Watch Cheat Codes with John Florence, Mick Fanning, Stephanie Gilmore, Mark Healey, and Coco Ho here.
“I love a crowded lineup if that’s what you’re gonna give me,” Mason told Stab.
In this latest installment of Cheat Codes, we sat down with Mason Ho on the North Shore to dissect the beloved brain underneath that curly fro-llet.
When Mason admits he “loves” a crowded lineup in the episode, he contradicts himself — he had just laid us out a three-step plan for a foolproof fun session that involved surfing alone (I won’t spoil the other two steps here, you gotta watch the episode).
But, if you read between the lines, Mason is giving us a lesson in Stoic realism. If you can’t change a situation and you must pass through it anyways, the most productive approach is to love it. Like the philosopher Albert Camus said of the man sentenced to an eternity of pushing a rock up a hill, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“The first thing I feel is anger, so much anger,” Mason says of stumbling on a crowd. “But then I start laughing, like a little kid who’s about to go crazy.” He then likens his approach to Braveheart and troops storming a battlefield, defending their homeland against the pesky British commonwealth.
Mason also teaches us — with authority that nobody can deny — how to minimize damage when surfing on shallow reefs. “I go above it,” Mason says. Sometimes he literally goes above the problem (a rock) with a timely floater as you’ll see in the clip. Other times he goes “above the problem” by “falling like a ball” and protecting his moneymaker (see the terrifying clip at 6:19).
He also recommends leaning into physical pain. For example, he advises thinking of “tough stuff” when you hit the reef. For Mason, he conjures up images of John Wayne getting shot in a Western movie and then gallantly getting back on his horse and riding away. Like the famous therapist Phil Stutz advises, instead of confronting pain and retreating back to the comfort zone, we must voluntarily pass through pain to the land of limitless possibilities.
![](https://ixtapasurf.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Cheat-Codes-Optimizing-Surfings-Pain-To-Joy-Ratio-With-Mason-Ho.png)
Mason’s last bit of advice concerns forecasting. We won’t give it away here, but let’s just say it involves outsourcing your homework to become a “lazy wizard”.
This is part one of our Cheat Codes with Mason. He gave us so much goodies we had to save some for part 2 — but that’s for another day. Enjoy.
You can see more of Mason in his Electric Acid Surfboard Test, where he stars alongside his sister Coco in Mexico. And, catch him later this month at Stab High Japan, Presented by Monster Energy which you can read all about here.
The post Cheat Codes: Optimizing Surfing’s Pain-To-Joy Ratio With Mason Ho appeared first on Stab Mag.