Using your body weight to improve your surf training for optimal surfing performance has many benefits. Firstly you can train anywhere and at anytime. You can choose to do your surfing workouts outdoors in the fresh air, down on the beach or in your hotel room when traveling or competing on tour.
Secondly, you do not need to carry any additional equipment or training gear, all you need is your body. If any other training equipment is required you can quickly adapt to your surrounds and use things like chairs, benches, playgrounds or even just a wall to help with your surfing workouts.
Lastly and most importantly is that by using your entire body you are training muscle patterns rather than specific muscles. This is important because surfing is an athletic sport that requires integration of many movement patterns happening all at once. Training your body to become stronger in entire movement patterns will greatly assist with surfing endurance and surfing power.
While many people believe that surfing workouts are all about building muscle or bulking up. This is not the case. Effective surf training means focusing on developing postural muscles crucial for joint stabilization, general strength and improved ranges of motion and not putting on excessive muscular bulk. Body weight surf training is ideal for these purposes and means that once your body has adapted to full body training methodologies and basic endurance it is more likely to respond better when power movements are introduced.
By using body weight to develop strength and strength endurance we can then safely increase the intensity of surfing workouts to incorporate more dynamic and explosive movements. Surfing training must have some component of power development and the best way to do this is through dynamic body weight movement patterns that mimic surfing requirements. This will quickly assist with powerful rotational movements performed in critical sections of fast moving waves.
While lean muscle is crucial for performance it is important to note that strength training in a gym may leave you with restricted ranges of motion unless an experienced surfing coach or trainer supervises you.
As you can see the benefits of surf training and surfing workouts can be easily achieved by using only your body weight. The key is structuring each surf workout carefully so there is natural strength progression in connective tissue, joints and muscles so the body naturally responds favorably and leads to a balanced more powerful surfer.
Hayden Rhodes has coached professional and amateur athletes improve their performance through scientific training, hormonal testing, nutritional coaching and holistic performance principles while surfing and snowboarding around the world.

Follow me!