I have been coaching wingfoilers for years, and there is one thing I keep coming back to. The riders who break through are not necessarily the ones with the most talent or the best gear. They are the ones who have sorted something out in their head.
That is the whole reason I started this podcast. It is called The Lineup. In surfing, the lineup is where you sit and wait for your wave. For me it means something else too: the moment your skills, your body and your mind actually line up, and you get one of those rare sessions where everything works.
For the first episode I sat down on the beach in Tarifa with three people I know really well, and who happen to be three of the most in-form young riders on the GWA Wing Foil World Cup: the Acherer twins, Tom and Aleks, and Rocco Sotomayor. All teenagers. All at the very top and all of them happy to share their experience.
A wingfoil mental block can cost you a whole year
The part of the conversation I keep thinking about is Rocco’s.
When he was learning the front flip, early on, he broke his arm on it. He was not competing much yet, as he says, he was just a kid trying tricks. But that crash did something that the broken arm did not. It left a mark in his head.
In his words: “that quite stopped me quite a bit on that trick. At least I had a mental block.” And then the line that I think every rider needs to hear. He did not land his first proper front flip until a year later, while he was already doing Palao back loops and harder things. A year. On a trick that, as he put it himself, “is one of the most basic tricks ever.”
He was completely honest about what that cost him. “That was a mistake, it took me too long.” Not the injury. The year of avoiding it afterwards.
This is the thing I see again and again as a coach. The fear in your head is almost always bigger than the risk on the water. Rocco is one of the best in the world and he still lost a year to a trick he was physically ready for long before he did it.
What actually breaks a block
So I asked him the obvious question. After a year, what changed? How did you finally just go and do it?
It was not a training plan. It was a younger rider coming up who started landing front flips in competition. Rocco basically dared himself out of it: he promised the kid that as soon as he arrived in Tarifa, if the kid sent it, Rocco would send it too. And he did.
His summary of how his block dissolved was the point when he told himself: “It’s about time, man. You can’t lose more time. Let’s go.”
That is it. That is the unlock. Not a secret technique. A decision to think differently, feel differently and suddenly being capable of doing what you couldn’t do before.
Two completely different relationships with fear
What I loved about having the three of them together is that they do not handle this the same way at all.
Tom puts it this way – his problem, if you can call it that, is that his ego will not let him quit. He said: “my ego doesn’t let me go off the water, I have to land it.” He was learning double front flips in Mexico, falling straight on his face over and over, and he refused to come in until he got one. Partly, very honestly, because he knew his brother and Rocco would tease him if he did not.
But listen to the reasoning underneath the ego, because it is sharp. If he crashes badly and then ends the session on that crash, he worries to carry the fear of that crash into the next session. So he forces another attempt, lands something, and walks off the water with confidence instead of fear. Is he managing his own head on purpose, just calling it ego?
Aleks, on the way back from his second injury, had the calmest take of the three. Same family, same level, completely different temperament. That contrast is the whole point of the show.
The sessions where everything just works
The other half of the conversation was the good half. The flow sessions. The days where the slightly harder tricks feel easy, and you even have time, mid-trick, to think “maybe I can add this or that, tweak it a little more, style it out, spin further,…”
I have chased that state for years, in windsurfing first and now in wingfoiling, and it is genuinely the reason most people are doing all of these fun sports, everybody on their level.
So I asked them straight: do you know how you make it happen?
Aleks gave the most honest answer possible. “I don’t know. Just like when you go out and the wing is a good size, nice wind, not gusty. The first tricks you land them right away. Then you have good confidence and the session ends up being pretty good.”
That sounds like a shrug, but it is not. Read it again. Good conditions, land the easy ones first, build confidence, then the hard ones come. That is a repeatable recipe for flow, described by someone who lives in it, who does not even realise he just gave you the blueprint.
Why this is the method, not just a chat
The Lineup Method is about three things: Skills, Body and Mind. Get those three to line up and you get Flow, and flow is where peak performance lives.
This episode is the proof of why the Mind part is not soft and optional. Rocco’s body could do the front flip a year before his mind let him. Tom uses a deliberate mental trick and calls it ego. Aleks builds flow through a confidence ladder without knowing he is doing it. Three of the best in the world, and the thing separating their good days from their bad days is happening between their ears, not in their gear bag.
If you ride in any form, on water or land, any sport, this one is for you. It is the conversation we usually don’t even really have – not consciously at least.
Meet the riders
Listen to the full episode
This is Episode 1 of The Lineup. The full conversation, with chapters, the guests’ rider profiles and the complete transcript, is here:
Listen and watch EP01 – The Fear, the Flow & the Front Flip
If it lands with you, send it to one rider who needs to hear the Rocco part. And if you want the whole method behind it, that lives at thelineup.tricktionary.com.
your Mind, Your Wave.
Michi
