Our guest blogger Alexa is not only a super keen surfer (you may have seen her in the recent ‘great gidget’ interview) but also happens to be a personal trainer at Agoga. She’s put together her top 5 moves to improve your surfing and surfing fitness. Happy surfercising, Gidgets!
5 exercises to improve your surfing
This winter I pledge to keep surfing. No matter how cold, no matter how wet and stormy, no matter how badly I’d rather curl up with a throw and read my book. This is THE year. Mind you, I’ve been saying this each and every year for the past 4 years and I still haven’t committed quite as well as I have to curling up and reading books. But this year definitely feels different; I’ve taken my fitness to a new turn and dedicated my fitness into surf conditioning training. It’s relatively easy to do; you just need to know where to start and out in the surf is definitely one of them.
We all know practice makes perfect when it comes to surfing and time in the water (TIW) certainly can guarantee a fit and strong body, but how can we expect to become stronger, faster and fitter if we’re only getting our practice in the water? As winter approaches and more of us head indoors for our fitness regime how can we possibly keep surf fit without our daily paddle and catch? Check out my top 5 moves for improving surf fitness and notice the difference in no time.
Paddling
Dumbbell Row over a Swiss ball
Often the muscle group that tires first is our upper body from constant paddling. Place a Swiss ball or Bosu under your hips and keep your feet firmly placed on the ground. Hold two light weights in each hand (approximately 1-3kgs) and extend your arms out in front. Keep your torso straight and squeeze your elbows, one at a time, down to your ribs. Mimic yourself paddling through the water.
Working with the Swiss ball promotes good core and back strength, essentially anything unstable is perfect for surfers .
Duck diving
Hindu push up
Start in a downward facing dog position with hands and feet on the floor, mimic the action of duck diving by leading with the head, neck and shoulders towards the ground before finishing in the up dog position. Hands are placed directly under the shoulders with hips to the floor. To make it harder move in reverse by lifting the hips up towards the ceiling, then torso and lastly head. For advanced version, use a Bosu to hold onto to make the surface less stable.
Pop up
1 Legged Burpee (with or without aTRX)
Place 1 leg into both handles of a TRX, place the hands on either side of the standing leg and keep all of the weight in the shoulders and core. Jump the standing leg back to hover parallel to the supported leg, try to keep the foot off the ground before bringing the knee into the chest and firmly back onto the ground. Stand on the free standing leg and jump to the ceiling. Repeat on the other side. You can do this without the TRX, just make sure the floating leg stays off the ground the whole time.
Turning
Travelling Cable Woodchop
Stand with your feet apart and face perpendicular to the cable (set high), skip the feet over so that you’re suddenly facing the opposite direction and while keeping the arms straight bring the wrists from high to low and crunch the core. Release the hands back up to high as you skip back to the starting position and chop on the other side.
Landing an aerial
Surfer Get Up to BOSU Jump On
Lying on the ground, pop up like you’re jumping onto your surf board, using your arms for momentum jump onto the BOSU whilst keeping the feet at hip width distance apart. Land nice and low into a squat position with the chest over the knees and the arms out in front. Use the unbalanced surface to your advantage and brace your core to keep stable. Jump off the Bosu and land back in the same spot.
Do each of these moves for 20 reps and repeat for 3 sets. Try to finish the 3 sets within 35 minutes. Make sure you’re adequately warm before starting and make sure you stretch your major muscle groups to cool down.
Give those a go and let me know how you go, see you out there in the waves – I WILL surf this winter!
Alexa.
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