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The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
235. Kelly Slater: 11x World Surfing Champion Shares His Diet Protocol, Training Routine, and Recovery Tips
01:35:59
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- [00:00]
Kelly Slater
When I was first starting out, all I wanted to do was I want to be the number one surfer in the world. I won my first world title at 20. I went from 43rd in the world to first.
- [00:07]
Gary Brea
Near the ocean, it's such a big part of your life.
- [00:10]
Kelly Slater
You know, surfing really provides feeling. I think most humans nowadays with the way life is, we've lost that feeling in surfing. It's kind of more personal because you in the ocean and there's not other people playing this game that you're in. Whether it's just the speed of the wave, it's a real connection to nature.
- [00:23]
Gary Brea
Whether you knew it or not. You're spending so much time moving your body and grounded. Touching the surface of the earth is one one of the healthiest things that you can do.
- [00:31]
Kelly Slater
I was in a health food shop and there was a tape by Dr. Joel Wallach. He said, no one dies from old age. There's no such thing. You die of a deficiency of something over a long period of time. I was like, this is fuel for my fire right here. I'm going to actually like start being healthy. And then I got into water fasting.
- [00:45]
Gary Brea
I think water fasting is game changers and there's always these life changing testimonials that we get out of it.
- [00:50]
Kelly Slater
When you first make a change you're in control of with your body, it's so exciting and inspiring.
- [00:55]
Gary Brea
What keeps you passionate and still having that drive to stay at the top of your game? Because I'm sure the entire surf world want to knock you off.
- [01:03]
Kelly Slater
You're going to hate this, Gary. You're going to like hold this against me here.
- [01:18]
Gary Brea
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brea. Where we go down the road of everything, anti aging, biohacking, longevity and everything in between. Today is definitely one of those in between podcasts. 11 time world champion surfer Kelly Slater is here on the Ultimate Human podcast today. I'm so excited to run this podcast. Most of my questions aren't even about surfing, which is really odd for the greatest surfer of all time. And we had an unbelievable hour long conversation about shark attacks before the podcast. So maybe we even get into that while. While the cameras are rolling. But welcome to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
- [01:55]
Kelly Slater
Hey, good to see you. Great to have you, man. Appreciate it.
- [01:58]
Gary Brea
Yeah, thanks for making the. You know, I'm always fascinated by not just athletic professionalism or sports domination, but someone that can actually stay at the top of their game in a sport for a prolonged period of Time, like, you know, like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. It's not like they were great once, but they were great over such a long period of time. And I find it absolutely fascinating that you are the youngest surfer in the world. A world championship in your. When you were 20 and you were the oldest surfer to win a world championship.
- [02:34]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [02:35]
Gary Brea
At 39.
- [02:35]
Kelly Slater
39, yeah. And I remember I nearly, very nearly got one or two in my 40s, but just didn't. Did you.
- [02:43]
Gary Brea
Close.
- [02:43]
Kelly Slater
Came really close. Yeah.
- [02:44]
Gary Brea
You. You had to break your own record, right?
- [02:47]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [02:47]
Gary Brea
Because. Because you were the oldest at 39.
- [02:49]
Kelly Slater
So you would have been the oldest.
- [02:50]
Gary Brea
In your 40s, too.
- [02:50]
Kelly Slater
Came close. Came close.
- [02:51]
Gary Brea
I mean, that's like some Tom Brady game stuff. I mean, and I remember. You know, I've been a UFC fan for a long time, and I remember Veer Belfort became a good champion. Yeah, he's a. Yeah, he's a friend of mine, too. And became a champion at 18, and he almost became a champion again at 36. And that would have been the same bookending career.
- [03:10]
Kelly Slater
But that was the Jones fight, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:14]
Gary Brea
So somebody stood in the way of that one. But. So I wonder if you would. I mean, I have so many questions for you, but I wonder if you would just sort of let us into the mindset of what keeps you passionate and committed and. And still having that drive to stay at the top of your game, because I'm sure the entire surf world wanted to knock you off. There's a lot of young surfers that wanted that championship, too.
- [03:40]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I mean, that's a. That's the deal. When you're young, you're after the top older veterans, and then when you're the old veteran, all the young guys are after you. And, I mean, I surfed against a lot of guys on tour whose dads I surfed against. Really, When I was first on, their dads were kind of like the, you know, the veterans or the older guys than me.
- [03:58]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I don't.
- [04:02]
Kelly Slater
Look, I've worked hard, but I. It's not hard for me to want to do what I've done because I love surfing. You love that much. I just love surfing more than anything, you know, really. When I was a kid, I just. I grew up in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. It was different than the other sports and things. To me, it was. I felt like I had a very different, intimate relationship with it, and I was. I felt like I was learning things about the ocean and waves and surfing and how to. How to go about it that no one had ever known or something. I don't know. That's how it felt to me, you know, that's not to say I felt like as a young kid I was better than my heroes or something, but I felt like I. I had this keen sense that my. My relationship with surfing and waves was my own. And I played football. My, you know, I sort of told the story to a lot of friends that my dad was our football coach and I would skip practice. Practice to go surfing.
- [05:03]
Gary Brea
I made your dad really happy.
- [05:04]
Kelly Slater
That's how you know if your dad. That's how you know if your dads are cool with what you do, you know. Was he supportive? Yeah, he was fine. Whatever.
- [05:11]
Gary Brea
You won a world championship. He was like, all right, well, you can skip practice.
- [05:16]
Kelly Slater
But I, you know, I played basketball and baseball and football, and I loved them all. I was a. I was a big baseball and football fan as a kid and knew everything about the sports, and I was actually quite good at football and I was quite good in the field at baseball. I wasn't a great hitter, but I really understood. I could see the plays almost in slow motion, you know, because I love the game. I studied it so much as a kid, both the games. But funny story, I told someone this story the other day that the Astros used to do their training in Cocoa, near where we live.
- [05:50]
Gary Brea
Okay.
- [05:50]
Kelly Slater
And so we used to go to some of the games and my brother caught a pop fly one time. I probably shouldn't even tell the story.
- [05:56]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [05:56]
Kelly Slater
But I'm gonna. Because my dad has passed away now. But my brother caught a pop, you know, a foul ball, and he was all excited and he was probably about 11 or something, 12 years old, and he's like showing his friends, and then this like 15 year old girl comes and swipes it out of his hand. Really goes running away with the ball. And my dad's got a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and she comes running by my grab. My dad grabbed the scroll by the hair now. Took the ball out of her hand and gave it back to my brother.
- [06:26]
Gary Brea
That actually happened on national TV just recently, too.
- [06:29]
Kelly Slater
No. And the woman took it from the kid.
- [06:30]
Gary Brea
Yeah, the woman took it from the kid. And she was like the most hated woman in all.
- [06:34]
Kelly Slater
That's why I was telling this story, because it was kind of different, because my brother literally had possession of the ball for a long period of time. It was his, you know.
- [06:40]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [06:41]
Kelly Slater
And so my dad was like, yeah, Whatever, Give that thing back. Yeah, but that was, you know, that was in the 70s. You could kind of do. Yeah, you could do.
- [06:47]
Gary Brea
Well, there's no social media, so 300 million people didn't see a connection.
- [06:50]
Kelly Slater
There was no live camera.
- [06:51]
Gary Brea
I literally think this woman, my dad.
- [06:53]
Kelly Slater
Would be in jail right now if you did it this year.
- [06:55]
Gary Brea
This woman's like the most hated woman on social media. I didn't even see the story, I just saw the hate on social media and then I started digging into it and I, then I saw the video and I was like, what a. You know, she kind of deserved it. You know, I mean if an 11 year old kids got it, or any kids got possession of the ball, I mean, for the love of God, man. And you're an adult, I mean, just let the kid have the ball. You were a kid one time too, you know, I, I sat down with a two time super bowl champion. He was, his name is Billy Davis. He, he was a wide receiver and very dominant during his career. He took the Cowboys to the super bowl, if that tells you the era that he played in. And I asked him the same question and he told me this story about how he would. Because I said, how did you fight like the fame and the stardom and the notoriety and how did you not just go after all the pleasures of the flesh? I mean, your boys are going to, you know, nightclubs and they're drinking and you know, you went from being not someone of means and then all of a sudden you're wealthy and so you're getting pulled in all these directions. You know, there's women, there's booze, there's all kinds of distractions. And he said there was a moment when I would, I would break off the line and he said I'd be running down the field full at a hundred percent. Like literally I did not have one ounce of, of effort left in my body. And he said I could be in a stadium with 70, 000 people, but I could hear one voice, someone just saying, go Billy. And I would look down the sideline and I would see that the trumpet player was too close to the sideline. And I knew that I was going to get knocked out right there. And I was actually going to collide with the trumpet player. And he said I could feel the ball snap. Like the ball would just go up in the air. I wouldn't even look back for the ball. And I could also feel the defender coming across the field to hit me. And he said at that one moment there was A feeling that I can't describe. But he said, I chased that moment like a rat to cheese. It was better than any drug that I'd ever taken. And I just craved that moment and I could. And I pushed out all the noise. So when you were at the top of your surf game and you still are, was there that moment? Like was, did you feel like this oneness kind of with the ocean? Like was there, was there something about surfing that you just didn't get from every, any other aspect of your life?
- [09:11]
Kelly Slater
For sure. And I, I think, I think anyone in their own way can find that. You know, they say you're in the flow or whatever. Flow, state, flow, state, you know, but, but in surfing it's kind of more personal because you in the ocean and there's not other people playing this game that you're in, but there's a little danger too. Yeah, and there's all that stuff too. That's, that's, that's.
- [09:31]
Gary Brea
Yeah, well that adds to sharks in a hundred foot ways.
- [09:33]
Kelly Slater
That's, that's part of what drives, you know, there's, there's definitely adrenaline junkie in all of us surfers that, that love it like that, you know, but there is a thing where you don't feel like you're, there's no time between the, the thought and the action or there's not, you're not even thinking, you're just feeling. And when you, when you really are feeling like what he's just saying is like he's just going by feeling. That's what we were talking about earlier with, with, with great whites. You know, great whites on the west coast through into the fall, they stay in California and then they migrate south. They think that they mate out off of Mexico and then some of the females go to Hawaii and blah, blah.
- [10:11]
Gary Brea
This is so wild.
- [10:12]
Kelly Slater
So how does a great white find its way down to that place out in the ocean where they mate in the breeding grounds area or you know, maybe one of the islands off Mexico they go to and then swim underwater for a couple thousand miles and find Hawaii, those tiny dots in the middle of the ocean. So there's this, I think humans, I think most humans nowadays, with what we have with technology and the way life is and how fast paced things are, we've lost that feeling to some degree. And so with surfing, I think you have such a connection with nature and you're back in it all the time and you crave that thing. It is a drug. I remember I got hired to do this thing with Disney one time where I went and spoke to a bunch of people, they were having a convention and I was telling them how I am an addict. I just got addicted to something healthy.
- [11:04]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [11:04]
Kelly Slater
And I did compare surfing to a drug. And I felt a little weird about saying that at a Disney convention or.
- [11:09]
Gary Brea
Whatever, but I was like cold plunging, my drug of choice.
- [11:12]
Kelly Slater
But yeah, exactly. But it's. Yeah, I think everyone, everyone has, everyone desires to feel deeply, you know, but I think we all have our emotional reasons why we're scared of that. With relationships and stuff like that. And then with our life being so fast paced, you're not really connected. Most people don't do something where they have those kind of feelings very often. And surfing, it's not hard to get that. It's, it's a, it's a rush. You know, whether it's just the speed of the wave or you're riding nature, you know, you're just riding wind energy that has really come from, you know, temperature variations that caused the wind to create in the first place. You're really part of nature, you know, you become part of this thing. So it's, there is, there's always been this connection between, you know, spirituality and music and surfing and rhythm and patterns and people who are kind of counterculture. Timothy Leary was kind of big part of the surf scene, Laguna beach, back in the day and stuff. And so there's, there's all these elements.
- [12:14]
Gary Brea
Timothy Leary, the comedian.
- [12:16]
Kelly Slater
Sorry, did I, did I get that wrong? No, the LSD guy.
- [12:18]
Gary Brea
Oh, yeah, he was like a comedian. Lsd, kind of, kind of the vulgar guy.
- [12:24]
Kelly Slater
Sorry, did I get the wrong, did I get the wrong Larry?
- [12:26]
Gary Brea
Anyway, some Leary.
