Gary Linden - Coaching Masterclass

Gary Linden is one of the most respected surfers / shapers / coaches in the world, he’s also president of the ASP, and a damned nice chap. He’s coached surfers like David and Paul Barr, Chuey Rena, Mike Lambresi, Brad Gerlach, Myles Padaca, Todd Holland, Taylor Knox, and Colin Smith and is at present working with Shaun Sutton, Banning Capps and of course the UK’s Russell Winter.

Steve England caught up with him on a promotional visit to Beach Beat to have a chat, check his shapes and find out how to improve your competition surfing.

“The first thing you have to distinguish is the goal. Most people are so worried about what they’re going to do, or how they’re surfing, they don’t focus on what is really important, which is winning, The goal is to win. You’ve got to catch the three best waves, and stop your opponent from catching any waves. So you’ve got to break the heat down. The heats are 15 minutes long so you’ve got to catch a wave every five minutes.

"The tides in Britain are really big and conditions are constantly changing. So to make sure you get the best three waves you’ve got to go down to the beach sit and watch what’s going on. You’re going to have to be there all day before the contest watching the conditions trying to figure out what’s happening. If you have a heat going in at 11 o'clock you’ll know what bank you’re going to be surfing.

"If you know that you can start to work out the kind of repertoire you can do on that sort of a wave. What am I going to do, how am I going to perform? You know the conditions, the banks and the wave shape so you can work out what you’re going to do. Then practise.

Todd Holland

"I coached Todd Holland to first place in the OP Pro, with Tom Curren on the banner, larger than life. How he did that was he practised at different stages of the tide all week. That experience and each opponent's style told him what to do. We knew certain people would be strong at some things but look terrible on others. So we said right, who are you surfing against and what are they going to do? Then you can put your strengths against your opponents weaknesses. For example if it was a left hand peak and it was Derek Ho: he’s frontside and you can say right, he’s probably going to ride the barrel. I’m backside, so to beat him I’m got to go straight up and down with big backside manoeuvres. I’m going to pit my strength against his weakness. Todd made the impact by using this knowledge and he was a good enough surfer to go out and do that.

Judging

"So you know you have to catch three waves, you know the bank you’ll be on, and you have the right equipment, then you have to look at your technique.

"You have to surf to the judges. The first heat should establish exactly what the judges want to see so the surfers can go out and say “Okay, that’s what they want, that’s what I’m going to go out and do.” Most top level surfers are talented enough to go out and surf to the judges criteria. If you understand what the judges are asking you to do, then you go out and do it you’ll succeed.

"Getting a high score is all based on risk. Critical manoeuvres closest to the curl. As a judge I’ll give you a ten if you knock the top off the wave out the back and go all the way to the beach. If you go all the way to the beach and then knock the top off it you didn’t risk anything. If you fall off at that point what did you risk? A half a point difference? Therefore your first manoeuvre is the one that is going to give you the highest impact and you should risk everything to pull it. Whatever move the wave dictates, whether it’s pull in pig dog or whack it off the top it has to be high risk. You have to put it all on the line, and somehow communicate that to the judges stand.

"But! At the same time you don’t want to do too much. You only want to risk just enough to look better than the next guy. If you start risking too much, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you're going to start blowing things. So if I’m surfing against you and you’re much better than me then I’ve gotta go and pull out everything. But if I’m better than you, then I’m going to wait and see what you've got. If you score a 9 on your first wave then I’m going to start going for it. If you score a 5 on your first wave, I’m going to go for 7’s and 8’s.

Focus and Video

"Mainly what I concentrate on is teaching surfers how to focus. How to analyse what the situation requires and how to get to the goal. But there are also some other good ways of improving your surfing technique.

"You can use videos. I've found that the surfers themselves are usually the best judges of their own surfing. If you see a video of yourself surfing then you usually just go ‘God, you suck!”, and you thought you were ripping! Like you thought you were barrelled but the curl was five feet behind you! So if you have video of yourself you’re able to evaluate your own surfing.

"What you should also note that there are various athletes who enhance or diminish their performance level by body positioning. Like Tim Curran has an arm that goes funny and it distracts from everything else that his board is doing. There are also athletes who enhance them, like Brad Gerlach who is a really stylish surfer. As a kid he wasn’t that good, he was a bit gangly, but he worked on it. He would go over and over little tiny details, like hand placement and how the fingers looked, how his body looked when he was doing certain types of turns, and all those things really enhance a manoeuvre.

"Another good example is Mike Lambresi. He wasn’t having great results until he started emulating Tom Curren. Mike began using his arms the same way Curren did, watching his body movements and analysing them. He went on to be three or four times US champion.

"So you've got the videos and analysed them, isolated a good style. Now ask yourself how that technique is enhancing the manoeuvres they perform. Then you can go out and work at your body positioning by isolating manoeuvres and practising. Go out and say, “Right, today I’m not going to make waves, I’m going to do a bottom turn/off the top. That’s all I’m doing, and I’m going to do it at two foot, at four foot, and up until I get it down.” Start with the bottom turn, because everything starts with a strong bottom turn, and then go through everything right up to aerials. Then put them all together.

