Stretching is a good place to start. Photo: Mick Haupt//Unsplash
Nothing puts a damper on surfing like not being able to surf. If you surf regularly, you’ve likely been benched a time or two due to injury. Sometimes injuries are unavoidable but oftentimes, they’re preventable. In an attempt to combat injury woes, we caught up with avid surfer and physical therapist Dr. Corey Rovzar to learn about common surf injuries, how to prevent them, and what to do in the case that you do get injured.
What are some common surf injuries?
Shortboarding and longboarding are kind of different sports, just in terms of what you’re more susceptible to because of the movements themselves. If we look at both, you could definitely have shoulder injuries from paddling. Shoulder injuries or your thoracic spine, which is the upper back, can be prone to getting injured. Typically, it’s going to be more muscle irritation as opposed to a full-on tear and stiffness.
I would also say that low back strains, or irritation to the joints or muscles in the low back, happen because your low back is holding you up when you paddle. It’s also a position that we’re not used to doing a ton in life because when we sit, our shoulders round forward as opposed to working against gravity.
When we look at the shortboarding world, that’s where we’ll see some high intensity type of injuries — something like an ACL terror or a ligament, kind of like what John John (Florence) had. When you’ve got someone twisting at high speed, they’re more likely to injure one of the ligaments in their knee.
What causes injuries?
With surfing, you need a ton of range of motion through your mid-back so that you can paddle and get up out of the water. If you lack that, then you end up using your shoulder joints a little bit more than you should, which causes people to develop pain in the joint itself. If you lack mobility in a certain area then you’re going to try and get that mobility elsewhere, which is the situation with overuse in the shoulder. If you lack mobility in the mid-back, then you’re going to overuse your shoulder to get it around.
You can also have issues just from being weak. Typically, people go out for a session anywhere from one to two hours, which is a long time to be using those muscles if you haven’t been working them out or cross training. With the seasonality of surfing, someone might not surf for a while and then jump back in. I would recommend easing back in. A marathon is an easy analogy for people: would you run a marathon tomorrow if you hadn’t run in six months? Absolutely not. Same thing with surfing. I’d tell someone to start with shorter sessions, anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and then work your way into whatever a full session looks like for you.
What are the best ways to prevent injuries?
Nutrition and sleep will optimize your performance in general, so those are important regardless of what activity you’re doing. From a cross training perspective, mobility’s a big one because the range of motion requirements are high while paddling. I tell people to warm up prior to going out and surfing to get that mobility. Also, when you think about something like a pop-up, that requires pretty good mobility through the hips. From a strength perspective, I’d say work the upper back and shoulders because those are the muscles that you work the most when you’re surfing. Planks are good because you’re in that position that you’d be in surfing.
What types of stretches do you recommend?
Any mid-back rotation stretches. A good one is the open book stretch. Thread the needle is another good thoracic rotation stretch. We’re prone to be stiff in that area even without surfing just because of what we do in our day — sitting behind a desk all day tends to create some stiffness throughout the mid-back. I’d recommend a few minutes of dynamic stretching before surfing and then five days a week do a static stretch hold for about a minute. Dynamic stretching is warming things up whereas static holds reduce tension so that your flexibility improves.
What are common mistakes a lot of people make that result in injury?
The biggest thing that I see is people jumping full on into an activity without working into it. For example, suddenly there’s a big swell and there hasn’t been swell in months and someone goes and does five sessions in a row. Or someone’s on vacation and they suddenly surf a lot and they haven’t been, that can result in an overuse injury.
Another one would be pushing through an injury, especially with the shoulder joint itself. If you’re starting to have pain there and you keep pushing through, you can make the situation worse. Or not really doing sufficient strength training — surfing is a lot of demand on the shoulder, upper back, spine, and core. If you don’t have good strength, then your mechanics will be a little off when you’re paddling. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of surfers do yoga because good yoga training will work both flexibility and strength — it’s a really good option.
What should you do if you are injured?
If you start to feel something, you should go take care of it. You should heed that warning sign and seek help earlier rather than later because it can get worse. I think for a lot of surfers, the mentality is that it will be fine and to just paddle through, but it can get worse.
