INTRO

With this guide, I want to give you clear and easily applied insight so you can get in the water, feel damn good, and surf as long as the waves are on tap.

Prep your body for the physical requirements of upcoming surf trips. With a bit of efficiently applied effort, you can fully prepare your body for a sudden increase in volume and duration of surfing. It just comes down to being able to catch some more waves!

You’re sitting on a boat in the middle of surf paradise, watching a perfect 4-5 foot (Indo-size) barreling reef break run down the line in aquamarine crystal clear water.

You’re on the surf-trip of a lifetime, an experience you’ve been waiting years for.

You’ve flown across the world to get here, spent thousands of dollars on flights and travel, and the conditions are perfect, exactly what you hoped for.

Now it’s time to surf your brains out.
Shred till your dead.

Ask yourself, are you physically capable of surfing as much as possible for an entire trip? 7 days straight? What about a 12-day full-on boat trip? Racking up a few surf sessions per day?

Or are you going to be the guy stuck on the boat making excuses for not surfing because your body is already giving out only two days into the trip? A fatigued low back starting to spasm, a solid beer gut making your pop-ups clumsy and slow, sheer exhaustion from the upper body after 30minutes of paddling, or some other nagging pain stemming from bodily neglect and lack of surfing.

Don’t be that guy or gal that is stuck on the boat, rather than in the water, because your body isn’t up for the challenge on your surf trip of a lifetime. I know which scenario I’d rather be in.

I’m going to be that guy in the water all day long, full-on frothing.

Which surfer would you be?

If you went on a trip tomorrow or next week, which surf scenario would you be in from a physical capacity standpoint?

You’re on a trip that is costing thousands of dollars and potentially putting you in a spot to surf the best waves you’ve ever encountered. You had better be surfing to your soul's content, rather than being limited by a body that physically isn’t up to the task.

With a bit of effort before a trip, you can bring your body up to speed so you can surf as long as the waves are on offer. Some surf trip prep can easily bring up your paddling endurance, aid your recovery, bulletproof your low back, have you feeling damn good, and fluid in the water.

Surf trips should be a marathon of surfing.

Are you ready for a surf marathon?

I’ve been involved in surf trips for years now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen surfers show up incredibly unfit and drastically unprepared physically. Their dream trip becomes a variation of disappointment, bitterness, and at times pain, all while sitting on the boat making excuses for why they’re not in the lineup to take advantage of that perfectly fun reef break.

Don’t be that guy (or gal).

I want to help you be the guy (or gal) that is surfing 2-3 sessions per day for 10 days straight. I want you to be the dude that gets out of the water because he’s hungry and thirsty after a 3-hour surf, not because his shoulder is giving out. I want you to be the woman that’s effortlessly pushing your comfort zones and getting some of the best waves of your life.

PHYSICAL FITNESS & RECOVERY

Better Body, Improved Surfing, More Waves

Build your fitness so you get into the water at full capacity and surf for as long as you want. Develop your fitness so you’re able to recover rapidly and efficiently from day to day, or even between sessions.

Those are the two primary aspects of what fitness will do for you and your upcoming surf marathon.

One facet of surf trip prep is building your Physical Capacity so your body isn’t the limiting factor on the surf trip. You want the ocean to be the limiter (but hopefully not too much), not your body giving out on you.

You want your body to have endless endurance, a strong low back for those marathon sessions, and an upper body that can paddle for as long as you want to surf.

The other facet of surf trip prep and how it will carry over to your trip is your ability to Recover.

A body that hasn’t been previously challenged, has deflated and formed to sitting at a desk all day, and hasn’t experienced an elevated heart rate in months is going to get beaten up after only a few surf sessions.

You’re going to end up feeling like you’ve been in a minor car accident. It’ll take days for you to recover because it’s such a heavy stimulus to your body, it’s a shock to the system.

You want your body to be physically fit so you recover overnight. You wake up, grab a coffee, drink some water, have a stretch, and you’re ready to shred.

Your recovery is on point because you’ve brought your fitness up to a level where the previous days’ surf session wasn’t the heaviest bout of activity you’ve had in the last few months. Your body is accustomed to output and can easily handle the physiologic stress.

*Nutrition will play a big role in recovery as well. What you put into your body will dictate the energy you can put out, and the physical loads your body can sufficiently handle. Inflammation will be exacerbated by the physical demands of surfing, muscular breakdown, and metabolic energy production waste. Throwing more inflammation into the gut with poor nutrition choices will dramatically worsen the situation.

WHAT TO WORK ON

Prep For Your Marathon Surf Trip...

