The best warm-up exercises before surfing

Do you know what warm-up exercises to perform before entering the water?

Surfing, like any other sport, requires physical conditions to do it correctly. It is demanding and demands a lot of effort, but the reward is huge.

Everyone, more or less, is clear that before performing a physical activity, they should do what they call “warm-up exercises”. If … move before … make circles with your arms … stretch … or jump … or run … but what to do and not do exactly? We, from the Cantabra Surf School, explain it to you in a very simple way, according to the latest studies in this field.

Warming up “is a set of activities or exercises of a general and specific nature that are done before performing any activity that has a higher demand than the resting state to get all the organs of the athlete to start up and to increase their performance” ( Villar, 1992) Simplifying, is a way of preparing our body to perform a physical activity. And in surfing the same thing happens, it is not advisable to enter the water directly. In addition, in our sport, there are days that we arrive with the car after driving, and we are inactive, and other days it is cold, the water is cold … even more important is a good activation. In this way we will have a better performance in our surf session, and also, we will avoid unnecessary injuries.

Another component that is rarely taken into account, is that in addition to the above, warm-up exercises serve for a greater concentration, which will also increase our performance.

A basic heating protocol, without going into very complex concepts of performance, would consist of a general part, and a specific one, where we prepare the body for real movements. An example could be the following:

General part:

– Joint mobility: would consist of moving, making several turns on both sides of the joints, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles. Important to lubricate them.

– Mobilization of the cardio-respiratory system: performing a small race or dynamic and complete movements, will help us to increase the body temperature, the blood flow to all muscles and the activation of the aerobic energy system.

Specific part

– Muscle and central nervous system (CNS) activation: after some general warm-up exercises, it is time to perform more specific and powerful exercises, for correct activation at the muscular and neuronal levels. Doing some push-ups, even with patting, squats or strides, doing a few jumps, or standing up very quickly and in a row, would be a good form of specific activation.

– Apneas: something that perhaps for surfing small waves is not done much, they are deep and long breaths, and even with air retention in the lungs for a while. These exercises help us to two things, first, to concentration, and second, in sessions of big waves, it is a way of preparing our respiratory system for long moments of lack of oxygen, so frequent in certain falls and hunts.

There is an eternal debate with stretching, whether or not to stretch, before or after. For some time now, the evidence has shown that it is not advisable to perform static stretches before performing a physical session because of injury and performance. Better dynamic and complete exercises.

From the Cantabra Surf School, the first surf school in Spain, since 1991 teaching real surfing, we recommend you as sports instructors, that you have good habits, and that you do a good warm up before your surfing, to get the most out of you.