Surfing & the Gym

[Geezer]

So this past rainy season here in Bali was pretty heavy. Rain started feom September. And today were still not through it yet. The longest rainy season that I’ve seen since being here.

So since I don’t surf when it rains, I started going to the gym. I’ve never really gone to the gym before; been a lifelong athlete but never lifted weights. Anyhow, Instagram as my friend and I quickly settled into a weightlifting routine just by following several people on the gram and doing the exercises as they did, and more or less recommended by consensus.

Progress has been good. I can lift my weight and all the exercises I do and M noticeably stronger and more flexible. As I combine some mobility and stretching exercises to my routines, as well as some surf specific exercises Anyway, I’m feeling great but haven’t been surfing much. Winds are finally starting to shift those still spinning around day-to-day., so I was able to go to my favorite surf spots over the past week

I’m pleasantly surprised to see the least!
Everything is better except for my paddle fitness, which is rotten. There is no substitute for thyme in the water when it comes to that it seems. However, catching waves is a lot easier. My sprint wave catching paddle is much stronger. I pop up is faster now…. So much so that I found myself on the wave so early I froze for a second, since I am is ever find myself in that position. Everything just felt easier….. except for pedal fitness!!! didn’t matter. I’ve been doing cardio with marked improvements, able to do much more than I could back in October for longer periods and lower heart rates. Yeah that didn’t matter at all. Ha ha ha ha.

So long story long, I’m gonna keep squeezing workouts in because as far as I’m concerned, this is a fountain of youth. Like I said, I’ve never felt better in the last 15 years and it’s totally improved my surfing, I just need to work on that paddle fitness and being ready to exploit those good positions I’m getting into!

[oldmansurfer]

What exercises are you doing for paddle fitness?

[Geezer]

What exercises are you doing for paddle fitness?

None. I’m doing alot that improve strength and monility in various ways. Doing incline walking, running and wind sprint intervals for cardio. For the paddle fitness I felt just as gassed as always after time out of the water. Been out three times this week and feel stronger each time but then it usually takes four consecutive days surfing to feel ok in the water and longer than that to take on crowds and more challenging conditions though I can cheat time a little using bigger boards.

Nothing beats time in the water.

[oldmansurfer]

There are exercises that can help your paddle fitness. Using dumbbells laying on your back place them as far over your head as you can and bring them straight up and down to your side then back up again. Using dumbbells as well while standing bend over so your upper body is parallel to the floor and hang your arms down then bring them up toward your rear till parallel to the floor. These strengthens the start and end of your paddle. Then for endurance use rubber stretch bands and fix them around head high back up with your arms in front of you till the slack is gone then bring your hands down to your waist and do hundreds of repetitions. But still better yet just go surfing. This is only if you can't go surfing.

[Geezer]

Paddle fitness and paddle strength distinctly two different things. Paddle strength has always improved with time in the gym. Fitness is up with time in the water. Just amazed the difference the gym made is all.

[oldmansurfer]

For paddling you need both fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. Slow twitch is built from weights fast twitch from repetition. If you just lift weights to build your slow twitch muscles you won't be paddle fit. You need endurance by building fast twitch muscle by doing multiple repetitions. The strength is important too but you need to be doing lots of repetitions of lower weights or in my case stretchy bands to build the fast twitch muscles that give you endurance.

[oldmansurfer]

But the best paddlers do long distance paddling daily. This is if you can't do paddling. Strength is important but building the muscles needed for endurance is what makes you paddle fit (besides strength and cardio)

[Naeco78]

Yeah there isn't much that comes close to just having time in the water. I go through similar in the spring.. i try to maintain at the gym during the winter, but my paddle endurance just isn't there for awhile.

The things i find that help the most with paddling endurance are swimming (best by far) and the Endless Rope systems that are vertical from the ceiling. Both of those are kinda hard to find at most gyms, but i find they help a lot when i've been able to use them.

[oldmansurfer]

so have you tried doing large numbers of reps with whatever exercises you are doing to stay fit?

[oldmansurfer]

when you paddle your slow twitch muscles use up their stored energy and you have to use the fast twitch muscles. Those are created with lower resistance than doing strength training but with large numbers of repetitions. You need hundreds of reps to train those muscles..

[Geezer]

I gotta ask OMS…..have you ever done weight training with hundreds of reps and found that your paddle fitness improved? Dollars to donuts you haven’t. Theoretically your argument is compelling but I don’t agree. Could a distance runner train to run great distances buy not running and just doing high reps of weights? The weight training may help them but without getting out and running they won’t become a better runner.