It’s 6 weeks before your departure date. You’re in the gym staring aimlessly at equipment and rows of treadmills, wondering what to work on. Maybe you hop on a treadmill for 20 minutes, do some inefficient stretching you learned a few decades ago, and finish up with some tricep pushdowns and bench pressing because that’s what you remember from your college sporting days.

I want you to do better than that. Your body and surfing deserve better than that.

Your surfing NEEDS better than that.

I’m going to give you a brief framework of understanding so that not only do my recommendations make sense, but you’ll have a better awareness of what will physically carry over to your time in the water.

First, I want you to be aware that what “surf fitness” and surf trip prep will look like for you may be slightly different from me. The reason being is that we have different bodies, different weaknesses, and different “holes” in our fitness and physical capacity.

Are you an older dude that surfs infrequently?

You need to work on mobility of the hips, spine, and shoulders so you can actually move your body when surfing down a wave face. Follow it up with some cardiovascular fitness to build a base of endurance to support your extended surf sessions.

Perhaps you’re a woman that is currently surfing 3-4 times per week already?

You’re already surf fit, and the biggest benefit you’ll take away from surf trip prep is building more strength and work capacity in the upper body to handle increased demands of surfing endlessly and surfing bigger boards on those proper barrel days in Indonesia.

Are you a desk jockey and only surf twice a month?

You’ll likely benefit most from making sure your joint mobility is adequate, shoulders are healthy and mobile, developing extensor chain endurance to hold paddling posture for long surf sessions, and building upper body work-capacity so you can paddle for more than 30 minutes.

There is carry over and similarity among all those surfer scenarios mentioned above, but the specifics of training which will give that surfer the biggest benefit is slightly different.

It comes down to Bio-Motor Profiles, and realizing what you’re lacking in the most. This is a bit of jargon from the world of Strength & Conditioning, but it’s an important concept for you to understand as it will help to focus your efforts.

What’s your biggest deficit in the water?

What aspect of “surf fitness” if you build or improve upon will have the biggest bang for your buck carryover to your surfing?

Fill that gap so you have an immediate return on invested effort, and then add in all the “toppings” of training that will continue to have more carryover.

Have a watch here if you want further insight into what I’m talking about:

Basically, as a surfer, you need varying amounts of flexibility & mobility, endurance, strength, power, and coordination.

What you currently have or what you are currently lacking will vary from person to person, based on injury history, age, physical characteristics, health, training history, and how often you're getting to surf.

What are you lacking?
What’s holding back your surfing?

Generally speaking for the dudes over 30 that aren’t surfing all too often:

You need adequate mobility and health through your joints, cardiovascular fitness to provide a base of energy production, and upper body work capacity for those 3-hour surf sessions. I’ve got to mention a healthy and durable spine as well, and the need for extensor chain endurance.

For the ladies over 30 that aren’t surfing all too often

Often the biggest deficits are strength and upper body work capacity. Upper body strength is extremely relevant to not only provide a base of control for endurance, but also to handle a surfboard in bigger surf, duck dives on boards with more foam, and just more physical capacity in the upper body for heavy paddle strokes. Similar to the dudes, cardiovascular fitness just helps with everything. It’s your motor, and a good motor makes marathon surf sessions far more fun. Also, a healthy spine is damn relevant.

Now that you have a foundational understanding of what is required of a surf “athlete” (yes, you are a human that surfs, so you are an athlete), and you understand that you have specific fitness needs inherent to you, let’s get into what you can start working on.

THE DETAILS & EXERCISES

Here’s the goods. The movements, the exercises, the stretches… the goods.

I’m giving you the movements that I give clients daily and that I use and have found to have immediate and beneficial carryover to how I move and feel in the water.

I will not be giving you a specific workout because that’s impossible. I know nothing about you, your injury history, your current output, training familiarity, or what bio-motor profiles you’re lacking in.

Take what you find below and formulate a plan for yourself.

If you want an all-inclusive follow along the process with workouts ready to go, you should check out my SURF TRIP PREP PROGRAM

Keep in mind the body needs time to adapt.

Two weeks before a trip isn’t going to cut it.

4-6 weeks is what will give you optimal amounts of time to reap the rewards and feel the results in the surf.

Getting Results

4-6 weeks is what will give you optimal amounts of time to reap the rewards and feel the results in the surf.

Being Consistent

Train 2-3 days per week with a combination of structured strength or endurance work, and also some cardio of your choice. The rest of the week add in stretching and throw in some of the joint health info you’ll find below. Breathwork is always a great addition as well which you’ll find in my Surf Trip Prep Program.

