Mobilise your hips, and it will make your knees and lower back more durable.  Those are good things, especially if you want to surf into your 60′s, 70′s, and really push the rad-factor and surf into the 80′s and 90′s.  If your hips are

I’m OK with that Poo Stance

moving properly, which they should be, you won’t sacrifice the joints above and below the hip, which are your low back and knees.  Not only is hip mobility going to help with keeping you pain free in the water, but freedom of movement through that hip joint will help you to be dynamically flexible and move around with some style instead of a poo-man stance.

I see a lot of people stretching, and it’s usually not quite right.  In this video/article I recently did for Surfing-Waves, I go through:

• the 90/90 hip stretch that nearly every surfer should be using
• techniques to isolating your hamstrings and stabilising your lumbar spine
• soft tissue release to the lateral muscles that can contribute to knee pain
• opening up your hip flexor muscles and quadriceps release
• learn the proper pelvis positions for hip stretches to focus on the hip joint and not the spine
• get looser more mobile hips so you can throw massive tail-whips!

So cruise on over there and check out the video on stretching your hips, and use some surf stretches that will improve your hip mobility, instead of floundering around with your legs up in the air.

Surfing-Waves Hip Mobility Series 

It’s a full video where I walk you through how to stretch your hips and not kook your hip mobility work.  Check it out… mobilise your hips.

The post Surf Stretches – Hip Mobility appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

What this article will not be is an anatomy lesson.  What it will be is a few simple things for you to start doing if you’ve got some knee funk…. cause knee funk turns into surf funk.

Myofascial Leg Work… Get Rid Of Knee Funk

You can read below for a bit more info on the knee, and how the ankle and hip and their surrounding tissue can effect the joint.  What you need to takeaway is that the quality of your tissue surrounding the knee joint can massively impact the way your knee moves….  and the manner in which your knee moves, or doesn’t move can cause pain.  So, if there’s ongoing pains (and an MRI has ruled out specific acute trauma), a good place to start looking is the muscles and tissue above and below the joint….. so get into some good ole’ myofascial release work.

Here’s a really good instructional video I did for Surfing Waves about Hip Mobility Stretches.  Most people don’t stretch properly, or don’t correctly isolate the intended muscle groups.  This video will walk you through the good stuff for hip stretches.  Yeah, you gotta loosen up your hips man!

Once you’ve been going through that tissue work pretty religiously for a few weeks, check out the video below about Hip Strengthening work.

This is the article the goes along with that vid, and delves into specific things to do with exercise and surfing with knee pain.  How To Surf With Knee Pain

Hey Man, Your Knee Is Stupid

The knee will basically do what the ankle and hip tell it to do.  What that means is that the knee is somewhat of a “dumb” joint.  If the ankle isn’t moving properly or has a dysfunction, the knee can become aggravated.  If the hip isn’t moving properly or presents abnormal tensions and immobility, the knee can become cranky.  The knee is a relatively stable joint (it should be), it’s a hinge joint that moves primarily in the sagittal plane, straight forwards or backwards.  Yeah there is some rotational aspects of the knee joint, but it basically is a hinge joint.  So when these exceptionally mobile joints above and below (ankle and hip) aren’t moving the way they should be (they should be highly mobile), the body will place forces through the knee joint, which will piss it off.  You need to make sure you’ve got adequate hip mobility, ankle mobility, and a strong core.  If those things are in order, your knee should likely behave, not always, but very likely.

Other Good Stuff For Your Knees

More Ankle Mobility…  You should be doing some type of ankle mobility work before your workouts!!!

Surfers Guide to Foam Rolling

Don’t Eat Shitty Food.  If you have chronically painful or inflamed joints, you need to start looking at the food you’re putting into your body.  Your nutrition will heavily dictate your systemic inflammatory status.  If you’re always inflamed, in pain, and swollen, clean up your food…..  Lucky for you I’ve written about it!!!!

Surf Nutrition – Top Foods to Fight Joint Pain   Get the lowdown on what foods to avoid (should be common sense but there seems to be a lot of idiots out there), and what foods you should specifically add to your diet.

There’s plenty of stuff for you to work on…  get your knees healthy.