Taylor Knox

"Another thing we used to do is run practise heats. We’d have an A team and a B team and go down the beach and surf off. At one point there was Col Smith, Taylor Knox, and John Suberall in the B team. Col Smith would get 8’s, Tom Suberall would get 7’s. Taylor Knox would get 6’s, every practice. So what we worked on was how to get Taylor to get 8’s, get John to get 8’s and get Colin to get 9’s.

"Taylor was always number three out of three guys you never hear of anymore. He’s still going because he worked and listened. I can’t take credit for his work ethic, he always worked harder than anyone else, and that has been the difference. He asked himself “If I want to surf better what do I do?” The answer is you go out three times a day. So he’d do that every day, and he still does. What ever you told Taylor to do, he would do if he believed it would help him win.

"One big problem with surfing has been that the surfers can’t afford coaches. The surfers that can afford them don’t need them. They have the ability to get through and do well on their own. But there are many good surfers that are rated (WCT) in the 30’s and 40’s, maybe even the 20’s that could go up ten spots if they had a full time coach. Where as in other sports like gymnastics, coaching is seen as essential part of the sport.

Russell Winter

"It’s been really rewarding working with Russell because I get to see results. I’ve worked with a lot of surfers over my career and a lot of them aren't able to grasp what I’m saying, or they can’t put it into play. But as we’ve worked together longer he’s has grasped things quicker. Which is good. He has as much talent as anybody out there. He’s got the drive, he’s got the determination, but he didn't have the strategy that some of the older guys, like Kelly Slater, had. It was just experience really. Some guys develop strategy really early. Those are usually the guys who don’t have as much talent. The guys who have heaps of talent are used to going out there and just blowing people away. That’s why Russell’s knee injury is really a good thing because it’s going to force him to develop strategy. Then when he goes out to win the world title, which I think he will, he’ll need to have the strategy as well as the talent.

"Unfortunately the judging usually isn’t good enough for the surfers to be able to establish exactly what they have to do. We make so many mistakes it’s pathetic, but it’s a subjective thing and no one is perfect. If you judge at 90%, then it’s excellent, but it means that 10% of the time you screwed up. All it takes is one wave to screw up on and it messes up the whole heat.

“The essence of coaching is having an innate understanding of the sport. I’ve judged for 30 years now, I’ve organised contests and surfed in them so I know what’s going on and hopefully I can channel that experience into another surfer.

“I can’t tell you what to do in general but I can guarantee I can take and individual and raise their level. First I’ve got to see where you’re making your mistakes, and mostly it involves getting inside the surfers head and putting my 38 years if surfing experience in there. Some people don’t need it, some people need five minutes, but maybe that five minutes is all that it takes to make a difference.

"When you’re concentrating so hard on something sometimes it‘s hard to see a different approach. Like his natural reaction might be to do one thing but I’m saying to do something else, it’s hard to fight your natural reaction into that other channel and see that side. It takes practice and it takes belief in the person that is coaching you. it’s not something that comes naturally.

"You can put more structure to a surfer like Russell, you can put more structure to his surfing, his lifestyle, but would you have to be able to know when to stop before you halt his creativity. A good coach lets people be creative when ever possible, they don’t put in structure in until it’s absolutely necessary, because the hardest thing in anything is to get is creativity. It’s like a horse that doesn’t want to be ridden, you don't want to break them because then you just have an old nag. You want to get to that point where you can just barely ride them. You just need to be there when that person needs help, you don’t want to be overbearing.

"It's been one step at a time [with Russ]. It’s been things like teaching him how Sunset beach works. He used to hate Hawaii, but now he goes there and gets his best results. You know, I’ve been surfing Hawaii for thirty or so years, so I know there are a lot of things to surfing Sunset beach. Like how to paddle out, how to get over being intimidated by the Hawaiians, watching the rip. There’s all these things I can pass on so that when he goes out in the a heat at Sunset he can concentrate on the goal, which is winning, and he has a plan on how to get there.

"So we’ve done a lot of things, but most to it to this point has been establishing a relationship that includes belief in each other. He knows that wherever he is in the world he can call me and what ever is bothering him we can work out a solution. We can work it out because he knows that there is someone who has been in a similar situation and knows there is some way he can get out of it. Usually that’s all you need, and then you don’t even need to call. It’s like my father gave me the sense of belief that if I fall down he’s going to pick me up. So I hardly ever fell. I didn't need that net anymore. You establish that trust factor once that happens, like religion, then miracles can happen, but they won’t happen if you don’t have faith.

"Necessity is the mother of invention. So far Russell hasn’t trained a whole lot because he hasn’t needed to. Some people won’t do anything until they’re forced to do it. That’s why I told him it was probably a good thing he got a knee injury. Because he’s going to have to focus on doing it, I told him that when he was lying around my house drinking beers. There were things he could do that would help him with his career. He called me before he left for Reunion and he told me what he was going to do, which is why I wasn’t surprised when you told me he got fourth at Reunion. But I couldn’t just sit there and hammer it. When the time is right you can get through to them.

"Once you know the break you’ll also be able to choose your equipment. If it’s a beach break you’re going to need a board you can flick around. In real waves like Todos Santos you’re going to need a big board so you can catch the waves. If you’re a weak paddler you’re going to need a wider board for flotation so you can out-paddle the rest of the guys. If not you can have a thinner board that is more sensitive that you can throw around. But basically, you’ve got to catch those three best waves."

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