“Sometimes I think that might be the reason, surfing so much,” John John Florence reflected when asked by DUKE why he thinks he gets injured so much.

“It’s hard for me because I’m a surfer at heart, and I surf all day every day, I like surfing more than anything else,” he said. “Whereas other surfers on tour focus directly on competing and maybe train a few weeks when the tournament is coming up and just surf the event; they put away their magic board and use it just for the heats… I’m not like that, I enjoy surfing too much to do that kind of thing.”

Florence has suffered three injuries and has had two operations in the last two years, all three to the ligaments in her knees. The first two on the right and the third on the left.

While in Japan, he told DUKE that, in order to preserve his "long-term health," he was considering not competing in Mexico and Tahiti, and later confirmed this on his social networks.

Asked if he goes to the gym to strengthen his muscles, he replied yes, “I go to the gym a lot,” he said in an interview conducted at Tokyo 2020, after losing to Kolohe Andino in the round of XNUMX.

“I’m changing and I’m always learning every time I get injured. I don’t want to get injured again, so I’m learning what I did wrong, even though it’s hard to know, and sometimes injuries just happen,” he said.

“We are all made differently and there is no one training regime that works for everyone, so I am definitely learning what training works best for me and my injuries. I am taller, skinnier, my training is different than it would be for a Filipe (Toledo), who is shorter. I think we are all learning what training is best for us,” he added.

On whether he is worried about continuing to suffer injuries, he explained: “No, I am not too worried, injuries are injuries and they are just another challenge for me. If I win another world title or win a gold medal or get injured, I take it all as a different challenge; I like to work on the process. I think the main thing I learned from my world titles was that it is not about winning the titles but about the process that led to that.”

“It's the same with injuries, you get injured and you say to yourself: 'OK, I need to learn'. I need to learn how to recover, what I did wrong, train and always improve. So what I try to do is take each injury as a different challenge,” he said.