Surf Fitness Training - yay or nay?
I "may" have heard a rumour about one among us today ... and if said rumour is true, he is about to enter the "zone" of surf fitness training. Anyone else been down that path?
Pretty much essential at some point wingnut, I train for a few months every year and so far that has worked well. I have now been surfing over 50 years and still feel pretty comfortable on a 6'0" most days.
this may interesting, Tiger Woods may have trained himself out of top level golf. According to Williams (his old caddie) - "When he looks back he might question some of the activities he did, some of the gym work he might have done that had all these injuries escalate."
Now keeping fit would makes sense for us surfing. It would have to depend on the level and the surf your after - heh ? Like BB said above, it would help.
It's bandied around a lot these days but a good regular yoga practice does wonders for not only flexibility but actually a lot of strength- which pays off in the surf. Plus, I've noticed the breathing as being deeper somehow during paddling.
It's not 'training' for surf specifically - but pays dividends in the water for sure.
As it is I find it hard enough to get time to get in the water , if i trained to get fit or flexible or whatever, id probably never get wet.
Most days I don't surf it's 60 chin ups, 60 push ups and swimming- underwater and freestyle , both as fast as I can possibly move through the water.
Takes 30 minutes maximum for the lot.
Any day I have a good surf I like to warm down my muscles with some cold beers.
Most days I don't surf, it's 60 cold beers, freestyle as fast as I can;)
Just ask Sheepio.
He'll tell ya.
blowin, how did you get yourself up to 60 pullups? that's pretty impressive. is that 6 sets of 10 or do you do it some other way? 3 sets of 7 usually fries me....then its all poor form after that, wiggling, squirming, kicking my way above the bar to do a single rep or two. I'll blow a shoulder one of these days im sure.
6 lots of 10.
3 lots fingers facing me, 3 lots fingers away from me.
60 in a row ?
Very much not happening.
Just practice and it will come.
It's like a prize beer gunt, not going to happen overnight.
God knows I've tried.
Yeah, that's pretty much my approach indo ... surfing is it's own fitness. A regime like blowin for the no surf days has never happened for me. I tend to just go and do something else like all the chores around the house I haven't done while the waves have been good ... washing cars, mowing lawns, general garden work, housing down the decks, etc
It's only like now, while I nurse a lower back strain, that I start thinking about whether I should have a regular stretching or surf specific exercise regime. Fucking annoying thing is, the lower back tweaked doing something very mundane - compounds the frustration. Injury from surfing is not good, but, at least being injured from pushing myself in the surf gives me some sort of satisfaction.
wingnut..I feel ya, I'm over 50 and have played a few ball sports for which we just did kicking footballs or throwing basketballs around as warm ups.
Surfing I regard the same, living very close to some beachbreaks in the FNC NSW means surf sessions always involve solid paddles/ and lots of duckdiving before you get to the line up. I ride my pushy to the beach and back, walk across the beach, stretch hammies and shoulders a bit at the waters edge while I check out the line up for a few minutes. That's my warm up regime.
So, like you I get the cardio workout from the sport itself. The last 4 months has been groundhog day conditions. I do lack flexibility, have tight hammys so yoga is the activity that I would like to do more of.
So there's a few of us in the post prime years of our lives. No, scratch that, we're aging like a good wine ...
Anyhow, who among us does, or does not, train for surfing?