Increase Your Surfing Paddle Power

By Clayton Beatty BSc

Clayton Beatty is the fitness expert behind Total Surfing Fitness, a website dedicated to functional fitness training for surfers. Clayton holds a BSc Degree in Human Movement and is a Qualified Exercise Scientist. If you would like to learn more visit his website at www.totalsurfingfitness.com

Sometimes I wish I had an outboard motor on the back of my surf board so I could just zoom back out to the line up after a wave. Unfortunately such surfboard motors don’t seem to exist, so there has to be another way.

The obvious way is to improve my paddle fitness, so the task of paddling doesn’t seem like such an effort during a heavy session.

In the following functional exercises, I am going to show you how you can do just that. By increasing your muscle strength, you will be able to paddle faster and stronger with less fatigue, which means more waves and more fun!

Upper back and arm strength are important for surfers because we use these muscles heavily when paddling. The stronger these muscles, the faster you can paddle into waves.

The following exercise helps strengthen your upper back and arms, as well as helping to stabilise your shoulders. Having your feet on a stability ball means your core muscles will be working harder as well. If you workout at the gym this exercise can be performed using the bar on a smith machine.

SWISS BALL INVERTED ROW

•  Hold the bar with an overhand grip, just wider than shoulder width apart.

•  Keep your core braced and pull your chest up to the bar.

•  Slowly lower your body back down.

The next exercise will help build your shoulder strength so you can paddle harder and stronger with less fatigue.

SWISS BALL INVERTED SHOULDER PRESS

 

• With your feet on a swiss ball slowly lower your head towards the floor stopping just short of touching.

 

•  Press back up until your arms are straight.

  

 

Incorporating these functional exercises into your training schedule means you will be able to paddle harder and faster than ever before. But beware… this means you may get more waves than your mates and they might not appreciate this as much as you…

To turn your whole body into a lean mean surfing machine, check out the Total Surfing Fitness training program. This is a functional training program designed specifically for surfers, which includes training for core strength, balance, cardiovascular fitness, upper & lower body strength and flexibility. Visit www.totalsurfingfitness.com to download the program.