"If you're expecting an intricately periodised strength and conditioning programme, prepare to be disappointed."
Kelly-Mania has taken over the mainstream media after the 54-year-old put on a wild heat winning performance at “The End of the Road” just days ago. Headlines crowing about how the ageless wonder is beating boys half his age, photo homages depicting “Kelly through the years” and exposes on how he is able to keep going at such a high level.
The venerable Men’s Health tucked in, on the latter, promising to reveal “how he stays so fit.”
Surf fans who have followed Slater closely for decades know that he is a particular eater favoring healthy fruits and chia seeds and various experimentations with supplements. His workout routine, however, is less well known.
I suppose I pictured the 11-time world surfing champion in some sort of semi-regular Crossfit except cooler program but, according to Men’s Health:
If you’re expecting an intricately periodised strength and conditioning programme, prepare to be disappointed.
‘I don’t have a workout routine per se. Surfing is my training,’ he told Men’s Health in a recent interview.
And he’s not exaggerating when he says that. When the waves are good, Slater says he can spend six to eight hours a day surfing.
Six to eight hours of surfing a day?
Wild.
But what is your average time spent per session? If I surf for more than an hour, I mentally give myself a little gold medal.
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because he’s wrong
Finnegan read like a really bad friend
Cunt
My biceps are rad, I chop wood and surf.
Xox
Banal caught me off guard.
It’s proof that the internet is where simpletons come to spend time.
I can understand someone saying that they dislike the book but the adjectives and reasons given here make no sense.
Anytime the book, or Finnegan, is brought up on BG the haters come out. I’ve gone through some old articles related to Finnegan and it’s always been that way. It takes all types, I guess.
I especially admire his prose.
Sweet. I actually didn’t know Rich was talking about Finnegan when I wrote that. I always stay across the street at Sundat Maswhen there. Place is legit and soooo much cheaper. Don’t have the beach access though.
I wanted to tell the story of just randomly meeting a surfer and he starts telling the stories Bill Finnegan told in his books. No context or idea who he was. This was 2005 when he wasn’t as well known among surfers. You’d think he was full of shit too.
I got bits and pieces of more context from his friends he was with and saw how certain respected people on the island reacted to/interacted with him that suggested he was legit as the week went on. But a willingness to suffer and experience pain for good waves gives a lot of credibility.
I thought your avatar was a dude on a boogieboard at first
Both Bog’s and Connery have are prone now that you mention it..
Are they closet boogers?
Barbarian days is even better than Doc’s Games. He had become a better writer and more rounded person.
Everybody loves Bill
he’s bullshitting.
how do you know when Kelly is lying?
when his lips move.
Erin rips – her results belie her surfing talent.
I always assume a session is 2 hours. That hasn’t been the case for like 20 years, but that’s still what I budget. Of course, I also expect a carnitas burrito to be $6 still, so I might be stuck in my 20s.
Does he still practice semen retention? Asking for a friend…
Contest on wonder if its women or men.
When I was snot nosed 20 year old kid who didn’t realize how lucky I was my dad paid for me and him to go to Tavarua. This was in the mid 2000’s when they still had exclusive access to Restaurants and Cloudbreak. Took the plane over, met up at the hotel near the airport. I get on the bus and quickly meet a guy named Mike or something who mentioned he surfed Mavericks within 2 min of introducing himself to the rest of the bus. I also met a guy named “Bill” who claimed to be a writer from New York. Since they were both surfers I assumed they were completely full of shit.
Bill and my dad are similar vintage so they sort of hit it off. I sat in on a few of the conversations where they exchanged stories about growing up around California. Bill mentioned living in Hawaii, surfing big Honolua without a leash while being completely broke, very good stories, all seem possible given the time and circumstances, but again this is a surfer I was dealing with.
We had good waves this trip and the biggest day Restaurants was head high to overhead. I saw Bill paddle out in the morning maybe 8 or 9 am. I had a few sessions and would go in for water and food for an hour or so then go back out. Each time I surfed Bill was out. I didn’t really think anything of it. But then mid to late afternoon I saw a soaking wet Bill looking ragged pounding water while a Tavarua employee brought him food.
I asked him if he just surfed for 7 or whatever hours straight hours.
With an almost embarrassed tone he said “Yes, I don’t get to surf waves like this that often.”
I took everything he said at face value after that.
I’ll have try to finish that novel tomorrow. It was excruciating
Reading it stroked the shit out of my ego because I had heard some of the stories years before the book came out.
