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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk is one of the most celebrated and accomplished professional skateboarders of all time. For more than 40 years, he has been at the forefront of the sport. And I don't mean just doing a sport for more than 40 years, they truly mean he has been at the forefront of skateboarding, developing new maneuvers, aka tricks that include incredible feats like the 900, a 900 degree spin in the air, as well as numerous other maneuvers that have really pushed the entire sport forward. He's also completely popularized the sport through his video game and through his ambassadorship for skateboarding. In fact, few, if any, names are synonymous with skateboarding in the general public as Tony Hawk. And he is oh so deserved of that title, because for more than 40 years, he has shown up as the consummate professional. He is kind, he is respectful, and he is completely committed to his craft and that shows up in every aspect of his life. He still, to this day, skateboards daily. And as you'll soon learn, he recently suffered a major injury, a complete break of his femur, that is the bone in his upper leg. And this is what many people would consider a career ending injury. Not only did Tony come back from that injury, but he went back to the very trick on which he broke his femur and recently completed that trick. That is a 540 or so called McTwist. I mention this because at every level of his life, Tony has demonstrated himself to be somebody with incredible drive, incredible vision, and incredible persistence. And today we talk about that drive, vision and persistence, and we talk about what it takes to set a goal and to continually evolve one's goal and to continually progress as a basically young preteen, as a teenager, as a young adult, as an adult, and, well, let's face it, as a 55 year old man, he is now heading a little bit past middle age, although we do hope that he lives forever. Tony Hawk, aka the Birdman, really does seem to be superhuman. But as you learn today, he is oh so human in the way that he shares his own experience and shares with you the ways in which we can each and all look at what we do and think about what we want to achieve and put our minds and our bodies to those goals and achieve them. I confess that today's discussion with Tony Hawk was a particularly thrilling one for me. To have. I grew up in the sport of skateboarding, so I had met Tony previously, although he doesn't remember it. That was many years ago. In fact, I met his parents. You'll learn more about that story during today's episode, but I was aware, of course, of Tony's accomplishments. I was also aware of his philanthropy, so he has a skatepark foundation. I also listened to his podcast with another professional skateboarder, Jason Ellis, called Hawk versus Wolf. We provided a link to that podcast in the show note captions as well. But never before have I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to the Tony Hawk and learn from him. So I was absolutely delighted to have this conversation, and it far exceeded my already lofty expectations. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium, and potassium, the so called electrolytes, and no sugar. Salt, magnesium, and potassium are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrolytes need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electrolyte concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits in cognitive and physical performance. Element contains a science back to electrolyte ratio of 1000 milligrams. That's 1 gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes. And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element. That's lMnt.com huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinkelement lmNt.com dot Huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up. Waking up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga, Nidra sessions, and NSDR non sleep deep rest protocols. I started using the waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga Nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the waking up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the waking up app a try, and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up app has lots of different types of yoga Nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga Nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations, and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga Nidra and something similar to it called non sleep deep rest, or NSDR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to wakingup.com huberman and access a free 30 day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com huberman to access a free 30 day trial. And now for my discussion with Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk, welcome.

Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaker A: I'm particularly thrilled to have this conversation because I've tracked your career for a very long time. Grew up in the skateboard thing.

Speaker B: I know.

Speaker A: Had your poster on my wall.

Speaker B: Oh, thank you.

Speaker A: Your name is synonymous with skateboarding, as you know. I think a question that probably get asked from time to time, but let's just clarify the data from the outset. Tony Hawk is your real name, right?

Speaker B: Yes, Anthony Frank Hawke. But I never went by Anthony. I mean, my parents call me Tony's and so could remember.

Speaker A: So it's a fitting name given the sport and what you do. And we will get into this a little bit later when we talk about family and parenting and parents. But I'll allude to the story now that, uh, when I was 14 years old, your parents took me in. Yeah, I slept in your bed, in your home, not with you in it, but surrounded by your, a near infinite number of trophies. And I and um, it must have.

Speaker B: Been right after I moved out.

