Kai Lenny is developing a new helmet for big-wave surfing and here's why

Kai Lenny: The craziest thing is the whole episode just seems like a weird dream. I was separated from reality. Since then, I've been trying to coming back to some normality. Basically, I had entered the Backdoor Shootout and I was also in the SUP portion of the event. The swell was rapidly increasing, maybe four-to-six feet, and I remember just being by the sand and contemplating whether I should wear my helmet or not. Molly, my wife, heavily suggested it, just based on so many people we know who've been getting severely injured out there.

I was really trying to psych myself up on wearing the helmet, because I felt like it's just not worth losing your life or going through all that trauma. So, everything was pushing me towards that. I ended up starting to work on my own custom carbon-fibre helmet with a buddy, where we took similar specs from how the layout is done on Formula One helmets.

I ended up going on this wave, pumping down the line and I went to grab my rail, but I flipped off the front of the board right before I got to where it was really going to Pipe-out. I fell inside of the barrel and as soon as I touched the water, I went black. Then, all of a sudden I was sitting at Ehukai Beach Park with the life guards and they were just saying, 'Sit down, Kai, sit down'. I had no idea how I'd gotten there or what was going on.

Yeah. I watched a video and I was conscious, and I had gotten myself in. The scariest thing was the fact that I hit my head, but I still was able to hold my breath, come up, get on my board, ride my board in and then walk up the beach, talk with the life guards and still have no idea how it happened. I saw this all on video and, watching, it was like I wasn't even in control of my body.

I went to a clinic called Brain Health Hawaii and it was actually a life-changer. It helped me to completely rewire myself and it was massive. I'm really happy I did that. I heavily suggest everyone get an EEG scan wherever you can, even if you haven't had a head injury or a recent one. These Brain Health Hawaii clinics are really convenient, because it’s here in Hawaii, but I'm sure everyone could do some research to find a clinic in their area. It's just great, because you can see if your brain is optimised or not and this head injury for me was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Basically, you’re remapping your brain and getting it to work optimised. Right after the accident, my brain was working at seven to eight hertz. Apparently, mine's wired to be in the range of 11 to 12 hertz, so my brain wasn't working all the way.

Getting an EEG scan is amazing because there’s so much potential to get out of a bad place in your head, even depression, simply by going through some treatments. Again, even if someone doesn't have a head injury or anything, I think it should be standard practice on every check up.

Yeah. I had one on and I split it in half! It absolutely split it right down the middle and I think I would've died if I hadn't had one on. It was only a six-foot wave at Pipe, but Pipeline, even at three-foot, you don’t take lightly. That place is more dangerous than most big waves that I surf, because most big waves have a lot of water beneath them, so you normally know what you're impacting. But, two-foot waves and up, I'm wearing a helmet out at Pipe now.

A Gath helmet, for example, they've been around for 40 years and they’ve changed a little bit in design, but it's a PVC shell. What people should understand is that helmets are meant to break. It’s actually a good thing when they get cracked, because it means the helmet absorbed all of the impact and not your skull.

That being said, based on what I've learned working with a few really smart people is that you can actually design these helmets where the crash structure is carbon fiber, which won't break, even if all the fibers will break internally. You wouldn't want to use the helmet again, but what it does is it takes all of the force and it spreads it across the helmet. The way the carbon is laid out is going to basically diffuse that impact across the helmet, so that, internally, the fibers break while on the surface level it will probably look as if nothing happened.

So, I'm developing a new one with my buddy, Aidan Mobley. It's cool because I went to SailGP over at San Francisco Bay. It was actually Jamie O'Brien and me that went to go sail and I've always been so curious about how these boats are built, because it’s the best designers building these carbon fiber boats in SailGP.

There was this kid working on a boat and I ended up talking to him, and picking his brain. We ended up sparking a friendship and I connected him with some good friends over at Maverick's. Then, he ended up coming back and forth to Hawaii and we started working on some fun projects, one of them being this new type of helmet. He's such a great person to work with because he builds these carbon structures and has connections through the America's Cup. We gelled perfectly.

Take it slowly and don't force your comeback too early. In some sort of way this accident was a real gift. It just means that I can become the ultimate athlete I've always dreamt of being. But for anyone that ever gets a head injury, I highly recommend that the first thing you do is try to get an EEG scan. What I've also noticed is my body tightened up a lot. I lost some flexibility right afterwards, so that took a couple of weeks, maybe three, of stretching and trying to loosen up. Not just stretching, but doing ART (Active Release Techniques), massages and specific stuff around my neck. Those things helped me come back really quickly as well, or at least faster. It's been over a month and I wouldn't say I’m 100 percent, but I'm back to where I was and I can continue to get better.