I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in order to surf well, you need to wipeout well. That knowledge, like so many other things, only comes from lived experience. You can watch all the tutorials in the world, but nothing teaches like doing. Still, though, a few pointers from someone with a pile of doing never hurts, so Matt Bromley is on a mission to share what he’s learned over the years.
“You never really know what is going to happen in a wipeout,” he said. “This is how I do it as safely as possible.”
There’s an old saying that says that those who can’t do, teach. That’s not necessarily true for anything, but especially not in surfing. Bromley has spent much of his life chasing huge waves and trying his very best not to fall, and in the process, he’s picked up a few good lessons.
A lesson on wiping out in the barrel is, admittedly, a bit of a niche thing. If we’re all being honest, we’re not getting barreled as much as we’d like. Hell, most barrels for me turn out to be closeouts that I exaggerated in my mind as I was paddling into them. Knowing how to safely escape from under the hood is important, because you want to be able to safely escape from under the hood without having to leave your surfboard, and the only way to do that is to try and try again.
“A lot of guys have really bad wipeouts when they’re surfing critical waves and there are a few things to be very aware of,” Bromley says. “Obviously when you’re surfing barreling waves, it’s shallow. The first thing you always want to protect is your head. Never dive head first into the base of the wave. It could be only a foot deep and you could be connecting with the reef or the bottom straight away.”
