Surfing comes to us from Anglo-Saxon-speaking nations, so we won’t be outraged that the surfosphere is full of Anglicisms.
The latter include descriptions of the playing field, tricks and even qualifiers to describe surf teachers. It’s on this last subject that we’re going to focus, in order to dispel a few preconceived ideas.
Surf coaching: marketing or reality?
“Coach” translates as “trainer” and therefore tends to designate a person who teaches an already experienced public, and more particularly high-level athletes registered in the competition calendar.
Among the many surf schools springing up on our French coast, many surf educators describe themselves as surf coaches, suggesting a higher level of expertise than that of a simple instructor. This approach aims to attract an audience of experienced surfers rather than beginners. The latter expect excellent teaching.
The majority of these coaches are former competitors, at very different levels, which adds value for an audience that presupposes great teaching skills. However, it’s not enough to have competed to possess teaching skills; in Australia, for example, some renowned coaches have only a modest level of surfing experience. Yet Australia is one of the three main breeding grounds for world surfing champions, along with the USA and Brazil.
What’s more, it’s hard to make a living exclusively from high-level coaching, so most self-proclaimed surf coaches teach beginner to intermediate surfers.
Like their counterparts who don’t call themselves “coaches” but nevertheless embrace the full diversity of the teaching field, and in particular training for students who already know how to surf.
It should also be added that once a surf educator has graduated from a French training center, he or she has no opportunity to develop his or her training towards the top level, as no higher-level training is provided by the Ministry of Sports. However, the “self-proclaimed coach” comes from the same training centers. His skills will therefore be closely linked to his teaching career: he is a self-taught pedagogue who has developed his skills throughout his career, thanks to his qualities of observation, analysis and transmission. In the same way as any other surfing teacher, whatever title he or she may have given themselves: teacher, trainer or coach.
As you can see, for me, the term “coach” is mostly marketing, even if there are coaches who specialize in advanced training and have genuine teaching skills. All surf teachers are obliged to bow to the law of the market and communication and sprinkle their com with fabulous words like “surf coaching” (sounds more professional than “surf teacher”), improvement (rather than regression when the teacher is really bad), video analysis and so on.
It’s not enough to call yourself a coach or to have competed to be a good surf coach. To find out for sure, the student has to try out the coach! Nevertheless, I’d recommend an educator with decades of teaching experience over a six-day-old bunny fresh out of training. Even if he’s prettier, has his picture in Surf Session Magasine and makes funny videos on Tik Tok.
Surf teachers, a wide range of profiles
To make the right choice in the jungle of surf schools, the trainee needs to know a few things. To put it simply, there are two types of surf teacher training:
The longest training course, and probably the one with the highest quality: the brevet d’État de surfing (former diploma) has now become the Brevet professionnel de surfing (professional surfing diploma), delivered by the training centers run by the French Ministry of Sport (Creps, FFS, Ucpa, etc.).
The ISA is the international diploma chosen as the European reference diploma, with only two weeks’ training, so the teacher’s qualification will depend largely on his or her profile and experience. There is also a German diploma which lies between the French diploma and the isa in terms of training time. Non-French graduates holding these international diplomas are tested by the French Ministry of Youth and Sports to verify their ability to safely take students into this specific environment. It’s important to make sure that your surf instructor has the necessary “Jeunesse et Sports” accreditation or professional card.
Nevertheless, whatever the geographical origin and training of surf instructors, depending on whether they emphasize commercial or qualitative aspects, the quality of their teaching will be highly contrasted: hence the famous knee take-off that is still frequently taught today, the antidote to any progress towards surfing excellence. And while not everyone is capable of executing a dynamic take-off, it’s curious to teach the knee technique by default, as if one were presuming in advance that one’s pupils would be incapable.
There are two approaches:
– the one that consists in keeping the pupil in a state of absolute dependence on his teacher: this is the school of the baby carriage and the knee take-off. Alone, the student is incapable of rowing to catch a wave or even a foam. This is clearly not coaching; it’s more a matter of superficial discovery of the discipline and the aquatic environment.
– the other approach considers that beginners deserve, just as much as experienced surfers, quality teaching that will enable them to become autonomous surfers, capable of surfing in complete safety (their own and that of others). And to become a good surfer. We’re not talking about coaching here, but initiation, and yet here we find the same acuity and teaching finesse as in top-level training. But without the pressure of competition.
So the same surf educator, whether he or she claims to teach or coach, needs to be competent in all phases of learning to surf, from initiation to improvement. Often, he or she teaches surfers of very different levels, although most experienced surfers will trust a surf school that claims to “coach”, because it relies on the prestige of a former competitor.
Diversity of coachees
Surfing excellence doesn’t need podiums; confronting ever-changing waves is a challenge in itself, and there are few complete surfers capable of surfing small waves as well as taking on outsized waves.
Aside from the elite teams, surfers who come to a surf coach or sports educator for refresher courses are generally at very different levels. In many cases, these surfers have missed out on a few important milestones and a few basics, and may have to accept a slight step backwards in order to get back on track.
“Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards,” Tessa Asamoha.
Of course, the educator can sell them the dream by talking about their little finger and the sensation of the wind on their left earlobe at the bottom-turn, but if the look, posture and support are incorrect, and the board too small, performance will be an impossible goal.
At Ki Surf School, students have to choose between “surfing their ego” or “surfing the wave”, and it’s this second objective that will be favored by the trainer/prof/coach.
Technical tutorials are almost exclusively found on the Internet, and are abstruse, imprecise and even regressive. Beyond the marketing packaging, a trainer’s added value lies in his pedagogical know-how, his ability to transform his experience and sense of observation into theoretical content, and his method of transmitting this knowledge. So it’s easy to see why he wouldn’t want to put his life’s worth of knowledge on the Internet for his competitors to use.
This blog tries to fall somewhere in between, giving surfers the keys to progress without giving everything away. The little secrets will be dispensed during a surf session and can then be tailored to the surfer.
In conclusion, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a coach, trainer, instructor or surf teacher, what counts is the teacher’s personality and the content of his or her lessons.
