🏄‍♀️ How to surf without surf 🥺

👋 Happy National Swim a Lap Day! Which feels fitting, because our main story this week is for anyone who’s landlocked and wondering if swimming laps is now the closest they’ll ever get to surfing.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• How to surf without surf 🥺

• Twenty-five years to a pop-up 🙌

• Surfing bliss incarnate 🤘

• From Oregon to global solo trips 💬

• Surf news roundup 📰

• The surf retreat lineup 🏝️

^{(NO) SURFODRAMA}

🏄🏻‍♀️ How to surf without surf 🥺

'Some days I think I'll just quit my surf dreams.'

If you've ever thought that, you're not alone. Landlocked. Postpartum. Stuck in winter blues. Recovering from an injury. Or between the surf trips. The reasons vary, but the feeling doesn't.

Here's the playbook straight from the Girls Who Can’t Surf Good community. How surfer girls train for surfing when they can't actually surf.

🛹 Pop-ups and burpees
Lowest-tech, biggest bang for buck. Practice your pop-up on the carpet, on a yoga mat, on the kitchen floor. One member wrote: 'Surf burpees, pop up practice every day, watch surf videos while doing them.' Another lays on the wheelchair ramp at her local hydrotherapy pool to do slow-motion pop-ups in warm water. Before work. Every day.

But but but do not get hung up on a perfect pop-up. There’s plenty more to surfing!

💪 Pilates (especially after a baby)
Pilates came up more times than any other single recommendation in the thread. Mat Pilates, reformer, postnatal Pilates. The reasons surfaced quickly. Core strength. Hip stability. Shoulder control. Balance. And one comment worth its weight in gold: 'I was surprised by how much my weak pelvic floor muscles affected my balance. So don't neglect those muscles.'

If you've recently had a baby, this appears to be the category.

🌀 Balance and surf skate
Some members take surf skate lessons in their off months. Some have surf trainer boards at home, commercial ones, DIY builds made from Lowe's lumber, custom ones designed to mimic actual foot placement on a surfboard. One member keeps a thick piece of foam in her kitchen and stands one-legged on it while she's making dinner. It all helps.

Anything that wobbles and teaches your feet to react is working.

🏊‍♀️ Paddle endurance
Surfing means a lot of paddling. Most sessions, you'll spend more time on your belly than on your feet. Or just waiting for the waves.

Swimming was the most-cited paddle-fitness recommendation. One member put it: 'I never get gassed paddling out now cos I'm always paddle fit even if I haven't surfed much lately.' SUP and paddle boarding on lakes were close behind. One landlocked surfer takes her board to a lake, runs along the shallows, dives on, paddles hard, and gets a short stand-up. Wow.

For the truly committed, there's the Surfbasis paddle trainer. Costs money, we haven’t had a chance to review it yet.

🏋️‍♀️ Strength (lats, shoulders, core)
Strength training for surfing has a shape to it. Lats and back for paddling power. Shoulders for endurance and the pop-up. Core for balance and the moment your board catches an edge. Hip stability for the bottom turn.

Planks, push-ups, TRX rows, deadlifts, lunges with a pop-up at the bottom. Bouldering came up too, from a member who said it's 'great for all round strength and mobility, and really works on your pull strength for paddling.' Climbing as cross-training is underrated.

📱 The apps and the toolkit
A few apps got named. Hydromind for surf-specific training programs. The Salty Club for routines and community. The Peloton app for general strength and cardio.

🤍 One last thing
If you just had a baby, first of all, congratulations! And if you feel like you may never surf again, this piece of advice from the group may be for you: 'Don't quit. You will need something for yourself more than ever after having children.'

The ocean (and the bores, lakes, oil tanker waves and wave pools) will still be there whenever you feel ready to get back to it.

^{GIRL WHO CAN POP UP AT LAST}

🙌 Twenty-five years to a pop-up because of Point Break

Meet Shari, one of our Girls Who Can't Surf Good. Canadian by birth, Dee Why local since 1998. She sat down for a long interview. This is her story.

Shari was 28, out very late on the Greek island of Ios, and had just finished watching Point Break at the Red Lion Restaurant. She climbed onto the table.

"That's it," she announced. "I'm gonna learn how to surf."

All the guys laughed.

That was 1993, give or take. Shari is Canadian by birth, has lived in Australia since 1995, and to hear her tell it, every consequential decision of the thirty-odd years in between traces back to that table in Ios.

She left her family behind. She went bankrupt twice. When Shari met the man who would become her husband, she laid down a single condition for a second date: he had to be willing to live within 100 meters of Dee Why Beach.

"I came here because I wanted to surf," she says, "and I didn't leave because I want to surf."

The road from Ios to Dee Why ran through two ski seasons in St. Anton, Austria, and a London doss house in Hammersmith. 31 people in a two-bedroom walk-up. Shari started on the living room floor, graduated to a bedroom floor, and finally graduated to an under-the-stairs closet. "I was the only person out of 31 people who had a door I could close."

