have the expertise, expertise, the confidence, the sense of entitlement, respect for others, and the fitness to finish the mission.
Surfers in the line up can sense when someone is entitled to their turn at the next great wave. They become more sensitized when the waves are few and far between or the good ones are separated by a lot of close outs.
Paddle for a wave when you have a chance to get the inside position and catch it at the apex. If the day is crowded, the surfer at the apex is most likely to have the right of way. You can’t help it about the long boarders who might be able to start much further out than everyone else or get there first.
It is up to the long boarders to share as well or people will be cutting them off and dropping in on them. It is also not a great long term strategy to take every wave when others previously backed off for you. Some surfers kick out early so they can get back in position, but that doesn’t entitle them to every shot.
The bigger waves move faster and fewer people can actually catch them. In a few waves, the line up knows who could actually utilize the big wave and not waste it. If you waste a few, you will have lots of company on the drop in.
If there are too many people at the break and it becomes dangerous with everyone running for the same wave, it might be advisable to move to a safer place or one that is in greater accord with your wave catching skills. The alpha surfers are most likely to win out at the best breaks on crowded days.
The scene also becomes more intense when there are not enough waves for everyone because too many are close outs or the wave interval is too far apart with too few waves per set. Some people enjoy the hassle and some would rather just come back another day.
Winning is emerging safe and not ruining your day with too much frustration at not getting enough chances for good waves. Everyone reads the surf reports and estimates the best times given their obligations and free time. It amazes me how so many surfers show up at the optimum time during a session.
I find that there is usually one best window a day and that’s the one I shoot for. I may arrive a little early and have it to my self, but when it starts going off, I will have lots of company. Surfing with buddies or knowing the crowd in the line up is great because you are more likely to get your turn and more courtesy when you paddle for a wave.
If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth it.