Stronger Legs-Stronger Core-Stronger Surfing
Legs Core Surfing: I’m all about supersets… essentially combining exercises that focus on different muscle groups. This is just really time effective and allows for a greater energy expenditure, so you’re not only getting a good workout and getting ripppppeeeddddd, but also building some endurance.
Saving time, getting in quality movement training, improving your strength in the water, and doing some workouts that’ll make you look good naked,… all good stuff in my book!
Bulgarian Split Squats & Stability Ball Jack-Knifes
These are good exercises for you, your strength, and your surfing. Let me tell ya’ why!
Bulgarian Split Squats – Single Leg Strength
I’ve written about the need for Single Leg Training and how it benefits us Surfers in the past… pretty extensively. You can read that here….
Stronger Legs Stronger Surfing – Single Leg Work
Single Leg Training – Why You Need It
Big Big Big Mention…. DON’T VALGUS COLLAPSE (medial or inward collapse of the knee joint). This will destroy a knee. Keep your knee, ankle, and hip in alignment, and a stable pelvis.
Performing strength work on a single leg essentially forces you to really focus on stability of multiple joints as well, while simultaneously building strength.
If you have more dynamic stability throughout your lower body, your force transmission or power will be increased because your kinetic chain doesn’t “leak” energy. It’s also a good way to build a more injury proof lower body… and not being able to surf because you’re injured isn’t awesome.
Single leg training, if done properly, is a highly beneficial and critical part of surf-preparation training. Bottom line, this move can directly improve your movements and strength in the surf.
WORD OF CAUTION – YOU NEED HIP MOBILITY FOR THIS EXERCISE
If you’re hips are chronically tight anteriorly or posteriorly, it will pull your pelvis out of alignment. This happens with excessive seated postures, and can promote a lot of postural distortions and pain issues.
It will also adversely effect the way you move in the surf, and your propensity for back issues. Here’s a few hip tissue mobilizations to play with and find what you need.
Single Leg Work & Ankle Mobility
Think about how dynamically your feet move when you’re surfing. There is a lot of movement going through that ankle joint, that is sending information up through the nervous system to the brain, which then registers, and then if you don’t kook it, the brain relays muscle signals to the body to react to that movement so you can whip out a top-turn.
That’s pretty awesome how that happens. However, what often happens is surfers ankle joints get restricted, so the “proprioception” or nervous system stimulus of the ankle joint isn’t correct. Also, movement will be forced into other joints.
A tight ankle joint can wreck a knee joint…. which sucks! So, you gotta keep your ankles moving well, so here’s an ankle mobilization! Aren’t I great! Just incorporate these mobs (mobilizations) between your sets or at the beginning of your workout.
Ankle Mobility – A Starting Point
Stability Ball Jack-Knifes:
Why It Rocks!
- Upper Body Strength
- Shoulder Girdle Stability
- Integrated Core Strength
- Pop-up Efficiency
Most People Wreck These… Seriously, they butcher the hell out of them, so please don’t. If you’re not doing them well, you’re just being a dick, so don’t be a dick.
With SB JKnifes, you’re building strength and efficiency of hip flexion, which is critical for fast pop-ups, but you’re also building upper body stability of the shoulder girdle, and some serious core strength.
Keys to a quality SB Jack-Knife
Quality Shoulder Positioning with a stable scapula– you don’t want scapular winging (your shoulder blades sticking out from the rib cage, this is usually from a weak serratus anterior).
Nice Spinal Curves – no exaggerated thoracic or lumbar curves, and don’t drop your head!
Stable Hip Flexion – as the hips pull towards the chest, don’t allow the movement to overflow into the spine.
Most private clients I work with have some trouble at first with SB J-knifes due to some weakness. Serratus strength and proper spinal positioning are some big reasons why.
For Shoulder stability training, which will help to recruit your serratus anterior check out this post…
There ya’ go!!! A quality superset to save you time, and give you a lot of benefits from two great exercises. Give me a shout on Facebook and let me know how these go for you. I actually used them yesterday.
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