Hawaii’s Nathan Florence doesn’t know when he’ll be coming home. “I’m assuming in the next week or two,” the 28-year-old tells GQ. Brother to the better-known World Surf League champ John John Florence, Nathan has, for his adult life, taken a markedly different path. Rather than the World Tour spotlight, with its jerseys, judging, and jockeying for position, Nathan has pursued a peculiar kind of cave-dwelling: lonely, cold barrels at the end of remote roads around the world. He’s documented it all on his YouTube channel with a POV style so intimate that it would make Alex Honnold reach for a warm blanket.
At the time of the call, the younger Florence is somewhere in Ireland, living in a town for which he has to look up the name (“I don’t want to get it wrong”), with plans to stay as long as the ocean keeps giving. For a North Shore-native raised on the Pacific sun and sand, it’s a strange life so far north, where the days are short and weak. But if there’s one thing that will draw him back, it’s the winter swells that slam into the Seven Mile Miracle every winter.
He caught up with GQ about how he fuels those marathon sessions and why he (mostly) didn't get the competition bug.
For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.
GQ: Run us through a typical surf session. How much time can you physically spend in the water?
Nathan Florence: If it’s a big-wave spot, five and half hours. You go out at first light and stay out ‘til 1 or 2 p.m. But it’s different from exercise on land, where you’re drinking and eating something. When you surf for that long, you’re only getting dehydrated, because you’re just swallowing salt water. But we grew up surfing, so we’ve grown accustomed to it.
Your family is synonymous with the North Shore of Hawaii, where the Banzai Pipeline is super close to the beach. How about sessions there?
If it’s pumping, you’re out at first light, and you’re staying out four to five hours. But if it’s temperamental, we’ll go two hours, come in, drink some water, maybe eat lightly, and go back out and surf another two hours, come in, and go back out another hour-and-a-half before dark. You could easily get seven hours of surfing in a day.
So how does one take care of his body in those brief breaks between sessions?
It’s different for everyone. Some guys you’ll see on dedicated programs, where they might leave the water because they have to eat at a certain time. Others are more loose. For me, hydration is everything. I wake up, coffee, and maybe I have a second coffee before I go out—no food. I’ll sometimes do that first session, and often I’ll just have another coffee and drink a ton of water and go back out. I know I’m running on fumes at those times, so I’ll usually eat something quick, like a Power Bar. If I eat a big meal after a big amount of exercise, dude, my energy is shitty. So I focus on hydrating, because you lose water when you’re surfing—oddly enough, you pee constantly, every 30 minutes. And in Hawaii, you’re sweating, too, because of the humidity. It’s all about hydration. This surfer, Mark Healey, started this company, Protekt, and he came up with this liquid hydrator we all use.
You also use the company’s sunblock, too, right?
[Protekt] started with that, and Mark’s all about it. We don’t have genetics to be in the sun. [Laughs.]. Wearing your long sleeve rash guard and keeping your face protected, all of that stuff is so we can repeat it the next day, you know? So you don’t blow yourself out day one.
Let’s go back to peeing in the ocean. You’re in a thick wetsuit currently, so be honest: Do you pee as much in your suit as much as you do in boardshorts?
Even more! It’s the cold! And I have booties on, so obviously that’s uncomfortable. But we’re surfing some heavy waves, so water gets in and flushes everything.
You released a line of clothing, shoes, and surf booties with Vans in November. How’d that come about?
I’m on the road constantly, jumping on a flight every week. So I wanted to build something that’s based in the essentials that I’d put in my bag, no matter what, on any trip. I want the pants that you see dads wearing, that you can zip off the legs—when I fly, I’m cold, and then I get off in Mexico, I want the legs off quick. A windbreaker keeps off rain as well as the wind and sun, and I can wear it on the Jet Ski all day, or throw it over warmer clothes if I’m in a colder climate. There’s two parts to the booties: one for colder water, one for warmer. People have this thing, like, oh, look at that kook with his rash guard and his reef walkers. But you want cuts all over your feet and staph [infection] on your surf trip? I wore those shorter booties at waves like The Cave in Portugal, and they saved my feet.
Do you use fitness trackers? How do they affect your training?
I use Whoop. They wouldn’t sponsor me, but I still love the product. [Laughs.] There’s a huge social aspect. I’m on a team with 450 surfers around the world, and I can see their sessions and some of their biometrics. It’s competitive for me and my friends when we train, who has a higher strain. I’d be, like, I woke up a lower resting heart rate than you did! Some things, like the HRV [heart rate variability], I found has no bearing on my recovery, even though they say that’s a huge thing. For me, it’s all about my respiratory rate and my resting heart rate when I wake up. If I’m above 41, I’m probably over-trained or over-surfed.
