1. Paddle on any kind of water
The most of the time we spend among the waves in our attempt to surf is paddling. Paddling to the line-up, paddling to the peak, paddling because of the side currents, paddling out again after a completed wave. It’s basically a sport, at which it’s harder if not impossible for you to improve without first improving your paddeling.
Since I am surfing, now for one and a half year I spent about 600 hours in the Ocean in my attempts to surf.
550 hours of those were paddeling
45 hours of duck-diving
4 hours of being smashed and crushed by waves
1 hour of pleasurable surfing the waves
Some say it’s probably the most stupid sport of all. Where you spend more than 95% of the time doing a really hard task, just to get a, relatively, short time of pure pleasure. But . . . all those, who have ever ride on a nice, a good-meter high wave, know . . . that, that feeling is worth every paddle and every other thing. It feels absolutely the best.
So . . . if one is to ride in a tube, one has to first paddle, a lot.
Just paddle!
2. Longboarding on the road or skate park
If possible find a skate park which has a quarter pipe and you can train the “top turn” on like a concrete wave. I am lucky enough that they have one like that in Peniche, where I do most of my surfing . . . and it’s just nice to have such a concrete wave on flat days.
Second best option would be to buy a “Carver” skate-board. This skate has some special suspension on the first wheel-axle. This allows you to “pump” to gain speed in a very similar way like on a surfboard. And if you have a half-pipe kind of ramp you can train to do back side and front side top turns. Please get a helmet doing this. I know it does not cool . . . but it looks much cooler than an open head. Falls on the head are quite common doing this.
Yes, I know this is not surfing and it would be better to go surfing the real thing. But in some cases, where there is a better choice to stay in one waveless country, for other things. This is the most you can get. The stoke is amazing.
And when it comes to the real thing . . . you are ready for that moment.
3. Abs & Push-ups
I’ve got the information about this while having a surf massage by Jana in Peniche. After a lot of days of really putting your body over its limits many time and crunching the muscles strongly. It’s really a good idea to relax them deeply sometimes.
Anyway we were talking about all sorts of stuff, but she said: “Some people do a lot of surfing, which is really strengthening your lower and middle part of your back. And if you do a lot of surfing without strengthening your front middle part, your body gets out of balance. There is much more work to do for the back muscles to keep the back straight, so the front muscles get even lazier. That’s not such a big problem when one is surfing, but when one stops to surf, there may be some back problems occuring because of that.”
So, I have decided to do this exercises 5 times a week. This guy may seem a bit funny at the first impression 🙂
But this is,by far, the most effective way of doing abs.
It’s only 8 minutes long and it has exercises for all the parts of the abs.
And if you feel, you need to work on your other parts of your body.
This guy has a lot of stuff:
Just get ready and prepare your best self to paddle, paddle a lot.
It’s the key to surfing, surfing good waves, . . . surfing the tubes.
Keep Surfing
Aloha
Deep Soul Surfer 