Afonso Tornelli

I’m Afonso Tornelli, based in Ericeira, Portugal.

I was born and raised in Ericeira, and I was also a bit of a nerd who didn’t know what to study. I picked Business Management with the classic plan: get rich. After two years in an office, I realised corporate life wasn’t for me, so I quit and went back to the beach. I don’t want to sound like a yogi or a fortune teller, but my schedule is basically written by the moon. Tides and swell decide what happens and when it happens, and a “normal routine” doesn’t really exist. Also, I’m still not rich, so I keep working. 

My work sits in two lanes: surf and physical exercise. I coach people to be better surfers and i help people getting healthier and fitter. I care about the boring stuff that actually moves the needle: structure, progression, and clear feedback. I’m not big on hype, trends, or “just feel it bro” as a coaching method – I m all about The unsexy fundamentals. 

I founded and built backYARD to bring together my friends into a solid team of coaches, create a hub where we could work side by side, innovate, and push surf coaching forward in Ericeira. It’s where coaching and training meet real-world operations and real standards, not just good intentions. I’ve invested most of my recent years into it, and it’s been the main platform where I’ve applied what I learned in business school while building my work as a surf coach and trainer. 

I use my mild OCD to building systems and processes. Sometimes simple, sometimes unnecessarily complex, always meant to organize information, decisions, and workflows so things run smoother. It’s basically my way of reducing chaos without pretending chaos doesn’t exist. It works for businesses, and it works for personal life too. 

Photography almost became part of my work at one point, but I chose to keep it as a hobby. I didn’t make it a profession because I have zero interest in spending weekends shooting weddings and crowded events, and when the waves are good I’d rather be surfing than stuck behind a camera. I’m not naturally the most artistic or “creative” person, so I use photography to train that side of my brain and pay more attention to what’s around me. It’s also my excuse to travel when I’m not carrying a board.  

With how many different things I study and work on, it probably sounds like I’m a generalist. And honestly, I am. I’m naturally curious, so I’m usually learning something new and trying things out—sometimes because it’s useful, sometimes because I just can’t help it. For a while it felt like a disadvantage. Lately, I’ve been challenging that view. Being a generalist is how you connect the dots, move ideas from one area to another, and make different parts work together.