How To Level Up Your Surfing With Intelligent Mobility Training
Do you ever think to yourself that maybe you should warm-up before paddling out or that your shoulder feels stiff after your session?
Everyone seems to agree that stretching is good, but many are confused about why it actually matters and what they should be doing. In this article, I am going to explain what mobility is, why it matters for surfing, and how to begin training it.
Part of my education is in Functional Range Conditioning (FRC), a mobility training system that is a powerful tool in preparing your body for physical performance and mitigating injuries. Mobility training will not directly translate to better technique, that must be practiced in the water, but it will give your body more options for ways to move and indirectly improve your surfing.
What Is Mobility?
“Mobility refers to the amount of USABLE motion that one possesses across a particular articulation (joint)” –https://functionalanatomyseminars.com/
Flexibility is passive whereas mobility is active. For example, you can easily use your arms to pull your knee towards your chest when lying on your back (passive) but may struggle to get your leg underneath you when popping up on your board (active). If you have the passive range of motion but can’t access it actively then it’s close to useless.
Mobility is like the great grandfather for strength, power, stability, and endurance. Without the prerequisite mobility, you won’t be able to develop these other qualities that you need to be successful with surfing.
Injury Mitigation
Not only does more mobility help you perform better, it reduces risk of injury and the severity of injury when it does occur (and it will at some point).
Injury happens when the load experienced by your body exceeds the capacity of your tissue (muscle, ligament, tendon, etc). By improving your range of motion and your strength throughout it, you provide your tissues with a greater capacity to absorb forces in different ways. This reduces the chances of something being strained, pulled, or breaking when you’re carving it up or getting thrashed by a wave.
Use It Or Lose It
This is an important concept that rules all fitness qualities, including mobility. Based on the positions you commonly assume, such as sitting at a desk, and the movements you are regularly exposed to, such as arching your lower back when paddling, your joints will maintain or lose the ability to move in certain ways.
To improve your skills and longevity in the water, we need to optimize mobility at several key joints used in surfing: wrists, shoulders, neck, thoracic and lumbar spine, hips, knees, and ankles. This entails regularly working in the full ranges of motion that you need at each joint. This could mean doing a daily mobility routine in the morning and/or before surf sessions, or whenever it fits into your day. At the end of the article is a video showing you how to get started.
There are common positions and movements that you need to be able to perform to be successful in every sport and activity. Appropriate mobility will make sure your body has enough movement options to access key positions and have the ability to adapt to the significant variation that you experience in the constantly changing water.
Take a look at these pictures to see some common joint angles required in surfing.
Many joint movements are required to pop-up effectively & efficiently:
- Hip flexion (her right leg)
- Hip internal rotation (her back leg)
- Scapular protraction (spreading the shoulder blades when pushing with arms)
- Spinal flexion (rounding your spine)
Movements that occur during paddling include:
- Shoulder external rotation and flexion as you reach forward
- Shoulder internal rotation and extension as you complete each paddle stroke
- Thoracic and lumbar spine extension
How To Get Started
Controlled articular rotations (CARs) are one layer of the FRC system. CARs are basically circles that take each joint through its full range of motion to help maintain its health and range of motion by lubricating the joint and stimulating the receptors in the joint capsule. We’re going to start with using CARs just to get your body moving and feeling a little looser and ready to go when you start your day or hit the water to paddle out.
Below is a two and a half minute video to use before your next surf sessions and introduce you to mobility training through upper body CARs.