Surf Fitness: Preparing for your Learn to Surf Holiday

Surf Fitness

Whether or not you need to undertake any preparation for your Learn to Surf holiday, depends on a number of factors.

These include things like:

* Your current level of fitness

If you have a good level of base fitness then you will probably need to do nothing or at least less than someone that is not physically active

* Your swimming ability

If you are a good swimmer and reasonably fit, then the paddling required should not be a concern. In most of the early lessons the Instructor will assist by pushing you into the waves and so little paddling is required. As you progress will you will be expected to do more paddling and learn to paddle yourself onto waves

* You Surfing Holiday Goals

If you are just looking to have a little fun, learn some skills and do a surf lesson each day followed by some other activities then you wont require a high level of fitness to get through the lesson. If however you’re wanting to “go hard” and maybe do some of your own surfing outside the lessons, then you’d better get ready for several hours in the water each day and the demands of this.

If you do want to do some training to get ready, here are a few suggestions that might help:

First, the obvious one – swim some laps (or swim wherever you can). There is nothing like paddling a surfboard itself but swimming is a great way to prepare your body for surfing.

Push ups: push ups will help your upper body strength and make it easier for you for transition from the lieing down position to the standing position on the surfboard.

Paddle a Kayak, Canoe, SUP – all these activities will help your upper body strength

Do some light/medium weight training at the gym with a focus on arms, shoulders and neck

As your surfing improves you would also need to do a lot of work on the legs but in the beginning the main stress will be on your upper body.

There are lots more exercises you can do and you can google surf fitness if you really want to but many of the results are for more serious/ high level surfers

As long as yoou have a reasonable level of fitness, you wont have any trouble undertaking your surf lessons obviously the more fit you are, the easier things will be and the more fun you will have.