Several years ago I moved to Spain and since I was living right on the coast and dating a surfer I thought I’d try learning to surf. I was pretty sporty anyway so I figured it would be fairly easy.
Wrong!
Learning to surf is tough to start with but I did it the hard, slow way and it’s only now that I’m starting to see the methods I could have used back when I started which would have speeded up my progress massively.
To surf well you need a bunch of stuff: balance, flexibility, core stability, endurance and lashings of strength especially the upper body variety.
My nice strong karate/running/horse-riding legs would come in useful later (much, much later) for turns, but at the start and forever afterwards it’s the upper body strength you need more than anything for paddling out, duck diving, paddling for the wave and popping up on the board.
So for most girls, we’re starting off with a huge disadvantage since even the sportiest of us tend not to have the majority of our strength in our arms and shoulders. One of the obvious advantages to learning to surf is that it tones up those arms and even add a little definition.
The disadvantage is that that strength is hard and slow to get if you do it the way I did.
For me, I just persevered with surfing, gradually getting strong enough to be able to last a decent amount of time in the water and catch a few waves. At the time I was learning I figured that weight training was basically a waste of time as I might train the wrong muscles and anyway I was scared of getting too bulky.
What I now know is that there are a bunch of surf fitness programs out there that will enable you to work on all the areas that you need surf so you can build strength, endurance and flexibility in surf-specific ways that will definitely help and won’t give you big fat sausage arms!
Specifically you should get a program that contains the elements described below:
Combination of both your aerobic energy system (with oxygen) and your anaerobic energy system(without oxygen). Interval training is an example of a way to achieve this.
Improve your core stability, strength and rotary power. Crunches alone will not give you core stability, stability balls can very effective with the right exercise and they’re also excellent for helping you stretch out after a surf.
Increase your upper body endurance, strength and power. You can do this with at home or in a gym with very little equipment.
Improve your mobility and flexibility. A stability ball could help you achieve this.
Improve your balance and lower body strength & power. Balance is key but most people don’t try to improve it because they think it’s just something you are born with. It’s not, you can improve your balance with very little equipment e.g. a stability ball.
In order to become a better surfer in the quickest amount of time possible, you need to get yourself a surf fitness program which incorporates the elements described above. Such programs can be bought online or created for you at your local gym. You can read about one here on this site.
This way you can get the upper body strength you need as well as working on the other components needed when learning to surf so you can progress much faster when you’re actually in the water and do it much faster than I did!
Technorati Tags: balance, core strength, Girl Surf, learning to surf, Surf Fitness, upper body strength
