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Is Avoidance the best Strategy in a crowded lineup?
Do you avoid crowded surf spots and seek isolated areas without waves? Do you worry about the crowd at your surf spot? Most surfers prefer solitude or surfing with friends to avoid stress, pressure, and intimidation. But the number of surfers is increasing everywhere. To keep enjoying surfing, it's crucial to navigate crowded lineups calmly.
Before we talk about avoidance, I want to simply explain what happens in our body when it feels threatened.
Surfing Mind: Surfing is a high adrenaline sport, and it requires your nervous system to be alert, observant and ready for action. Your nervous system is put in a low-level fight-or-flight mode.
Here is how the Fight or Flight response progresses:
Alarm Stage: The initial reaction to a perceived threat (a looooooot of people in the surf)
where the central nervous system prepares the body to either confront or avoid the threat.
Resistance Stage: The body attempts to normalize and recover from the initial elevated
response. If the stressor persists, the body continues to function under higher stress levels.
Exhaustion Stage: If the stressor continues for an extended period, the body may enter this
stage, potentially leading to exhaustion, burnout, and reduced stress tolerance.
The intensity of fight or flight can also be influenced by individual factors, such as previous experiences and genetics, as well as the specific nature of the stressor (for example it could be a life threatening situation).
Coming back to our problem - the crowded line-up. In this state your body becomes more sensitive and aware of danger (think other boards, other people are in your way, you might have had an accident, or you might be in the way). You have a higher likelihood of being triggered.
Factors resulting from the Fight-or-flight-response that can stop us from catching waves:
• Fear of doing something wrong and being judged by the crowd, as group acceptance is crucial for survival.
• Performance anxiety increases with larger crowds and heightened alertness.
• Rely on subconscious programming rather than active reasoning; this means learned behaviour (for example: "I have learned in my childhood that confronting a seemingly dangeours situation can lead to harm.") Childhood behaviours often emerge in situations where immediate reactions are needed (e.g., avoiding conflict, perfectionism, bullying, emotional shut down).
Avoidance
Avoidance
A lot of us have learnt that avoiding confrontation is the best (easiest) way to get or stay away from problems. Many of us have learned that avoiding confrontation (big crowds) helps us achieve what we really want (catching more waves but really being liked by others, not being the greedy one, but he good one who is sharing) by not voicing our needs. This behaviour is often rewarded with love and attention for being calm and quiet and respectful, influencing how we interact with peers.
o If avoidance is your coping strategy while surfing, you might find an empty spot with less good waves or avoid surfing entirely. Suppressing emotions can cause significant inner stress.
o At its core, avoidance prioritizes peace over expressing emotions, leading to frustration from suppressed feelings and self-sabotage, where your desire to surf conflicts with crowd avoidance.
o This can result in growing resentment towards oneself ( I am not good enough as I can not get waves), which is highly toxic.
Easy Solution: Find empty waves, but you might drive long distances or only find mediocre ones. But if you are doing this in a group it can still be a lot of fun!
Harder but try also: Overcome frustration and assert yourself to catch waves. Here’s how:
1. Breathing exercises: Use box breathing (4x4x4x4, 8 repeats) to calm your nervous system. Breathe fully, expanding your stomach and pressing on the diaphragm. You can also do this in the water and pair it with visualization.
2. Surf visualization: Visualize paddling out calmly, shredding, and catching many waves even on crowded days. Repeat three times in detail, for at least five minutes—longer and more detailed is better.
3. Observation: Before paddling out, observe others' behaviour. Many people just sit around without catching waves, and some don't know where to sit. This can mentally reduce the crowd's size.
4. Going surfing in YOUR right conditions: Before you are paddling out yu should make sure that the conditions are right for you. Beginners going out in too big surf are putting theire health and others' on risk. You will find that whne the conditions feel right for you, you will feel more confident and more lielly able to battl;e a crowded line-up. Be honest to yourself - you will get to the point when you can surf bigger waves. Promised!
5. Using your voice: When you are paddling for a wave make sure you are determined to get it. If neccessary tell the other surfer that YOU are taking the wave (think of it as putting on the indicator when you are driving your car – you are signalling what you intend to do). To stay trustworthy keep looking if there is another person and do not drop in because paddling for a wave does NOT mean you have the right to drop in on people (although some may think that as a matter of fact). You should make an effort and know about surf etiquette and display it.
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