- [12:27]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, whatever. Just play that one over and over. Okay, who is it? Who was the guy? No, Dennis Leary is the guy. Dennis Leary. Timothy Leary was the guy who did, he was testing, he was, he was, he was just taking tons of LSD back in the day. And anyways, there was a lot of surfers around that era and that was kind of like in the 60s and 70s. There was a lot of surfers who were expats that they didn't want to go to war. They were kind of peaceful people, but they loved chasing surfing and the waves. And a lot of them disappeared to Central America and Bali and far off places, you know, South Africa or whatever. To go surf and not go to war, that's crazy. So they almost became like hated by their country because they didn't want to fight, you know, but so there's a, there's an interesting Culture that's always been a part of surfing. But I think ultimately, I guess what I'm getting at is that, you know, surfing really provides feeling and you get a, you get a good feedback from that, whether it's a positive or negative. You know, sometimes you're doing it right and sometimes you're doing it wrong and you kind of know real, you don't question it. You're like, ah, I gotta fix something, I'm out of line here. Yeah. And you know, if it's not going your way, but it's a real connection to, to the outside elements in nature.
- [13:40]
Gary Brea
There's got to be a time though when you're dropping, you know, down into a wave. I mean you've, you've felt the sheer power of the ocean. I mean you've, I'm sure you've been pummeled by waves before, of course. And you know, some of these waves are 50, 60, 70ft tall and you're on a, a board. What is it six feet by?
- [14:03]
Kelly Slater
Well, it depends. There's a lot of different, you know, there's a lot of different variables in there. I mean if you're riding a wave that big, it's generally when you're getting towed in on a jet ski and yeah, you'd probably on a board that's only six feet long, it's really heavy. If you're paddling, if you're trying to paddle like the biggest waves in the world, which, you know, the biggest waves ever paddle onto maybe are, they're a little smaller than the ones you can tow onto. You know, you could probably tow onto 100 foot wave if you can, if you can find one, but you can't really paddle onto 100 foot wave. Just the logistics of the speed of the wave, how long it takes to get down, all that kind of stuff and, and a big board creates a lot more friction on the water and, and you know, you can't maneuver or go as fast with a, with a big board.
- [14:45]
Gary Brea
So yeah, prefer like being towed out and being on a smaller board that.
- [14:51]
Kelly Slater
Makes it easy, that makes it easier. But I think you, you, we've always, my generation especially, but most, I think there's always been this kind of feeling where you need to kind of, you need to kind of earn your keep by paddling into big waves first before you tow into big waves. Yeah, but that's sort of starting to change. You're seeing a lot of people who can just, oh, I just started surfing, I want to tow a big wave and it's Pretty common now. And people go to Nasirae and want to get towed in on a 60, 70 foot wave and they've, you know, probably never paddled a 20 foot wave.
- [15:22]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [15:23]
Kelly Slater
I feel like you kind of have to like, you kind of got to earn your keep a little bit just to, just for your own confidence and stuff, you know, it seems kind of dangerous. It's dangerous. But my best buddy invented this inflatable vest. Shane Dorian invented this inflatable vest because Shane had a near death, near drowning experience himself. Yeah, he almost drowned at Half Moon Bay in California in around 2013, I think it was.
- [15:50]
Gary Brea
And from what? Just being pummeled by big wave.
- [15:52]
Kelly Slater
Huge like, you know, 60 foot wave he paddled onto and he was under for like a minute. But you know, imagine your heart rate's like, yeah, you know, 150 and you, you didn't get a good breath or the wind got knocked out of you and you, you know, your CO2 is high in your blood or whatever in your lungs and, and you're upside down. Yeah. And you're getting flipped around and you can't get to the surface. Another wave comes over, that kind of thing. So when Shane had that situation, he's like, I gotta do something about this. Because he loved big waves and that was his thing and he invented this thing. So basically every single big wave surfer in the world now is wearing a vest at all times that is inflatable because you don't want to have to completely rely on that. You want to be trained up and have your cardio good enough to where you could handle whatever without that, whatever situation you're in. Because that thing's not foolproof. You know, it could not work.
- [16:41]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [16:41]
Kelly Slater
It's been a few times where they haven't worked.
- [16:43]
Gary Brea
Oh, wow.
- [16:44]
Kelly Slater
But you want to be able to be confident that you've been in those situations and you're not relying necessarily on a jet ski to get you or this inflatable thing. Like you can hold your breath and the old school way, you know, but, but those have made it really accessible for most anyone to be able to tow into a giant wave. And, you know, if you can hold your breath for 15 or 20 seconds in a situation like that, you're probably going to be fine.
- [17:09]
Gary Brea
Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here but my VIP community. That's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge, tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for Life. Join the VIP community at the ultimatehuman.com VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Was. Was there a time, I mean, during your, you know, championship career and like, competing at that level, were there like, waves during certain eras where there were like, really great athletes and really great surfers and was there times when you felt like there wasn't a lot of competition? Or did that entire time, did you feel like somebody was right on your, your heels or did you even think about that?
- [18:53]
Kelly Slater
I've had different rivals, if that's what you mean.
- [18:55]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I'm saying, what mother faded you? I mean, just the passion of the sport.
- [18:59]
Kelly Slater
Occasionally it was rivals. You know, I had a. There's a. There's been a few big rivalries in surfing. One of them that's been spoken about a lot was myself and Andy Irons, who unfortunately passed away in 2010. But Andy and I for about six or eight years had a really pretty intense rivalry, and that really pushed me at that time. This is like early 2000s, maybe. 02. I came back on tour, I took a few years off and came back and he was world champ for like three years running starting the first year I got back on tour. So it took a big effort by me to get myself into a different gear and catch up with what was going on. You know, whether that's your surfing itself, your strength and your preparation, or just your mental state, you know, all those things kind of come together to create this recipe of ingredients for yourself. But, you know, prior to that when I was, when I was first starting out, when I won my first world title at 20, it was my first full year on tour. Yeah, I had already been a rookie because I competed a little bit in the two years prior to that, but not a full year. And.
- [20:09]
Gary Brea
Wow. You went straight to a world.
- [20:10]
Kelly Slater
I went from 43rd in the world to first year. Yeah.
- [20:14]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [20:15]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. So the, in 90, the end of 91, they were creating this new transition of the tour where it wasn't just an open series. You could just enter any contest. You had to be in the top 44 in the world to be able to be in any of the events.
- [20:29]
Gary Brea
Oh, okay.
- [20:30]
Kelly Slater
And so that year I, I graduated high school and I went on the qualifying series or I went on the world tour. And you had to be in the top 44. I got 43rd, so I just made it by one side.
- [20:41]
Gary Brea
That's wild.
- [20:42]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. And. And the guy who got 44th was a guy named Munga Berry from Michael Mungaberry from Burly Heads in Australia. And Manga and I were surfing against each other and second to last event of the year at Sunset Beach. And he spun around on this wave. He was behind me. I was paddling out and I paddled over this wave. I'm like, oh, I'm too late for this thing. I can't go. And Mungo was behind me and he spun around and barely, I don't even know if he paddled. He just stood up on this huge wave and free fell into it. And basically by making it through that heat, he made it on tour and he, you know, he ended up in the last, very last spot, he and I. But yeah, there's different things drive you at different times. When I was 20 years old, all I wanted to do was I wanted to be the best surfer in the world. I want to be the number one surfer in the world when it be a world champion like my heroes were, you know, and I want to try to match them. So I didn't have to find any kind of motivation when I went to contests. I was like, oh, I get to surf against Martin Potter. Oh, I could surf against Tom Curran. And you were always Tom Carroll. Oh, this guy. You know, it was either somebody I hugely respected or it was somebody who's surfing I didn't really respect. And I thought I should beat him.
- [21:56]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [21:56]
Kelly Slater
So I'm like, I gotta go prove, you know, I got a chip on my shoulder kind of thing. And when you're young, you, when you're young, you kind of got A chip on your shoulder for some reason. And when you're older, you got a chip on your shoulder for the opposite reason.
- [22:06]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [22:06]
Kelly Slater
And so you. You go through this sort of whole crescendo of, you know, reasons why and. And how you put your energy and efforts out there.
- [22:16]
Gary Brea
Well, for my audience that's not familiar with how surfing is scored, like, to become the.
- [22:21]
Kelly Slater
I'm not either.
- [22:24]
Gary Brea
All right, well, then we're screwed.
- [22:25]
Kelly Slater
This is a very.
- [22:25]
Gary Brea
Thank you for watching the ultimate Human podcast.
- [22:28]
Kelly Slater
It's a very hotly debated topic. You know, depending if you win or lose, the judges were either for you or they hate you.
- [22:34]
Gary Brea
Because as a layman, I'm like, that guy looked like he did a good job.
- [22:37]
Kelly Slater
He lost. I mean, we can.
- [22:40]
Gary Brea
Is it.
- [22:41]
Kelly Slater
I suppose it would be like, if you were judging music, you would get people who are good musicians, you would hope, you know, relatively skilled musicians and knowledgeable, and they would judge the skill at which someone played a song. I mean, because surfing is an art form as well. Right. So it's. You're sort of dredging this creativity, how they use the wave. But there's also a huge luck factor in surfing. Like, the right wave could come at the right time. That's way better than all the other waves.
- [23:10]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [23:11]
Kelly Slater
And so the idea behind judging surfing is you're trying to imagine what is the outermost limit of what can be done on a wave. What's the most high difficulty? And what.
- [23:25]
Gary Brea
I mean, are you trying to perform on that wave? Are you actually trying to do things on your board that are, you know, different difficulty levels so that a judge sees you and goes, wow, we just.
- [23:37]
Kelly Slater
Not a full 360. Because the wave doesn't always ask for the most difficult thing. You know, sometimes it's just a nice brushstroke, you know, it's just a nice turn at the right speed. It doesn't have to be the crazy fastest thing in the world. You know, sometimes, depending on the pace of a wave, it might want you to go slow or fast or do something radical or something that's much more subtle. But it's the control with which you do it. It's the, you know, the efficiency of body movement, all these sort of things. But I don't. I guess the best way to kind of go about learning about judging maybe would be watching gymnastics. Like a floor exercise.
- [24:14]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [24:15]
Kelly Slater
Because the commentators talk you through it. So. Oh, you can see how they just stepped when they landed there, or they flared their arm at a certain place in a high dive or you know, in these different sports that are judged, you know, high level, people can point out the small little things that did that detract from what the scoring would be. And so you would kind of hope for that in surfing. But sometimes even, you know, all of us pros will be sitting around watching a heat. We'll see somebody ride a wave and we'll hear a score pop up that's either high or low. And we're like, what the hell is that?
- [24:49]
Gary Brea
Right?
- [24:49]
Kelly Slater
You just, out of the blue, we're like, what did they see that we aren't seeing?
- [24:53]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [24:54]
Kelly Slater
But then, you know, we're all humans with emotions, so sometimes it's your friend and sometimes it's somebody you want to lose. And there's always things that are biased. And so the judges do their best to try to be robots that really.
- [25:08]
Gary Brea
Try to judge the skill set, but.
- [25:10]
Kelly Slater
They'Re surface in their own skill set. But then getting back to the feeling thing, when you watch somebody surf, if you understand surfing and you're trying to score it or decide what's better or worse, you can almost feel what that person feels. And we. There's a thing in surfing about claiming. Like, you know, people claim a ride or claim maneuver, and you can tell if somebody really feels it or if they're trying to sell it to the judges.
- [25:37]
Gary Brea
Right, Right.
- [25:38]
Kelly Slater
And, you know, I need this score. So you're just like, yes. And. And you can tell that like, okay, that guy's way better than that's not close to his best maneuver. So he can't be that excited about that.
- [25:49]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [25:49]
Kelly Slater
But it could be a close heat and he needs to get through there for a certain result at the end of the year or in this contest or whatever. And so he might be excited not because it was the greatest maneuver, but because he does think that he beat that person or she thinks she'd be that person. So there's different reasons why you might claim a wave. But the most respect in surfing has always come from guys that don't claim anything at all. And, you know, there are guys like some of the older guys that would never, they would never do a hand gesture at all. And those are the guys you always look back in history. Yeah, you look back in history. Guys I got to respect Tom Carroll. I got to respect Tom Crane. Like certain guys that just never threw their hands in there. They're just like, hey, give it to me or not. But I did my best.
- [26:28]
Gary Brea
That's awesome. I mean, so when you were pursuing this, this sport in these world Championships. Were you constantly moving around the world chasing the best waves?
- [26:38]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I've been in so your life for 40 years.
- [26:41]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [26:41]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [26:42]
Gary Brea
And. And what are some of your favorite places in the world?
- [26:47]
Kelly Slater
If people ask me, I just say, like, Fiji is probably my favorite place to go.
- [26:50]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [26:51]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. The people are so nice. The surf's really good, the weather's warm, the fishing's good, the diving's good. It's like all the things that I want to do are there. You can even golf on the mainland.
- [27:01]
Gary Brea
Yeah, but.