That’s a vibe. I’m a fan of Bill’s writing, despite all the haters here. Maybe they should have listened to the audiobook, like I did, so they wouldn’t have had to struggle with all of the pronunciations. Was the Mike fella famous, or just a regular Californian surfer?
I’m not sure how the end of barbarian days came off if you read the book, but hearing him narrate it with so much sincerity made for an excellent ending.
I think his article “Playing Doc’s Games” about his years in SF is one of the 5 best things ever written about surfing. But other than that, Barbarian Days seemed like the kind of book a non-surfer would appreciate. I pretty quickly got over “and then we scored this place nobody had ever surfed and it was big and perfect and dangerous and oh, btw, I’ve never had to punch a clock or be anywhere at any specific time at any point in my life.”
For my money, Dan Duane’s “Caught Inside” is a far better and more accurate book portraying the life of surfers you’d recognize.
I first read Caught Inside in 2003 at my Uni library, and I own a copy. In fact I own two copies, but Amazon can take one away from me any day they like, without recourse, as has been proven by Sony recently. I’d like to think that the majority of experienced surfers would hate it, as it’s the tale of a learner surfer. I like it because I like rural, coastal places and when writers write about that.
I think you completely missed the part of BD where he worked the railroads for 4 YEARS to save up for his big trip. And that he worked as a pot-wash in Kirra less than 2 years into the trip. And that he worked as a full time teacher in Saffa a year after that. I respect your opinion on the book, but you might be letting some bias against the writer or the style of book get in the way of enjoying it.
Out of curiosity, do you have a favourite autobiography that you enjoyed? And if not do you read biographies, because that’s what the book is and can only be enjoyed that way. The interesting life of a respected war reporter / journalist.
Barbarian Days is frikking amazing.
I’m curious – what exactly did you find amazing about it? From a surfer’s perspective the word banal comes to mind every time I think about it.
In all honesty I’d wager that like many surfers you’ve probably led an equally interesting if not perhaps more interesting life than Finnegan. You’re a better writer too I’d say, at least in your usual format. Guys like Finnegan are just boring and unoriginal but somehow find themselves incredibly interesting, or at least the right crowd tells them they’re interesting and they eat it up.
Bullshit. You find me a single surfer on earth who surfed the waves he did, as early as he did (often one of the first 7 – 50 surfers to surf these spots and then have the skill to write about it. To have kept notes about his travels and then to have the writing skills to write about it. And he’s a good writer. An award winning writer.
In honestly a bit shocked that you can’t see how unique that is.
Every surfer I know who has read the book loved it.
IF you’ve never traveled with someone else
surprised, very
Crazy part is what you’re saying here is all true, yet I found it flat. It’s not a bad book, I just don’t relate to it or care much for his voice or perspective. It’s all subjective, of course.
Banal?
mate, really???
Thats your assessment of BD?
Finnegan didn’t “discover” anything on his surf travels, the best wave he surfed was Restaurants and he heard about it from Mike Ritter’s girlfriend in a bar, who told him and Brian where it was –
His talent is he is a very good writer, from his years on staff at The New Yorker, so he can make an otherwise singular and selfish pursuit like surf travel interesting to all, particularly to non-surfers who love “Barbarian Days” as it opens a world they knew existed, but had no previous entry point.
A major subtext of the book for me was that the “sacrifices” we make for good waves often harm the people around us.
you know that dude that “explores” beyond the campsite just after you arrive to “check the river” and disappears wondering when dinner will be ready when he returns and if the tents are up?
Ha, you’re right, I have no recollection of the railroad job. I do remember the teaching job, but I don’t think that counts.
Duane may have been inexperienced when he wrote it, but I still think it nails the day-to-day of a surfer living in what I’d consider reality. He also charges heavy Ocean Beach in the winter and doesn’t surf at all the rest of the year, which is pretty cool.
Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, if you’d consider that an autobiography, is prob my fave and one of the most influential books I’ve ever read. My life wouldn’t be the same without it.
Gonna check it out. Desert solitaire.
Finnegan worked for 4 full years m, after his Uni, on the railroad making good money. It was a huge decision for him to leave that job because he would be giving up his seniority and therefore a promising career. All the senior people in his industry couldn’t understand why he would leave. He worked hard and made good money.
I have DD’s book on climbing in Yosemite in my inbox to purchase. Maybe one day.
Was just at Arches. Went to Back of Beyond Books and got a picture of his writing desk. I gifted everyone in my family copies of The Fools Progress years ago.
Back of Beyond is such a treasure
One of the greatest and most spiritual places on earth especially during winter when it is much quieter.