She fell for the Australians in that house. Things had gone sideways. Thefts, "bad things." And the Aussies kept saying, you got to do the right thing, you got to do the right thing. "I thought, well, any country that has that as a saying has to be a good place."

But first there was Maui.

A friend she'd skied with in St. Anton called her in Canada: Shari, we're all down in Maui. I've got a room, a job, and a car for you to buy. Get down here. Shari quit everything and inside ten days, flew to Pa'ia, and moved into a house with ten surfer guys. She was working, and she was, finally, learning to surf.

A Hawaiian man at Pu'amana, on the south side near Lahaina, took her under his wing. Every morning she and a German friend named Franziska made the 45-minute drive across the island to practice surfing in the small waves.

Then Shari decided she had to surf the North Shore…

What happens on the North Shore is bad. Very bad. What happens after is the whole story.

A roll of duct tape. A Hawaiian woman who returns Shari's board to a house she's never been to. Two decades in Dee Why's lineup. Cancer. A forty-pound comeback. And the pop-up revelation that took twenty-five years to land.

👉 Continue reading Shari’s story

^{VIDEO OF THE WEEK}

🤘 Surfing bliss incarnate

Here's one minute of absolute bliss featuring Sandi, @sandiwol, one of our mighty Girls Who Can’t Surf Good crew.

That’s it. That’s the video.

Yes, she can surf pretty good. 😜 No, it’s not Pavones.

^{LATEST FROM GIRLS WHO CAN’T SURF GOOD}

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🏖️ Looking for a beginner-friendly surf instructor near Doheny Beach in South OC, ideally a woman-owned business? Community top picks: M&M Surfing in Seal Beach, Girl in the Curl in Dana Point (ask for Mary), Bella, and San Diego South County Women's Surf Club for a road trip south.

🌲 Surf spots within reach of Boise on the Oregon Coast? Community top picks: Short Sands, Otter Rock, Agate Beach, Indian Beach, Lincoln City, Newport, Pacific City (long logs), Seaside (the Cove), and Westport in Washington for some jetty protection.

🛫 Solo August surf trip for an advanced beginner with JetBlue points?
Community top picks: Tamarindo and Nosara in Costa Rica (direct from Boston), Pura Vida Surf Adventures in Santa Teresa, Chica Brava in Popoyo Nicaragua (running an Aug 8-15 women's camp), San Clemente or Santa Cruz in California, Algarve Portugal with Tiny Wave Surf Camp, and Imsouane in Morocco.

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Surf fashion in Paris. Competition tech o’clock. Artificial reefs in Santa Cruz. Teahupo’o tragedy.

🌊 Pharrell sends Vuitton surfing
Louis Vuitton’s spring-summer 2027 men’s show brought surfing to Paris, with an artificial wave, logoed surfboards, Monogrammed diving gear and a beach-to-boardroom collection from Pharrell Williams.

⌚ Apple Watch joins the WSL kit
Apple showed how World Surf League competitors use the Apple Watch in heats to track time, scores and priority in real time, even when they cannot hear beach announcements from the water.

🪨 Pacifica surfers pitch Rob’s Reef
A group of Pacifica surfers and coastal engineers wants to build an artificial reef that could slow waves, fight erosion, restore beach sand and possibly create a new surfable wave.

🏄‍♀️ Santa Cruz statue finds its meaning
Surfers Kaila Pearson and Sarah Gerhardt explained why a female surfer statue matters in Santa Cruz: representation, balance and a public symbol that says women have always belonged in the lineup.

🖤 Teahupo’o tragedy
American surfer Patrick Phillips has died after a wipeout at Teahupo’o, a reminder that even smaller days at one of the world’s most consequential waves can be deadly.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS SURF DIRECTORY}

🏝️ The surf retreat lineup around the world

The directory just got a refresh, and the next six months of surf escapism are looking nicely populated. Retreats across Indonesia, the Philippines, Spain, Mexico, Sri Lanka and one stateside contest. Highlights:

🧘‍♀️ For the wiser crowd. Two Over-40s retreats this year. Siargao in October (Oct 4-10) and Lombok in late November (Nov 30-Dec 6). The 'when do I stop being a beginner' demographic finally has options.

🌺 For the cultural curious. The Women's Surf & Cultural Retreats in the Mentawais run twice in August (Aug 2 and Aug 16). Daily surf, local food, coral planting, batik workshop, jungle hike.

🍂 For the European autumn. Surf & Soul in Spain runs back-to-back start dates (Oct 16 and Oct 17). Pick your week.

✨ For something different. MoFlo x Surf in Baja, Mexico (Nov 11), and The Sevana in Sri Lanka over Christmas (Dec 20). Both improver-level.

👉 Check out the All Things Surf Directory for details

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

_{The Wipeout Weekly—our home and digital magazine.
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The Wipeout Weekly podcast—daily surf stories and weekly* guests.
All Things Surf Directory—surf retreats, learn to surf, classifieds, surf-side lodging, you name it.
Girls Who Can’t Surf Good—an 86k-member-strong private group on Facebook.}
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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
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