Speaker A: So this would be. I was 14 years old. Maybe I'll just tell the story now very briefly. I was 14 years old. I was at a contest at Lindavista boys club. Everyone left me and another kid named Billy Waldman were still there. Your dad said, where are you going? It was clear that I didn't know where I was going. My life was. I was a wayward youth at that time. And so they took me in for a night, maybe even two nights. Your mom, Nancy, and your dad, Frank, were so gracious, brought me into your home, took me to dinner. I don't recall.

Speaker B: I mean, that tracks. That would definitely. My dad and my mom together would be doing that. Yes.

Speaker A: Incredible people. And we'll get back to that story later. Cause you and I actually met the next day in Fallbrook at your ramp.

Speaker B: Oh, Fallbrook. So it had been 88. 89.

Speaker A: That's right. I'm gonna say 89.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And it must have been one of the either NSA or castle contests that your dad was very active in. Well, we'll get back to that. But I have so many questions that relate to skateboarding to you, and really, as a neuroscientist, to the whole concept of a life of continual progression, because whether or not people listening to this and watching this are skateboarders or not, and I imagine that most of them are not, it's absolutely clear that you've been in this game a very long time, and that you've somehow managed to continue to progress over and over to come back from very severe injuries and somehow keep getting better and better. So the first question I have is about the younger version of you. Did you have any sort of self concept, like, I want to be a pro athlete, or I want to be a skateboarder, or I want to have a video game named after me. Right, right, exactly. But if you can think back to maybe even pre skateboarding, do you remember what your self concept was? This notion of, like, I have a self, and I'm either similar or different to other kids in some way.

Speaker B: When I was young, I was put in a lot of advanced classes, and not that that felt like a badge of honor. It felt more like I was just classified as a nerd. But then I thought, okay, well, that's my strength, so I'll lean into that. And I thought that maybe I would be a teacher, because I thought, well, I get all these concepts, and I think I could relate them to kids or to my peers, because I helped a lot of my classmates through some classes, so that's all I really had. I didn't know. And then when I would play sports, I would be okay. I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't the VIP or the MVP, and so I was just kind of playing basketball, playing baseball. And then when I found skateboarding, I mean, it was pretty obvious that that was what I wanted to do. Once I got on a skateboard and realized that I could maneuver it and do things that were unique and not they were moving the needle or anyone cared, but they were unique in the sense of, like, I've never seen one do this, and this feels awesome, and so I just want to do this. And so I didn't think that this is my career. I was ten, so I just thought, this is my hobby, this is my thing, and I don't want to play these other sports anymore.

Speaker A: Did you stop playing all the other sports?

Speaker B: Yeah, I quit little league in the middle of the season when my dad had been appointed president of that chapter of little league because he was the coach, he was always very involved in all of his kids. I have three siblings, so he was always very supportive, whatever they were doing. And then when I was playing baseball, he became a coach. Cause he had time, and he was doing that. He was. He was, you know, almost retired. And then he was such a prominent figure in the Little League. They said, oh, you're president now? And so then someone else was coach, and then I was skating, and I was over it.

Speaker A: Did you immediately start skateboarding in the parks on transition, as we say, or were you pushing around in the driveway like most kids?

Speaker B: I was transportation, and skating was kind of a fad. So I started in 78, roughly, maybe 77 even. And it was kind of a fad. So kids just had skateboards, and they would all cruise around, you know, like it was the seventies, so everyone had a bike, right? And you knew where all the kids were because the bikes were in the front lawn. And then at some point, that kind of turned into skating. So everyone had skateboard. They were all, like, shitty JC Penney or big box store skateboards. No one had really good ones, not in my area. But then at some point, we were just looking at these magazines of people skating, and everyone's skating in pools, because that was the dog town and Z boys era, and it was like, these guys are flying. I want to, like, where do we do that? Skate park opened up in San Diego.

Speaker A: That was Del Mar skate park.

Speaker B: Skate park. Oasis.

Speaker A: Okay. Oasis.

Speaker B: Oasis Skate park was the first one in our area. Actually, I take that back. Spring Valley was the first skate park. I tried to go there, and I was nine and you had to be ten. And I remember sitting in the parking lot looking over the fence, and my dad didn't realize what they. Cause my dad would have easily lied for me, but he didn't realize there was an age limit. And he said, how old is he? Nine. Oh, sorry, he can't come. And then they closed not long after. So when I never got to skate Spring Valley.