- [27:02]
Kelly Slater
But yeah, just in and around the ocean is great there. And. And really, the people are just so kind. Like the nicest people you'll ever meet anywhere in the world, the Fijians. Like, we had a contest there some years ago, and we went to a local school and the kids wrote a song for us and sang it. Like 100 kids singing us a song they wrote just for our contest.
- [27:22]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [27:23]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. That's cool. And everyone, I think everyone in every village can sing in like three, four, five part harmonies. Yeah, they're all just like these beautiful voices, and they can all play instruments, but they're just so welcoming and such nice people that.
- [27:38]
Gary Brea
So you would head to Fiji for a certain time of the year and.
- [27:40]
Kelly Slater
Just it can be whenever. But typically through our summer months is the best time down there, which is their winter months, our winter, their summer. It tends to be a little bit like cyclonic weather. Yeah, it'll be super hot, really humid. The surf's not especially great that time of year.
- [27:57]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [27:57]
Kelly Slater
And they can get some cyclones and storms, but.
- [28:00]
Gary Brea
And I noticed you've been very vocal about conservancy. I mean, and stands to reason that you love the ocean and you, You. You respect the waves and you respect nature so much. But how did that come about? Did you just build a respect and a love not just through the sport, but for the ocean and for the environment? Or was it. Did you see things going on that you. That just kind of turned your stomach and you became this evangelist for the environment? I mean, talk a little bit about, like, your, you know, why you're so passionate about conservancy. I mean, even. Even your sunscreens, you know, you talk about how they're not. They're really safe and.
- [28:39]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, well, I guess I, I don't resent that word, but I wouldn't want to be called evangelical about it because I hate when people are too preachy about anything. But I just. We do have to think about generations after us and our kids and leaving a better place for them. If we can. If we can, you know.
- [29:04]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [29:06]
Kelly Slater
I don't think that even needs to be explained, really.
- [29:08]
Gary Brea
Yeah, well, some people, it's got to be explained to some people.
- [29:12]
Kelly Slater
I know, but I think the ocean resources are endless. Some people are just disconnected from that environment and that nature and, you know, maybe they're just all business and live in a big city and they don't go experience that kind of stuff. But if you go to a place like Bali, you'll see the effects of modern times and plastic pollution and stuff. I, I like, I, I don't jump on every bandwagon around like climate change and that kind of stuff, but it's really clear. I think we can all easily agree, you know, because there's a lot of things where you can. People don't agree on certain things, but you. We can all agree that there's a lot of plastic pollution in the ocean.
- [29:47]
Gary Brea
Yeah, that's, I think that's different than carbon emission and.
- [29:50]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, and that stuff can be debated back and forth. But when you see an ocean full of plastic and then the wind changes and it all washed up on the beach when the season changes and it's disgusting and you literally can't even walk on the beach, that's when, when everyone needs to get together and go, okay, we need a solution for this.
- [30:07]
Gary Brea
Yeah. And you wonder where all that comes from. It's like, are we just throwing trash into the ocean or is it boats throwing it overboard?
- [30:13]
Kelly Slater
No, a lot of it. Well, in that particular situation, the Balinese like to say it's all the Javanese, it's somebody else and it's all coming from Java. But I think it's just that my friend in Bali explained to me probably best when he said, look, when I was a little kid, we ate all our food wrapped in banana leaf. And we would eat the food and then we'd throw the banana leaf out and eventually that turned into plastic and we just kind of kept throwing the plastic out and so a lot of waste and there's not a really great infrastructure for garbage in some of these places. So through no fault of any individual person, it just tends to be that there's not the infrastructure for it. And there's a lot of weird local politics around these things, even in, in small areas. But it doesn't go to a central place to be processed right. And on small islands, like it's, it's not easy to get rid of a bunch of plastic. And what do you do with it? You create a mountain on a tiny Island.
- [31:10]
Gary Brea
You got to bury it, I guess. You know, I mean, they're starting to melt it down and turn it into.
- [31:15]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I think you. I think you need to melt it at about 5000 degrees so it really turns to a tiny bit of ash. I mean, that's one. That's one way to deal with all that stuff burns. And I think ultimately we're going to have to figure out how to take plastic, melt it back down to turn into fuel more, more easily, which is not a hard process at all.
- [31:33]
Gary Brea
It's just.
- [31:34]
Kelly Slater
There's not an infrastructure for it.
- [31:35]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [31:36]
Kelly Slater
And. And that's not a perfect solution because that's more air pollution. But, you know, the stuff you can really see is like, it makes it obvious for everyone that you need to deal with it. But. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know, I don't like to get too preachy about it, but I just, I just try to, you know, in my own life, I, I do my best to recycle all I can. And I hope that when that recycling bing goes that the right thing is done with it.
- [31:58]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [31:58]
Kelly Slater
That end.
- [31:59]
Gary Brea
But, yeah, I always question that too.
- [32:00]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. And I, I hear a lot of times it's just not.
- [32:03]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [32:03]
Kelly Slater
So that is disheartening, you know.
- [32:06]
Gary Brea
Yeah. I mean, we, we. We live in Miami and we had the condo that we were in, had a recycle chute and a trash chute. And for like a year and a half we would put recycled down the recycle chute and trash down the trash chute. And one day I had to show up the receiving and I actually saw that they came into the same bin and it was just piled up on one side of the bin and piled up on the other side of the bin, and we were going through all that effort.
- [32:30]
Kelly Slater
I think you want to, you want to feel like you did the right thing.
- [32:32]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah. You felt good when you were upstairs, but when you went downstairs and saw it's all the real thing.
- [32:36]
Kelly Slater
But I don't know, one. One time my mom came over to my house and I was taking apart all this cardboard and putting. Recycling that and then plastic over here and then garbage over there, whatever. And she's like, what are you doing? Just throw it all in one. And I said, no, I just. I feel like I want to do the right thing. So then my mom started recycling all of her cardboard and plastics and stuff.
- [32:54]
Gary Brea
Paying it forward, man, I love it.
- [32:56]
Kelly Slater
And.
- [32:57]
Gary Brea
But you know, in sometime around September last year, you. You had a Prnovo body scan.
- [33:05]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [33:06]
Gary Brea
And that was actually this year.
- [33:07]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, that was in June this year.
- [33:09]
Gary Brea
Or June this year. Yeah. And. And it was kind of a shocking health update for you, and I know that you've talked about it, but. Yeah. And there were these lesions in your bone. Is that.
- [33:21]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I had. I'd have to go back over this. There was. There was only a couple of mild to moderate things to even be concerned about. But I think the thing that really shocked people was how much scoliosis I have. I have a very curvy back, you know, and. And the people I've worked with over the years have called it functional scoliosis.
- [33:41]
Gary Brea
Clearly, it's working. Yeah.
- [33:42]
Kelly Slater
I figured out a way for it to benefit me in some situations, I guess. But now, you know, we. I told you before, but I had hip surgery six weeks ago, total replacement, and I've been fighting that for 30 years. 33, 34 years.
- [33:59]
Gary Brea
Yeah. You told me you actually tore your labor when you were 19 and you won your world championship when you were 20. I mean, I don't know how many people realize that, but you won the world championship with completely torn labor.
- [34:09]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [34:10]
Gary Brea
And, you know, torn labrum is not something that just heals itself. I mean, it's scars around there, but it doesn't really.
- [34:16]
Kelly Slater
Super fun, Gary, to be in the labor.
- [34:18]
Gary Brea
Yeah. No. I'll live the rest of my life and not try. I've torn bicep tendons. Not even completely. I just actually did a podcast with DJ Dillashaw, and he. And he was talking about how he won, you know, two championship UFC fights with, you know, both his shoulders being torn and even how he had one of his traps, part of his trap, you know, put into his shoulder to try to replace the. You know, the rotator.
- [34:43]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [34:43]
Gary Brea
And. And fighting at that level, and you're like, wow, Even he still became a world champion, in his case, twice, in your case, for decades.
- [34:52]
Kelly Slater
But like I said, the adrenaline takes over, you know, and, like, what TJ was saying, too, like, once you get in the fight or you get in the surf and the waves are big or you're in an intense situation competitively, the. The adrenaline kicks in, and you don't feel pain the same way. Your pain receptors aren't waking you up. They're. They're like you're trying to put them.
- [35:13]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [35:13]
Kelly Slater
Backstage. Yeah.
- [35:15]
Gary Brea
Backstage. Yeah.
- [35:15]
Kelly Slater
Backstage.
- [35:16]
Gary Brea
Adrenaline does that, you know.
- [35:17]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [35:18]
Gary Brea
And I mean, I've. I've. I've worked with a lot of UFC fighters, and they say that you. You don't feel the pain till after the fight. Yeah, right. And I can understand that. I mean. Yeah, you know, time when all that adrenaline.
- [35:28]
Kelly Slater
I know I was. I was watching those fights this weekend with Merab and Petr Yan. And Petr Yan had this. His approach was basically, let me rob hit him, but he had his hand here. He was blocking and he kept. Because he's peppering him with that, but he's like, well, I'm blocking this. But he was staying within range because that was his plan or whatever. He was staying within range and just taking those shots. Why? Well, because it was allowing him his own counter shots and, and defensive wrestling and stuff, I guess. But, I mean, I saw a breakdown on it online. It was explaining all that, but he was really taking those because that was a range he wanted to be at.
- [36:02]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [36:03]
Kelly Slater
So, like, these guys just know, like, I can get hit. That's not going to knock me out. If it was the only one shot I took today, I wasn't ready for it. It probably hurt me. But when that adrenaline's kicked in, you know, like, you see some of these guys take a couple hundred shots in a fight.
- [36:16]
Gary Brea
Oh, it's, it's.
- [36:17]
Kelly Slater
And you're like, this is.
- [36:18]
Gary Brea
I go to plenty of fights and I'll never.
- [36:19]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. Sometimes I see.
- [36:21]
Gary Brea
So impressed.
- [36:22]
Kelly Slater
It's. It's really. Since becoming a mma fan about 20 years ago, it's really, it's really taken the intensity off of injuries for me. So, like, I see some of these guys just like, their freaking eyes hanging out.
- [36:37]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [36:38]
Kelly Slater
Like, they're just so cut and, and.
- [36:40]
Gary Brea
They'Re happy and they're expecting each other.
- [36:42]
Kelly Slater
Burnt in blood, and they're like, no, I want to keep fighting. Don't call this fight off, you know?
- [36:45]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:45]
Kelly Slater
So I'm like, if my fin cuts me and I got, you know, I need three stitches. I'm like, I could probably surf a little longer. You know, it's like, it gives you.
- [36:52]
Gary Brea
A perspective where, like sharks in your case.
- [36:54]
Kelly Slater
So, yeah, maybe depending where you're at, but it's. It's not. As for me, it's been. Become less scary to get injured after seeing what these guys willingly put themselves through.
- [37:04]
Gary Brea
Yeah. Yeah.
- [37:06]
Kelly Slater
I've interviewed a few of the.
- [37:08]
Gary Brea
A few of the greats, and like, the. What you really begin to respect at that level is the amount of strategy and, and thinking that goes into it. You know, I've heard Dana White talk about the difference between being a good fighter and a great fighter is composure. And I imagine the hardest time to maintain your composure when is when somebody's actively trying to hurt you. And it's also hard to not get pissed off. Um, you know, pain just immediately causes you to flick your switch, especially when somebody else inflicted. If you cut it on your board, you're not actually angry. Yeah, but if somebody else cuts you, you'd be angry at them.
- [37:43]
Kelly Slater
It reminds me of a fight from the other. From that last card Terence McKinney was fighting, and he just starts mopping this guy in the first minute of the fight. He's just so aggressive, and the other guy just, boom, boom. He's just like a punching bag, you know, and he's getting rocked, and you can see he's, like, covering up, and he ends up on the ground at one point. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, I wonder if this guy's got a plan, you know, like. Or if he's just, like, so dazed right now from getting hit. And then a minute later, he wins the fight.
- [38:09]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [38:09]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, he just turned it around. He just. He ended up tapping out.
- [38:13]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [38:13]
Kelly Slater
I think it was a tap out.
- [38:14]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [38:14]
Kelly Slater
But, you know, after getting completely rocked and beat up for like a minute and a half.
- [38:19]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [38:20]
Kelly Slater
But then, you know, his plan was, I gotta. I gotta keep some cardio and energy. And then Terence McKinney kind of faded, and as soon as he faded, the other guy turned it on. So they. They, you know, it depends on that approach. Are you. Are you a. You know, are you going to come in aggressive or are you going to come in and be defensive and counter?
- [38:36]
Gary Brea
Yeah. I mean, like, when you were surfing, did you. Did you ever have those moments where, like, you picked up the board and walked to the edge of the ocean and you just looked at the waves and you're like, I'm over this. Like, you know, did it ever become monotonous?
- [38:49]
Kelly Slater
It's funny because Andy Irons, who I mentioned before, he and I had a big rivalry and then in. And that went on for about six or seven years or something. And then.