-cris

The post Get Rid of Knee Pain appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

Endurance, I need some more of it.  This last weekend was really my first time back in the surf (some solid waves too 4-6foot) in about 2.5 months.  I had been out of the water with a shoulder injury, and would have liked to have eased it into some smaller surf, but that’s what the ocean delivered, some solid 4-6ft beach break… I can’t really complain.  The shoulder held up quite well, but what was lacking was overall endurance.  I was getting gassed way too quickly.  So yeah, some of it was lack of specific arm strength/endurance, but a lot of it was that my body didn’t have the work capacity any more, it didn’t have the overall endurance or conditioning.   So what is a surfer to do?  Get a damn jump rope.  Cheap, easy, simple, old-school,…  the jumprope.

Jumprope Intervals, or Jumprope Movement Circuits

Jumprope Intervals-  basically, you jumprope at a moderate pace (you could be talking while jump roping, but it’s kind of annoying) for about 3-5minutes.  Then you hit the interval for about. 30-60seconds. The interval is you jumping rope as fast as you possibly can for that shorter time period.  Then you go back to the moderate (kind of hold a conversation pace) for 3-5 minutes, then repeat the high intensity interval.  Repeat that for 4-10times.  It’ll smash you, in a good way.

It’s basically developing  an overall capacity to put out energy, and at varying intensities, just like surfing.  Sometimes you’re casually paddling, other times you’re paddling your ass off.  Train both of those energetic demands…. jumprope intervals.

Jumprope Movement Circuits – This is an easy one, and fun, and is really up to you to play around with.  Pick a few basic movement patterns (push, squat, rotation, lunge, etc), and pick an exercise for each, or for just one movement pattern, or maybe 2, or 3, or 4, whatever.   For example sake, let’s use a pushup and squat exercise.  I’ll jumprope with some varying intensities (nothing quite as hard as the jumprope intervals, although you could go that hard if you want) for about 2-4 minutes, then I’ll perform nearly as many reps as I can of the chosen exercise….  then right back into jumprope.  Continue repeating.  Really, you could use only one exercise between jumping rope, but I usually mix it up with 2 or 3.  Play around with it.  Your building endurance and work capacity, and then throwing in some quality movement work between the jumping rope.   It’s easy, it’s good, it’s fun.

Jumprope intervals are a very simple, and highly efficient way to get in some extra “metabolic conditioning” or endurance work for you lay-persons out there.  Quite often with clients whom are working their way through Surf Training Success, and need a bit more focus on overall conditioning, we throw in some jumprope intervals.  Kettlebell swings can be another good way to get in some endurance strength work, but that’s for another post.

-cris

**  So that pic of the surfer at the top of the page… it’s my buddy Jy, and another good friend Geoff Swan snapped that.  Check geoff out over at Geoff Swan Tumblr

The post Surfing Endurance Training appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

 I’ve said this before, and will once again reiterate.  The human body is designed to move. Run, swing your arms, spin, jump, bend…. movement.  These actions require interactions of muscles throughout your body, muscle chains, or fascial lines is what we call them in the health world. In the small pic above of the dude with different colored lines criss-crossing his body… those lines represent muscle slings.   These chains of coordinated muscle action is what allows you to move in the surf, react to turns, turn the head, spin the shoulders, and swing your lower body around to smash the lip and throw some gnar-spray brahhhhh!

Cable Machine Circuit Training

- Pulls, Pushes, & Chops -

Surfing is all about the flow, movement with ease, and reactive timing of muscle chains.  Train you body to do that!  A cable machine is one of the few “machines” I use  with myself and my clients.  With proper use (check out the video and get your learn on), you can train groups of muscles that will have you moving with more strength and efficiency.  Chops, Dynamic Pulls and Pushes, Rotational Training… oh so good!

MOVEMENT TRAINING

1Arm Band Pushes and Pulls - Dynamic Core Training -

I’ll travel with one of these bands and wrap it around a tree or post for an easy workout.

Something else you’ll dig are these stretches.  Just like the cable training above, these stretches are working on flexibility throughout your muscle chains.  Integrated flexibility is what you need to move in the surf.  Check out the article below.