Surf Always

Always surf as much as possible before a trip, and adjust your training to accommodate the surfing.

Relax

I often recommend to clients that the last week to 10 days before a trip stop training. From that point on simply surf, stretch, and feed the froth for your upcoming trip!

The most important aspect of Surf Trip Prep: Surf As Much As Possible

Surf every chance you get before a trip. Simple.

It can be quite difficult to specifically simulate the physical demands and energy requirements of surfing within a gym setting at times, so get in the ocean as much as you can before a trip. How are you going to replicate a 2.5-hour surf in the gym? You won’t, so go do that in the water.

Surf Intensity. I often chat about this with clients and explain to them I want them to increase their surf intensity before a trip. So what’s this mean?

Surf Harder. Paddle more than necessary. Expend more energy when you have a chance to get in the water and place a physical demand on your body.

Provide a stimulus to the musculoskeletal system so it adapts to the increased surf demands.

If you’re in the water before a trip, surf harder. On the paddle back out paddle harder and faster than necessary. Take the long paddle out instead of the rock jump. Embrace the hold-downs. Consider your surfing as part of your training and apply some additional load to the body.

This Surf Intensity aspect heavily applies to you if you’re not getting in the water too often.

For the crew that are surfing multiple times per week, you likely don’t need to do as much of this as you’ve already built a good surf-engine base.

1

JOINT MOBILITY & JOINT HEALTH

The ability to move fluidly and at times powerfully are the underpinnings of quality surfing.

If your joints don’t move appropriately you are dramatically impeding your surfing, hindering progression, and setting yourself up for injury.

Let’s get you moving well. Flowing like water.

What follows are some basic yet effective strategies to improve range of motion and durability to areas of the body that often become stiff or restricted through previous injury or sedentary postures.

These are movement centers of the body in terms of rotation, so you want these joint complexes to have full access to their potential. Much of surfing is rotationally based movement. If you can’t rotate well you can’t surf well.

The primary centers of rotation are the Hip Joint and the Thoracic Spine. For those of you that are anatomically inclined or working within the health / rehab fields, yes I’m well aware there are far more intricacies to rotational arthrokinematics within the body, but for the scope of this let us simply agree that surfers want their hips and spine to moving well.

Nobody wants to be the overly stiff poo man wiggle surfer.

Rather than explaining what I want you to do via text, let’s just show you. Get kinesthetic with this, have a watch of the follow-along videos, move your body, and start implementing stretching and movements that help your body to move well so you surf well.

*Note: Someone is going to write to me, letting me know that I should have spoken about the ankle joint. Yes, your ankle joint must be able to move well. I haven't included it for the sake of brevity within this guide, but don't overlook the need for full range of motion through the ankle complex so you can maintain the health and joint integrity of the lower body.

2

PADDLE POSTURE

Right now I want you to mentally and physically assess your posture.

How are you sitting while reading this?

Did you just sit up straight as soon as I asked you that? Elongate and upright the thoracic spine, get the pelvis tucked appropriately underneath the rib cage, and bring your head back into alignment over the body. Posture.

Computer posture, modern day sedentary posture, collapsed structural integrity, whatever you want to term it, it's the antithesis of how you want and need your body to move. This is most immediately relevant when looking at paddling postures.

Suboptimal (bad) postures will slowly destroy your surfing.

Collapse into the worst computer posture you can exhibit, and then imagine how that posture would look and feel laying on top of a surfboard and paddling for the next 3 hours. It would be destructive, painful, and exhausting.

It would literally be destructive to joints and tissues. That collapsed and inwardly rotated posture brings joints out of ideal alignment. When you go paddle and surf for a few hours, you're placing torque, force, and repetition through joints that are out of ideal alignment. This creates tension, inflammation, potential spasm, and over time wear-down of structures. That becomes pain and injury.

The sad part is that there are countless people paddling around like that. Next time you're in the lineup take a look around at other surfers’ paddling postures. I guarantee you'll be able to pick out who spends too much time at a desk or computer.

Understand that improved posture, but also endurance along the extensor chain of muscles on the backside of the body, will not only drastically improve your paddling, but it will improve your body's overall ability to move well.

There are countless exercises that can be used to improve your posture, and at times there needs to be multiple modalities used.

Tissue Release to open up muscle tissue and fascia on the front side of the body to allow improved joint range of motion. Mobilizations to restore movement potential in the thoracic spine's vertebral segments. Stretches to restore movement, and exercises to strengthen positions.

I want to give you a few particular drills that are often implemented with my clients, which you'll find in the video, but also the quick keys you need to implement.

First, Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, should be an integral part of your everyday movement practice.
Secondly, with postural exercises, like a cobra exercise, or the movements I demo in the video, understand that you need to build muscular endurance.

When you surf, a long paddle out may have you holding a paddle posture for ten minutes or more. Over a surf session, you'd easily accumulate well over an hour's worth of extension based posture (extension is that arched paddling posture). You need endurance along these muscles on the backside of the body so they can hold you in position without spasm and pain.

To build endurance you need to pay attention to repetitions (reps) and tempo.

For example, a typical Cobra exercise held for 2 seconds at the top and performed for 10 reps, only accumulates 20 seconds of time under tension (the actual duration of muscular workload). If you do 3 sets, you've only amassed 60 seconds of muscular time under tension.

Do you think that's going to help a 3-hour surf session? Nope.

You need to accumulate far more time. 4 minutes is a good place to work towards.

You may need to do multiple sets of 20 or 30 second holds. Build up to 1 minute holds. Vary the movements used, and adjust the resistance implemented. Progress to 2 minute holds depending on the exercise being used.

Accumulating 4 minutes of work in total is what you’re after.

Yes, you surf for far longer than 4 minutes, but often surfing is a transition from paddling posture to seated posture, then some standing on a wave face for a few seconds, some more paddling, more transitioning movement.

Often if you build a sustained work capacity for 2 minute holds of a position shown in the video, you'll immediately feel the carry over effects to your paddling positions.

Add to that some longer surf sessions prior to your trip so you're exposing your body to long term postural demands and actual in the water time, you'll develop a durable and surf-stable back.

3

ENERGY SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

BUILD YOUR ENGINE

Are you out of gas after 45 minutes of paddling?

Gasping for air after a solid wipeout and a few duck dives?

Huffing and puffing after an average paddle out?

Your engine is out of fuel. Your engine needs a tune-up. Your engine needs to be able to rev highly into the red, and immediately recover to an easy and cruising idle. That is surfing.

Let’s tune-up your surf engine.

You want you to develop your energy systems, especially the aerobic energy system, so your endurance engine runs fully fueled while you’re surfing.

The technical aspects of energy systems within your cell can get deep. We aren’t going deep, but you are going to get a brief insight into what you’re wanting to accomplish.

Your aerobic energy system is your base engine. It is the workhorse, your solid idle, and the underlying energy system for those long surf sessions, as well as supporting recovery. It’s the process of cellular energy metabolism utilizing glucose and oxygen.

Bottom line, it produces energy for your sustained surf sessions.

You have other energy systems as well that help to provide energy for higher intensity outputs. These are called the Glycolytic System or Lactic Acid System, and the Anaerobic Phosphocreatine System.

Simply take away from that bit of technical jargon that your body has different methods of producing energy dependent upon the intensity and duration of the demand.

The aerobic energy system is the foundation.

Tune-up your engine, and dial in your surf endurance.

My initial go-to recommendations are to get in a pool and swim. Not only is it an unloaded training environment since you’re suspended in water, which can be great for the spine, but swimming can be a beast of a cardio effort and get your arms moving in similar patterns as paddling.

The next most often recommended methods are a jump rope or a rowing machine. Pick your cardio poison, and choose the one you don’t hate since you’ll be on there for a minimum of 20-30 minutes.

4

PULLING, AND MORE PULLING

Paddling is pulling. When your hand enters the water, biomechanically you are pulling yourself towards your hand.

There are intricacies to this for those that want to nerd out on the paddle stroke, but I won't mention it all here. Parts of the paddle stroke are a pushing movement from the perspective of lever arm action on the shoulder and elbow joint, but it still predominates as a pulling motion.

Since most of your time as a surfer is literally spent paddling, you had better train your upper body to be capable of pulling. Pulling with endurance, strength, power, and mobility.

I tend to advise a variety of pulling movements, in a variety of intensities.

Yes, pullups or chinups would be beneficial. Yes, laying on an exercise ball and replicating a paddling motion with bands would be beneficial. Yes, performing ring rows with heavy load to 6 reps max would be beneficial.

Ultimately, you want to develop general strength and control in pulling movements, and then layer on endurance with higher rep exercises and short rest periods.

You need to be able to paddle (pull), with sustained effort, efficient technique, and fluid movement, for as long as the waves are on offer.

Consider for a moment your most recent surf session. Periods of time were spent casually paddling with minimal effort. Scraping to catch a fast breaking wave suddenly threw muscular intensity up to 90-100% effort. A paddle back out through numerous duck dives, some higher effort paddling to sneak under a set, and an elevated heart rate kept you at a 80% effort or more for a few minutes. Your arms, their muscles, and the energy systems that support their contraction and energy production are exposed to a wide range of intensities.