- [38:57]
Gary Brea
So that motivated you?
- [38:58]
Kelly Slater
Well, yeah, but then he and I became pretty good friends, and we kind of dropped the whole thing. You know, we, like, kind of got past our, you know, both of our peaks in the rivalry and stuff. And. And I remember being in the water with him. We're in Huntington beach, and there's about 30,000 people on the beach, and he was really, like. He was in a real, like, personal growth phase, and he was, like, trying to get some things together in his head and, you know, step back from the. The surf thing. Like, the being the pro surfer a little bit and. And do some personal growth. And I remember he looked up at the beach and he goes, I hate this.
- [39:36]
Gary Brea
That's what I mean.
- [39:37]
Kelly Slater
Like, he just looked at the beach. He goes, I hate. I just don't even want. Why am I even. Why did I put myself out here? I don't even want to be here right now.
- [39:43]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [39:44]
Kelly Slater
And I was like, yeah. And I've totally felt that before.
- [39:46]
Gary Brea
I've done so many things in my life that I was really excited about when I started. Like, you know, I was a competitive amateur triathlete for two years to three years, but I got out of the water one time after the Chesapeake Bay, half ironman, and when I got home, I. I put my bike on the garage wall, and I didn't get back on my bike for, like three years. I mean, I was just over it. And. And by no means did I have even remotely the level of commitment that someone like yourself went through for decades to stay at the top of that game and want to do the same thing and not ever feel like you've mastered the sport, because at some point you have to feel like, you know, I've been a world champion so many times over such a long period of time, I've already mastered the sport. It's. And I. I'm fascinated, Gary.
- [40:36]
Kelly Slater
I got the mindset to go surf around the world.
- [40:38]
Gary Brea
Well, that's true. Money's a motivator too. Okay, there it is. That's what I was looking for. I don't.
- [40:45]
Kelly Slater
I'm.
- [40:46]
Gary Brea
We broke the news on the ultimate human podcast. This is all about money. No, I mean, I get.
- [40:53]
Kelly Slater
I can't complain. It's not. It's not all that hard. One of my best friends quit the tour when he had. He had re qualified for the following year, but he had decided to retire and go get a job. And about a year later, we're in Australia and I'm in the contest, and he's working. He had to go to the contest because he had. Because it was part of his job. He had to fly to Australia to do some work at that event. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Why? You should still be on this tour right now. And he's like, I'm an idiot. Yeah. He's like, I was making more money going surfing. He's like, now I work all freaking day. He's like, I'm here. I can't even surf nearly as much as I want. I gotta find a break because I'm Working the whole time.
- [41:33]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [41:33]
Kelly Slater
And he was like, I should have stayed on tour till it ran out. I'm like, yeah, exactly.
- [41:37]
Gary Brea
You're like, I'm still at it, bro.
- [41:40]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. So he.
- [41:42]
Gary Brea
But I can't imagine that there's a lot of money in surfing unless you are at the.
- [41:45]
Kelly Slater
No, most of our money is sponsorship dollars. And, you know, you got to get a certain notoriety and that kind of thing. But the money in surfing has dried up a little bit in recent years because surfing was built on the backs of these originally from the 60s and 70s where these guys wanted to go surf around the world. So they started companies to sell clothes so they could. In wetsuits, so they could fund their own surf trips. That was really how the Rip Curls, Billabongs, Quicksilvers of the world started, really. All the big brands from surfing and, you know, and then if you extend further out, then you go into, like, Volcom and, you know, other brands that were started by surfers as well, but they basically were like a means to an end to get around the world and go surf these places they wanted to go. And Quicksilver started by. It was Alan Green and John Law in Australia, and they. We can get a couple friends and they made some surf trunks, and we're selling them out of the back of the. Literally out of the trunk of their car. And then they make enough money and go on a surf trip.
- [42:42]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [42:42]
Kelly Slater
And. And then they realize, like, oh, well, all these surfers.
- [42:44]
Gary Brea
Authentic brand.
- [42:46]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. And then all these surfers need gear, and then, you know, their other friends started a wetsuit company, and that was Rip Curl. And. And, you know, eventually, then all those brands ended up, like, Quicksilver started making wetsuits, and Bill and Rip Curl started making clothing.
- [43:00]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [43:00]
Kelly Slater
So then everyone's making everything.
- [43:02]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [43:02]
Kelly Slater
And then surfing through the 90s and early 2000s really was peaking as far as the brands go.
- [43:08]
Gary Brea
I remember.
- [43:08]
Kelly Slater
I mean, I remember Quicksilver was OP and.
- [43:12]
Gary Brea
Yeah, remember OP the corduroy shorts, like.
- [43:15]
Kelly Slater
But Quicksilver had a big thing because they had quick. I was. I was a quicksilver guy for 23 years, and it was Quicksilver Roxy was the women's line, and DC was the shoes. So those three brands were powerhouses through our industry. And skating with DC Shoes, obviously. But, you know, Quicksilver is so wealthy. They were making so much money, and so all the surfers and skaters and sponsored athletes and, you know, models and all that sort of stuff were all making really good money from the brands. And then Eventually a lot of them became public brands and they were kind of chasing stock price instead of just like making what authentically made them great brands. It was more worried about like the company structure than it was about the product that was being made. And, and then outsiders came in and started buying, you know, take over these companies and stuff. And it really changed what surfing was, you know, in the last past 20 years. And those companies also owned, they didn't own the tour, but they sponsored each of the individual tour events.
- [44:17]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [44:17]
Kelly Slater
And they had the media rights. So they would run their media rights. You know, Billabong would run them the way they want, Quicksilver the way they want, and they would own everything from that particular event. But now we have a world tour. The WSL took over from what, the asp. It used to be called ASP and they took it over and they own all the media rights to all the events now. So it's not the individual sponsors. So that kind of changed as well. And you know, you could argue good and bad points about that, but it changed what our sport is to some degree. But the brands, the original brands are not what they were. And I don't know if there's anybody at any of the companies that would try to claim that they are the same.
- [44:55]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [44:56]
Kelly Slater
It just, it just changed the environment's change and now new brands are coming in. I mean, like, I created my own brand. It's called Outer Known.
- [45:07]
Gary Brea
How's that doing?
- [45:08]
Kelly Slater
We're doing all right.
- [45:09]
Gary Brea
Yeah. Gotta be, man. You're the greatest surfer of all time.
- [45:12]
Kelly Slater
John. John Florence created a brand called Florence Marine. And you know, a couple of the other surfers started other brands that are kind of filtering their way into taking over space in the shops and stuff. So there might sort of be this rebirth of some of the origins of brands, starting with surfers. And that's how surfing became an industry.
- [45:33]
Gary Brea
One of my favorite biohacks outside of Breathwork by far is mineral salts. Baja Gold sea salt. It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs. You know, most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient or fatty acid deficient. We are mineral deficient. So a quarter teaspoon of this in water first thing in the morning will make sure that you get all of the essential mineral minerals that you need. It tastes amazing. In fact, I made a steak today. I actually made a grass fed steak with grass fed butter. And I put just mushrooms and a little bit of rosemary and I sprinkled Baja Gold sea salt all over the top. Try it. It'll be your new favorite for cooking too. It's the cheapest and one of my favorite biohacks. I don't know, a 15 or 20 bag of this will probably last you five years. This is literally the world's best biohacking secret. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Yeah. And you know, I think looking at a. Careers that spanned as long as yours did, I mean obviously conditioning is a big part of being a surfer and most of your conditioning, I imagine you just got in the water by doing your.
- [46:30]
Kelly Slater
I just surf a lot.
- [46:32]
Gary Brea
Yeah, but were the things that you did outside and I mean now that you're in your 50s and you're still competing, you know.
- [46:39]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, not full time now. I quit the full time competing about a year and a half ago, but.
- [46:43]
Gary Brea
I'm also not that long ago, bro.
- [46:45]
Kelly Slater
That's no, 53. So when I was 52.
- [46:47]
Gary Brea
Okay, 52.
- [46:48]
Kelly Slater
So yeah, yeah.
- [46:50]
Gary Brea
I mean competing to your 52. I mean I can't think of many sports, I mean not even really golf. Are there a lot of 52 year old golfers?
- [46:56]
Kelly Slater
Well, there's the, the champions two year.
- [46:58]
Gary Brea
Old NFL players, that's for damn sure.
- [47:00]
Kelly Slater
When you turn 50 in goal on the PGA, you, you join the Champions Tour. So that's, you know, all the, they.
- [47:05]
Gary Brea
Got a little exit.
- [47:05]
Kelly Slater
Older legends. Yeah, you know, Phil Mickelson would be a young guy on that tour right now, but that would be the Freddie Couples of the world and, and that sort of guys.
- [47:14]
Gary Brea
But, but, but what, what are you doing to stay conditioned? I mean as, as maybe as surfing is decrescending. I mean, I know that you're big and you know, you're a big believer in the biohacking and longevity space.
- [47:25]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I became, I'll tell you my, my history of. I, I grew up. My mom hates this and she thinks that this is a personal attack on her. I swear it's not. Mom, I love you. You did a good job. You're boys by yourself.
- [47:36]
Gary Brea
And he actually spoke highly about you before the podcast, just you know, off camera.
- [47:40]
Kelly Slater
But you know, we just, we just didn't. And I don't think people in the 60s and 70s really worried about it. You know, my older brother's born in 69, I was born in 72, my younger brother in 78. But back then we were, you know, the first world and we got the best food in the world or whatever. We ate tons of sugar. I mean I grew up. I always tell people I Grew up on Oreos and Doritos.
- [48:00]
Gary Brea
Oh.
- [48:01]
Kelly Slater
I mean, literally, ice cream cupcakes.
- [48:03]
Gary Brea
You're gonna have to cut this out. You realize. Just kidding.
- [48:07]
Kelly Slater
That's started from the bottom now we're here. Yeah.
- [48:10]
Gary Brea
Yeah. No, you were exercising your ass off.
- [48:13]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, no, I mean, I was super active, but. Yeah, but I ate tons and tons of sugar. I used to have. I remember I'd. I'd wake up in the morning before high school, and you're gonna hate this, Gary. You're gonna. You're gonna, like, hold this against me here. But I used to make, like, a chocolate milkshake in the morning for my breakfast, and I would literally throw, like, ice cream cookies, Hershey's syrup, like, whatever I could find, like, into this. This would be my. And I would drink it on the way to school, and then by the end of the first period, I'd be doubled over with a stomach cramp.
- [48:46]
Gary Brea
For the record, that was before you were a world champion.
- [48:48]
Kelly Slater
Oh, yeah, this. When I was a teenager.
- [48:50]
Gary Brea
Okay, good.
- [48:50]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, but, bro, I'm a Florida. I'm a Florida man. I'm from Cocoa Beach. Like, this is what you eat. I mean, it could have been beer.
- [48:59]
Gary Brea
Yeah, no, it's crazy when I talk about, you know, it's. It's crazy. I mean, TJ talked about that, too, in his early career being, like, in his 20s when he was fighting on, you know, the. The show stuff.
- [49:12]
Kelly Slater
Ultimate Fighter.
- [49:13]
Gary Brea
Ultimate Fighter. When he's fighting on the Ultimate Fighter.
- [49:15]
Kelly Slater
That, you know, diet was no good.
- [49:16]
Gary Brea
Dies. Complete garbage. Yeah, but I mean, I think now.
- [49:20]
Kelly Slater
You know, there's too much information. There's too much information for you to be in denial of it. But. Yeah, so my. My sort of. I would call it a health journey. My health journey started in my early twenties.
- [49:30]
Gary Brea
Did it really?
- [49:31]
Kelly Slater
And I was in a health.
- [49:33]
Gary Brea
Good. Because so did your professional career so good.
- [49:35]
Kelly Slater
I was in a health food shop in Solana beach or Encinitas down Cardiff called Kai's, and I ordered a juice or sandwich or something, and then I was standing there waiting for my food, and there was a tape. There was a. Like this. Just. There was one thing for sale on the. On the counter, and it was a tape by a guy named Dr. Joel Wallach, who I. Maybe you know the name. And. And it was $1. They weren't trying to make money from it. They were just trying to get people to listen to stuff from health from a health guru. So I bought that tape, and I. This is when we had cassettes in the car. And so I'm driving around, I would just listen to this thing. And he started talking about how he had done, like 17,000 animal autopsies, 3,000 human autopsies. And he said, no one dies from old age. There's no such thing. You die of a deficiency of something over a long period of time, you get a disease, blah, blah. And I just was like, wow, this is fascinating. And I had just. I had already become world championship at this time, but I was like, this is fuel for my fire right here. This. Yeah, I'm gonna actually, like, start being healthy.