Speaker A: Cause I think of you as synonymous with Del Mar skate ranch.

Speaker B: Sure. Well, that came later because Oasis skatepark was open. So this was when I first went, was like, 78. A friend of mine was going, and he said, I'm gonna go to the skate park. So I had to go get. You know, it's such a hassle. Like, I had to go get the authorization form. I had to get it notarized by the bank, by my parents, like, to go there. And then I went. And it was. That was my epiphany. When I first saw people flying around in person, I was like, this is what I'm doing for as long as I could possibly do it, because it looked like magic. It really did. It looked like they were flying on magic carpets. And it spoke to me in the sense of being a daredevil, but also doing it individually, not relying on my team, not getting hassled by a coach. It was just like, oh, I could be part of the scene, but do it my own way. And then I skated Oasis as much as I could whenever I could get rides there. And then my parents moved to north County, San Diego, when I was in high school, mostly because they were just chasing kind of real estate deals. And so I got lucky that Del Mar skate ranch was right there. Every other part closed. But Del Mar skate ranch remained open. So, I mean, there was a bit of luck to all that. And it was based on geography.

Speaker A: Your dad's involvement is interesting because I got into skateboarding because my dad wasn't around that much at that time. A lot of kids get into skateboarding because it doesn't require parent involvement. Was it unusual to have parental involvement at that stage? Yeah. I mean, I remember Frank, and by the way, I remember Frank and Nancy, your parents, with such fondness, not just cause they took me in, but I remember thinking, like, they were at times the only point of stability in a landscape of, like, 200 people, where, as you know, there could be potential chaos of any kind. And your dad had this way of moving about, like, he wasn't afraid. Afraid. I recall that he wasn't afraid to say what he thought, like, hey, don't do that. Like, impose some regulation at these contests. And at the same time, it seemed he also understood that this was a sport unlike other sports. Like, you're not going to regulate kids like me at the time, or you're not going to try and control people. So what was it like to have your dad involved? And the reason I ask is that you're a parent. We'll talk more about parenting. But also, it seems that he went from saying, okay, little league, other sports, which is more typical, to okay, this kind of unusual sport, skateboarding. But your mere interest in it was enough to get him excited or motivated enough to take you around to these places. That's pretty special. I mean, that's pretty.

Speaker B: It was. I mean, and in that respect, it was great to have his support and to rely on him for that. The fact that he was always around and that he was in charge of a lot of the events, that sucked because it just marked me as one being favorited and spoiled. And most of my friends, their parents didn't want them skating. So even though they were stoked that my dad was doing this kind of thing and giving that kind of support, they still were like, your dad's here. This is our thing. This is our scene. This is our getaway from our parents. I didn't really have a choice in the matter. I did at some point tell him my concerns and my frustrations with it, but he didn't really want to hear it. He was very much steadfast, like, well, I've been coming this far. We can keep our distance at these events, but people are relying on me to organize them. And so I just had to suck it up for a while.

Speaker A: Did it push you harder? Like, you know, if you could prove yourself with a skateboarding, then you didn't have to worry about any claims of favoritism, because ultimately, you can't fake skateboarding, right? I mean, there's no deep fake version of skateboarding. You know, you either can do it or you can't do it, and it's shown in real time, so. And I suppose back then, I recall you were quite a bit skinny or skinnier.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, I had all kinds of things going against me at the time.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I don't think people will realize this unless they met you in person, but nowadays there are few taller skateboarders out there. Cause the sport's grown so much. But you're pretty tall. You're like six.

Speaker B: Six three. But I was not when I was growing, when I was that age, I was very small and kind of concerningly small, because by the time I got to be 16, I was still. I looked like I was 13. I used to get pulled over. I literally, like, I had a car that I bought with my earnings. I had a Honda Civic, 1977 CBCC. And I would get pulled over, and then the cops would be like, how old are you? I'm 16. Like, well, you look like you were 13 back there. And then I shot up around age 17.

