Laird Hamilton
Cultivating a relationship with discomfort will help you discern the difference between good pain and bad.Collection: Relationship
As soon as you cut sugar out of your diet, you'll lose the craving for the stuff entirely and won't even be able to handle a regular soda.Collection: Diet
Everything we want to do in life requires discipline. And like strength, flexibility, and endurance, it can be built up over time.Collection: Life
Death has influenced me. It has made me more grateful and thankful to be alive.Collection: Thankful
You have an obligation as an organism living here to evolve and innovate and learn. Clothing, fitness - all part of the evolution of Laird the athlete and Laird the brand. I want to keep evolving that.Collection: Fitness
Every successful person has a fair amount of self-control - it's just the nature of success.Collection: Success
Definitely the ocean was my saviour. It saved me from a lot of destruction. Or I'd say self-destruction.
Coming up with new ideas keeps me young and excited.
There's a thing about discomfort. Maybe if we lived in a different universe, maybe discomfort wouldn't be so beneficial. But the universe that we live in at this point, we benefit from discomfort.
I'll go out in the morning in the dark and sauna to start the day, a really hot one. I'll do something really hot, or you could also just jump in an ice tub and get the opposite of that. Either one of those kind of extreme thermal exposures is gonna boost the system. It's gonna rev you up.
Almost every guy I look up to - everyone whose life is an example of how to live - is an early riser. All of them wake up in the dark, and they're just revved and ready to go.
To me, there's nothing worse than waking up and realizing that the sun's already been up for awhile. I feel like I've missed out, like I'm only getting three-quarters of the day.
I subscribe to the idea that energy perpetuates energy, and nothing makes you more tired than sleeping in or sleeping too much.
If I don't get a chance to work out first thing in the morning, my whole day sort of goes awry.
Omega-3s may be the single best supplement you can take on a regular basis.
Whenever I can get a nutrient or health benefit from a root, an herb, or a functional food instead of a pill, the effects will be stronger.
The first thing I do in the morning is take a hot shower to wake myself up and shake off the slumber and stiffness that accumulates during the night.
You don't want to put coffee on an empty stomach - too much acid.
Dogs put their paws out in front of them to arch their backs when they wake up and so should we. It stretches the chest, the hip flexors, the whole front of the body.
Over the years, I've learned that two distinct forces lead people to put themselves in dangerous situations: ignorance and experience.
When it comes to risk, a good rule of thumb is: 'Would you do it if no one was watching?'
Anyone who knows what he's doing takes a serious attitude toward a risky situation and doesn't take it lightly.
Most people don't stretch, because, in a way, it's one of the activities that hurts us the most. It's instantly uncomfortable, which isn't true when you work out intensely and can build up to that pain, or when you have sore muscles from a tough session the day before.
If you watch football players stretch before a game, you see a kind of agony on their faces that you don't see when they're on the field. This pain is why yoga incorporates so much breathing, because you have to exhale that discomfort out to get through it.
What separates great athletes from mediocre ones isn't only talent and training - it's also how well they can handle discomfort.
When I've helped out-of-shape friends get back into shape, the first thing we do is get them more accustomed to struggle. You train hard, which is uncomfortable, and then you get sore - and then you're uncomfortable because you're sore. But you have to keep going.
I've always had a huge pain threshold - I've broken legs and dealt with it - and the ability to deal with the pain of injury allowed me to heal faster.
The first time you do some new exercise, you're sore and tired in a way that you hadn't been before. But do that same exercise for three or four months, and you have to do twice as many reps and with more weight to feel as though you've accomplished anything.
Everyone gravitates toward what they're good at. If you've got big legs, you're going to go squat. If you've got big pecs, you're going to go to the bench press. It's just what we automatically do.
Being upside down is the ultimate counterbalance to the repetitive motions we do in our vertical lives - walking, standing, paddleboarding, sitting upright.
Usually, working out is about aesthetics - six-pack abs and biceps and pecs - instead of true functionality. True function has a different aesthetic appeal.
If I'm doing serious swim training, I like fins, a snorkel, and a mask.
I love swimming in rough water, usually along cliff lines and places where the waves are really banging on you.
Swimming is the root of surfing. The first board you ever have is your body.
While swimming is a great workout, it's also one of the best activities for recovery. It improves the flexibility in your arms and shoulders, and surrounds your body with pressurization.
Paddle boarding is like walking on water. Standing atop a board in the middle of the ocean, you see everything from sea life to the coastline and across the channel. Having that sweeping expanse in front of you, you just want to go exploring.
Like swimming, paddle boarding is an all-body workout. It strengthens your core and stabilization system, requiring your connective tissue to generate power through your hands and out your feet.
All the exercise in the world won't get you into good health if you eat nothing but sugar and carbs.
There hasn't been one diet in the history of diets that has worked on a large scale. That's because good nutrition has to be part of a whole lifestyle shift.
Whether we're trying to cut out processed foods, get fit, or lose one bad habit or another, the biggest obstacle is always mental.
There are lots of aspects of our lives we don't have control over, but we do have control over ourselves. That's one thing you can own.
I learned about the importance of feet the hard way - by breaking my left foot more than 10 times, as well as all the metatarsals and arches in both feet. I know that if your feet are hurt, you're done; without them, you're immobile. And now I appreciate them and treat them with the respect they deserve.
There isn't a sport in the world - including swimming - that doesn't involve the foot, so when we train the whole body, we have to include the complex system of muscles, tendons, and joints around the ankle and foot.
Walking in softer substances like sand and grass forces the feet to work to stabilize the body and really strengthens them.
Standing on golf or lacrosse balls and rolling them through the arches is a painful but seriously effective way to warm up and strengthen the feet.
You won't find a better place to get your heart rate up and strengthen your entire body than the beach. Compared with the pounding that exercising on blacktop, trails, or even grass delivers to your joints, the beach goes easy, and causes less muscle inflammation and fewer post-workout aches, too.
To me, supplements are a necessity, not a luxury. I think of them as medicine: Instead of asking a doctor to prescribe me a drug when I'm ill, I'd rather take something that can help me avoid getting sick in the first place.
The feet are loaded with nerve endings and are the key to balance - and I'm in the balance business. In fact, we all are. I also believe the Earth is charged with an electrical frequency that matches your nervous system and immune system. So the bare feet allow us to absorb that energy and is a critical part of your wellness.
Pleasure is definitely a part of my diet, and I regularly eat delicious whole foods. But my main priority is to eat in a way that nourishes and protects my body and the planet.
All the people I know who have been bitten by sharks are less afraid of sharks now. Every one of them. I think they imagined being attacked by a shark would be so much worse than it actually was.