- [50:39]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [50:39]
Kelly Slater
And so I got. I got super into. I. I started just trying different diets, like food combining, you know, I did food combining for a while. I met. I. I became familiar with the Gracies from going to. Oh, yeah, from going to Rio for contests every year. And then I eventually met Hickson and. And Hoise and Hoyler and all those guys. But I had read their book prior to that. A friend of mine had written a book about them. And I think two different friends of mine have written books about the Gracie family now. But I started reading about their diets and they talked about food combining. And then I started looking into it. What is trophology and why don't proteins and carbs go well together, blah, blah. And I started kind of experimenting with that on myself and seeing how I felt, and I realized I had more energy and I sleep less and I digest better and I don't have stomach problems. And so I kind of just became really sort of fascinated with health and the body. And strangely enough, my mom was an EMT and firefighter, so she went to medical school for some degree of time to learn what she needed. And so I kind of already had this, like, maybe this genetic thing in my DNA where I wanted to learn about the anatomy and digestion and all that stuff. So I. I was traveling in my early days. When I first got on Quicksilver, I was traveling with a guy named Tom Carroll, who was two time world champion. But Tom was one of the few guys that cross trained and really talked about diet.
- [52:07]
Gary Brea
So he trained off the waves?
- [52:08]
Kelly Slater
Oh, yeah. He was doing all sorts of cross training. And Tom was like, crazy fit, super strong. Everyone talked about how big his calves were and his thighs were. I mean, and it was actually funny because back at that time, he also wore super tiny shorts, so his, like, leg muscles would just, like, jacked, like. Yeah, like. Like explode. His, like, tiny trunks, you know, like, almost look like it would rip him in the side because his Legs were so powerful.
- [52:33]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [52:33]
Kelly Slater
And he surfed that way. You know, he surfed with all his power and energy. He was known for that. And Tom became like a big brother to me. And we were. I was like 18 years old. I was in Australia with him, and I kept telling him how I didn't have much energy. And. And the night before, we had eaten pasta, I had a spaghetti bolognese. And he goes, well, maybe it's because of the proteins and the carbs together or something. He's like, have you ever thought about that? And I was. That was the first time I ever heard about food combined. I'm like, no, what does that mean? How do you know this stuff? What do you mean? You just eat food and it gives you energy. I just never put the equation together. And unfortunately, we're not taught that in school. They don't really give you any kind of formalization about that, especially in public schools. And so I. I was just kind of shooting from the hip, trying to learn this stuff, traveling around the world. And I became really sort of infatuated with it in my. Through my 20s. And then I got into, like, water fasting and master cleansing.
- [53:33]
Gary Brea
Oh, that's great, man. I think water fasting is. Yeah, you can master fasting two, three times a year. I mean, those are game changers. Yeah, I do big water fasts on my platform. Take thousands of people through water fast, and there's always these life changing. Yeah, literally life changing testimonials that we get out of it.
- [53:50]
Kelly Slater
I went about 15 years ago. I was doing a master cleanse for about. I think I did 10 days with the, you know, the tea with the cayenne pepper and stuff. And anyways, the. About four or five days in, and I went golfing with one of my best friends and his dad. And his dad's. His dad had a couple groups of friends there that were all doctors. It was like this doctor outing. They go golf every Thursday or Friday, whatever. So I was with him, and afterwards they're having lunch and they say, you want something? And I was like, I'm doing a fast or a cleanse. You know, what are you talking about? And I started telling him about it and, like, why are you doing that? So just. I'm gonna let my digestion heal. I'm gonna let. I'm not gonna be digesting food for, you know, almost two weeks. So that can all just relax and heal and so good. Settle down. And. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, you know, if you don't eat food for a long period of time. You're doing salt flushes every morning.
- [54:40]
Gary Brea
It's probably like, I'm out of your mind.
- [54:42]
Kelly Slater
Doing the smooth and the move teas and I'm. And blah, blah. And they're like, you don't need to do that. You just take the stuff that we take to get a colonoscopy, and that just flushes everything out, you know, in 24 hours. Nothing else is in your system. And I was like, well, what about mucoid plaque? And they're like, what are you talking about? These are doctors, you know.
- [55:00]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [55:00]
Kelly Slater
And so literally that day, I was driving home and I had to stop to go to the restroom. It was the first time I ever got mucoid plaque to come out of my body.
- [55:11]
Gary Brea
Yeah, no, I've done that, and that is gnarly.
- [55:14]
Kelly Slater
I was like, what is. What I did? I just, like, did my intestine just come out?
- [55:19]
Gary Brea
What was going on?
- [55:20]
Kelly Slater
I mean, sorry to get graphic for people out there, but I think a lot of people that watch your show probably know this stuff.
- [55:25]
Gary Brea
Oh, they do.
- [55:26]
Kelly Slater
And if you haven't, you know, you need to go and Google mucoid plaque and how to get it out of your body. But, you know, after days and days and days of hydrating and no food, stuff starts to loosen up and you're like.
- [55:38]
Gary Brea
Comes right off.
- [55:39]
Kelly Slater
No wonder I'm nutrient deficient. No wonder I don't digest food properly. No wonder am I, you know, this and that. It's unhealthy. Or people getting cancer left and right.
- [55:47]
Gary Brea
Yeah. And then you feel the lights come on. Right?
- [55:49]
Kelly Slater
The lights come on. And, like, literally your eyesight changes.
- [55:52]
Gary Brea
Yes. Everything I tell people that I think.
- [55:55]
Kelly Slater
So excited, man. I got so excited when I got my first mucoid plaque.
- [55:59]
Gary Brea
Yeah, well, because afterwards you feel amazing.
- [56:02]
Kelly Slater
I remember that day. I remember exactly where I was like, yes, it worked. This is a real thing. Because, you know, I'd seen all these stories of people online. Yeah. Like, yesterday, I was watching something, and this guy was talking about getting parasites out of his body, and he saw him, and he's like, I don't want to show you. Because kind of people don't like to see that stuff. But if you want to, I'll send you some pictures. And. But when. When you first make a change, you're in control of with your body, it's so exciting. It really is so exciting and inspiring.
- [56:30]
Gary Brea
And when you feel shift in such a short period of time, it's. It's Also inspiring. You're like, wow, this is how I used to feel all the time. I remember this feeling. It should have spent so many years that I've just adjusted my new state of normal.
- [56:44]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. There were just so many Oreos between that period.
- [56:47]
Gary Brea
A lot of them.
- [56:48]
Kelly Slater
No. But I tell people, I, I, that's one thing I'm a little evangelical about is water fast. And I tell people, oh man, me too. And they're like, oh, so I just shouldn't drink water for 24 hours. I'm like, I mean, I should only drink water for 24 hours. I'm like, no, what you got to do is you got to go at least three days. You got to get past that day too, because day two sucks.
- [57:07]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [57:07]
Kelly Slater
And I'm like, day three is awesome.
- [57:08]
Gary Brea
Day three sucks.
- [57:09]
Kelly Slater
Day three is great.
- [57:11]
Gary Brea
So true, man.
- [57:12]
Kelly Slater
And you know, day three, you're like, whoa, I'm awake again. I'm alive. I like my, my thoughts are clearer. I was telling people, I told a few people the past year, a year or two ago, I did one. And on day three, I surfed, played golf and worked out pretty hard that day on the beach with a couple of my buddies. I never lost any energy throughout the whole day. I had full energy and actually I think I did four days that one. And I was like, why didn't I just go for like 10? When you're already there, you can keep going.
- [57:44]
Gary Brea
In fact, a lot of people come out of my three day water fast and go four or five.
- [57:47]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [57:47]
Gary Brea
I tell them don't go past seven without medical supervision. But because sometimes you think you can keep going and you don't want to get electrolyte imbalance, you can go much longer. I just think that you need to really know what you're doing. But you're right. A three day water fast is game. I've done three of them in the last year, you know, with tens of thousands of people. And it is always still shocking to me the stories that come back from our three day Water Fast. In fact, you can download 3D Water Fast.
- [58:12]
Kelly Slater
Especially people who aren't already like quite healthy. Yeah, they do it and, and all of a sudden they're like, oh, and.
- [58:19]
Gary Brea
It'S just about no one. So enlightenment can't go 24 hours to 72 hours without eating. It's it, you're, you're mentally. So it's tied to food.
- [58:28]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [58:28]
Gary Brea
You think I'm going to die on a flight from Miami to L. A if I don't eat over Colorado right? You know?
- [58:35]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [58:35]
Gary Brea
I don't eat before we land. I will expire before we get to the airport.
- [58:39]
Kelly Slater
It's crazy.
- [58:40]
Gary Brea
So tell me a little bit about how, like, exercise and longevity has changed for you. I mean, what, what is your. What are your go to protocols now? You were talking about cold plunge.
- [58:51]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, no, I love. I. I feel like sauna into cold plunge. Like the, the lazy man's way to work out. You know what I mean? Like, you get your cardio hit. You get your cardio hit.
- [59:03]
Gary Brea
I guess if that's all you're doing. Yeah.
- [59:05]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. Well, yeah, but I mean, if. Typically I'm just like, surfing a lot and then a. I play a lot of golf.
- [59:11]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [59:12]
Kelly Slater
I don't cross train a whole lot, but I do a little jiu jitsu and I, you know, I kind of. I'm. I'm kind of like a. A binge workout person where, like, I get into it and. Yeah. I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm gonna be lazy and surf for a while.
- [59:25]
Gary Brea
Yeah. Well, surfing still, if I surf a.
- [59:27]
Kelly Slater
Lot, really cardio, usually when I'm. When I'm in Hawaii, I get in really good shape just because I just surf every day. You know, it might be three to five hours a day in the water.
- [59:36]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [59:36]
Kelly Slater
And. And then, you know, try to get myself to run the beach a little bit.
- [59:40]
Gary Brea
Or how do you keep from just getting fried?
- [59:43]
Kelly Slater
You wearing your sunscreen? You know what if it's. If I know if I'm somewhere tropical or it's super hot, I wear sunscreen. But, you know, I am lucky. I've. I've had tan skin my whole life. Like, I was like. You could probably have mistaken me as being, like, half black when I was a kid. My mom just put me in the sun. Yeah. We're in the sun all day. Yeah. And I was so darkly tanned when I was a kid.
- [60:06]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [60:06]
Kelly Slater
Much darker than I am now. And there's a picture of me and my brother in the bathtub. I'm like two or three, and we're both naked and you can see our butts. And like, my butt is white and the rest of my skin is like dark, dark, dark.
- [60:19]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [60:20]
Kelly Slater
Like, I look Hawaiian or something.
- [60:22]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [60:22]
Kelly Slater
And. But I just always, like, I like being tan when the more tan I am, the less I get burned. I don't know. Like.
- [60:29]
Gary Brea
Well, that makes sense. Yeah.
- [60:30]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [60:30]
Gary Brea
That's your natural defense mechanism.
- [60:31]
Kelly Slater
I went to. I went to Bali a few years ago for three months, and the day I got there, my friend who's like kind of pale, was tanner than me because I'd been surfing in wetsuits for the past like six or eight months before that. And I was so angry. There's no way you're. You're darker than I am.
- [60:46]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [60:47]
Kelly Slater
And so I just made it my, my mission to get super dark again. But that's easy to do when you're surfing all that time, especially in Bali.
- [60:54]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [60:54]
Kelly Slater
You know, but certain places the sun is just so violent, you, you have to be covered up.
- [61:00]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [61:01]
Kelly Slater
No matter how good your skin is. But yeah, I mean, I've seen, I've suffered some skin damage and stuff, like my. I got spots on my head.
- [61:09]
Gary Brea
Actually.
- [61:09]
Kelly Slater
I went to the dermatologist yesterday and trying to address it now just.
- [61:12]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [61:13]
Kelly Slater
50 something years of just in the sun. As much as I could possibly.
- [61:16]
Gary Brea
Is there things they're concerned about or.
- [61:17]
Kelly Slater
No, nothing that's like turned up to look bad or anything, but it's just discolorations and stuff over a long period of time. You know, they call them pre cancerous.
- [61:26]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [61:26]
Kelly Slater
I don't know.
- [61:27]
Gary Brea
I feel like you just keep an eye on them.
- [61:29]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [61:30]
Gary Brea
So. So what are your go to's now? Sauna, Cold plunge. Do you do red light therapy?
- [61:34]
Kelly Slater
Do you? Yeah, do some red light therapy. I sometimes sleep on a Beamer mat.
- [61:40]
Gary Brea
Pmf. Yeah. Yeah.
- [61:42]
Kelly Slater
And then, you know, the thing is.
- [61:45]
Gary Brea
Whether you knew it or not, you were spending so much time, you know, moving your body and grounded, you know, I mean, touching the surface of the earth is one of the healthiest things that you can do.