Speaker A: Okay, so that's interesting, and we can get back to this when we talk about your almost remarkable levels of ability to recover from physical injuries, because, well, I'll just share a little bit of a biological theory here, which is that there are a lot of people that study longevity, and perhaps the fastest rate of aging that we ever undergo is puberty. Right. If you think about a kid before puberty, kid after, it's, like different human being, psychologically, often physically as well. Some people have a longer arc of puberty than others, and that does seem to correlate with a longer life. And so it's kind of interesting, you know, some kids hit puberty and they go through all the markers of puberty in, like, one summer.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Other kids, it's very, very long. And it sounds like we don't have to talk about when you hit puberty and the other markers, but it sounds like your growth spurt occurred late. That's a terrific marker of a long life, by the way, because what it reflects is the onset of a big burst of growth hormone out of the pituitary and I, the brain. And if you continue to grow for a long period of time, that indicates, you know, it gives you a little bit of the slope of the line. Does that make sense?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: So this may have important and fortunate consequences. So at 17, you shot up. Am I correct in remembering? Maybe you said it, maybe somebody else did, that you were, forgive me, but so skinny when you were a kid that you actually wore elbow pads as knee pads.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a true story for sure. I took inspiration from others that I identified with, namely Steve Caballero, because he was already an established pro when I started to come up in the ranks or even get noticed at all. And he was wearing elbow pads on his knees in this full page picture of him in Winchester doing a backstater. And I was like, that, I want to do that. And he's small, and I feel like that's my goal. I didn't say, like, if he can do that, I can do it. It was just more like, oh, this. I identify with that, and that gives me hope.

Speaker A: And as I recall, Stevie also has a pretty severe scoliosis, right?

Speaker B: Like, at one point, he has.

Speaker A: At one point, he was turned, turned pretty, pretty tight to the, to the right or left? I don't recall which, I mean, still incredible. Skateboarder loves Stevie. He's a norcal guy. So I grew up, I know whatever.

Speaker B: He had is from birth, but. But it was more that his size, and I didn't even know he was many, not many, but at least four years older than me. So I just was like, oh, there's small guys doing that. I can do it, maybe. But when I got tall, when I went through puberty, suddenly I had all these tricks, and then suddenly I had the strength and the height that gave me confidence. And so all of a sudden it was like, oh, I can go way higher now. And I'm comfortable with these tricks, these intricate board maneuvers and stuff. So that was a huge advantage to me. The smaller stuff felt different after that, which was harder. But being able to blast 8ft in the air as opposed to 4ft in the air was a huge advantage.

Speaker A: Yeah. Isn't that wild when the nervous system knows how to do something and then your body changes and you can do the same thing, but with so much more force?

Speaker B: Even the bowls look smaller. When I would stand on top of them, I was like, wait, this isn't that big.

Speaker A: It's wild. Well, the reason I ask about this, I think people listening generally seem to assume that if you become a Stanford professor or become a professional skateboarder, or you become a professional soccer player, that you were just fated to become that. It's clear that it's the confluence of so many different factors, but one of the consistent factors, for sure, is a sense that you just really love doing it. Right? I mean, I can't imagine getting proficient or excellent at anything without loving doing it. And so, still, at this time, when you were, let's say, 1415, did you have any concept of, I'm going to have a pro model, I'm going to. None of that.

Speaker B: Well, there was none of that to be had. So we didn't have these great aspirations because no one had really done that before. You could have some success. Yes, you could have maybe a signature model, but even the top sales of skateboarding then wasn't a career. The prize money was $150 for first place, 100 for 2nd, 50 for third.

Speaker A: A couple tanks of gas, some food.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's put it this way. I turned pro when I was 14. By the time I was 15 and a half, and I had a learner's permit and I could drive a scooter. I had $600 in my bank account, and I used that to buy a Honda express moped for a year and a half. That was my earnings was dollar 600.

Speaker A: So clearly, money wasn't the dopamine hithennezhe. It was the actual skateboarder.

Speaker B: Sure. And that's what I mean, though, there was no goal of that because it just didn't exist. So I didn't care. Like, are you kidding me? I have my own vehicle at age 15. Like, I was living large. I could get to the skate park on my own. That was amazing.

