Training
Here are some pointers to keep you fit, healthy and on track to surf better than you ever thought possible.
1 Swimming is the first and most obvious choice to improve your surfing, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
2 Total Body workout
Swimming is the total body workout, when you swim you engage and use nearly all the major muscle groups, arms, legs and core.
3 Low impact
Swimming reduces stress on your joints while also allowing you to taylor a session to suit either high intensity or endurance.
4 Tone up
Swimming as little as twice per week will help you build strength, tone muscles, enhance fitness and increase your metabolism.
5 Cardiovascular fitness but low impact
The heart, lungs and circulatory system are recruited to create aerobic metabolism, to maintain your cardiovascular fitness is to enhance your wellbeing and functional fitness.
6 swimming is a lifelong pursuit of happiness, no matter your age or ability swimming has many advantages for your daily wellbeing.
7 swimming can be used to rehabilitate or compliment treatments for various conditions of fatigue, chronic pain and injury. The gentle compression of the water on your body while also supporting and reducing impact hold a massive advantage in helping runners recover from shin splints and tendon damage to arthritis by stimulating blood circulation.
8 swimming burns calories so can help in weight reduction, toning and body composition depending on the workout you use.
9 swimming helps to boost your mood and leave you invigorated for hours after. Being in and around water has long been known to help our mood and mental health but now with the surge in open water swimming the benefits of cold water and swimming have exploded. The norepinephrine is released from the edrinal glands in fact 250 percent above base line giving you a surge of dopamine which can last for up to 4 hours later. This is a higher and longer high than most substances.
10 swimming in cold water will trigger the sympathetic nervous system of fight, flight and freeze. Through it´s release of adrenaline which can cause a managed stress response that can de-stress you for the rest of the day, build an appetite and in general make you less stressed from the blue therapy that calms and soothes your soul.
Yes swimming is great for all over fitness but by adapting your swim session you can make it surf specific.
Strength and conditioning
In triathlon it is known as the 4th discipline but is strength and conditioning miss understood. Many people think strength training is all about body building and muscle mass, but this could not be further from the truth. Strength and conditioning is an essential part of not just surfing but day to day life, functional fitness and a way to help you fortify your body to deal with those long surf sessions.
Strength and conditioning training helps us maintain postural control, muscle balance, muscular function, muscle integrity during movement. It also increases muscle recruitment and neuromuscular control and reduces the risk of overuse injuries.
1 Body weight exercise
After the age of around 30 we start to lose muscle mass, and it imperative we hold the muscle mass we have to be able to make fitness gains without injury. Exercises like Pilates, yoga and stretching. Body weight exercises like the plank, squats, Asian squats, lunges, pull ups and dips all hold an important roll in maintaining fitness.
2 Strength
Strength is the maximum force that can be developed in a group of muscle during a single activity or lift. Strength training plays an important role for all surfers in a number of ways, it prevents injury, addresses muscular imbalance that occur due to the nature of the sport and brings balance to the surfer.
3 Mobility
Mobility is the degree to which a joint is allowed to move before being restricted by surrounding tissues. This is also known as range of movement around a joint.
As we have said before surfers who sit for long periods of time, either at a desk or in a vehicle, are most susceptible to mobility issues.
4 flexability
Flexabiity helps reduce the risk of muscle and tendon strains and tears, and increases range of motion (ROM)
5 Balance
Balance is the ability to sustain or return the bodies center of mass or line of gravity over its base of support and helps the surfer maintain structural integrity and posture.
6 Power
Power is the ability to produce maximal force over a short period of time. During training and during a surf session surfers us power constantly.
Power based exercises require you to accelerate against gravity and decelerate their body weight after its been accelerated by gravity. Because of the demands, surfers must demonstrate an ability to handle more than their body weight with ease before attempting advanced power exercises.
We can separate these phases in our surf training further still so you can work to a year round plan.
1 stability and endurance
The goal of this phase is to develop neuromuscular efficiency, stability and functional strength
This will include a high rep count of between 12-20, low set counts of around 2-3 with 60-90 seconds of conditioning exercise with a short rest period of less than 30 seconds. Any weight used in this phase should be light if any at all.
2 Maximum strength
These workouts are designed to build a foundation that can be used for power development. The goal is to diminish strength imbalances and translate strength training into surfing specific activity.
This will include a lower rep count of 6-10, higher set counts of around 4-6 with longer rest periods between sets of around 2-3 minutes while also increasing the weight past body weight.
3 Power
These workouts are used to develop power, balance and neuromuscular control. Exercises that increase power include plyometric exercises
This will include rep counts of 1-8 if its plyometrics 1-8 with sets of 3-5 with a rest period of around 2-3 minutes with the exercises performed with a heavier weight again.
The power exercises shouldn’t be used when you are tired or sore or cant perform correct technique.
4 Maintenance
This phase decreases the stress of a strength and conditioning training session by reducing resistence load, reps and sets.
This will include rep counts of around 5-15 with a set count of 1-3 and a rest period of 30-120 seconds with a weight up to 85 percent of your max weight used.
Specificity and reversibility
Keep your strength and conditioning training specific to surfing and also general body function. We also need to understand the power of rest or reversibility, if the exercise is too strenuous at this time adapt to make it easier, if the weight you have chosen is too heavy then reduce the weight. If you can not complete the reps or sets because the weight is too heavy reduce the weight until you can perform the exercise with correct form.
Best advice learn to be patient, don’t jump into a training regimen that is not manageable, start slow and make bigger gains remember this is a change of lifestyle.
Stretching
No matter if you are going surfing or doing a training session daily stretching as a routine can be really beneficial for your mobility, functional fitness and position on the surfboard.
We have various ways to stretch from static stretches that can lengthen chronically shortened tissue, active stretching will activate the functional antagonist, and dynamic stretching will excite the central nervous system.
Now lets take a closer look at the way we can stretch and what it all means.
1 Dynamic stretching exercises increase your range of movement and promote blood and oxygen flow to areas specifically needed for surfing. Dynamic stretching should encompass all planes of movement, in order to maximize the movement that occurs in various joints. These planes are sagittal, frontal and transverse. Dynamic stretching can be performed any time including before and after your surf session.
2 Static stretching or static sustained stretches hold a position by relaxing the body part being stretched and letting it naturally go further. Static stretching can be used as a cool down after your session.
3 Foam rolling how can something so simple be so effective, foam rolling can be used as a warm up or cool down relatively inexpensive and so effective.
Foam rolling releases muscle knots, relieves inflammation, and improves overall comfort. It can also increase your range of motion, flexibility, and mobility while boosting circulation and lymphatic flow. Is a feeling of pain and pleasure all at once but once you use it you probably will not be able to put it down again.
