I nearly died in the impact zone when I was first starting to surf a couple of years ago. The waves kept crashing on my head - it was so scary. The big mistake I made was trying to swim back to the shore; I kept trying but was making no progress as the current kept pulling me out. When my friend finally got to me, he told me to get on the board and bodysurf a wave in. That saved my life. So simple! I learned that lesson the hard way, and I'll never forget it.

I’m a beginner and I’ve only tried to surf twice before. I remember right before I went to rent the surf board, I had fear of failure so strong that I had to do a 10min meditation to calm myself down and encourage myself to embrace failures. Just found your channel out. Really like your content!!!! They’re so helpful🥹

Thanks for this. It's a great video and exactly what I needed at the moment. I had a bad experience a couple of weeks ago, rough surf conditions. I was in a class of intermediate surfers and we got split up on the way out beyond the break. I was already tired from trying to paddle out and got badly smashed in in the impact zone, and when I was under water the second time, I really had no breath left and thought I was going to inhale underwater. I felt that my lungs were going to burst and the surface seemed much further away than I was expecting so I was panicking. Fortunately I got my head above water and was able to take a breath - but my big fear as I came up was that another wave would have come down on top of me and then, I'm not sure what would have happened. I knew my instructor was not far away but I'm not sure how long it would have taken him to get to me if I was drowning. Anyway, I left the water after that and did a beach clean to calm down but I was very shaken by it. I liked that you gave that great piece of advice at the end about learning to hold your breath. I've been practicing this now. I can now hold my breath about a minute 15 seconds and trying to get that up. I think what I learned during the experience was to think about breathing when you're surfing and especially if you're about to go under in a wave. Take a deep breath or two if necessary just before you're about to go under, then you can stay calm throughout and not panic - as you say Daniel, you'll be under for seconds only. Keep up the great work!

Amazing video and tips! Thank you!

My only fear is an impact with surf fins, these things are razor sharp

Awesome video man and this goes for everyone who has fear of bigger waves or even like me anything over 6ft, don’t be ashamed no everyone is born or has the mental capacity to surf huge waves I can throw buckets, do a nice layback yet I still have that fear keep in mind I definitely could do it but it’s a mental barrier and I do plan on it eventually:)

Great video! Such great insights

Great vid! Thank you, I'm moving forward to get that book!

Really interesting video Daniel! You don’t find much content about this topic. Keep it up! 💪🏽

Pretty nice content, very helpful.Grettings from Perú.

I would really recommend doing a 3-7 day surf camp to overcome these fears. Except for the survival one, I've barely felt the other ones, only lightly - and I would mostly attribute that to my experience of training with surf instructors and a bunch of other enthusiastic new surfers :) At a good surf camp, you have the trainers starting from a good place of skill so you build your surfing ability incrementally + the other camp surfers are usually extremely friendly and you all encourage each other from a positive angle - if you do well, you all cheer :) So it feels like team sports but without the judgements. So many good feelings, great energy :) It's also not that expensive (relatively, but particularly if you travel anyway and spend money on accommodation/food) - e.g. in Portugal or in Morocco!

"Everybody has also started surfing at some point". Yes, but they where 10 years old, not 30+ from a land locked country.