To efficiently prepare for sudden increases of paddling demands, similar to your upcoming surf trip, require exposing the upper body to a range of rep ranges and energy demands.

I'm often programming basic horizontal ring rows with my client programs in the 8-12 rep range. Once efficient control is developed and movement competency I'll begin to move towards more endurance focused movements with higher repetition ranges. Banded straight arm lat pulls laying on a ball, working towards 30 reps or more, or sustained duration sets up to 2 minutes fit nicely into this realm training.

Pull, and then pull some more. The exercise varieties are vast and ultimately up to you and your individual training abilities and shoulder health.

5

LOCAL SHOULDER ENDURANCE

Bulletproof your weakness.

Let’s get specific about getting your shoulders up to surf trip work capacity.

Most of you reading this fall into the category of “not surfing as much as I want”.

The true reality is that surfing IS the best way to condition the body for the rigors of surfing.

Yet that truth isn’t the reality for most of you. You need to utilise smart training to bring up your capacity to surf without limitation.

With gym time or training at home you are attempting to apply stresses and loads to the body in similar movement patterns and energy demands that surfing requires. This is in order to create tolerance for what surfing demands.

It’s so you’re surf-fit.

Surfing, from a biomechanical viewpoint, requires movement and specific muscle endurance that modern living just doesn’t utilise.

Visualise some sloppy gravity stricken computer posture.

Now visualise a surfer paddling with a nice arched (spinal extension) posture.

Do you see how modern sedentary postures are the antithesis of what paddling requires? *Most of surfing is paddling by the way.

Since the postures are essentially on opposite sides of the movement spectrum, the muscles utilised in surfing (paddling postures) tend to be grossly underused and just straight up weak.

Most of modern screen-laden living doesn’t ask much of your posterior chain of muscles and scapular retractors. So suddenly you find yourself thrust into a surf trip after a decade long stint of desk work, and low and behold you can’t paddle for shit.

What you can and need to do is specifically target some of the muscles surrounding the shoulder joint and scapula.

Without too much detail and generally speaking here, you want to build some endurance through the deltoid muscles, posterior rotator cuff muscles, and the scapular stabilising muscles. Ok, a bit of detail: Anterior, medial, and posterior deltoid, infraspinatus and teres minor, mid & low trap muscles, rhomboids, and serratus anterior.

Some of these drills you’ve probably seen before if you’ve ever gone through some shoulder rehab protocols.

They can be boring. They’ll likely be high rep. They will probably be light resistance. Most importantly, they will require you to be kinesthetically aware of attempting to isolate a specific movement range in order to target a specific muscle. Your body knows movement, not specific muscles. Pay attention as you utilise these movements and focus on ideal alignment and control of your joints.

The boring high rep ranges will pay off in the surf.

Have a watch of this video and choose a few drills. Your movement options aren’t limited to what I demo, as the potential variety of exercises is vast.

Now Get Prepped For Your Trip

Go get ready to shred till your dead… Or at least till it’s time to sit on the boat, grab a bintang, and watch the sunset over the Mentawais Ocean.

There’s a lot of info there, I know.

Formulate what you need, and put it into action.

Focused effort for about 6 weeks will pay HUGE dividends in the surf. Drive up that wave count, and drive down that too tired to surf excuse.

As mentioned at the start, which surfer would you rather be? The surfer racking up multiple surf sessions per day, or the surfer bitching on the boat about the tide not being right (when we all know in reality he’s just too damn out of shape to surf...excuses excuses).

*** I know this because I’ve seen it. I see it on nearly every trip we run, and I see it on all the trips I’ve been on. Neglect robs people of their surfing, and robs them of what could be a wave of their life. I’ve compiled what you NEED to work on to get your body up to speed. This is EXACTLY what I teach clients and our trip guests, and it works!

Invest in your surfing and your body. Ultimately your Health IS Your Surfing.

For just a few bucks you can grab my full Surf Trip Prep Program (it’s an app!).

Take the guesswork out of all the info I’ve given you, rest assured the training will pay off in the surf, and just click on your phone and start your training ***

Grab my Surf Trip Prep Program, and in 4-6 weeks you’ll be sitting on a boat in paradise, surfing to your souls’ content.

Go Get the app if you don’t have it yet.

Smart Training. Better Surfing.

THE ULTIMATE SURF TRIP PREPARATION GUIDE

Surf as Long as There are Waves...

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