Speaker A: To be 14 and be a professional at anything. Must be a trip, so to speak. But what I'm wondering about, because I came up when I, your early cohort with pal Peralta. So for those that don't know, so called Bones brigade, right. I guess it was, what, total, what, like six, seven guys? There were some that were a little more peripheral than others. There were about six, seven core guys in the various videos. I mean, you guys were famous, right? You had posters on kids walls who skateboarded. There was a second, or maybe it was a third surge of popularity in skateboarding because it would sort of surge in general popularity, then disappear and come back, as it has over decades, keeps coming and going to some extent. Did you have a conscious awareness of just how much attention was being placed on photos of you? Videos of you? And I'm just wondering about the younger version of you, whether or not you realize what was happening. And the reason I ask is because you've always seemed to me, somebody who, through interviews, through videos, through our interactions, and for those who have known you much longer than I have, just very grounded, like, not caught up in it. We've never seen headlines about you kind of just blowing all your money or wrecking cars and destroying your life. I mean, I'm sure you've made mistakes like any of us, but you seem to have avoided a lot of the pitfalls of, quote, unquote, famous people and celebrities. And yet you were a famous person from a very young age.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think it was that I didn't never. I never. That was never a goal. And then when I had a sense of it, I was very uncomfortable. I mean, I was happy. I was happy to be successful. I was happy that people recognized me. That was amazing. Just because I was good at skateboarding. I never imagined something like that, but I was always very. I mean, some people thought that I was sort of almost, like, pompous or arrogant because I wasn't interacting, because I was just. I was walled off. I was like, I don't know what to do.

Speaker A: Gosh, this is the last words I would ever use to describe you.

Speaker B: I think it was just more that people would see me. Like, I'd go to a ramp. I didn't know anybody, and I would just start skating, and I'd do all my stuff, and they were like, oh, he doesn't even talk to anyone. And it was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to act.

Speaker A: Also, you're 14 years old, right?

Speaker B: Broke me out of that, because I remember one time, there was a kid that was just staring at me, like, hold my skateboard. He had my signature model, and he said, go say hi to that guy. What? Are you sure? Like, he wants to interact with you. Just go high five him or anything. And I learned to break out of my comfort zone by doing that enough. But my first go around, I mean, that was sort of my first wave of fame. I'd say the bones brigade years. And we were so young that we thought, this is forever. And so we were definitely careless with our money, with our actions. And at some point, my dad saw that he didn't think it was going to be long term, because no one had had a long term career. Right. So he encouraged me to invest, to get property, like, to buy a house. That was my saving grace, because I definitely was spending on cars and things of that sort. Yeah. Like, kind of a little bit beyond my means. I wasn't really considering all my money was 1099 income, so it wasn't. We weren't paying taxes on anything. And at the end of the year, it would be like, oh, you owe this much. Like, wait, what you talking about? So, for instance, hey, do you want to go to Hawaii? Yeah. Okay. Invite everyone. We're all going to Hawaii. Let's rent a place. Okay. And it was on me because I had the means.

Speaker A: You mentioned Stacy. We should probably clarify for people. Tony's referring to the great Stacy Peralta.

Speaker B: Yeah. He was the one who put me on the bones brigade when I was still considered sort of a circus act. My skating was not really established. The stuff that I was doing was largely made fun of because people thought that what I was doing was just more like a free show.

Speaker A: Can you explain more? And let me just tell you that my first recollection of you, that I still have that image in my mind, is the finger flip air. For folks that aren't familiar with skateboarding, people ride around on transition or in the street handrail stairs. You know, people probably familiar with all those things. But skateboards will riot up toward the top of the pool or the ramp, and they'll do something on the so called lip or the coping. That's to ride at the edge of it, or they'll go above it, like, in the air. But I recall seeing you do the finger flip air. I'd never seen anyone flip a board in the air. I'd seen people do varial, so move it. This is going to be complicated for people just listening, but just flip it upside down and then catch it in and finger flip error. Yeah, that was. I remember that was jaw drop, right? It was like, so if that was considered circus era or circus like, then I don't know. I don't know what it was being compared to, because at the time, we probably watched that. It was in slow motion, as I recall, and we probably watched it 3000 times. You know, that summer, there was a big group of us. It all started skateboarding that summer.

Speaker B: I would say kind of just before that, in that window is when people were. Were more giving me flack for what I was doing, because I was mostly doing board variation stuff, but I still.

