Still chasing the feeling that started it all.
Jo Pickett paddled out for the first time in the early 1970s and never really came back to shore. Fifty-some years later, she says the ocean still has more to teach her.
A long, unlikely apprenticeship.
Jo grew up on the North Carolina coast and caught her first real wave at Wrightsville Beach as a teenager — and that was that. Over the decades that followed she built a competitive career that includes national and regional titles, all while founding what’s now one of the Carolinas’ longest-running surf schools. These days she winters in Nosara, Costa Rica and summers on Wrightsville Beach, chasing exactly the kind of days she now helps her students find.
There’s not a more beautiful thing in the world to watch.
She’s spent as much time studying bodies as she has studying waves.
Jo is a certified personal trainer, a certified yoga instructor, and an NSSIA-certified surf coach — which means a lesson with Jo is a completely tailored experience. She studies your alignment and balance, and helps you better understand what your body is doing — on the board and off of it.
One cue at a time. Never more than you can use.
Jo doesn’t hand you a list of ten things to fix. She watches, picks the one adjustment that will actually move the needle, and waits until it’s second nature before adding the next. In the water, you get about three seconds between paddling for a wave and standing on it — that’s not the moment to overthink. It’s the moment to be present and connect with the ocean.
The ocean has its own flow. So do you. Jo’s whole job is helping the two sync up — and by her own admission, watching that click for a student might be the only thing she loves as much as riding a wave herself.
Ready to feel it for yourself?
One 90-minute lesson is usually all it takes to understand what her students mean.