What I have found and the point I was trying to make was there are alot of gains that can be made in the gym but there is no substitute for time in the water on a board for building paddle fitness. Like I said my mobility, strength including surf specific strength training and flexibility have improved dramatically as guided by a battery of youtube and instagram videos and many visits to the gym over the last six months, but it’s not surfing so that rust is still there.

I remember a see different posts in the past where a newbie surfer thought they would adapt quickly because they were into crossfit or HIIT and they had their bubble burst after actual time in the water.

Today was my fifth time out this week, each sesh has been 2hours-ish. Halfway thru yesterday I felt the old gears kick in, but it took a few times out on near consecutive days (missed yesterday and hut the gym instead - was raining again!) before the body agreed to start backing me.

It’s like those memes with the guy who sits at a table with a big placard. This one would say “There is no substitute for time in the water - prove me wrong!”

Anyway, I’m all in on the weights. Started amassing different pieces of equipment for working out at home since i don’t want to use surf time for the gym now the weather is shifting to the dry season. Going to shop for kettlebells and a medicine ball tomorrow after the morning surf. Fun times!

[oldmansurfer]

I have done resistance band training and found my paddling level acceptable after prolonged period of not surfing. I have the fast and slow twitch thing mixed up it is the slow twitch that you want for surfing endurance. I haven't tried lower amounts of weights with increased repetitions because I am using them for strength training and it's too much hassle to keep changing the weights depending on what i am doing. Swimming is good cross training for surfing. Long distance paddling is even better. In everything at my age though one needs to be careful to avoid overdoing it. The resistance bands I use are less than $30 for a package of them including the stoppers that go in a closed door to hold the bands in place. They are long round bands with different resistances and handles to go on each end. They have a stopper that goes in the door, basically a knob on the end of a strap that you close the door on. Time in the ocean is the best but this is if you can't spend time in the ocean. Strength training is good for surfing but it will help only with catching waves and maybe only initially till those muscles you trained get tired. There are other muscle fibers that will stay useful for a longer period of time and that is what you need to train besides cardio and strength and flexibility and balance. But if you can surf that is the best thing. Believe me if I could I would be surfing. It's hard to replicate paddling 500 yards doing sets of ten.

[Naeco78]

Yeah i think 500 yards would probably be a pretty good barometer. I've had times when I've consistently gone to the gym for months at a time.. but no matter what i try.. i still have a rough time trying to swim a 500m in a pool. Same for a good surf sesh.
But when i can swim a 500m straight thru.. i can easily transition into good surf

[oldmansurfer]

I figure I can gain a yard or meter with each paddle so a 250 rep set with each arm daily should do well if you are using the muscles you use for paddling and weights enough to make you winded during the 250 set. So you feel like you are paddling to avoid getting caught inside by a wave by the end of the 250 reps. The exercise I do is with both arms so only need to do 250 total. Currently I am off that number but working my way up. I am back to 200 but not daily before a variety of things stopped me from exercising.

[HaoleKook]

This is a good conversation. I have some experience as I had surgery and took 10 months off from all activity. I wanted to bookend that downtime with a week at surf camp, and hired a fitness trainer to get in shape beforehand. She specializes in triathlon/distance stuff but is a phd and very adaptable, and I had worked with her before. I did 6 weeks of training prior to camp.

A few things she said related to this post:

*Marathon runners don't do full marathons in training. Since I wanted to be able to surf multiple sessions a day for 7 days straight, I thought I had to work up to that. But once you get in good enough shape to do something, there isn't much benefit in training for it every day. So 3 days a week was plenty for paddling, the other days were for stretching or working on pop ups.

*You don't get faster at running by doing stair trainers, and you don't get better at pop ups by isolating the movements. I was at the end of ankle recovery and not able to do full pop ups yet, so I started by doing lots of lunges and squats. I got noticeably better at both of these things, but once I was cleared for dynamic exercise and started doing pop ups I got super tired, super fast. It seemed like I got nothing out of the lunges and squats, although maybe they helped me make progress more quickly, IDK.

*Over training can be as bad as under training. I wanted to be able to surf 4-6 hours a day in Costa Rica. There were days where I thought I should do multiple sessions here to get ready, but by the end I'd be tired, I'd be fatigued the next day, etc. You get more out of exercise by doing the right amount with good form, building muscle, then letting your body rest and rebuild.

After about 3 weeks I told her I felt like I wasn't doing enough, but literally a week later I started to notice I wasn't getting tired at the end of my sessions. When she taught me to run it was the same - we weren't supposed to feel tired the next day, that was a sign of over training. I did triathlon training with her, it felt like she was babying us, I never felt tired during training, but then I went out and destroyed my goal in the race and finished super strong.

