What is The Surfer’s Health?

A touch of enlightenment or a bit of saltwater common sense?

When I left university, with no experience and no real plan, the only place that took me in was one of those esoteric clinics where everybody spoke very softly, smelled faintly of incense, and seemed convinced that most human problems could be solved with Tibetan singing bowls and the correct herbal tea.

In the rooms next door, there was a Quantum Healing therapist, a Psychic Surgeon (still not entirely sure what was being operated on), an Aura Fluffing and Clearing specialist, and a guy treating musculoskeletal problems with hammers. It was a very a lively place.

And yeah, they claimed to treat everything. Absolutely everything. If you walked in with a headache, you might leave with your aura aligned, your chakras rebooted, and possibly a mild concussion from the hammer guy.

They looked at me a bit suspiciously. Maybe wondering what I was doing there. What exactly was my therapy? Why wasn't I wearing a tunic? Why didn't I speak in a whisper? Was I some kind of undercover inspector from the health authorities?

These days, I scroll through Instagram and other platforms and see a remarkably similar landscape. A steady parade of “miracle workouts,” “the secret to this,” “the 3 best exercises for every pain,” five-thousand-dollar longevity protocols, surf mind and body retreats… and, of course, the latest trick some enlightened soul has discovered for low back pain.

It reminds me a lot of that clinic. Just without the guy with the hammers. Which, depending on the day, may or may not be progress.

But hey… do these things actually work?

Not the clinic stuff. I think we can safely move on from that.

I mean the surf-related ones. The training, the recovery, the protocols. Do they hold up?

That curiosity, the need to understand if something works, how it works, and why it works, led me down a fairly deep rabbit hole. Hours spent digging through research papers, protocols, and data.

And that’s how The Surfer’s Health came about.

It’s a place where I want to share what I’m finding. The current state of science around surfing and health.

So, in TSH, I’ll try to separate the good info from the bad one… I also try to organize it. Strip it down to what matters. Make it simple. And build practical solutions for us, surfers, in the form articles you can read and programs you can actually use.

So, what is TSH?

Simple, clear, science-based information… with a bit of salt.

No magic. No hype.

JB