"The Line Up" with Michi Rossmeier: Mental blocks in wingfoiling - podcast about fear and flow
SURF
· 19.05.2026
Tricktionary author and coach Michi Rossmeier launches "The Lineup", a podcast about the mental side of wingfoiling. The name refers to the moment when skills, body and mind come together to create one of those rare sessions in which everything works, "is in flow". For the first episode, he met up with three young athletes from the GWA Wing Foil World Cup on the beach in Tarifa: Tom and Aleks Acherer and Rocco Sotomayor. All three are teenagers and among the best riders of their generation. The central topic of the episode: how mental blocks can slow down development and what triggers flow states. The conversations took place between sessions and show an openness that is rarely found in competition reports. Michi emphasises that the riders at the top are not necessarily the most talented, but those who have mentally sorted something out.
Rocco Sotomayor: A year lost due to a mental blockade
Rocco Sotomayor talks about his experience with the front flip. Early in his career, he broke his arm trying to do it. "That really slowed me down on this trick. At least I had a mental block," he says. The broken arm healed, but the mental block remained. He didn't land a single clean front flip for a whole year, even though he had already mastered more difficult tricks such as Palao back loops. "That was a mistake, I took too long," he admits. It wasn't the injury itself that was the problem, but the year of avoidance afterwards. According to Rocco, the front flip is "one of the easiest tricks ever", yet the mental barrier cost him twelve months of development time. Podcast host and coach Michi Rossmeier sees this as a pattern that he observes time and again as a coach: The fear in your head is almost always greater than the actual risk on the water.
What finally solved the blockage? No training plan, no new technique. A younger rider began to land front flips in the competition. Rocco challenged himself: he promised the young rider that he would also try the trick as soon as he arrived in Tarifa. "It's about time, man. You can't waste any more time. Let's go!" he said to himself. And he did. The blockage wasn't solved by a new method, but by a decision to think and feel differently. Suddenly he was able to do what he hadn't been able to do for a year. Rossmeier sees this as the real key: not a secret technique, but a mental decision.
Tom and Aleks Acherer: Two completely different ways of dealing with fear
Tom and Aleks Acherer deal with fear in completely different ways, even though they are twins and ride at the same level. Tom describes his problem as follows: "My ego won't let me leave the water until I've landed a move!" In Mexico, he practised double front flips, repeatedly falling on his face and refusing to go ashore until he landed one. Partly because he knew his brother and Rocco would tease him otherwise. But there's a deliberate strategy behind the ego: if he finishes the session after a hard crash, he's afraid he'll carry the fear of that crash into the next session. So he forces himself to try again, lands something and leaves the water with confidence instead of fear. Aleks, on the other hand, just back from his second injury, takes a completely different approach. Calmer, more relaxed, less driven by ego.
The other half of the conversation revolves around flow states. Those sessions in which more difficult tricks seem easy and you have time during the trick to think about whether you can add another turn or improve the style. Michi has been looking for this state for years in windsurfing and now in wingfoiling. It is the reason why most people do these sports. So he asked the three of them directly: Do you know how to trigger it? Aleks gave the most honest answer: "No idea. It's just like when you go out and the wing is the right size, the wind is good and not gusty. You do your first tricks straight away. Then you have confidence and the session ends up being pretty good." That sounds like a shrug of the shoulders, but it's not. Good conditions, land the easy tricks first, build up your confidence, then come the difficult tricks. That's a repeatable recipe for flow, described by someone who lives in it without realising they've just given the instructions.
Here you can listen to the podcast "The Line Up" with Michi Rossmeier:
