Surfing Through Pain: World record holder Blake Johnston Reveals How to Break Your Own Limits

"You can't give those negative moments a voice. You don't sit within them and ruminate on how things suck."

There ain’t much ol Blake Johnston can’t do. Two years back, the former pro surfer stepped out of the Pacific after stomping the Guinness world record for longest surf session ever, surfing for forty hours straight, catching over 500 waves and raising almost a quarter of a million dollars for charity.

Blake Johnston’s latest feat, and y’would’ve heard about it on every major outlet except here ’cause I was waiting for the heat to die down a little before we spoke, was to surf the Sydney wave tank for a month straight, all day every day. He had a couple of commitments, his kid was in a snowboard comp and he had a book launch down in Tassie, but he hit twenty five out of thirty-one days in July, surfing ten hours a day and, ultimately, rode 4097 waves for a total surfing time on the wave of seventeen-and-a-half hours.

Put that into perspective. Most rides are twenty seconds max.

And Blake being Blake, he didn’t just scoop a little cream off each wave, takeoff, turn, flick-off, or cruise to the end, but legit surfed each wave as best he could. Integrity is a real big part of Blake Johnston’s world.

“You make promises to yourself. No one would’ve given a fuck if I rode 3003 waves. I wanted to ride 4007 waves. Then more. There’s an integrity to it, an accountability, doing what I said I was going to do. It’s important in life that we stick to the promises we make every day.”

 

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Blake was advised by a doctor that he should take a break every three hours or the results on his body weren’t gonna be pretty. Blake did it for one day then figured, nah, I’ll push through.

All day, every day.

For a man like me who starts to lose interest after a dozen waves max, who ain’t no fan of pain, and as someone who often writes cheques he ain’t never gonna be able to cash, I wanted to talk less about the record-breaking feat and more about his techniques for beating pain.

First, an admission: it’s been a week since Blake rode his last wave in the tank and even though the surf is six-to-ten feet and painted in neat little rows by all-day offshores, he ain’t surfing. Blake has infected feet and shoulders that don’t work so well on their hinges.

“It’s difficult mentally to look at that swell. I should be whipping in with my mates. I’m weak, man, my body’s still in survival mode. I nearly passed out in the sauna. It’s not adapting like it should.”

He ain’t complaining, howevs, more a mechanic evaluating the condition of an old beater that’s been brought into the shop.

“The strength will come back. The Whoop told me I averaged three-and-a-half hours of sleep. That’s an adjustment I’m making, more sleep, but I keep waking up with my feet against the sheet. I can’t sleep on my side.”

So, how does a man push himself to surf for 10.3 hours a day over the course of a month in ten degree water and wrapped in a hoodie, 4/3 and booties.

“It’s a curiosity. I want to see what my forty-three-year-old body can do. It’s more evidence of what I can push myself through. It’s kinda scary. I’ve got some wild ideas in my head but sometimes I’ve gotta keep ’em to myself so I don’t scare the wife or my mates.”

The key, says Blake, is not to give the pain a voice.

“In those moments, you can’t be more present in your life. Your senses are heightened but it mirrors life. We through so many emotions every day, happiness to frustration to sadness, and when you push your body to the extreme you become adaptable to your environment. You realise how connected your body and mind are. You learn how one influences the other. You’re putting booties on nearly in tears and someone paddles out and they’re stoked on surfing, some ten-year-old bodyboarder from Earlwood who would never get to surf or a tradie getting to surf during the week, and instead of focussing on my left heel bleeding in my bootie, I chose to focus on that, for them to get the most out of their moment.

An ear infection two days in was tough to wrangle mentally, he says.

“It’s so consuming if it’s your tooth of your ear, how prominent the thoughts and attention you put on them. It was sensitive to touch with the hood and the neck and jaw lit up. But you can’t give those negative moments a voice. You don’t sit within them and ruminate on how things suck.”

Blake says there were times when he didn’t know if he would be able to get to his feet – he plans on editing a clip to show the reality of it. But, he says, he was able to overcome that handicap by learning different techniques to stand up, letting the board fall away to make the space between knees, feet and deck bigger, by riding what he calls the right boards and focussing on what each board could let him do.

Incredibly, middle-aged daddy Blake says he improved as a surfer over the month.

“It improved my timing and precision. A lot of us oversurf a wave. There’s an urgency that’s detrimental where we put a board where it doesn’t fit. Now I use less effort and I know where to put my energy. We’re told by surf coaches to look over your shoulder, use your arms, but if you’re not in the moment and making right decisions, timing and precision, you’re missing opportunities. It solidified my belief that the best thing you can do for your surfing is to ride different boards.”

Tell me more about pain, daddy.

“It’s a cliche but, fuck, cliches are cliches for a reason. Pain doesn’t last forever. It’s a feeling we get through. After that first day, my whole left side was loaded, knee, glute, quad. One we push through that, experience it, you become more capable than we think. That’s something I really took away from that. Man, 110 waves a day in ten degree water. And that was proper surfing and I’m proud I did that with integrity. I was still doing turns on my last day.”