Surfing is an enjoyable physical sport that requires fitness and vigour. Paddle out, balance on a surfboard, catch a wave, and do a few aerial tricks and big hacking turns all demand a variety of physical abilities. For this reason, beginners should do these surfing exercises to improve their balance and strength.
How can beginners train for surfing to improve their balance and strength? Surfing exercises like single leg suf training and lunges can help beginners improve their balance. Meanwhile, exercises like surf core training, planking, push-ups, chin-ups, front leg squats, etc., help improve strength.
Since surfing is a full-body workout and sport, you need to establish a strong body and excellent balance. Below are some surfing exercises for beginners to improve balance and strength:
Surfing Exercises To Improve Balance
Single Leg Surf Training
Balance is crucial for anyone trying to get better at surfing. You can have a training program that will challenge your balance demands to react quicker and have better joints.
Single-leg movements are an element of training that will assist in preventing lower body injuries while enhancing your balance. So, consider adding it to your surfing exercises.
Lunges
Lunges are a more difficult exercise challenge after push-ups and squats. Since you must be able to move your hip joints freely while surfing, lunges can help you improve the balance necessary for this movement.
After mastering the basic lunges, level up your balance exercise by doing overhead walking lunges, dynamic lunges, alternating medicine ball twist lunges, alternating sandbag lunges, and alternating dumbbell split lunges.
Surfing Exercises To Increase Strength
Surf Core Training
In the recent years, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding core training, which has regrettably led to many misconceptions. What’s true is that having a strong core is essential for both pain-free living and being able to surf quickly and powerfully.
It’s important to realise that your “core” is more than just your abs. The muscles in your trunk that make up your core stabilise and transfer power and movement throughout your body.
Beginners and all levels of surfers should practice integrative core exercises rather than isolated ones, like crunches, which have little use to surfing. Stability balls, exercise bands, medicine balls, and cables are great equipment for effectively exercising the core.
Aside from planking, other beginner core exercises you can add to your training include:
- Cable Chops
- Supine Lateral Ball Rolls
- Stability Ball Rollouts
- Horse Stance or Bird Dogs
- Pallof Press
- Stability Ball Jack-Knife
- Medicine Ball Chops
Planking
It may not seem like much from the outside, but planking works every muscle in your body and is quite challenging to maintain for more than a few seconds. Planking is an excellent surfing exercise to improve core strength, so try it in your next training.
The strength of your core muscles is essential to your surfing technique. A strong core will help you maintain balance while paddling and riding waves. It will also give you the power and stability you need to perform turns and other maneuvers. By improving your core strength, you can become a better surfer.
Shoulders and Upper Back Exercises
A pro surfer workout routine always includes exercises that can improve their strength for paddling. But even for beginners, these exercises are essential.
In surfing, paddling is among the most tiresome things to do. By including strength-training exercises in their routine that can strengthen your shoulders and upper back, beginner surfers can increase their paddle power and help themselves catch more waves.
Chin-ups
It might surprise you to know how much more your upper body plays a role in standing up on a surfboard and maintaining your balance. Finding a good wave and missing it because you couldn’t paddle or get up quickly enough is among the most aggravating things for a surfer. Training your upper body is crucial in this situation. Chin-ups are one of the greatest exercises for surfers.
When you don’t usually do chin-ups on a regular basis, you should begin with a chin-up bar. Hold the bar with your hands over your shoulders and hang there. Lift your body out of this starting stance until your chin is higher than the bar. You must ideally perform two sets of six repetitions each, with a one-minute break in between. If you’re unable to accomplish it yet, begin with as many as you can and gradually progress from there.
Push-ups
Among the surfing exercises to improve balance and strength is push-up. One of the surf training at home that beginners can do to improve their strength and balance is push-ups. Since it works on numerous muscular groups at once, the push-up is the Swiss Army knife of fitness and strength exercises.
Developing core and upper body strength can help you a lot as you paddle to a wave, rapidly jump up on the surfboard, or duck dive. Additionally, practising push-ups on the right and a regular basis will help you avoid injuries on the shoulder.
When you’ve figured out how to do a proper push-up, you can begin by accomplishing as many push-ups as you can and progressively increasing the number as your fitness improves. You can make them more difficult by elevating your legs or increasing the weight on your back.
Others Surfing Exercises To Improve Shoulders and Upper Back Strength
Surfers would benefit from more therapy on the shoulder girdle and the frequently damaged rotator cuff. You may try the following exercises to improve your shoulders and upper back strength:
- Dumbbell bent rows
- Shoulder A, T, Y’s
- Cable face pulls
- Straight arm cable pull-downs
- Body blade exercises
- Shoulder scarecrows
- Suspension training tricep pushes
- Rotator cuff external rotations
Front Squats For Legs
The correct squat pattern is necessary for getting up on that board. Front squats enhance your surfing technique and increase your endurance and posture.
Every session should consist of 3 sets of 12 squats. Add squats to your surf exercise by only employing your body weight. After you’ve learned the squat routine, you can add weight to strengthen your knees, ankles, lower back, and hips.
Start Doing These Surfing Exercises to Improve Your Balance and Strength!
Surfing, like any other physical exercise, becomes more enjoyable as your fitness levels improve. A consistent fitness plan that includes all these workouts can significantly enhance your surfing endurance, and you’ll soon be able to surf the waves for long periods. Learning how to surf and how to be good at it ins’t easy. But, if you want to be a pro one day, you must often practice surfing on the water and perform strengthening and stability exercises.
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