Fitness tips for surfers – training tips for wave riders

Table of Contents

The right surf preparation for your holiday or for advanced surfers

Enjoying the view on Fuerteventura

Surfing is older than most sports. It has a rich history that goes back a long way, and yet there is a gap between our sport and traditional sports. Take football, for example: if little Johnny wanted to play football but never made time for training, most people would immediately recognise that he will not get very far. But if he wants to learn to surf, most people only ask whether he is a good swimmer – and if he is, he should just go out and the rest will come naturally. When it comes to surfing, we do not think about training or preparation.

Other athletes know they have to invest time in training for their sport, because it was instilled in them from the very beginning, when they were small children.

Since I like working through things on a list from start to finish, let us start with step one: paddling.

Surfing means paddling. The most important muscles in paddling are the lats, shoulders, trapezius and triceps. They work together to push the water away beneath us and get us to the line-up as quickly as possible. Once we are there, these muscle groups of course also get us into the waves. For most of us, paddling is not exactly the most exciting part of our sport, but it is an essential element.

The main thing we want to focus on is muscular endurance – the ability to work muscles with repeated contractions over a longer period. With that in mind, we want to train these muscles with low resistance and a high number of repetitions. Exercises such as swimming, dry swimming with bands or light dumbbells, and cable or suspension exercises such as TRX are great ways to build our endurance and make sure we can ride more waves in our next session.

To make quick progress here, it is also important to build strength, which can be increased in particular through pull-ups and medicine ball training.

Surf Workout, Surf Fitness – Paddle Training

Now that we can paddle into the line-up more easily and with less effort, let us move on to step two: the pop-up.

To get to our feet we obviously need our legs. The question is: which muscles are the most important and why? I will break this down into two parts: prime movers and stabilising muscles.

The main players are the larger muscles, which we first need to train for explosive power and then for strength endurance, supported by smaller, stabilising muscle groups that maintain balance and control during these movements. For me, the most important prime movers are the front and back leg muscles and the hip flexors. Then there are the stabilising muscles such as the abductors and adductors of the thigh and the gluteus medius.

To get the most out of these muscles, power and strength in the prime movers must be combined with stability and balance in the stabilising muscles. Exercises such as plyometrics (jumping) on two legs or one leg are a good training option here. Squat and deadlift variations standing on one or both legs build strength, and you can combine them with exercises on an Indo Board, balance ball or large exercise ball to build the right kind of strength and stability.

Pro surfer workout: Pop-up, duck dive and rotational strength training

Finally – and for me the cornerstone of surfing – comes step three: the core.

All manoeuvres in surfing revolve around our body’s axis and rotations around it. Rotation is controlled by the lumbo-pelvic-hip region. Here, too, there are two different groups: muscles for stabilisation and muscles for movement. There are six stabilising muscles: transversus abdominis, internal obliques, lumbar multifidus, pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm and transversospinalis.

On top of that come eight more muscles responsible for movement: latissimus, erector spinae, iliopsoas, thigh muscles, hip adductors and abductors, rectus abdominis and external obliques. This is a very large and complex group that should be well trained and provides the foundation for good – or better – surfing.