Surf Journalist reminded, again, of rejuvenative nature of hebetude, daily napping and the divine joy of being a “sloppy beast”!

Many miracles.

For as long as I can remmeber, I’ve been in thrall to the US Marine ideal, wake up pre-dawn, make bed, drop and give me twenty, ten chins, cold shower, all those traditional paving blocks of a successful existence. 

A stab in the eye to a world of junkies, hippies, freaks, VALS and every other sloppy beast out there. 

Over the past year and a half, as mentioned in eighteen previous posts,  I have become enormously fond of my WHOOP fitness tracker.

Four days ago, I explained how it freed me from the idealogical prison of hard work and guided me into a guilt-free and dreamy languor resulting in injury-free surfing. 

Today, a short note detailing how WHOOP showed me how little I was sleeping and the effect it was having on my recovery and therefore performance. 

The WHOOP measures, 

TIME IN BED

Sometimes it takes time to fall asleep and we don’t get as much sleep as we think. WHOOP automatically detects how much time you spent in bed in addition to how much sleep you got so you can see how well you slept.

DISTURBANCES

Whether we toss and turn, share a bed, have a newborn, or have a bad night of sleep, our rest doesn’t always go undisturbed. Track how many disturbances you had while sleeping and see if your sleep was interrupted too often.

EFFICIENCY

Are you asleep when you’re in bed? Sometimes we periodically wake-up and have restless nights of sleep. With WHOOP you can track how efficient your sleep was.

RESPIRATORY RATE

Track your breathing while you sleep based on the numbers of breaths you take per minute. Shifts in this metric can signal changes in health.

LATENCY

Monitor how long it takes for you to fall asleep based on when you are attempting to go to bed. Latency is tracked when you manually set sleep as an activity.

All addictive metrics and it has become an article of faith that what WHOOP asks, I must deliver. 

See average sleep over four consecutive days.

Surf performance below par.

General mood, listless, a slow walk across sand punctuated by slow paddling, no real desire to engage pack in games of strategy.

I’d figured boredom with the game, usual frustrations with crowds, quality of waves.

By following my personal sleep coach and by enjoying midday and three pm naps, beginning at twenty minutes apiece, increasing to one hour as my body became accustomed to the shutdown, I negated the effect of late nights.

The spark came back in the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile faintly luminous, into the face.

And, surfing without reserves or defences.

Rejuvenated, restored, I cast off everything, and returned to a love of surfing as powerful as the pansexual uge, in my case at least.

Buy your WHOOP here, fifteen percent discount if you use the code BEACHGRIT at checkout.