You’re right there is an advantage you get as a middle class or above dude with professional parents. Less chance of long term economic consequences if you fuck around for a few years in your 20’s. Going a lot of the places he did to turn around and get a writing job would be a lot harder if he didn’t have that. One of the more subtle ways class shows up in the US.
But also the stuff Finnegan did surfing looks easier in hindsight because Fiji etc. is now a well tread path. There are still waves out there that few if any have surfed. Usually cold or islands that don’t have swell windows directly south. Also places with unstable governments. Maybe they’re more expensive to safely access but they’re out there.
You also can’t get the kinds of writing jobs today that he did back in the day. I was able to make a living as a freelance writer for a long time but I couldn’t possibly do it now, and I had to hustle far more than he did.
Yes, I wrote a book about some of those places –
Selling well, thanks – you can find it on ama*on in the US and many booksellers worldwide.
Barbarian Days – written for non-surfers indeed.
I had to put it down somewhere around halfway through. A mix of boredom and the fact I had to ask myself why I was reading some guy’s life as a surfer/his personal musings when there are far more interesting surfers to read about. Plenty of surfers have lived a life so similar to Finnegan’s.
Just struck me as something either motivated purely by ego…or perhaps something to impress his Manhattanite peers in an attempt at greater relevancy in that circle.
Even Nat Young’s autobiography was far more interesting to me as a surfer. Yes it hurts to say it, but as a surfer, yeah, it was.
In my early 20s, after grinding at Jiffy Lube for 2 years and saving $$, I quit and didn’t work at all for a year. I lived on $19.20 / week in food (one polish sausage, a bag of potatoes, a gallon of OJ, a couple yellow onions, and beans) and surfed every day along the CA Central Coast / Big Sur with my battered Parmenters and Coles trying to find as many new spots as possible. I didn’t have the knowledge, connections, money, or balls to travel to the South Pac in those years, like Finnegan did. But I think I could prob turn around a pretty good collection of essays about that time that would be more authentic than Barbarian Days. To most surfers I know, anyway.
I’d read it but again I’m probably not really representative of any market that exists.
I have a few little vignettes about funny situations or things that have happened to me when trying to get waves. I’ve thought about writing a few of them up and submitting them here. The problem with writing about myself is that I have too big of an ego when I write but too much self awareness when I edit. I should probably just not give a fuck and throw something out there I’m not happy with.
bullshit mate.
I couldn’t get past the diamond head masturbatory wank session.. Never picked it back up even knowing later in the book he writes about two characters I’ve shared a rental van and line ups with..
If you think that is bad, try reading masturbatory books by self-professed Wall Street greats. You might hang yourself during the first chapter.
I can’t get past that he willingly lives in NYC. I’d rather chew my own leg off. I dunno how you can grow up partially in Hawaii, spend your prime traveling to beautiful wild places, then settle down in pure hell.
Maybe its a right of passage for his career. A lot of big things happen in the Big Apple.. Europe and North Africa pump all fall through spring. NYC would be a good spot if you had time and money. At his level he probably had both in the 90’s and 00’s. Publications had money to burn.
None of that would matter to me, personally. I’d rather live in my car in my own particular slice of beautiful, uncrowded NorCal, then live high on the hog in NYC. Especially if I was a writer who could work from anywhere.
Got a friend living in his car on Oahu. I remind myself all the time “I can’t end up ..” Paradise not!
When I say “live in my car” I mean, “remain gainfully employed and live in a well-equipped Sprinter Van that I can easily afford to maintain and improve, etc”
Caught Inside is a real gem.
Playing Doc’s Games is the definitive account of a scared barn with a psycho big wave wave mentor. I can relate. I’ve always wondered if there is no eos chapter for bill because warshaw saw it as a betrayal of norcal core.
I think by the time Barbarian Days came out EOS wasn’t adding new entries.
My session all depends on conditions and crowd-
No crowd/great waves- 3 hours
No crowd/average waves- 2 hours
No crowd/mediocre waves- 1 hour
No crowd/terrible waves- 30 mins
Crowd/Good waves- 2 hours
Crowd/average waves- 1 hour
Crowd/mediocre waves- 1/2 hour
Crowd/terrible waves- Not going out
Time watching the women surf chopes yesterday- 1o minutes.
I know a Abalone diver from Morrocco & the only caught 2 waves every surf
I know a Abolone diver from Madeira who only catches 3 waves every surf
Does he throw them back at least?
Simon Jones is on that tempo..