Learning to surf isn't an easy thing when you think about it: you're trying to stand up on a plank of fibreglass or foam no wider than your arm as it's hurtling through the ocean.
But as you get better at it, you're able to carve up and down those waves, shakaring all day and all night. Sadly though, just because you know how to surf, doesn't mean you don't have the odd injury here or there.
Take Steve Bowens for example, who suffered a pretty horrific face plant while surfing on a stand-up paddle board.
He was knocked clean in the face and had to be helped to the shore break before he was taken to hospital.
Steve said: "The wave was not big, about 3ft. However I landed in the wrong place at the wrong time and the board hit me square in the face, right between the eyes.
"The sensation was as if someone hit me with a baseball bat. It was violent and I as I came to the surface I knew that I was likely to pass out."
Surgeons peeled his bloody face off and patched up the muscle behind the skin, rebuilt his cheek and created a titanium mesh for one of his eyes.
Yeah - when we say it was a bad face plant, it was a bad face plant.
Steve said: "As the impact had imploded the bones which make up the sinuses, this had forced air around my brain, and created a hole from my skull to the outside world through which cerebral spinal fluid now flowed."
He's hoping to use his experience to train other surfers what to do in accidents like this one to make sure it doesn't end in a death.
Featured Image Credit: SWNSTopics: Surfing, injury, Fail, Community