And that’s also what athletes mean by the term progression. Walsh had been surfing at Jaws since he was a kid. There had been days, weeks, months, and years of 4 percent plus 4 percent plus 4 percent, of pushing himself into ten-foot, twenty-foot, thirty-foot surf, of continuously testing limits, of lateralizing, of nearly dying, of driving past injury and fear, of honing skills, getting stronger, getting smarter—a self-taught, near graduate-level education in hydrodynamics, meteorology, body mechanics, and flow.