Wait, you’re saying a 41 resting heart rate is high?!
Yeah, 40 or 39, that’s my normal. It’s a great indicator, in my opinion, of how your body’s feeling.
How has access to your biometric data changed the way you train?
It hasn’t, which is hilarious. [Laughs.] For me, training is 90 percent for my mentality. If there’s no surf, or if there is surf, but it’s not exciting to me, I need to be doing hard workouts to stay happy. The endurance is a great side effect, but I feel accomplished, I feel like I completed, when I finish those workouts and can see my progress. I can lift more, faster, for longer now. Or I can run trails for way longer or faster than I could before. In my opinion, you need some goals outside of surfing. Otherwise, when the waves go away, you have nothing.
How do you think growing up and living in Hawaii affected your diet?
I eat a lot of poké and raw fish, which may have some effect on my mercury levels. [Laughs.] I’ve heard of people going on all-raw tuna diets and getting mercury poisoning, but I’ve never done that.
Then what’s the most Hawaiian thing you eat consistently?
I guess it would be just that: sashimi and fish dishes. There’s way more traditional stuff, like the lau lau [fatty pork and salted butterfish wrapped in leaves] and the kalua [smoked] pork that you would find at any local family’s home. But for me, I’m pretty rogue. I eat on the go a lot, and I want stuff that’s quick. So I’m finding whatever I can just to get calories in, because I burn so many.
So how many calories are you burning each day?
I’ll give you a regular day—I didn’t train, I didn’t do anything. It would be 2,000 or 2,500. A full fucking surf day would be a 6,000-calorie burn day. You’re spending so much time in the water that you know you’re not going to get that amount of food back in. My goal on those days is to eat as much as I absolutely can. I eat a lot of meat and I eat a ton of carbs so I can go again the next day.
What are you still figuring out about your diet?
Self-restraint. [Laughs.]
You feel like you need to learn it?
Not that I need to learn it, but I need to prioritize it more. I rationalize on those big days that I can eat whatever I want. Late night comes along, and, Should I eat a giant bowl of Frosted Flakes? Yeah, I will. And I’m, like, Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that. [Laughs.]
Why is that a bad thing?
Because it’s foods that aren’t high in nutrition. Maybe I do need those carbs, and they’ll help in recovery, but I’d be better off eating something like a sweet potato, where I’m going to get vitamins and minerals as well as the carbs—that stuff helps in recovery. But it’s also harder after you’ve eaten a big meal. You’re not, like, I’m going to smash a big bowl of sweet potato. [Laughs.] You want something sweet and easy.
The best I ever felt was when I was counting macros. For six months, I had everything dialed—weighing and measuring foods to hit a specific number. You need to hit that number every day—not go over, because that would be a weight-gaining state, and not go under, because that would be underfed. Just maintenance, so that you’re recovered every day. But you have to eat clean foods to hit it, and it’s a ton of food. Man, I was sleeping better, I was waking up fresh, I was doing two workouts a day and surfing. The difference was insane. But it was taking so much willpower and work on the side.
You don’t compete often. What’s your relationship with contests?
They don’t fit into my life right now. Well, they do fit in, because I’m at home during wintertime. But I would never go somewhere for an event, unless it’s in my category of sport, which is big-wave. I would travel to go compete at Jaws [Big Wave Challenge, on Maui], because I love Jaws, and that event is gnarly and it’s against the best guys. I feel passionate about proving myself and pushing the limits of big-wave surfing against other guys who are doing the same. But put me in an event where it’s surfing technical, small-wave stuff, I have no love for it, and when you have no love for something like that, you’re not going to do well.
Your brother John’s a former world champ, and Ivan also competes. What’s the dynamic between the three of you like, with each of you involved in such different disciplines?
It’s great, and it’s even better that it went that way. John’s passion was world titles. He wanted to be the best surfer in the world, not the best big-wave surfer in the world. I want to push limits in heavy water, so I chased that. I feel like when you lean into your strengths, it’s easy to learn and progress and get better. That’s what each of us did: leaned hard into what we were really interested in in the micro-categories of surf, and it worked out. But there are those times when it’s just me, John, and Ivan, having a surf with each other, and those are some of the best sessions.
