Tips on Exercise & Nutrition for Stronger Surfing

Series Summary

Surfing is a sport that catches the imagination. From the Beach Boys to Blue Crush, youths across America and the world are caught up in the mystery and status of surfing. For those who surf, it isn’t such a big deal. But for the Midwesterner trapped in a Chicago winter or the fishmonger selling cod on the streets of Boston surfing might hold the same mystique as a foreign country. English explorer Captain James Cook “discovered” Hawaii for the Europeans. After the captain was killed during failed military “negotiations” with the natives in 1779, Lieutenant James King took on the responsibility of keeping a travel journal of all the strange and exotic customs they’d come across. King’s entry on surfing took up two pages. It is impossible to say when surfing became popular, but it has continually been a central part of Hawaiian culture. Since the United States conquered Hawaii in 1893 and annexed it as a state in 1959, the local surfing culture has been adapted by mainlanders, epitomized in the surfer lingo and lifestyle of Sean Penn’s character Jeff Spicoli in the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

In this free video series, expert surfer Schell Michael shows you several workouts to get your surfing body in tip-top shape. She explains and demonstrates exercises like strengthening your core, running for endurance, balancing on a surfboard, paddling at home, squats and lunges for leg power, and push ups for getting on your feet in a jiff. You will also learn "pop ups" and triceps workouts to get your body ready for standing on the surfboard mid-wave. Check these out today!

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Michelle Michael, I'm here with Expert Village. We are going to talk a little bit about diet and exercise, which is a main component in keeping your body healthy and being fit for the ocean. The ocean is definitely an unpredictable place and anything can happen at any time. And you want to be in your most peak performance that you can have. So you need to get your nutrition in there and just keep it healthy. Also with working out you can formulate your own plan, theres all different types of things, there surfers yoga, theres platies, theres, you can run. I mean you can go on a bike ride, hiking, whatever is going to get you out there and get you physical is going to be great. Getting your lungs strong is definitely really important, so if you can get a lot of cardio, any kind of running endurance long physical activities are going to be great because some times you can get held out under there, underneath the wave and maybe you have to be under for like fifteen, twenty I mean you never know how long you are really going to be under the water for so to have your lung capacity high up there is a good thing."