Surf Performance Training

“Don’t put training ahead of surfing. There’s no training for surfing like surfing itself. Training is mainly a way to prevent injuries while you’re surfing, by building strength in your body. Swimmers can go up and down the pool all day long, but eventually they have to go into the gym to balance out their body or strengthen up their shoulders, otherwise they are just going to blow something out. Same with surfing. You develop overuse patterns and you start blowing things out left, right and centre.” – Mick Fanning, Surf For Your Life.

I came to surfing fairly late in life. I had toyed around with the idea of learning to surf in my early teens, yet it wasn’t until around 10 years later I decided that in order to improve, I needed to get out there everyday. So, without the advantage of being a grom early in life, I then became a 26 year old frother – stoked on a new passion and outlet for my natural tendency to exercise and train more than the average female. The surf became my loyal physical, mental and emotional dumping ground. It also became my physical, mental and emotional energy tap. I think there’s something pretty healing about the ocean and it just feels good to be in it.

The first time I found myself going across the wave face, I was hooked like anyone else who’s done the same. Being older, my body was less pliable and forgiving than would be of the typical young grom, so I experienced a fairly strong change in the way my joints and muscles felt once I began to practice every day. Being an exercise physiologist and trained in dance since the age of three, I’ve grown to be aware of optimal spine and joint postures and have developed a high sense for proprioception (the position of my body in space). Surfing seemed to be challenging everything I had learnt in the past about keeping the body symmetrically conditioned and aligned.  Some of the dysfunctions I see in my surfing clients, as well as what I was seeing within my own body include:

Upper back hunching over.

Head poking forward.

Pelvis rotating away from the front leg in standing, with the torso rotating toward the front leg.

Pop-ups are one-sided –twisting the body to the same side in each powerful pop-up, creating imbalances. Power = more force traveling through the body.

Back knee dropping in which creates and inward stress on the knee joint.

Back ankle dropping in (pronating) which creates an inward stress on the ankle and transfers that stress up to the knee, hip and beyond.

Shoulders and neck tightness and soreness from loads of paddling. Overtrained shoulder internal rotators.

 A shrinking ass and an aching lower back.

These were the challenges I was facing as a rehabilitation and strength specialist, yet my own muscle and joint issues surfacing were not enough to detract me from my passion to become a better surfer and keep surfing for the rest of my life. This is why I am passionate about teaching surfers how to look after their bodies and perform to the best of their ability, so they can squeeze out more years and expertise in what they love to do most, just as I wish for myself.

Surfers often jog or run, do sit-ups, push-ups, ride bikes, and may even pump iron or do yoga. But rarely do they actually practice movements they’ll need on the board or work specific muscle groups that they’ll use in surfing.

An average ride lasts less than sixty seconds, and on a good day, you’re doing well to catch ten waves per hour. That adds up to less than ten minutes of practice time for each hour you spend in the water. Compare this to skiing or snowboarding – runs are usually limited only by conditioning. On a good hill, a single run might equal an entire day of surfing in terms of time spent building muscle memory by actually doing the activity. Especially at the beginner to intermediate stages of surfing, the ratio of paddling to standing up is even greater than it is for advanced surfers. Surfers also need to wait for decent swell in conjunction with surfable wind conditions, and in a spot that is not trying to accommodate 50+ surfers at once, which never happens?! So as a surfer, and especially if you were a late starter, you’re facing a very steep learning curve. A solution is to practice key moves in a controlled environment, just like athletes in other sports. Surf-specific training comes into play here. Flexibility, agility, strength, conditioning, power, and practice doing the things you would actually do to catch and ride a wave.

That’s the performance side of surfing, and then there’s the injury side, which can slowly happen (or quickly with impact situations) as your body morphs into what is required in surfing as a unilateral (one-sided) sport. What this means is that the act of paddling is fairly symmetrical, yet once you get ready for the wave and from the moment you push up and bring one leg further forward than the other, you are now asymmetrical for the rest of your ride. Your hips are rotated, your back ankle and knee drop in, your torso is rotated, your neck is rotated to see where you’re going, and if you’re like most people, you favor rights or lefts. If you are genius enough to surf switch-foot, you could potentially save yourself a lot of chronic overuse injuries, but this is rarely mastered.

What I See