When Mick Fanning was coming through the competitive surfing ranks as a teenager, the training regime was pretty simple.

“Fitness wasn’t even part of it growing up, it was just, ‘Let’s go surf,'” the 42-year-old said.

“We had a couple of camps here and there but most of the time we were trying to find coaches, or just training with our mates.”

It was an era when professional surfers were celebrated for their hard partying and working out in the gym was at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Fanning’s longtime coach, Phil McNamara, said even having a coach was considered taboo.

“In the 1970s, 80s and even early 90s the concept of being coached as a professional surfer was not cool,” McNamara said.

“You didn’t admit to it. In fact, my first couple of world champions never called me their coach.”

Professional production line

In the decades since, the sport has changed dramatically.

Thrust into the global spotlight with its inclusion as an Olympic sport at the 2021 Tokyo Games, Australia is getting serious about developing its future surfing gold medallists.

The next generation of stars are identified and mentored, from the age of 12, to become world champions.

This production line is Surfing Australia’s elite pathways program.

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The 40 most talented juniors in the country are selected to train at Surfing Australia’s high performance centre (HPC) at Casuarina on the Tweed Coast, 15 minutes south of the Queensland border.

The centre is the first of its kind in the world and Surfing Australia’s pathways manager Clancy Dawson said young athletes between the age of 12 and 24 would refine their skills there until they qualified for the world championship tour.

“The coaches are no different to the athletes, we are still going, ‘Oh, do we need to do that?’—  but everyone is starting to see the value and getting on board.”

The HPC has adopted a structured approach to training, including sessions in the gym and a renewed focus on psychology, wellbeing and post-career opportunities.

Ready for take off

A gymnastics trampoline, skateboard ramp and a foam pit could be key to the success of Australian surfing.

It’s where the up-and-coming juniors practise and perfect their aerial manoeuvres — spins and flips that judges score highly in competition.

None of Australia’s recent champions — Stephanie Gilmore, Tyler Wright, Fanning or Joel Parkinson — are renowned for their ability in the air.

To win a world title today, top-level competitors need those tricks in their repertoire.

It was identified as the top priority for Aussies if they are to match it with Brazilian aerial specialists Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira and Felipe Toledo and Hawaiian John John Florence, who have won the last seven men’s world titles between them.

The sport has progressed so quickly that many of the best female aerialists are teenagers.

“It was just an area that I knew we could train quite easily and also an area that I felt that we needed to improve in compared to the rest of the world,” Dawson said.

Practice makes perfect

One of Australia’s top prospects is the newly crowned under 18 world champion Dane Henry.

Henry epitomises the modern elite surfer, effortlessly blending the high-level turns, barrel riding and aerial acrobatics required to one day challenge the world’s best on the WSL championship tour.

The 17-year-old from Fingal Head started surfing at the age of two and has been training at the HPC for the past four years with a singular focus — becoming a world champion and Olympic gold medallist.

He spends countless hours on the trampoline and in the gym developing the strength and dexterity required to pull off his explosive, new-age style of surfing.

“It has definitely helped me open my eyes to what is possible on a surfboard,” Henry said between backflips during a gymnastics session.

“Surfing was kind of stuck for a while.

“Everyone is in the gym now and it’s definitely starting to show in the water as well.”

Fanning hailed Henry’s aerial ability as “incredible” and Dawson said his protege’s recent junior world title run was testament to his years of daily practice.

“He has fallen off thousands of times,” Dawson said.

New school approach

While Australia’s best young surfers are battling for a spot at the HPC, the Gold Coast’s are often found at Palm Beach Currumbin State High School.

It’s not unheard of for families to relocate from interstate so their children can try out for a coveted spot in the school’s surfing excellence program.

It was established by former world champion Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew in 1992 and has become an extension of the elite junior pathway, ensuring world-class talent doesn’t slip through the cracks.

Other schools around the country have followed suit and created surfing programs of their own.

For students Maddy Kenchington and Sunny Clarke, both members of the famous Snapper Rocks Surfriders Club, it’s part of their journey to become a professional surfer.

For the frothing 13-year-old grommets, it doesn’t get much better than getting to surf during school.

Their week consists of two training sessions in the ocean and one in the gym, plus the occasional theory class where they study biomechanics and analyse their technique on film.

“First and foremost they are still going to be kids and you want them to enjoy it, so you don’t want to over-complicate it or make it too technical,” coach Blair Semple said.

“Adding that power and that strength into their surfing and creating those good habits from an early age is what’s going to set them apart and what is going to help propel them forward.”

Balancing act

Palm Beach Currumbin’s high performance manager Phil McNamara has been there since the surfing excellence program started in the early 90s.

Within a few years, he was training two boys who would go on to become some of the program’s most most accomplished graduates, Parkinson and Fanning.

McNamara went on to coach Fanning to three world titles after school and credits him as one of the pioneers of the physical preparation that’s now commonplace in surfing.

“It’s hard to believe but [Fanning] wasn’t the number one gun when he was a teenager,” McNamara said.

“To see him maximise the talent he had through sheer dedication to training and professionalism, when professionalism was a dirty word, that’s what I feel most proud of Mick about.”

While the veteran coach said the link between training out of the water and success in the water was obvious, he believed young surfers today might be spending too much time in the gym and not enough time in the ocean.

“The talented ones are going to be good surfers no matter what you do with them, so the first rule is do no harm,” he said.