Last year, longboard surfer and C-Skins team rider Beth Leighfield quit her job to focus solely on surfing. Her commitment has paid off in spades. Beth just won the 2026 English championship, making her the reigning British and English women's longboard champion, and at the start of the summer she was voted women's longboard surfer of the year at the UK Surfer Awards. Next month she’s heading to the ISA World Longboard Championships in El Salvador with Team England.
In between victory laps and training sessions we grabbed a moment with Beth to find out more about making the leap to being a full-time surfer, what it takes to win big, and the lessons learned along the way.
Beth, how did you come to the decision to go all-in on surfing and competing, and when did you make that commitment?
The year before last I was working a full-time job as a sustainability consultant and I was still competing, but I felt like I wasn't achieving the results that I wanted, or that I knew I could achieve. That season I had saved up some money from my job and I decided that if I wanted to reach the goals that I was aiming for and to level-up then I needed to have surfing as my sole focus. So I quit my job and made the decision to go for it. I started working with a sports psychologist and decided to give it a few years where I am just focusing on surfing, to see how far I can get with it.
Your hard work is clearly paying off - but what has the hard work been? Can you talk us through your approach to training and achieving this success?
I’ve competed for years. It was something that I enjoyed doing and that I was passionate about. I wanted to do well, but I never saw it as “this is my job.” So the biggest shift for me has been a mindset shift, to treat surfing as my job - the training, going to the gym, and all of the other things that go into being the best surfer that I can be and achieving results. That’s all part of the job.
It’s scary when you’re putting all of your cards on the table like that. I can’t get knocked out of a contest and have an excuse like “it’s because I’m not a full time surfer” and also there’s just the fact that by focussing solely on surfing I’m saying very publicly that I’m going for this.
So yeah, I'd say my approach has been to treat it as a career. I started working with a sports psychologist and they really helped me create some routine and structure with my goals and with my training, because although I’ve been coached a few times I don't have a coach. There's not any framework available from Surfing England or Surfing GB for longboarding so we are left to our own devices, so my sports psychologist helped me create some routine and structure which really helped with everything, and particularly my motivation.
What’s your current training mix, from physical training and recovery, through surf specific training and competition preparation?
I try to surf as much as I can. I will have a few goals and some different things each session that I will work on, and also some different conditions which I try to make sure I surf in. I do sports and conditioning training with LIFT coaching and I go to the gym at least twice if not three times a week. Then very recently I have also started swimming more and doing some breath hold work to help build my confidence when it's a little bit bigger. I’m definitely not planning on surfing Nazaré any time soon, it’s just a mindset thing to give me more confidence when the surf gets bigger. jAs I mentioned before I work with a sports psychologist and I also go to the sauna quite a lot and I do some breath-work in the sauna too with the hot and the cold to push my limits in that way.
Are there any unexpected elements of the work, or things that you tried thinking that you either wouldn’t like it or that it wouldn’t have an effect, and then found otherwise?
There's that famous phrase "Little by little, a little becomes a lot" and I think the biggest thing for me that's helped is discovering that all these little incremental changes that we started to put in place last year do make a big difference when you put all those small gains together. That's really helped me and where I’ve found the biggest impacts happen.
What have you enjoyed the most since going all-in on competing?
It's been really nice to achieve some of the goals that I've set because it does feel nice to achieve what you set your mind to do.
And what’s been the biggest lesson that you’ve learned?
I think that the biggest lesson I've learned was at the start of last year, when I’d made the decision to go all-in but hadn’t yet started putting in any of the ground work. The results weren’t there and I wondered why, before realising that me saying “I'm going to surf full-time” but then not changing anything else other than just having a bit more time to surf, wasn’t going to nudge the needle. I needed to put in the ground work with all of the other things.
In that moment of realisation last year, which I always try to remind myself of, is that my whole self-worth isn't pinned on whether or not I achieve these competitive surfing goals, or even what I'm doing with my surfing. There's so many other parts to me and so many other things that I enjoy doing and it's not all about performance outcomes. I think breaking down my goals into smaller goals really helped with that as well because then if I don't get the place I wanted in a competition but I've done all these other things then I can still look back and take the positives from having given it my best.
Are you a goal setter? What are the goals that you’re currently aiming towards?
I am now! This year my bigger goals were to win a national title, to qualify for the World Championships, and to make the final of a European tournament. Those are my performance goals and I've got smaller goals broken down into training goals or mental preparation goals.
I've done the first two, and for the third of making the final of a European tournament, there’s two stops left this year so I’m aiming for at least one of those last two! I'm already pretty stoked but get going for that last goal as well.
What hurdles have you faced along the way, and how have you overcome them?
I think primarily mental barriers. It's quite scary to say, “Right, I'm going to try and surf full time.” I found it scary. And so just working around those sorts of feelings of why I find it scary and delving into that a little bit. And also there is a big financial strain. I've always worked and I've normally had some form of consistent income, whether that's when I worked as a sustainability consultant or when I worked for charities before that, or when I was a full-time self coach.
Income-wise this year I get a little bit of consistent income from my sponsors, and then to supplement that I make a bit of money through social media, so if you guys do see any athletes posting content please engage with it because that's how we can do what we do. I've also started up a high-level longboard focussed surf coaching business with my friend Emily called Zest. So those three things are how I'm making a living but they aren't consistent incomes so not really knowing month-to-month what's coming in I do find quite stressful. I'm just managing to make it work at the moment, and I'm just going to do it for as long as I can make it work financially and am still enjoying it.
What have been your favourite surf moments in 2026 so far…
My favourite competitive moments were achieving my two goals of winning the English national title and then making the team for the World Championships. That's pretty sick. Then my favourite surf moment was probably this January when I went to Peru and surfed a very nice long left hander with my girlfriend. That was really cool and just to spend some time enjoying surfing. Also my last favourite surfing moment was just a few weeks ago when I went to The Wave and I did a barrel coaching day. I don't shortboard that often, but I really really enjoy it when I do, and I found that really fun just trying to do something different for a day and not focussing on longboarding.
We're super proud to support Beth on her competitive journey, and to see her winning titles wearing C-Skins wetsuits. Her next stop is the ISA World Longboard Championships in El Salvador this October, and with no funding available from national governing bodies, Beth's actively looking for additional sponsorship and and support opportunities in addition to those she already has, to help her get there. Drop her a message on her Instagram if you interested in joining us in supporting her.
All images from the 2026 Longboard National Championships by Jamie Elliott/Surfing England