Speaker A: Didn'T have the height, the height in.

Speaker B: Terms of the height, in terms of getting in the air. So I was doing all the stuff kind of right at coping level. And so people weren't taking it into consideration or giving it much merit because it was just like, oh, he's doing a little board twist or a bar turn. And then when I started to get some height, around the time you saw and started doing those tricks, like, visibly way up high, that's when the shift happened in terms of more acceptance. But I was still labeled as, like, a trick skater, robot skater. And then you had Christian Osoi, who was all, style air is higher than anyone. Anytime he did a trick, it was going to be so flashy and so amazing and rock star personality and rockstar personality. And so in that era, you. I mean, it was very divided. It was like no one liked us both, you know what I mean? It was just so strange to be of that age and of doing something that had never really been established. And then suddenly I'm pitted against another skater, and we're just trying to make our way through teen years and skateboarding, and it was hard. I mean, it was like I got bullied. Yes, I was successful. Yes, I was doing. But I would get. Thrasher magazine would talk shit about my performance when I would win.

Speaker A: Yeah, I remember that because I was from northern California, and Thrasher magazine was a skateboard magazine from northern California. Actually wrote for them for a while when I was a postdoc to make some extra money under a different name, folks. But you can try and find those articles. They're out there. And then in Southern California, it was skateboarder mag, Trans World, mostly. Trans World skateboarding.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was Trans World skateboarding. And Thrasher magazine were the two the rivals, right? Yeah.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I recall some of those things that were said. It just is amazing to me. But it brings about a really important lesson, which is that kid that gets made fun of, if they're determined and they love what they're doing, that's going to be the kid that blows everyone away later. And I know this for sure, because I'll never forget. Do you remember the back to the city contests that were held in San Francisco? So I went to those. They were in the drain fountains in front of city hall. I remember getting there one day, and there was this guy with kind of, like, afro like hair pushing around, and he was doing what are called daffies. He had two skateboards. He was kind of, like, weaving around. And I remember thinking, you know, San Francisco has got its issues now, but back then, it was rough also for different reasons. I remember thinking, like, this guy's gonna get beat up. I hung out with the embarcadero crew. I was like, this guy's gonna get beat down. That guy was Mark Gonzalez.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: So one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest street skateboarder, if you can't really define these things, greatest and whatnot in skateboarding. But, you know, I remember thinking, this guy's just. He's a kook. And then I realized who it was, and then I realized he was just like any other kid there at some level. And then a lot of the kids that got teased early on, they stuck with it. Five years later, I'm seeing them in the magazines, and I think about this with podcasting, too. There have been some podcasters that have reached out early on and had questions, and I look at their stuff, and one's initial impression can be like, what are they doing here? And then you just see them two years later, three years later, and they're doing amazingly well. And you're like, this guy or gal is here for good, they're probably going to be top of the game in a few years. So you never count anybody out. When you would go to sleep at night in that erade, were you like laying on the pillow going like, oh my God, people hate me. There's stuff in the magazines. I gotta push harder. This is hard. Did you talk to your dad about it? I mean, again, it's a lot to bear. Even as an adult, I can only imagine what it's like to bear as a 15 year old kid.

Speaker B: I didn't really have a support group or any resource to voice those concerns. I just knew I wanted to keep getting better. That was it. And so if anything, if I was worried about those voices, if I was worried about whatever take people had on me, I knew I was going to go back to the skate park and learn more tricks. And at some point I had so much of that as a foundation that it was sort of undeniable that like, well, he can do all this stuff and he doesn't just do it at his home park. And I think that's probably when the tide turned for me, is when I started to do well at other events, namely Upland Pipeline, which was for the most part the most frightening pool that we could ride.

Speaker A: The thing was big, but I also recall the hips, as they're called, the transitions, the way they match up were.

Speaker B: Super tight, lotiver giant coping, super rough. Like if you fell in Upland, you're getting chewed up. It's pulling your knee pads down.

Speaker A: I didn't know that because from the photos I wouldn't know that.