- [61:54]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [61:54]
Gary Brea
And so all that time you're just discharging into the earth, your body was very grounded, you know, I mean, all that time on the beach and in the water.
- [62:02]
Kelly Slater
In the water.
- [62:03]
Gary Brea
Ions for the water is so good for you, man. There's a reason why you feel great at the beach.
- [62:07]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [62:07]
Gary Brea
You know, I mean, I mean, sometimes.
- [62:09]
Kelly Slater
The beach, you just smell the ozone, you know, it's like. It smells like that ozone. Yeah. You know, the negative ions. Yeah.
- [62:15]
Gary Brea
And do you feel disconnected when you're. You're not near the ocean? I mean, it's in such a big part of your life.
- [62:24]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, to some degree I do. When I was younger, I would feel it much more if I didn't surf for a few days even it would. I would go crazy.
- [62:33]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [62:33]
Kelly Slater
But now, I mean, I haven't surfed in a couple months because of this, but I caught two waves the other day. We were at our surf ranch and I. Since.
- [62:42]
Gary Brea
Since you're. Because this is only two weeks old, right?
- [62:45]
Kelly Slater
Six weeks old.
- [62:45]
Gary Brea
Six weeks old, yeah.
- [62:46]
Kelly Slater
Okay. Like five days ago, I caught two waves.
- [62:49]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [62:49]
Kelly Slater
It didn't feel right. So I'm like, I'm not gonna. And, you know, I can surf to where I'm putting no pressure on my hip. You know, if I could. If I want to push it, I can. But I can also surf, and it's about as much pressure as if I'm standing. You know, I'm not manipulating.
- [63:03]
Gary Brea
You've perfected, I think it's fair to say.
- [63:05]
Kelly Slater
Well, it's pretty. It's pretty easy to stand there and feel like I'm just standing there. So, like, you know, I don't have to work hard. If I surf, I cushion. So I just wrote a couple waves just to see how's this thing feeling. I did a couple little turns. I'm like, I'm not ready.
- [63:16]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [63:16]
Kelly Slater
So I'm gonna just wait another few weeks.
- [63:18]
Gary Brea
Are you rehabbing it right now?
- [63:19]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, I'd been going to physio and getting deep. I. I got a lot of Thai massage. Just. I go. Just go until I scream.
- [63:28]
Gary Brea
Really?
- [63:28]
Kelly Slater
It's like.
- [63:29]
Gary Brea
Is it painful?
- [63:30]
Kelly Slater
Thai massage?
- [63:31]
Gary Brea
Yeah. Never had a Thai massage.
- [63:33]
Kelly Slater
Oh, really?
- [63:33]
Gary Brea
No.
- [63:33]
Kelly Slater
Oh, yeah. It's like. I think it's the best.
- [63:35]
Gary Brea
It is, but I mean. I mean, it's painful during it, but.
- [63:38]
Kelly Slater
You notice it hurts. You're not getting injured, you know, But.
- [63:42]
Gary Brea
I mean, do you notice it the next day that you're more limber or you have more range of motion?
- [63:46]
Kelly Slater
You really do. And then I do it. I tend to do a stretching session afterwards, you know, for a short period of time. And I just. I compare it before and after, but I usually go home and take a hot bath or sauna right afterwards and some electrolytes and.
- [64:00]
Gary Brea
And I'm gonna get you on the hydrogen tablets. Yeah, yeah. Because. Yeah. Tissue repair. I always throw them in my water. That's these little guys right here.
- [64:09]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [64:09]
Gary Brea
Here, I'll throw one in your water.
- [64:10]
Kelly Slater
There.
- [64:11]
Gary Brea
I see your water glass. Boom. Let's throw two in there.
- [64:15]
Kelly Slater
All right.
- [64:16]
Gary Brea
It's a selective antioxidant that'll help with the inflammation. Do you have any pain anywhere right now?
- [64:22]
Kelly Slater
Hip? No, just sitting in my lower back. My lower back's been really affected by.
- [64:28]
Gary Brea
The hip, so let me know how that is when you're. When you're done. That. Yeah. When it's going to take about a 2 minutes to dissolve and then just whack it back.
- [64:36]
Kelly Slater
Cool. But, you know, if I'm not totally out of pain. Tomorrow, I'm going to let you know it.
- [64:41]
Gary Brea
If you're totally out of pain, you better tell me. Well, we're working out in the morning, so I'll check in with you. You know, I. I had an. I tore my acl, my mcl, and I actually cracked the lateral half of my tibial plateau off. Geez. A pretty bad knee injury.
- [64:54]
Kelly Slater
How.
- [64:55]
Gary Brea
Dude, I knew you were going to say that. I was going to try to talk fast so you wouldn't ask. Yeah, I wish I had a better story, but, I mean, this was years ago, like, 2008, I think.
- [65:04]
Kelly Slater
And drunk late at night, Really?
- [65:07]
Gary Brea
I had had a few cocktails. I was actually at an insurance convention, and I had a few cocktails, and.
- [65:12]
Kelly Slater
I think I had to call it out, didn't I?
- [65:14]
Gary Brea
I had taken three Jiu Jitsu classes, like, including the first day, where all you basically do is stretch and meet your instructor. So I had.
- [65:22]
Kelly Slater
Is this pre Biohack Gary Bracket?
- [65:24]
Gary Brea
No, this is way pre Biohack, you know, And I had taken three Jiu Jitsu classes, and so I. I thought I was a badass. I knew how to pull somebody by me and then choked him, and that was it. But you're supposed to kind of stand there and let me do it to.
- [65:35]
Kelly Slater
You, where I'm supposed to, like, you got to come like this.
- [65:38]
Gary Brea
Yeah, no, punch like this. And then I'm gonna up block, and then I'm gonna chop you in the neck, and then I'm gonna sweep your foot, and when I sweep your foot, you have to fall down. You know, it's like, help me out here. So I had three Jiu Jitsu classes, and I'd watched a lot of ufc, so I felt pretty good about myself. And I had a few cocktails, and I was at an insurance conference, and my business developer, who was a Division 1 wrestler.
- [66:01]
Kelly Slater
Oh, here we go.
- [66:02]
Gary Brea
We started, like, mouthing off to each other. He was like. He goes, dude, just so you know, I would mop the floor with you. And he's like, let's just not even have this conversation. And I was like, well, we could go up to the suite and figure it out, you know? And I hit the presidential suite up there.
- [66:16]
Kelly Slater
You're like, I'm gonna.
- [66:16]
Gary Brea
So all my.
- [66:17]
Kelly Slater
I'm guillotine this guy.
- [66:19]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I'm gonna grab his wrist, I'm gonna pass him, and then I'm gonna be behind. I'm gonna rear nature, choke him. And it works so good. In my second Jiu Jitsu, Class.
- [66:28]
Kelly Slater
And there's this thing called a kimura. I'll get him.
- [66:31]
Gary Brea
Yeah, James. And he was a little spark plug, just a little muscular spark plug. And, and, and he was actually fresh out, out of grad school. And he wrestled through grad school even too. So those guys are beast. So we push all the furniture aside and all my whole staff went up there. And it started friendly. And then I really started trying and he wasn't. And he hip tossed me and my leg got stuck on, on the side of his knee. He did not mean it at all. And everybody heard it go. I mean, it was just this big popping, tearing sound. One girl actually got sick, and then I was sitting on the floor.
- [67:09]
Kelly Slater
I'm so glad I asked.
- [67:11]
Gary Brea
My knee was cocked to the side and I was like, oh, this is not good. So maybe we can cut all this out.
- [67:17]
Kelly Slater
And it's terrible for my career. And your body's like, hey, tell me about the jiu jitsu classic 20 years ago, just for the record, all three of them.
- [67:24]
Gary Brea
Yeah, 20. Yeah. 20 odd years ago. And, and, but anyway, the, the point that I was trying to make when you rudely interrupted me and asked me what happened was I remember my surgeon said this. He goes, the surgery went perfect. He's like, you got great cadaver tissue in there. The surgery went as good as it could go. But he said, that's 30% of your journey. 70% of how your knee will treat you for the rest of your life is how dedicated you are to post operative rehab. And I listened to the doctor and I. Yeah, and, and he, yeah, he was, he was a great surgeon. Still is a great surgeon. And so I just dedicated my life. And he said, there's going to be a point in rehab where it feels like you're just tearing pages out of a phone book, you know, meaning your progress is in the beginning. You have lots of progress. You start to get range of motion, the pain starts to go down. But he said, when, when you, when the progress seems immeasurable, keep going. And I took his advice and, you know, it was a few years later I was an amateur age group champion for the state of Florida in triathlons. And I, you know, knock on wood, man. I've had no pain, no loss of range of motion. I never complain about my knee. Doesn't bother me in bad weather. So maybe, you know, with your hip, that post operative rehab is just so incredibly important.
- [68:42]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [68:43]
Gary Brea
You know, how dedicated you are because a lot of people just stop when it's just not painful anymore. But the muscle atrophy is still there, and you really haven't retrained the muscles, and your body still thinks you're injured, and then you're out playing basketball one day and, you know, you do all of a sudden.
- [68:56]
Kelly Slater
I feel great, Gary.
- [68:57]
Gary Brea
See, I'll give you an affiliate link. No, this is great. This is why I pee so much. But. So you're still doing the rehab for it?
- [69:10]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. In fact, I'm just getting to the point now where I can start to actually train. You know, I'm getting a range of motion and.
- [69:16]
Gary Brea
Have you battled a lot of injuries during your career?
- [69:19]
Kelly Slater
No, I've been. That's really. I've been super fortunate. My worst injury was I broke my foot really bad in 2017. Surfing?
- [69:30]
Gary Brea
Yeah. How do you break your foot surfing?
- [69:33]
Kelly Slater
I've broken my feet four times. Surfing. It's pretty calm. It's not as uncommon as you think. The board flipping into me this way. So basically what happened with this one? This is the. This was the fourth time I've broken either toes or metatarsals. Wow.
- [69:49]
Gary Brea
It comes up that violently.
- [69:51]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, so the board just flipped into me that. So three times. The first two times it happened to me, I was on a wave. I don't. I don't know how you're surf knowledges, but I was basically in the barrel of a wave with my back to the wave and the lip of the wave landing here. And that lip, when it lands, it explodes back. You know, you see when a wave breaks and it explodes. Right, so inside the tube, that comes back up in the tube at you like this. And so the first couple times I did it, the lip landed there and pushed the board this way, and the board flipped towards me.
- [70:29]
Gary Brea
And your foot just.
- [70:30]
Kelly Slater
And broke toes and. Or metatarsals.
- [70:33]
Gary Brea
Ah.
- [70:33]
Kelly Slater
The first time I did, I broke two metatarsals. Another time I broke a couple toes and then I broke. Then the last one I did, I wasn't on a big wave. It wasn't anything very exciting. It was a wave that was all closing out like the wave was finishing. And I pulled into the wave when it broke, and I was just going to dive off. And while I was in there, I was like, should I dive or should I ride it out? Because in a wave, when you. If you stay on your board longer, sometimes the energy kind of dissipates a little before you even wipe out. So, like you've. You've kind of fallen after. The worst part of it, if you fall just before it all breaks, you can get sucked up and over on the. In the lip of the wave and hit the bottom and stuff. Right. This wave wasn't even. There was no factor of that. It was a. Not a very big wave at all. And I pulled in, and I was kind of in two minds. Should I jump off or should I ride it out? And my leg was straight. And all I can figure that happened was some part of the wave. I was facing the wave, too, so it was a different angle, but somehow the board violently got pushed into me and my leg was straight, so something had to break in the chain.
- [71:38]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [71:38]
Kelly Slater
So I broke all five metatarsals across the top.
- [71:41]
Gary Brea
All five?
- [71:41]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [71:42]
Gary Brea
You mean you literally snapped your foot?
- [71:44]
Kelly Slater
I put a new joint in my foot, basically.
- [71:46]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [71:46]
Kelly Slater
It's a brutal injury. I broke the Liz Frank joint. I broke the.
- [71:52]
Gary Brea
That is a lot.
- [71:53]
Kelly Slater
2Nd, 3rd, 4th metatarsal in a line diagonally. And then the fifth one cracked up over here high in the metatarsal. It was a really. It was a really bad injury.
- [72:02]
Gary Brea
Yeah. How long did that take you out?
- [72:04]
Kelly Slater
About. About a year and a half.
- [72:07]
Gary Brea
Year and a half?
- [72:08]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [72:08]
Gary Brea
You had surgery?
- [72:09]
Kelly Slater
I had surgery on it like, two weeks after it happened. Because the foot swole.
- [72:14]
Gary Brea
It must have been the gnarliest X ray.
- [72:16]
Kelly Slater
The foot swelled up so bad. Yeah, I'll show you the X ray. The foot swelled up so bad that I couldn't fly because it was like the foot expanded so much. So my doctor basically said, look, just like, let the swelling go down a little, Ice it for a few days before you fly. I was in South Africa, and I had to fly double red eye to get home.