Full Body Flexibility Stretches-How You Should Be Stretching

“the Key To Fluid Stylezzzz…..   flexibility within the muscle slings or myofascial slings of the body to promote full body flexibility .  Get into some Surfing Stretches. Muscle Slings / Myofascial slings = Interconnected muscles and fascia that work together as a cohesive unit to provide large movement patterns.”

So that pic of the surfer at the top of the page… it’s my buddy Jy, and another good friend Geoff Swan snapped that.  Check geoff out over at Geoff Swan Tumblr

Yew!!!!!!    -cris

Need Some Ideas for Your Own Surf Training Workouts.  Check out My Full Surf Fitness Training Program.  Full vids, manuals, mobility drill, soft tissue recovery secrets, months of workouts, nutrition…..   all the goods!  SURF TRAINING SUCCESS

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Surf-Fitness is all about building a stronger body so you can do what makes you happy in life, and do it better… surfing.  Your surf fitness training had better have some type of pressing training, and for more carryover to our sport, throw in some pushups to help develop your popup speed and power.

This is an article I recently wrote for SurfScience, so cruise on over there and check it out…  Surf Fitness PopUp Training.   Below is a little taste to wet the palate.

There are a few critical movements for surfers to master when building strength and core control. One of those moves that every single surfer, no matter their age or skill will benefit from is the pushup. But we’re not talking about lazy, non-coordinated pushups, we’re talking about developing the perfect pushup. With developing the strength and muscle coordination to perform a perfect pushup, you’ll not only be exceptionally stronger and faster with your pop-ups, you’ll develop a stronger core and a more stable upper body which is essential for deeper duck dives and long-term shoulder health.

Read the rest of the article here at SurfScience – PopUp Training

You’ll get an understanding of:

• How Not To Do A Pushup
• Common Faults that Promote Injury
• How To Progress Your Pushup to More PopUp Carryover
• Why You Shouldn’t Do Pushups On Your Knees….. Ladies!!!

Check it out!!   It’s a great site that I’m happy to be able to contribute to.

-cris

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Yeah, I realise that it’s spelled with an “o”, but that’s how they spell it!  Last week I gave a talk to a group of surf mommas from Dee Why.  They’ve got a great group of ladies still pumped to get in to the water, in between taking care of their little ones.  Check out the group Surfing Mums.

Warmups & a Few Exercises

I went over a few quick and easy movements for a pre-surf warmup, and few exercises to build some hip and leg stability, and to improve core strength and stability.

Warmup: 4Movements

Squat Toe Touch Drill, Yoga Pushup, One Leg Rotations, Hops

With the warmup…. I harp on surfers and clients all the time….  WARMUP.  That initial paddle out can be a beast at times, so get your body warmed up.  Move the joints, wake up stabiliser muscles, prime the nervous system!  Hopping into the water cold will very likely lead to an injury someday… and injuries don’t help your surfing, so WARMUP.  Seriously, warmup, even if it’s just 2 minutes.  Use the 4 movements shown in the video and you will hit every major muscle group, excite the nervous system, lubricate joints, move tight tissue, and get your body moving!

Exercises: 3 Movements

Squat with Knee Band, Rotational Planks, Horse Stance

These are 3 great and simple movements that will help strengthen your body for the water.  Squat with Knee Band – The squat is essential for surfing, so I showed the ladies how to clean up their foot and knee position, keep a good thoracic posture, drive back into the hips, and use a knee band for extra lateral hip stability.  Rotational Planks are a great movement when done correctly.  We could all use a bit more core strength, and this move does a great job of developing a very strong torso.  Horse Stance- this move gets butchered all the time, but when done correctly is really useful for developing transverse plane stability of the core, along with some other goodness.  Transverse plane stability is essentially being able to withstand rotational forces through the spine, and keep a healthy pain free low back…. yeah that’s a good thing.

There Ya Go!!!   A quick and easy warmup, and 3 simple yet very effective exercises.

