As a young grommie, I was pretty land locked. I would reckon it was at least a four-to-six hour drive to the nearest beach.
This goes against the normal idea of the Aussie surfer, who grows up shredding by mastering the basics almost in utero, and first learning to crawl up and down a softie in the white water. As a result, the better part of my early life was spent in the pool – two-to-four hours a day, as it turned out.
At my peak, I was training 12-14km per day, and although now that would probably be considered overtraining, I was pretty good at it. But like most opportunities wasted on the young, as I started to get properly good, girls, rugby and alcohol also started to become interesting. But that’s another story.
What that means is that I know a thing or two about splashing around efficiently in the water to get myself from A to B with as little fuss as possible. I am not a swim or surfing coach, however, so I need to preface my advice here with that in mind.
In this week’s blog post I answer a simple question, in three compact parts. For those of you don’t like to read, just watch this video:
Three things you need to master to paddle faster
Step 1: Get your Technique Sorted
Faster paddling is created by first perfecting your technique. If your technique is all over the shop, then that is going to create turbulence in the water and increase drag. Just splashing about can get you nowhere slowly.
Each paddle stroke can be broken into three phases: The first phase is the “catch phase,” and is basically the point where your hand enters the water and presses downwards by medially rotating your shoulder around your elbow. Think of trying to drive your forearm down into the water. During this phase, it is useful to think of pulling your body towards your hand as your drive the forearm down. This helps create lift and forward movement.
The second phase is your pull and release, where your hand comes toward the midline of the body, and is then pressed behind you, brushing your thigh (or rail when on a board) as it is released. This also involves a little trunk rotation, so you will actually use your hip and trunk to apply gentle alternating pressure on each rail. While there can be quite a lot of rotation in the pool, there isn’t as much on a board.
During the final recovery phase (while you are paddling with your other arm) the arm is then returned to the catch position using a high elbow, simply rolling it forward from the shoulder. You can practice this by lightly dragging your fingertips along the surface of the water.
So if you want help with this, my advice is to find a swim or surf coach, preferably one that is a little obsessive compulsive about technique, and learn how to get yours right.
Example swim efforts for drilling better technique:
Once you have the mechanics sorted, start doing simple form intervals to practice swimming with perfect form. Here is a really simple example for those with no experience.
Warm up: 3-5 mins – followed by corrective stretching for the shoulder where needed
Form Interval: 8-16 sets/50m perfect form swimming – 30 sec rest. (if you can’t manage 50m without your mind wandering – do 25!)
Cool down
It is more important on these days to make sure that your muscle memory gets worked rather than your muscles. You can always build paddling endurance once your technique is perfected.
If you would like me to blog about other great swim drills for better technique, send me an email and let me know here.
Example swim efforts for FASTER paddling
If you are looking to train for speed in the pool (once you have amazing world class technique, of course), then sprint intervals are definitely the way forward.
Sprinting and power work is exhausted somewhere between 3-20 secs. This would mean short distances AS FAST AS POSSIBLE – 25m is perfect (you only need 5-6 power strokes to catch that wave after all). 6-10 sets is lots, with a suitable rest periods between efforts.
As soon as your time starts to drop for each successive effort, that is when you stop. Remember, you don’t want to train yourself to be slow!
Step 2: Minimize Drag
Get yourself properly balanced on your board and try not to hyperextend your back if what you want is more speed. As you lift your chest, your weight will transfer back onto your tail, increasing drag. You may need to move up and down your board a bit to find your sweet spot.
Once you find it, try to memorize where you are looking at your board so that you can find it again faster next time. I know people who make a mark on their stringer at that point.
As the wave approaches, your first five fast paddle strokes should be done with your head and chest down if you want to maximize speed. As the wave catches you, that’s when you want to be extending the chest, getting your last 2-3 paddles in, pressing your hands into the board, and transferring your weight back into the knees, ready to pop up.
Step 3: Strength Training
This is really most important when you are recovering from injury. If you have a buggered rotator cuff, and you hurt when you paddle, you should probably get that fixed.
There is really no substitute for paddling like paddling. But you can train your rotator cuff and your paddling form in the gym as a substitute.
This would include both open and closed chain pulling and pushing exercises. The difference is basically this:
If you pull on something, hard, and it moves, that’s open chain. Kind of like when you put your hand in the water, and your hand moves to your thigh.
Here are some examples of open chain strength chaining exercises that would benefit your paddling, rotator cuff and general open chain strength.
If you pull on something, hard, and you move towards your hand, that’s closed chain. Like when you put your hand in the water, and notice your body moving forward.
Here is an example closed chain pulling exercise, that you should be familiar with, and has a great transfer to paddling:
This is why strength training isn’t the perfect substitute for paddling performance. It is a real mixture of open AND closed chain pulling and pushing exercises. The great news is, if you like pulling and pushing against stuff in the gym, it is going to help!
If you want to train for faster paddling using weight training, then that means you want to work on explosive power training as opposed to training for better paddling endurance. They are very different things.
So training for paddling endurance would mean training with light loads, and a time under tension of 60 seconds and above before you fatigue.
Training for power – to paddle faster – would mean training with heavy loads (or if you suck at pull ups, body weight might be enough), and you are looking for that system to be exhausted anywhere between 3-20 secs. Think of 2-4, or 4-6 rep max loads only.
Don’t forget that before you try this, you first need to build a base of flexibility, joint stability and strength. You can learn how to do all these things by reading my other blog posts, or by checking out my surf fitness products here.
If you have questions that you would like to see answered here, please send me an email to ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com.
Ash Boddy
Weekend Surf Warrior