Speaker B: Oh, it was, it was treacherous. It really was like, it was. And, and I wanted to do well at the event and I would drive up there every weekend. Like my friend Greg Smith was a freestyler, but he lived near Upland and so I would go drive Friday after school, straight to Upland, skate at night, skate Saturday all day, skate Sunday early, and then drive home because I live in San Diego and I just made it my mission to figure that thing out because that was the proving ground for me. So if I could skate that, I could go skating.

Speaker A: I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic greens. Athletic greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic greens and the reason I still take athletic greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long term health. And those probiotics and athletic greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, athletic greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met. And it tastes great. If you'd like to try athletic greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com huberman and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up athletic greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, etcetera. And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D, three, k, two. Again, that's athleticgreens.com Huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D, three k, two. So it's clear you had enormous drive. Let's talk a little bit about the process of trying tricks and the anxiety associated with it. Did you and do you have a sort of systematic process? Was it I'm going to learn the basics first. Did you say that? Do you say, okay, I'm going to learn how to do stuff at coping level, then I'm going to do a little error, then I'm going to go bigger, I'm going to do this? Or did you just try what you wanted to try? Obviously you weren't haphazard about it. It seems you're pretty systematic about exploring what's possible and then pushing forward little by little. But yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about how you have conceptualized. Okay, tomorrow I want to try this.

Speaker B: It comes in different forms, but for the most part I think about how I could combine existing tricks and would this trick work going into this trick? And could your body position shift or would it all work in unison? And when I approach a new trick, I'm saying more. In the last 20 years, my thought process is I have all the pieces to this. I've done every bit of it. I've done the first part of the trick in another form, I've done the second part or the grinding of it or whatever, usually in some other basic way. And then the landing is, well, the landing is from whatever that is. And if you can throw all those things together and make the timing work, it's going to work. And I never went at something with some haphazard approach or throwing caution to the wind, like, hope this see what happens. It's always very much like, I know I have all these things, and so I just have to put them together. And, I mean, now things are so technical that my same approach that I'm doing hundreds of times, one of them just works. And it's not because I didn't. It's not because I committed to that one. It's because of some tiny fractional adjustment that happened that I didn't even know happened, and it just worked. And, I mean, that kind of is the curse of what tricks are now. Because there are plenty of moves that I've done over the last ten years, even that I only did once because it was too fucking hard to get to, and I didn't learn from that one make, and that's hard to accept, because in the past, I was learning tricks to have them in my arsenal, that I could just throw them down at a competition or a demo. I've got them in my pocket these days. Like that trick, for instance. I did a 360 shove it, 5.0 to Fakie.

Speaker A: Let's break that down for you. 360 shove it. So who's going to take this on? I'll let you take this on. I can try from my knowledge and perspective, but why 360 shove?

Speaker B: It is pushing the board with your feet and letting it spin. A full 360 rotation under your feet and then landing back on it. It's a trick that people do on usually on flat ground. I've learned to do it up on the vert walls. Like, I can do 360 shovets, kind of in the air, but I'm doing that. I'm doing a 360 shove it, and then I'm landing on my truck, right.

Speaker A: Like the axle between the wheels on.

Speaker B: One axle in a what we call 50 position, which is basically a wheelie on the truck. So everything is so precise. I got to do 360 shove it at exactly a certain spot on the wall. I've got to catch it so that my truck lands when my foot hits it. I can't push it into the truck because that screws up my balance. So it has to land on the truck. I have to land with my weight perfectly set back enough that I can come in backwards, because I'm doing this trick, and I'm going to come in Fakie. Right. 360 shove, 50 to coming in forward is a whole different beast. I could probably do that just in a few tries, but the idea that I have to land on this thing balance on it like a teeter totter, and then reverse my energy and come in fakie backward. It's so hard. It's so hard to get into the right position. Anytime I try it, there's, like, a one in ten chance I'm even going to get into the position I need, and that's the one I have to commit to. So every time I do it, it's so intense, and it takes so much commitment and so much mind. I don't even know how to explain it like that. You have shut everything else out except this one moment and this one fractional piece that you have to make work. And it. I've done it once, and I, like, I would love to do it again, but I know what it's going to. It's going to take the same amount of effort. I didn't learn from that one that I made some trick that makes it happen every time. It's all so technical, and there's so many things that can go wrong that I'll accept that. Okay, I did it once.