Thanks again to SurfingMums for letting me come have a chat with them… you’ve got a great group ladies!

cris

The post Surf Moms – Warmup & Exercise appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

If you’ve been reading my stuff, following the blog, checking out facebook posts, you realise I’m an advocate of eating real food.  I firmly believe that the food you put into your mouth is one of the largest variables in dictating your overall health, well-being, energy output, mental clarity, ability to recover, maintain immune system health, blah blah blah…   the food you eat is important.  Modern day society eats garbage, capital letters GARBAGE.

PANCAKES

With that being said, here’s a pancake recipe that isn’t garbage….  I love pancakes, and expect most of you out there reading this do to.  Take a look at any store bought pancake mix ingredient list, and you will see garbage.  Preservatives, flavourings, food colourings, bleached flours, processed crap, and a whole bunch of other stuff that your body won’t recognise as food.  So make some Pancakes that are delicious, and contain whole, real foods.

INGREDIENT LIST

EGGS, BANANA, PEANUT BUTTER or ALMOND BUTTER

Watch the video for proportions, and increase or decrease as you see fit.

Additional goodness if you’d like – cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, cacao powder, almond or coconut flour as a thickener.  Jazz these pancakes up!

Note:  these pancakes are gluten free.  I’m a staunch advocate of removing gluten from your diet, and likely most grains (there are exceptions to any food rule).

You could check out a bit more of my thoughts on grains/gluten here: Pre Surf Breakfast – Not Cereal

Second Note: Paleo fanatics, this recipe uses Peanut Butter, which doesn’t fit into your Paleo paradigm as peanuts are a legume, and in Paleo world legumes are a no-no.  Use some almond butter.  Want my thoughts on Paleo??  Paleo Freaks

Digging the nutrition stuff?  Here’s some older posts that’ll give you some good insight into what I consider basic nutritional guidelines.  The bottom line is to eat real food, not to become dogmatic in your approach, and simply listen to your body (if it doesn’t like something it will tell you).

Surfers Nutrition

Healthy Surf Snacks

Learn To Read Nutrition Labels

Surfer Nutrition Basics

Eat some good food, fuel your body and mind, and then get pitted!!!!   Barrels and barrel and barrels, and a stack of pancakes.

-cris

The post Easy Breakfast Goodness appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

I think I’m close to a shoulder operation…. and it’s no fun.  In all honesty, I’m pretty good with shoulder rehab, training, tissue work etc., but sometimes injuries are just too destructive to deal with non-surgically.  I bothered my shoulder on Friday doing some heavy sprint work…  (sprint work is really good for power training and explosiveness).  Check out – Sprints: Workout In The Park   and Surfer Power Training.

Curly on a GOOD day

So, I bothered the shoulder pretty darned good, and intended to rest it.  I was taking a drive up to skate a bowl in northern sydney, and stopped at Curl Curl to check the surf… it was super-fun.  3-4foot wedges, dumping on the inside bar.  I went out against better judgement, and on the 5th wave I felt it go…   it was nauseating.  If any of you guys have felt that feeling, you know how much it sucks.  Surf was quickly over (did get a couple good waves), but got out thinking “that’s gonna be a 20grand operation”.

I had an acute injury, and went out against better judgement.  Some of you guys and gals may not have acute injuries, but you probably have some type of dysfunction or postural offset.  This can be bad news, and could set you up for an injury down the road.  I want to give you a few things you can work on to clean up those shoulders, and have some Happy Surf Shoulders, cause mine ain’t too happy now. (I realise ain’t ain’t proper english, but i’m using it for effect).

Mobilise, Activate, Integrate Movement, and Get Em’ Moving

Here’s what you’re accomplishing with that series of goodness.

• Mobilising tissue on the anterior shoulder, and posterior rotator cuff.  The anterior chest tissue can pull the scapula/shoulder girdle out of proper alignment.  The posterior rotator cuff can get some gnarly trigger points and adhesions…  get rid of them.
• Activating Lower Trapezius (to help reposition the scapula) and continuing to mobilise anterior chest tissue.  This is basically activating the external rotators of the humerus and the upward rotators of the scapula, while continuing to open up the front of the shoulders, which get pulled forward from you sitting at a desk and staring at a computer for too long (but keep staring at this article because it’s rad!)
• Integrating movement, swinging those arms, and letting the nervous system realise the new range of motion, and you’re getting things moving!!!