So I was basically paddling 3 days a week (either just paddling around or surfing on my knees), stretching 2 days a week, and doing treadmill and core exercises 2 days a week, for 6 weeks. When I left I felt healthy, not like super strong or super different, just good and healthy.

I went to surf camp for the week, actually arrived 4 days early and surfed 10 out of 11 days, some days 4 sessions. I never was tired. Ever. Everyone else was exhausted after the 2nd day, I felt like a machine. I got home and went surfing the next day and the 3 days after that.

So, there's no replacement for doing the actual activity in training. You can do arm exercises but paddling requires core stuff too, and requires to use arm/shoulder/core muscles in a different way than gym exercises or even swimming.

There is harm in over-training. Your body changes it's energy usage when it gets over tired and you start operating in a zone that really doesn't benefit cardio or physical strength.

There is benefit in supplementing workouts to build muscle, but not replacing the specific activity. Triathlon training is 90% slow speed work which is endurance building. It is supplemented by short high intensity strength exercises or sprints to build muscle. I did 2-3 months of run training mostly at 12 minute miles, then went out for a pace mile and ran under 8 minutes having never done that before (at 45, 200 lbs, never having run before). The actual triathlon (sprint) was something like 90 minutes, I can't remember, but I never did any training for 90 minutes straight let alone anything at full intensity for more than maybe 90 seconds at a time.

The one other thing I did was focus on paddling efficiency. There's a guy on YouTube (based in Cali) who specializes in that. I didn't go into much detail but there's a similarity with distance swimming where your arm isn't supposed to move through the water - you don't push water backwards, you push yourself forwards leveraging the resistance from the water. I'm not anywhere near perfect but I can tell I'm paddling more efficiently than I was before. I think it helped.

[oldmansurfer]

I used to swim a lot and was on the swim team but quit in 9th grade. Back when I started surfing (after graduating from high school, we just had our 54th reunion by the way) I had to swim to get my board as there were no leashes. And I took up paipo boarding before I started surfing but between all those activities my swimming times improved without any specific training. The paddling is not exactly the same but close enough that when I started surfing I did not have a problem catching waves. Eventually though my arms would get what I used to call rubber band arms Where my paddling stroke is sort of like stretching a rubber band and shooting it forward. My arms just fell limp in the water like a rubber band would. This I found could be overcome by mental toughness just pushing myself to create force. I used to surf two hours a day and 4 to 6 each day on the weekend. Never had any problem with overuse. It is a concern now. I still have a lot of core strength. Have no clue why but I always did. When I was in high school they had this president's fitness day where we did all these exercises. I performed poorly except for running a mile and doing sit ups. I didn't train to do hundreds of sit ups but I could do literally hundreds. They told us to do as many as we could and I was counting 196, 197, 198 then the coach came by and said is that 100? I said no that's 200 and he laughed and said I could stop because they only count 100. LOL When I came back from college I surfed in the summer breaks and that was enough to keep me in reasonable shape so that I had no problem catching waves. In fact when I stopped surfing for 12 years and restarted I was in good enough shape that I didn't have much of a problem catching waves. It wasn't because my arms were too tired it was because I was unfamiliar with the surfboard and my wave reading was a bit off. But I know from others this is a problem others experience. Perhaps it is just the effect of the mental toughness I learned the first time around. Perhaps I am just spouting nonsense because I am different? Could be but that is what I am doing now. Training myself with with 40 pounds resistance bands doing multiple reps that is also cardio training. I think people have the idea that you work till you are winded and that is cardio but in my mind it is getting in that state where you need to breath more to get oxygen and staying like that for a long period of time. This trains your muscles to use anaerobic metabolism which is what you need for endurance. SO to me aerobic training is training your muscles to do anaerobic metabolism. At least that is the way I have always looked at it. I am not an expert LOL but what I have done works for me. Perhaps also the reason my training works for me is that I don't go surfing for hours at a time if I haven't been surfing for shorter periods of time and found it okay. Basically if I am getting tired I get out of the water before it becomes an issue. Even in my old age I haven't had overuse issues but have had them from doing other repetitive things. I tend to listen to my body and play it safe. When I paddle back out I work on my form once I no longer need to worry about getting caught by a wave. If I am going longer distances then I can get in a groove sometimes where I feel the power in the stroke and notice the difference between me and other surfers paddling out. My whole life I have just done my own thing and maybe I don't know anything but it seemed to work for me. I am not going to worry about it at this old age.