INNER BALANCE WITH: ROBBY NAISH
Life’s a seesaw with many seats, and sitting around the fulcrum in the middle are business, health, family friends and leisure. If you go too heavy on one, everything else goes up in the air. There’s probably an equation to balance it all out, but we prefer to deal in matters of the art and not the science of fulfilment. So we asked Robby Naish how he’s managed to flow with the forces for so long…
Photos Filip Zuan
(This feature originally appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Windsurf Magazine. To read more features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 10 x issues a year!)
Health
SUP: Younger bodies don’t have to worry much about maintenance, but Father Time will catch us all. Can you tell us what changes in pace and output you’ve had to make?
RN: Honestly I have never really had to give it much thought and fortunately my body has pretty much kept pace with my athletic desires. I never really slowed down as far as the amount of time spent on the water… and I think that’s for me, what has made it easier to stay in shape and for the most part injury free for so long. I also ride with a pretty even throttle in terms of how I go about trying new things or hitting it hard. I have always approached things on the water with injury avoidance at the forefront while still riding hard, rather than just throwing myself into things with reckless abandon. Clearly having water as my playground of choice vs dirt, concrete, snow, ice or grass has been a big help too, as water is amazingly forgiving compared to just about everything else. Only recently, with the increase in sup to my regimen has injury or “wear and tear” become a slight issue. If you are not careful, the repetitive nature of sup paddling can be pretty hard on the shoulder and elbow joints – something to watch out for. Don’t over do things. Hold back 5-10% rather than paddling right at the straining limits and the shoulders will be happier.
Business
SUP: A lot of people set up businesses in the surfing industry to get them closer to their sport, to find that business actually keeps them out of the water. How have you managed this problem?
RN: You have to keep priorities. For most people, paying the bills of course has to be a pretty high priority, and as a result their business time usually comes before their surfing time, or they simply eventually get “sucked in.” I am lucky in that I am still a pretty well paid athlete. I get to ride whenever I want and still HAVE TO in order to meet my contractual obligations to my sponsors. I never let my business activities pull me too far from the water for too long. And for me being on the water is a very important part of the reason I started Naish in the first place. If anything, the business could use more of my time, but you could say that about everything in life. You have to have a balance with all of the choices and options and obligations that you create for yourself in life. Ultimately you have control over what you do and how you spend your time. Is time with your family important? Is having a well paying job? Is being the first guy out on the water every morning important? I enjoy the business challenges as well as those on the water, and fortunately I have been able to juggle them reasonably well.
Family
SUP: When we’re kids our families have a spirit for supporting our passions, so how can a parent foster a spirit of support for their hobby from a partner and kids that depends on them?
RN: See above. You have to have balance. A happy, fit, healthy mom or dad that makes time for themselves to stay on the water is going to be a better parent. Just spending every waking hour that you can with your kids is not necessarily a good thing, especially if that means “sitting in the den watching football on the tele” every weekend drinking beer. We set the examples for our children. Being a little selfish on occasion and spending time for ourselves in a positive, constructive, self nurturing and healthy way is not a bad thing, it is a good thing that will make the whole family vibe a healthier one. A great thing about sup is that it can also be “inclusive” of family too, not “exclusive.” Sup is something that you can do WITH your family, without it really even cramping your style much. You can take little kids on the board with you. And eventually they get on their own board. There are few sports where you can go as a family and actually do it together and have fun. I cannot take my family out to Ho’okipa, but we ride at Thousand Peaks together all the time.
Peers
SUP: During your competitive career, there was a tour to follow, events to win, elders, a system telling the athletes ‘what to do’. When you transitioned away from it, did you lack direction?
RN: To a certain degree that can happen. On tour you live by the event calendar, and you live for points-positions-podiums-prize money etc… Life has a very clear path and purpose and you can look twelve months in advance and pretty much know where you are going to be and when. Giving up that secure and very targeted existence can be difficult for an athlete, especially if you did it for decades as I did. Fortunately I did not stop competition all of a sudden. It was very gradual as I eliminated disciplines from my windsurfing World Cup events and eventually began competing in the Pro kiteboarding events. I did that for a couple of years before eventually not competing at all. I also always had various business activities throughout the years while I was on tour, starting with Quiksilver Europe in the mid 80’s with a lot of stuff following. So I had more going on than just competition – though competition was the number one priority always- and that made it so that there was not a giant void in my life when the competition ended. For some guys that don’t “sew parachutes” for themselves while they are on tour, life afterwards can be a sudden and rude awakening…
Sport
SUP: You’re still surprising us with feats like Pororoca, and it’s almost as sure as the sun will rise that the upper age of performance surfers increases each day, but do you feel that you, or others around you of a similar generation, have had to revise your expectations on what your contributions to the sport can be?
RN: Not really. I know that I am not going to be the world’s fastest paddler, or the guy that rides the world’s biggest wave. But because I don’t want to be, more than because I don’t feel that I could. My personal “expectations” with SUP have been pretty modest from the beginning. I don’t want to be one of those “old guys” that looks like he is living in denial and always seems to have something to prove or is clearly not comfortable getting older. I’m 51. I embrace it. I have lived and continue to live an incredibly blessed life. I know how lucky I have been to have been given the life that I have. I have worked really hard to keep it all going, with a deep appreciation for everything around me, including my health and fitness. I try to have fun, to ride at a high level no matter what I am doing, and to share the sport and the stoke and the boardriding lifestyle with the world. My contributions to sup are very different to those of windsurfing, and different to those in kiteboarding, but I also don’t go into things with many “expectations.” I have pretty much always lived by dreaming a lot, working and playing really hard and relying on “let’s see what happens.” Up to now it has worked out pretty well for me.
Surfers…
SUP: There’s a photo of Occy on the Naish Australia FB page, grinning holding a Javelin 12’6…what do you think happens in a shortboard surfer’s mind when they look at a paddle and say to themselves ‘you know what, it’s my time’?
RN: There is for sure almost always some pretty strong resistance from “shortboarders” towards even trying sup. There has been some headway made recently though as more “good surfers” and younger guys and girls get into sup. For sure from the beginning sup was a bit of an old guy sport, whether we like to admit it or not. Laird and Kalama are nearly 50 and most of the other first generation sup clan including myself are older than that. When you are 16, 17, 18, or even 25, remember how old 50 seems?! There is nothing wrong with that, but it takes seeing other young athletes doing it (and it helps if they are ripping) to slowly change that perception. It takes time. And for sure we have come a long way in a pretty short period of time. I know a lot of kids under 18 that are fully into sup, many of whom also surf a shortboard. The multi-sport athlete like me or Kai Lenny is also becoming less uncommon and is more appreciated than it was previously. It’s now cool to be able to do multiple sports. Especially from a fitness standpoint, sup is also a perfect cross training tool for an athlete in any sport, including surfing, and that fact is becoming clearer every day as more and more top athletes around the globe add sup to their training regimen. SUP
“ For guys that don’t “sew parachutes” for themselves while they are on tour, life afterwards can be a sudden and rude awakening ”