More Happy Shoulder Stuff…

Full Upper Body Pre-Surf Warmup Sequence 

Surfers’ Rotator Cuff Training

Put It All Together with Surf Training Success

Surfers Shoulders – Essential Shoulder Training is one part of the Surf Training Success program, and gives you the step-by-step process to correcting your nagging shoulder issues.  Stop surfing with pain, discover Recovery Secrets to the muscle activations and tissue release, and learn how to build a surf shoulder training program.

Get Your Shoulders Moving… and then Surf.  Painful shoulders suck.

-cris

The post Happy Surf Shoulders appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

Yep, that’s a pic of the Situation and his abs.  I’ve never met the guy, don’t really care to, but he probably would be funny to party with, just once for story-sake.  He also appartently came out with a protein infused vodka. Anyways…  let’s move onto core & torso training for surfers.

Core training gets absolutely butchered.  If I walk into a commercial gym setting, I have to close my eyes and dry-heave from some of the “core” atrocoities I see going on.  These people are well intentioned, just blaringly misinformed.  So now, you don’t have to kook your core training, because now you’ll know some beneficial surfer core exercises.

Anterior Core Fallouts – Get Ripped!!! – and a seriously strong mid-section.

With these “fallout” variations, you’re effectively training the core to do what it is designed to do.  Stabilize the spine and pelvis, and transmit force from the upperbody to the lowerbody and vice versa.  Doing loads of abdominal crunches is absolutely NOT effective, disregards the actual

Good Lookin’ Torso!

biomechanics of the abdominal wall, and creates dysfunctional posture.  If you’re rectus abdominis becomes overly contracted, it pulls your rib cage down, further promoting that no-good posture you get from sitting in a car or at a desk all day long.  That posture, a depressed rib cage, stooped shoulders, forward head, is seriously bad stuff, and will at some point wreck your surfing.  What you need to do is train the core effectively, efficiently, and the way a surfer needs to with these surfer core exercises.

KEY POINTS of ANTERIOR CORE FALLOUTS

• Don’t allow the back to sway or arch – maintain a stable neutral spine posture
• Find your proper level of exercise of the 3 variations shown
• Perform “core” training towards the end or your workout so you don’t fatigue spinal and pelvic stabilizer muscles

More Surfer Core Exercises

Renegade Rows   Surfing Core Rotational Training

Cable Chops – Rotational Core Strength & Power Training

Paloff Presses – Get Some Abs Man – Best Core Exercise

Now understand this, as it is important.  This is only a minor snippet of core training, especially when it comes to rehabilitative core training.  These moves above are great full-body integrative core training, but there are plenty of other movements that are used to restore proper function of the inner unit core muscles (tva, multifidus, diaphragm, pelvic floor), which I’ll touch upon in upcoming posts.  My point being, if you’ve got back, or pain problems in general, there will be other movements you should become proficient at prior to the exercises shown above.  And, those without pain, progress into other forms of “core training”, like sprinting, one-arm farmers walks, Single Arm Kettlebell squats or lunges, Kettlebell swings, indo-board training……  on and on.  Get functional!

So, now that you’ve read that, and the other posts, use some beneficial core training… and use some movements that will make you injury proof, surf with faster turns, and get some abs man!!!!  or woman!!!!

Leave me some comments and share this post with your friends if you dig it!

-cris

The post Surfer Core Exercises appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .

Those damn shoulders….  surfers shoulders.  If’ they’re grinding, dislocating, inflamed, crunchy, or pain provoking, than your surfing is suffering, and when you can’t surf because of joint pain, it’s a terribly frustrating thing.  If you’ve had an issue with your shoulders, you’ve probably at one point seen a physio (physical therapist), or sports med doctor, or ortho…. or who knows, the list is endless.  Whoever you saw likely prescribed you some band external rotations or some other type of posterior rotator cuff strength work.  That’s unfortunately only one piece of the puzzle with shoulder issues.

