Do you remember the first barrel you ever got? My first was tiny. It didn’t actually count as a barrel, if I’m being honest. Not much bigger than a head dip, really. A quick vision before I lost my nerve and pushed out through the back, telling myself it was a close out. But I don’t know that it was a close out, because my eyes were mostly closed.
Since then, things haven’t gotten much better. Oh sure, I’ve had a few here and there. A few tiny barrels, all too brief, but still unforgettable. Never, though, have I been violently spat out of a standup barrel. Matt Bromley, however, has. Many times over. He wants to help people like me and maybe you if you’re a person like me.
“Here, in the last video of my barrel riding masterclass,” he writes, “I go through a full summary from picking your wave, to paddling in with confidence..sticking the steep drop and then pulling into the barrel with momentum, navigating the foam ball, and getting spat out.”
Bromley, in his quest to surf the biggest and best barrels in the world, has amassed a whole lot of time under the hood, and he has one final piece of advice that might not seem obvious: “Remember to keep your eyes open in the tube!”