- [72:32]
Gary Brea
Oh, my God.
- [72:33]
Kelly Slater
So elevation for 10 hours. Elevation for 10 hours.
- [72:36]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [72:37]
Kelly Slater
And when I got home, my foot was even bigger than right after the injury.
- [72:42]
Gary Brea
So then had you had the surgery or. No, you had the surgery?
- [72:46]
Kelly Slater
I was gonna fly home and see my surgeon. He's a good buddy of mine. He lives right near me. And so he came over my house to see my foot. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna have to wait, because when I do surgery, it's gonna blow up again, and it's gonna. Your foot's so big, it would rip the stitches out. You know, it'll rip them through your skin. So he's like, we gotta. We're gonna have to let that thing settle for a few days. So it was really probably a good.
- [73:06]
Gary Brea
Were you just putting in ice buckets?
- [73:07]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, basically.
- [73:08]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [73:09]
Kelly Slater
But so it was basically, like, good two weeks before I got surgery, and then it Blew up again. And then I had pitting edema for like three months. It was terrible.
- [73:16]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [73:16]
Kelly Slater
And. And then. Yeah, I started surfing a little too soon on that one. Yeah, it. I did that in July and I surfed the contest in December. I actually, I actually did all right in the contest.
- [73:30]
Gary Brea
But you, you did that injury in the contest?
- [73:33]
Kelly Slater
No, I did it. I did the injury just before I had to compete, like an hour before I was going to compete. So I was out of that contest. But then I. I surfed a condest in December. I did it in July. I did a. I surfed condos in December, but it wasn't a condos where I had to do maneuvers. You know, we're not turning, we're just pulling in the tube of the wave. So I'm kind of essentially just kind of going straight on waves. So it wasn't really.
- [73:53]
Gary Brea
So for you, that's like a walk in the park?
- [73:54]
Kelly Slater
Well, it's just, it's easier than having to move around small waves.
- [73:57]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [73:58]
Kelly Slater
It was sort of medium sized waves where you're just going straight in the tube of the waves. And it's a. In a weird way, it's kind of safer for the foot. That makes any sense?
- [74:05]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [74:06]
Kelly Slater
So I was able to do it, but it was, it was probably dumb on me, but I was just so excited to surf that contest. That's my favorite event. So I wanted to surf it.
- [74:13]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [74:13]
Kelly Slater
And. But then in February, I got all the hardware out. I took all the screws and stave. It was three plates and 16 screws or something.
- [74:22]
Gary Brea
Oh my God.
- [74:23]
Kelly Slater
So I took those out and then I had to. I swear that the healing. The healing from that second surgery was harder than the surgery, I think. Wow. Like getting that stuff out. My doctor basically just said, hey, when you're. When the cuts heal, you'll be. You should be all right. But I got the whole pitting edema in my foot again and stuff like where you push your thumb in it.
- [74:44]
Gary Brea
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [74:46]
Kelly Slater
It was disgusting. It was almost like dead tissue. And so I wasn't getting much circulation. So the healing didn't happen for very long. Like the. Typically I've broken bones many times and you know, four weeks the bones healed, six weeks the calcium fills back in and you're bone looks normal on an X ray. I broke that in July. I got the X ray done in February and the calcium was just filling in, so.
- [75:10]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [75:10]
Kelly Slater
Because one bone shattered in like eight pieces or nine pieces and another one was in like four or five pieces.
- [75:17]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [75:18]
Kelly Slater
So the blood flow was obviously not very good.
- [75:20]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [75:20]
Kelly Slater
Plus, it probably shattered. The doctors who did it were a little concerned, actually. My. My normal surgeon, he sent me to someone else. He goes. He's like, I could probably do it, but these guys are really good at it. And I'll send you to them. So these two doctors in Burbank did it, and they said they were basically, like, taking tweezers and putting a little piece of bone back together and trying to, like, glue them back together.
- [75:44]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah.
- [75:45]
Kelly Slater
And they weren't sure that my foot would. Oh, that's. They weren't sure if the bone would sort of, like, heal properly.
- [75:50]
Gary Brea
Yeah. And then we all spend one third of our lives sleeping. One third. That's 25 years of your life on a mattress. Breathing it in, absorbing it through your skin. The US Mattress industry is the most chemical heavy in the entire world. 96% of mattresses contain petroleum foams. 92% use chemical flame retardants. You wouldn't eat that, so why would you sleep on it? The ultimate snooze is different. No petroleum, no fiberglass, no boric acid. Just gots certified organic cotton and wool, 100% natural Talalay latex and made in America. It's the only mattress that I back Gary Breca because it meets my standards for human optimization. Sleep chemical free. Visit theultimate snooze.com and use code ultimate for 10% off. Now let's get to sleep. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. And would you say you got back to 100% after that?
- [76:44]
Kelly Slater
No. Still haven't you?
- [76:46]
Gary Brea
Still.
- [76:46]
Kelly Slater
Honestly? Yeah. So then 10 months after my original injury, so this is May of The next year, 2018, I went to Fiji and I was surfing. There's a really big swell. So I went to chase big waves. No problem on the big day. The next day was kind of small, and I just did something dumb on a wave and I heard it all over again, and I tore the plantar plate.
- [77:07]
Gary Brea
Oh, my gosh.
- [77:08]
Kelly Slater
Between my first and second toe. Just like, ripped it because there was so much scar tissue that.
- [77:14]
Gary Brea
That ligament.
- [77:15]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [77:16]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [77:16]
Kelly Slater
Tore it. And so I was on. Then 10 months after my original injury, I was back on crutches.
- [77:21]
Gary Brea
Oh, no.
- [77:22]
Kelly Slater
And. And I remember it's like on the island where we stay, I was walking with crutches and I just started crying. I'm like, I can't believe 10 months. And I'm like, I think I'm worse than I was.
- [77:33]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [77:34]
Kelly Slater
10 months ago.
- [77:35]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [77:35]
Kelly Slater
It Was that injury hurt? That hurt worse than the original injury?
- [77:39]
Gary Brea
Oh, yeah, no, that's it. It was tearing a ligament off the bone.
- [77:42]
Kelly Slater
Oh, my God, it was so painful. So basically that took me till about the of 2018 now.
- [77:47]
Gary Brea
What did they do for that? Did you go and have it surgically repaired?
- [77:50]
Kelly Slater
I didn't, no. I just kind of waited it out.
- [77:52]
Gary Brea
Oh, dude. Yeah, it's like, brutal.
- [77:55]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, it was brutal. Yeah, that was. But I still get these weird phantom nerve pains through my foot.
- [77:59]
Gary Brea
Like they're not weird phantom nerve pain. Well, yeah, I guess, like they're from injury.
- [78:03]
Kelly Slater
You know what I mean? Yeah, but. Well, it'll like, I'll get like a shooting pain and then it doesn't stick around. Like, it, it doesn't keep going. But I'll get. I get plantar fasciitis all the time because I golf and then I'm pushing off that foot. Off the toe of that foot. Yeah, off the ball of that foot. And then by the end of the day, if my foot's just. If I've walked a lot or whatever, I feel like my foot has shortened up so much and I. It's like gonna. It feels like it's gonna tear sometimes. Yeah.
- [78:30]
Gary Brea
Do you see yourself when the hip injury, you know, when the hip repair heals, do you see yourself just even going back into competition for fun?
- [78:40]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, yeah, a little bit.
- [78:44]
Gary Brea
Or even just going back into competition.
- [78:46]
Kelly Slater
I mean, I'll probably compete.
- [78:48]
Gary Brea
53 isn't that long ago.
- [78:50]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. But I'll probably compete for at least another decade. Not, not necessarily professionally or high level competition, but there's. There's a lot of team events and fun events that I want to do too. But I would say as far as, like tour events, I don't know, for the next two, three, four years. There's a couple events I really love that, that I. I definitely have a chance at.
- [79:15]
Gary Brea
Really? That's awesome.
- [79:15]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, that. That suit my. That suit my strengths.
- [79:20]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [79:20]
Kelly Slater
And what is that basically, like a little bit bigger waves with, with barrels, like hollow waves. That's, you know, that's probably what after all this time has. Has become my. My real strength.
- [79:35]
Gary Brea
Is there ever that one that, like, is it, you know, either you're inside the barrel of a wave or you're dropping down the face of a huge wave. Is there ever that one? That's just like. That's it.
- [79:48]
Kelly Slater
Oh, yeah.
- [79:49]
Gary Brea
Just like I'm like spiritually connected to what I do now. Is it when you're inside the barrel, the wave? Because I Always think you sent me.
- [79:57]
Kelly Slater
It goes like ocean.
- [79:58]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [79:58]
Kelly Slater
And those ones, certain ones are like slow motion. But then you will have certain waves in your lifetime. There's a few waves I can think back in my lifetime over 30, 40 years that really certain, just individual waves stand out.
- [80:11]
Gary Brea
Really.
- [80:12]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [80:12]
Gary Brea
What was it that stood out about it being inside the barrel or.
- [80:15]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, usually just some, just this.
- [80:16]
Gary Brea
The sheer size of it and the speed going down the face of it or.
- [80:20]
Kelly Slater
No, just, just how well you connect with the wave, maybe how deep or how long you get in the barrel or you find just the perfect wave. You've been looking for years for that one wave at that one location. You know, because every wave is different. Every. There's no two waves alike. There's a lot of waves that are similar on the right side that come at the right angle, at the right height, the right part of the reef that you're surfing at. So there are waves that look very alike, but there's no two ways alike. And it's really about how far you can push yourself to take off deep and late on the wave and still make it and, and match the speed of the waves. Right. You don't always have to be going super fast in order to have a great ride, you know. Yeah, that's maybe a super fast, long, deep tube is the most impressive thing and most exciting thing.
- [81:10]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [81:11]
Kelly Slater
But you know, sometimes it, you know, like I was saying earlier, sometimes going slow and pacing what the waves asking for is the right thing.
- [81:18]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [81:18]
Kelly Slater
But it, it is probably always more exciting when you're, you know, as deep as you can possibly be on a wave and going as fast as you possibly can go and. Yeah. And the things trying to outrace you and you keep up with it somehow that's the most exciting, especially on a big wave that's you know, like danger, super dangerous.
- [81:38]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [81:39]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [81:39]
Gary Brea
So. So where does this go for you? You continue to compete? I mean, are you working? Well, I'm not as far as surfing.
- [81:48]
Kelly Slater
I'll just put an asterisk on the competitive thing because there's just one or two events that are on the tour that, that I really like that, that if offered a wild card I would accept and still compete on that level. There's a couple of events that are just fun events I'd like to do with my friends or like teammates. And then you know, besides that, like I'm a new dad again. I have a 29 year old daughter who lives in Lauderdale actually and, and then I have a 17 month old son and you know, I look forward to him starting to surf. He's ridden seven waves in his life.
- [82:21]
Gary Brea
Has he really?
- [82:22]
Kelly Slater
And he also.
- [82:22]
Gary Brea
17 months.
- [82:23]
Kelly Slater
It's awesome. He. Not on his own. Those are all with me. But four in the ocean and three in the wave pool.
- [82:30]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [82:30]
Kelly Slater
And two in his mom's belly when he was halfway here. So. So he's sort of ridden like nine waves.
- [82:38]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [82:39]
Kelly Slater
It's kind of funny.
- [82:39]
Gary Brea
That's so cool, man. 17 months.
- [82:41]
Kelly Slater
I would have no idea where to even start counting how many waves I've ridden in my lifetime. Yeah, but he's on. He's on seven right now.
- [82:48]
Gary Brea
Dude, that's. He's gonna outride you, brother.
- [82:50]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, he will, but no, hopefully.
- [82:53]
Gary Brea
How's the Wade pork doing?
- [82:54]
Kelly Slater
It's going really good.
- [82:55]
Gary Brea
It is, yeah.
- [82:56]
Kelly Slater
It's super fun. It's a. It's a super fun experience.
- [82:58]
Gary Brea
Is it like, family oriented? You have partners in that?
- [83:02]
Kelly Slater
I'm actually not an owner. We. I sold my share of it. We. My partner and I started it in 2014, finished in 2015, 2017. We sold it.
- [83:12]
Gary Brea
Oh, wow.
- [83:13]
Kelly Slater
But we. We're founders of it, so we still get rights and access to use it and a few days a year and. And, you know, get invited up there with other groups of friends that are going. But it's a. It's become a real. It's become a destination for surfers that have been there already that want to go back over and over and over again. And, you know, the thing with wave technology is they're not cheap. And ours is the most.
- [83:38]
Gary Brea
I can't imagine it's cheap to actually make consistent waves in a pool.