ALL THE PIECES TO SURF SHOULDERS

As I’ve written about in the Complete Guide To Surf Paddling Exercise, there’s loads of things that affect the shoulder.  Thoracic spine mobility, breathing, anterior chest tissue, mobility, pelvis alignment, serratus anterior function, lower trapezius strength…    the body is connected folks! Learn how to deal with all that stuff in Surf Training Success (bottom of this page).  The take home is that R-cuff training is essential, but it’s only part of the picture when creating healthy surf shoulders.  With this article, I want to show you two critical methods of rotator cuff training.  But don’t forget, to alleviate a nagging shoulder problem there are often a lot of other aspects to consider.

Surf Shoulders – Rotator Cuff Strengthening Exercises

You’ve got the scapula (shoulder blade), that sits on top of the rib cage.  This scapula has something called a glenoid fossa which has a shallow concave area.  In that concave area your humeral head (head of the upper arm bone) rests, and is held in place by your rotator cuff.  The Rcuff is comprised of 4 muscles that have attachments on the scapula and form a tendinous cuff around the humeral head to anchor it in place, keep it stable, and prevent unwanted motion while the larger muscles move the entire shoulder.  Suprasinatus, Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and Subscapularis…. those are your Rcuff muscles.

There can be loads of issues that create dysfunction of the Rcuff, and too many pathologies to list here of what could be causing you pain.  Despite the myriad of issues or dysfunctions, you’ve often got to strengthen those Rcuff muscles so you can paddle your ass off, pain free… cause paddling in pain sucks, and sucks bad.

2 Methods for R-Cuff Work

External Rotations focus on strengthening the Teres Minor and Infraspinatus.  Due to postural distortions (sitting with hunched shoulders), these muscles become stretched, weak, and dysfunctional… and then they stop properly performing their job, and then your shoulders hurt in the surf.  Bad news.

Closed Chain Rhythmic Stabilization In the video I demonstrate ball perturbations.  That’s a fairly advanced form of R-cuff rhythmic stability work.  Depending on where your strength levels are and if you have presenting dysfunctions, you may have to regress that movement to one arm circles against a wall, or some other variation.  These RS’s (rhythmic stabilization) are working on the timing of the rotator cuff firing and stabilizing the humeral head.  Think of those dynamic forces going through the shoulder joint during a duck dive….   you need dynamic stability and RM’s can help you do that.

IF YOU’RE NOT IN PAIN…  YOU SHOULD STILL FOCUS ON R-CUFF WORK

Preventative Maintenance… keep your shoulders optimally performing.  Every program I develop for surfers has some focus on shoulder health and integrity, and definitely some focus on keeping that Rcuff happy and strong.

And eat good food!!!  Crap food will make you inflamed, and inflammation can start to hurt, and definitely start to affect joints.  It also comes into play if you’re dealing with current issue or trying to recover from a surgery.  Learn more here..   Top Foods To Fight Inflammation

Shoulder Health – Good Posture, Healthy Tissue, Proper Range of Motion, Quality Diet, Strong Stabilizers!

Do You Have Some Shoulder Funk!??? —-Check This Out!!

To learn a bit more about this oh-so important joint, check out this goodness from Strength Coach Michelle Drielsma.  She does an awesome job of delving into the shoulder girdle, possible dysfunctions, and gives some great exercises.

Surfers Shoulder Imbalances

Shoulder Problems Part 1

Shoulder Problems Part 2

Here’s Some More Gnarly Shoulder Stuff!!  – My Current Favourite Shoulder Endurance Exercise

And Check Out The Article!!  It’s full of surf shoulder training goodness.  SURF SHOULDER EXERCISES – CLOCKS

Want the Low-Down on How To Fix Your Nagging Shoulder Problems?

All the tissue work, all the stretches, the necessary core strength, the additional rotator cuff work… all the goods to keep you duck diving the bombs, and paddling the heavy point currents.  Surf Training Success includes Essential Shoulder Training, which gives you the steps I use with my clients to prevent shoulder injury and get rid of aching shoulders in the surf.

Quit missing out on surf because your shoulders are weak, your posture is out of alignment, and you don’t have the strength necessary to surf at your best.

-cris

The post Surf Shoulders – Rotator Cuff Training appeared first on Surf Strength Coach .