Speaker A: In thinking about the 360 show at 500 fakie, was that something that you thought of the night before you decide that day? Do you ever use visualization? Have you ever had learning come to you in a dream or find that you tried, tried, tried something, went to sleep that night, next day, made it anything like that?

Speaker B: Yes. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll write down something because it was like, oh, there's this trick. Oh, I think I could do that. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna write it down.

Speaker A: So you dream about skateboarding from time to time?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yeah, that has shifted a bit after I got hurt, but, yeah, I used to dream that I can't skate like I'm trying, and that it feels like the ramp's made a carpet. I can't get the speed, I can't get the timing. And then as I went through this traumatic injury, my dreams shifted to, wow, I can skate. I can do all my tricks again.

Speaker A: Oh, interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: A little piece of science around the can't can't skate piece. Or when people feel like they're bolted down in a dream or they can't run away.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: There's this one phase of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep, where the brain is very active. The dreams associated with it tend to be very vivid, and at the same time, we are completely paralyzed. And the idea is that no one really knows why, but that it's the case that we're paralyzed to prevent us from acting out our dreams. It's also an interesting neurochemical phenomenon because during these rapid eye movement dreams, they tend to be very intense, but the body can't release adrenaline. So it's almost like its own form of trauma therapy. It's like you're experiencing this intense thing in your mind, but your body can't react. And so oftentimes people have argued that that's why you feel like you want to move and you can't because you actually can't. Some people have woken up while still a bit paralyzed. Have you ever had that happen where.

Speaker B: You wake up and actually, a couple of my kids have struggled with that a couple times.

Speaker A: Yeah. Rem interference, it's called. It's not dangerous. And usually people can jolt themselves out, but it's kind of terrifying. So that's interesting. We'll get to a discussion about the recent injury, and thankfully, recovery from the injury not miraculous, because that makes it seem as if it's surprising. Frankly, I'm not surprised that you've recovered, but it is spectacular the way you have. But you're saying that in your dreams before the injury, you would think about skateboarding, but you felt like there was a kind of can't do it.

Speaker B: When I was doing it in my dream, there was always some roadblock that I just couldn't like, why can't I get any speed? Why can't I snap or do this trick? It's more in the moments where it's twilight moments where I'm kind of awake and I'm thinking about tricks that everything else falls away, and I can actually focus on what kind of new moves to come up with. An example of that was recently, I went to the X Games in Japan a few weeks ago, and I was thinking I was going to go more to show my support because they had a vert event. There's not a lot of vert events anymore. So if there's a vert event, it's kind of like, if you build it, I will come because I want to show my support. That's kind of where my heart is. And they had a best trick event, and I thought, man, maybe I could get in the best trick. Is there anything new, though? And I'm still recovering from my leg. And then at some point, I was falling asleep, and I thought, oh, I could do that trick and come in 180. I know I could do that with my current state and not getting that much speed. So to explain what I was doing is half cab body variable to backside blunt.

Speaker A: Okay, we can walk through this half cab cab has come up backwards. Go 360. Right. So half of that would go one.

Speaker B: As I approach the top of the ramp. Yeah, I body rail. That means I jump around and then I jump around on my board, and then I make sure that it lands with my two trucks out and my tail on the coping, which is very precarious. And I've done that and come in Fakie before.

Speaker A: That's the blunt piece.

Speaker B: That's the blunt. So I've done that. And then you have to use your feet to lift up the board. Coming Fakie. Right. I've done that. I've done that twice. And I thought, well, I wonder if there's something I could do like that. And then I realized that if I just keep coming around and I come in backside direction, that keeps my body spinning and that might actually be easier. It wasn't, but I figured it out.

Speaker A: I think I saw a clip of this on Instagram. I did it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I did it. X games. And that was like, it was my last run. I was. It was. I mean, it didn't move the needle. I got 7th place. But for me, it was a huge momentous.

Speaker A: It felt amazing, I bet.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it was like weeks of preparation and trying to figure this thing out. I made it twice before the event, on my own, alone, on my ramp. But that's just an example of. I was literally falling asleep, and then all of a sudden it was like, half gut body veil backs up blunt.