You know how it is. You’re just starting to get into the flow of surfing, feeling the timing of the waves, catching a few good rides and your body starts to feel tired. That’s completely natural as surfing uses so many different muscles to other forms of exercise! There’s lots of preparation you can do at home to get in better shape for surfing; simple exercises to work four main areas – strength, endurance, balance and flexibility.
Swimming is a fantastic way to build upper body strength and endurance. It really is the best preparation for paddling that you can do, because it prepares your shoulders, lateral muscles, and back for the repetitive motions. It’s also important for anyone taking up surfing to feel completely comfortable in the water and is a confident swimmer.
Any Aerobic Exercise, running, spinning, or lap swimming . . . will give you all-round cardiovascular health. You’ll be able to surf stronger for longer. Take the stairs at work or enjoy a healthy, brisk walk at lunchtime.
Upper body Strength & Conditioning makes surfing easier and certainly more enjoyable. Any upper body workout with weights at the gym will improve your paddling and pop ups. Try curls, shoulder press, lateral raises, rows, chest press and triceps workouts. If hitting the gym is the last thing you want to do, try some push ups at home. Start with 1 set of 10 or so and gradually build up to 20 or 30 in several sets
Regular Yoga will improve strength, flexibility and balance, which will help with your pop ups. A basic “flow” class like Vinyasa or Ashtanga is great for building core strength and will work on your upper body. Yoga helps you understand the strengths and limitations of your body and allows you to practice at your own level without any judgment of your performance, much like surfing! Remember, the Surf Diva motto is –
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