As the sport of surfing grows in popularity, so grows the need for proper training programs to help push athleticism in the sport to new heights. Gone are the days of the beach-bum surf-slacker. Today’s surfers are fine-tuned athletes on a mission to win and be recognized as world-class athletes.
To be competitive, surfers must be physically well-rounded and have both endurance (paddling and duck diving) and explosive power (popping up, big bottom turns and explosive turns and airs off the top lip of the wave). Balance is of paramount importance too, as is symmetry between lower- and upper-body strength.
For some of us, we would just like to look like a surfer—lean, toned and powerful (and tanned). Regardless of your focus—athletic or aesthetic—this simple surf-specific workout will help you increase both your fitness ability and physique appeal. From a purely fitness standpoint, surfing is a big workout that can be exhausting. Therefore, your workouts should be equally challenging so that you can perform your best over the duration of a two-plus-hour surf session.
Perform 12 reps of each of these five sports-specific exercises, and then repeat the full circuit two to four times for a full workout. No equipment required to perform this workout, so it can be performed almost anywhere (even the beach).
- Paddling: Prone Cobra to increase shoulder mobility and core stability
- Popping up: Clap pushups to build explosive upper-body power
- Bottom Turn: Squat Jumps to help absorb gravitational forces and redirect them
- Balance: Single-leg pistol squats to enhance stability, mobility and the ability to get low and stay balanced
- High-intensity endurance: 300-yard shuttle run to push your heart rate to the limit with explosive one-minute bursts followed by intermittent rest
he most important thing you can do after a workout is refuel*. From a physiological perspective, your body has just undergone a bout of physiological stress. After a weight-training session, your muscles are in a catabolic state, which means muscle protein breakdown is occurring. After a cardio or weight-training session your body also has depleted its glycogen stores, which are the body’s key source for energy during exercise.
*For more information on pre-workout fuel, check out The Two Most Important Things You Can Do Before A Workout.
By making an effort to refuel quickly after a workout, you can maximize your body’s ability to build lean muscle mass, prevent muscle breakdown and restore the cell’s energy reserves. The ideal timeframe for refueling is up to 30 minutes after a workout. These 30 minutes, sometimes referred to as the “anabolic window,” optimizes the body’s use of fuel. Although research has yet to narrow this time frame to an exact minute, it is best to think of your window as insurance. It’s easy to get distracted after a workout, but if you go hours without eating you miss out on the opportunity to prevent muscle breakdown and enhance muscle protein synthesis. Therefore, if you make it a priority to consume something within 30 minutes of completing your exercise session, you can avoid the risk of losing all of the benefits of your training session.
It takes some effort and planning to optimize your training through refueling, but it is well worth it. After all, refueling helps the body recover, which will make your subsequent workouts that much more effective. Recommendations for post workout consumption include a carbohydrate-to-protein ratio of 3:1 or 4:1. Essentially, to optimize protein synthesis and restore glycogen, these ratios appear to do the trick. To make your post-workout consumption practical, think about bringing your shake or food with you to the gym or wherever you are training. Whey protein is a great post-workout protein option, as it is rapidly digested and can get into your muscles cells quickly. By keeping it in your gym bag, you can be sure to optimize your training and avoid worrying about when you can get access to food.
When we hear the word balance, we usually think of standing still on one leg or trying not to fall when walking on a slippery surface. While standing on one leg can certainly help improve static balance, maintaining control of a moving center of mass over a changing base of support is probably more relevant to many of life’s activities. This type of training is known as dynamic balance, and can help enhance skills that are relevant to a number of sports and activities of daily living. Dynamic balance training is also an effective way to help you achieve your fitness goals.
Optimal balance is achieved when multiple sensory systems provide information about the body’s position as it moves over the ground. The eyes (visual), inner ear (vestibular) and skin (kinesthetic) contain numerous sensory receptors that provide important feedback to the central nervous system (CNS) about which muscles to activate and when. Maintaining static balance as the body remains in one position is relatively easy because you can concentrate on which muscles to contract to remain stable. However, many activities of daily living happen quickly, which means you have to rely on conscious thought to control which muscles to activate.
Here are five reasons why it’s important to train dynamic balance and how adding it to your exercise program can produce results.
1. Training for dynamic balance could help you improve your running technique. The gait cycle, whether walking or running, requires the body to maintain control of its center of gravity as it changes position over a constantly moving base of support. During the gait cycle your body must maintain control of your center of gravity—usually found near the belly button—as you transition from one leg to the other. As your right foot hits the ground, the left leg prepares to swing forward; at the same time your left arm is swinging forward while your right arm is moving backward. The motion created by the swinging of the arms and legs results in a counter rotation between the upper back and pelvis to generate the momentum to move the body in a forward direction.
2. Dynamic balance training is an effective way to strengthen and tone the obliques and the muscles of the hips, thighs, glutes and low back. These muscles connect your hips to your pelvis and your pelvis to your spine. Increasing the strength of the core muscles can help improve your balance and coordination, while also improving your appearance.
3. Having good dynamic balance can help improve your coordination and ability to react to sudden changes of direction, both of which can help reduce the risk of an accidental fall. Controlling dynamic balance should be a reflexive response that happens automatically. If you feel that you don’t have good balance, it is extremely important that you do the work necessary to improve it.
4. Dynamic balance exercises can easily be added to the warm-up phase of a workout to prepare for lower-body strength training, a long run, an obstacle-course race, or for recreational sports such as tennis, basketball or soccer.
5. Dynamic balance exercises can be used as low-intensity recovery exercises between sets of high-intensity interval training or as a low-intensity bodyweight workout to help promote recovery the day after a challenging training session. These exercises can also be used on those days when you can’t make it to the gym, but still want to do something active.
Adding balance exercises to your workouts can help improve your overall energy expenditure and enhance your ability to perform your favorite activities. Here are six dynamic balance exercises to help you improve coordination and strengthen your muscles. Try adding this program as a warm-up at least two times per week for four weeks and you will be surprised at the difference you will feel and see.