Credits co-operations and references

Thank you to all the people who have had an influence on my surfing and surf coaching along the way. Some of you might not even have noticed the impact you had.

One example is a comment during a training session with fellow instructor trainees: “Man, if you always paddled with the same effort you show when trying to reach the lineup before a clean-up set, you’d catch any wave.”

That one stayed with me forever. When you paddle away from a clean-up set, you give everything instinctively. When paddling into a wave, you sometimes have to flip that switch consciously.

For its work in promoting surfing as a sport and developing training programs, certification pathways and ongoing professional development for current and future instructors, coaches and judges.

I completed part of my required practical training with Tim’s surf school in Famara. For me, that meant learning from someone who helped shape surf coaching on an international level and was respected far beyond Lanzarote — and I am grateful to him and his team for giving me one of my first real steps into professional surf coaching.

Even though I only had a few brief conversations with him, one short talk about my own technical surf development changed a lot for me. It moved my thinking away from simply “spend as much time in the water as you can” towards a much more useful question: why and how does something work — or not work? Random trial and error leads to random progress. Turn it around.

What I admire even more today is that Tim was not only a surf school owner, but still a coach on the beach. When he was there, he taught. For me, that says a lot. His work was not just about running a surf business; it was about the sport, the teaching and the people in the water.

Tim sadly passed away in 2022. He is still remembered by many, and his Surf Insight content remains valuable for surfers and coaches who want to understand surfing better. In great memory.