- [83:42]
Kelly Slater
It's getting more and more cheap. But the concrete costs a certain amount. Energy costs a certain amount. It's energy is not even the high cost. The concrete really is to make the pools and to build out with some of the hardware.
- [83:53]
Gary Brea
And you guys did that on your own in 2014.
- [83:56]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [83:56]
Gary Brea
To burn a lot of your fortune doing that.
- [83:58]
Kelly Slater
I was worried that I was going to end up using. Burning all the money I ever made.
- [84:04]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah. That seems like a labor of love.
- [84:07]
Kelly Slater
And I definitely would have had it not. Had it not done well, but, you know, people loved it and it turned into something and it's become a good business for the guys who own it. But, yeah, I don't own it, but it's, you know, I'm super proud of it and I still feel like it's mine, you know, like it's ours.
- [84:24]
Gary Brea
Is there anything you're working on on the horizon. Is. Is there an entrepreneur in you that's going to come out?
- [84:30]
Kelly Slater
Well, I'm. I'm building a. A wave pool in Austin, and everybody's moving to Austin. I know.
- [84:36]
Gary Brea
What is it? Is it Joe Rogan? Like, what's. What's sucking people down there? Literally. I did a podcast in the Middle east with a modest influencer, and she was moving from Middle east to Austin.
- [84:52]
Kelly Slater
Well, I got into golf in the mid-90s, and about five, six, seven years into playing golf, I met a guy named Mike Meldman. And Mike owned this golf course that I love to go to on the Big island and built a community around it. A few years later, I got into the idea of making wave pool technology. Wave technology. And then I started imagining I could build, you know, in surfing what Mike's done in golf. We could build these communities around a wave pool and people wouldn't want to live there. And so we worked on it for years. That was the ultimate goal for me with this wave pool technology. And so, long story short, Mike and Mike's group and my group are partners to build this wave in Austin.
- [85:40]
Gary Brea
Oh, wow. And it's going to be a community.
- [85:42]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, build. It's a private community. Private wave. And it's about, like seven minutes from the airport. The good thing about it, it's underway now. Yeah, it's. We're. We broke ground January this year.
- [85:53]
Gary Brea
It's kind of a big deal. Dude, you seem so humble about it. Yeah, I'm just building this community homes with a waypool.
- [85:58]
Kelly Slater
I. I don't get too.
- [85:59]
Gary Brea
Other than that. Not really anything I've learned, I've learned.
- [86:03]
Kelly Slater
With wave pools, you don't get. You don't get too invested until there's a wave running.
- [86:08]
Gary Brea
Okay.
- [86:08]
Kelly Slater
You know what I mean? Like, like, don't get your hopes up too much, you know, like, oh, she kind of likes you, but you haven't gone on your first date yet.
- [86:15]
Gary Brea
Yeah, it's a lot of money and a lot of concrete that's hard to move around if the wave doesn't work.
- [86:20]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, yeah. But there used to be a wave on this property. It was a wave called inland, and it was a different technology and it was like a very early days technology of wave pools. And. And then the guy who owned it also built a brewery there that they never used. So there's a brewery on the property and there's just. They have all the permitting and water rights and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of the perfect place for us because central America. There's people from all over that want to fly and come surf these waves. Yeah. And, and there are a lot of people who are going to be members that already do have some kind of like either a business or some, for some reason to go to Austin. Some members that live there already that are going to be members of our club. That's cool. So. But yeah, it is like a boom town. I mean, I was, I was there a year or two ago and you know, you get invited to these parties and it's pretty much every person you see in the media and biohacking world and podcast world and. Yeah, blah, blah.
- [87:20]
Gary Brea
No, no, it's, it's. I mean, Austin seems to be taking off. And what's cool is you can get outside Austin. You can actually get a lot of land and, and yeah, you know, there's a, you know, I know, I know a lot of folks that are actually getting like, outside of Austin into the countryside and you can actually still get decent plots of land out there.
- [87:37]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [87:38]
Gary Brea
And eventually I want to, I want to ride things out on a regenerative farm. So I'll dump all this silliness in Miami and eventually I want to be on a regenerative farm. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Where I want to have something. I've, I've looked at two places. I've looked at Tennessee and I've also looked at in Colorado. There's 11,000acre one that I really like, and there's another plot of land in, in Tennessee the weather's a little bit more, you know, less seasonal. In Tennessee you gotta, you gotta have.
- [88:07]
Kelly Slater
At least 10,000 acres. Right.
- [88:10]
Gary Brea
But I mean, just to have cattle, chickens, horses and. And I want to really get into the regenerative, sustainable farm.
- [88:16]
Kelly Slater
I have 11 acres on. Yeah, listen, I don't even have it.
- [88:19]
Gary Brea
I don't even have an 11th of an acre. I don't know what I have here. 20,000.
- [88:24]
Kelly Slater
I do. I actually have some land on the big island on. In Hawaii.
- [88:27]
Gary Brea
Oh, do you?
- [88:28]
Kelly Slater
I got 11 acres up in the kind of new rainforest up there, like at 3, 500 foot elevation. But next to me is 270,000 acres that can never be built on or anything. That's cool. It's really cool. So if you want to hike and there's like cows roaming it and stuff, you know.
- [88:43]
Gary Brea
Yeah. I mean, there's not such thing as a wild cow.
- [88:45]
Kelly Slater
Right. I think on this property. I mean, they're not.
- [88:49]
Gary Brea
This is cows that got out.
- [88:51]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, they just got out. But they just roam free. I mean, I think most of them are tagged and owned by somebody, but good luck finding them on 270, 000 acres if you don't have them tagged or GPS.
- [89:02]
Gary Brea
So I have a. A group I call my VIP group, and it's. This is like the group that I really pour myself into. These are. These are the community that I'm really building, and I do private podcasts with them, and I do Q&As and stuff like that. So they've asked. They've got a couple of questions that they want to ask you here. So we're gonna. As we wind down the podcast, we'll go in and. And answer some of my VIPs questions.
- [89:27]
Kelly Slater
But when you say private podcast, what do you mean by that?
- [89:29]
Gary Brea
So we just. We shut the cameras off and I let them submit questions to. To the guests so that I tell these folks who's coming on the podcast.
- [89:38]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [89:38]
Gary Brea
And then so they knew you were coming and they. They submit questions to you. So. Yeah, I normally don't tell the public, you know, who's. Who's coming on the podcast. We like to surprise, not even tease it, you know, every week, keep it really entertaining. But these guys I let know ahead of time, and then they prepare questions and they got some really good questions for you. There's a couple of them here. All right, if you're interested in becoming a VIP, you can go over to theultimatehuman.com forward/vip and just sign up to be one of my VIPs. But as you may or may not.
- [90:08]
Kelly Slater
Know, I'll do that.
- [90:09]
Gary Brea
I. Yeah, it's 97 bucks a month. It's practically free. But I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question, and it's, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate Human?
- [90:24]
Kelly Slater
It's funny because when I walked in here, I mean, obviously I know your show and I know it's called the Ultimate Human, but if. If you were just a random guy walking down the street and you had a shirt on that said the Ultimate Human, people like, man, that narcissist.
- [90:35]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah, he's narcissistic. I think some people think that I'm saying I'm the ultimate Human, so maybe I should say, I should maybe put podcast on here so people don't think I'm an asshole.
- [90:46]
Kelly Slater
One of my best friends, he. He owns a bunch of smoothie shops. Actually has one here, Sun Life, if you know that. But he lives in Austin. He has one there, too. And he. He wears a shirt all this all the time, says Cult Leader. Yeah. It's so funny because he has a people, you know, there's some percentage of the people who don't get the joke.
- [91:07]
Gary Brea
I mean, I get it, but I think if I just saw him wearing Cult Leader, I probably wouldn't get it at that time.
- [91:11]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. To. What does it mean to be the ultimate human? I think it means finding your purpose in life and living up to your potential in the simplest terms. And if you don't know what your purpose is, finding it. And a lot of times that's just helping other people or something simple, you know.
- [91:33]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [91:34]
Kelly Slater
But I. I find myself off purpose a lot, you know, and it takes something sometimes to shake us up, to get us back into like, what's the right direction for us. And. And then you also go through phase in life where you don't know what that, what that next thing is.
- [91:51]
Gary Brea
I think it's perfectly normal.
- [91:52]
Kelly Slater
There's some level of that for me right now, you know, getting out of pro surfing or, you know, like I said, I got paid to go surf, chase waves.
- [92:00]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [92:00]
Kelly Slater
Which is great. Is the best job in the world.
- [92:02]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [92:02]
Kelly Slater
But, you know, what's next and where do you challenge yourself and stuff? And I guess I'd like to, for my own self, from my own ultimate human share. I love to network. I love to put people together that have the right, you know, thing that can help someone else out. Like, you should meet that person and do this with them, you know, and it could be music, it could be health, it could be surfing, could be film. Yeah, anything. I'm, I'm passionate about all those things. Highly passionate about all those things. But I think it's, you know, taking all. All of your own special sauce and, and putting it in the. The right place to be able to help other people and help the world.
- [92:45]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I think that's great, man. Kelly, man, thank you so much for coming on the Ultimate Human podcast. Thanks a lot. It's been a pleasure having you. I even, I think my. My wife enjoyed the shark conversation more than anything. This dude knows more about sharks, by the way. We should do another whole podcast on sharks.
- [93:01]
Kelly Slater
It's just because the surf world is so affected by shark attacks that we study that information, you know, because it. Some part of some aspect of each one could come in handy one day.
- [93:14]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [93:15]
Kelly Slater
But there's certain places in the world you go with South Australia, South Africa, Northern California, the northeast of the US on the east Coast. You know, there's These pockets of sharks that are.
- [93:26]
Gary Brea
You just know it.
- [93:27]
Kelly Slater
Yeah, there's been a lot of attacks and stuff. So it's. It's really good to be informed about where you're at and what the potential.
- [93:33]
Gary Brea
I mean, you. You invested. You've lost close friends to shark attacks.
- [93:37]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. And that's shark attacks, drownings, all sorts of things. But yes, shark attacks are. It's. That's a. It's a. It's just that primal fear we all have.
- [93:47]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [93:48]
Kelly Slater
And Jaws was probably one of the most impactful.
- [93:52]
Gary Brea
That was the worst movie ever.
- [93:53]
Kelly Slater
Probably one of the most impactful movies ever. It probably was because, like, I mean, it came out when I was about six or so.
- [94:01]
Gary Brea
I. I'll never forget it. And, you know, now if you went back and watched it, it would feel. It seemed cheesy.
- [94:07]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [94:07]
Gary Brea
Right. Because we got AI and. And, you know, we had Avatar.
- [94:11]
Kelly Slater
Yeah.
- [94:11]
Gary Brea
But. But yeah, I mean, the way the movie made it seem like the shark was actually hunting people.
- [94:19]
Kelly Slater
Yeah. And we didn't know. I think most people didn't know how Great White's hunted or what the event would look like, you know, so that opening scene with a girl swimming at night and she's by the buoy and then the shark's dragging her and she's above the water and she's getting dragged back and forth. It's so unrealistic to what a shark attack actually is.
- [94:37]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [94:38]
Kelly Slater
You know, they come and bite, you know.
- [94:39]
Gary Brea
Well, they only had the hydraulic thing moving her back and forth. There's only so much they could do but that.
- [94:44]
Kelly Slater
And then there's the beach scene where, you know, there's everyone's in the water screaming and running out, and you're hoping your kid's not in there still.
- [94:49]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [94:49]
Kelly Slater
So it's just like it plays on that ultimate.
- [94:52]
Gary Brea
Oh, they did a great job. I still remember Jaws and I remember actually going to, I guess Disney World or Universal Studios and seeing the actual model of the. And it was this vinyl shark. I mean, yeah, it looked like. It looked pretty fake up close, but I guess when you just did flash pictures of it, it really.
- [95:10]
Kelly Slater
I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard as a kid, I heard that the story was kind of based on this shark that had attacked a couple people or they think the shark had same one up in Montauk or somewhere. When I was like 13 or 14, I went in this bar, restaurant or whatever in Montauk, and they had caught this shark. And it wasn't the biggest shark in the world, but they think this one had attacked a couple people or whatever, and they had the head of it mounted in this restaurant.
- [95:36]
Gary Brea
Oh, wow.
- [95:36]
Kelly Slater
And that was a story I was told as a kid. But, you know, okay, between then and now, maybe my story has changed a little bit of neurodegenerative memory or something.
- [95:48]
Gary Brea
Well, listen, man, we're gonna have you back on the Ultimate Human. Maybe we talk about shark attacks at some point in the future, but thank you so much.
- [95:54]
Kelly Slater
Great to be here. Thanks for your podcast.
- [95:56]
Gary Brea
And until next time, guys, that's just science.