Wouldn’t you like to look like this? Photo: Clare Plueckhahn.
“I don’t go left.” That’s what I used to tell myself. If you have ever surfed with me, I may have already told you this.
Lately, I have been doing something radically different with my surfing. I have been training in the gym as usual, then when I surf, I try not to think, but feel my way through the wave instead. This means paddling into the wave, then allowing my body to react and adapt.
Guess what? Something remarkable happened. Instead of just looking for rights (my comfort zone), I pulled into a wave, and before I knew it, I was effortlessly cruising left. Nothing noteworthy. No big hacks on the face. Just a really nice, cruisey ride. It wasn’t until after the wave was over and I was sitting out the back that I realized, “Fuck me, that’s different.”
My training on my backhand, and my kinesthetic mindset of feeling and reacting to the wave to find my balance points meant that I did something physically that I would otherwise resist mentally. I had gained unconscious competence without really ever trying to go left before. This week’s blog post comes from one of my riders who wants to know how to apply this logic to his cutback.
How to teach an old dog new tricks
It can be done. Just about anyone can learn to master a new movement. It may just take a little longer, and you need to be a little clever.
Why? It takes only 300-500 repetitions of a new movement to gain unconscious competence, but once learned, it can take as many as 4,000-5,000 repetitions to unlearn it.
This is because your body (read: nervous system) learns movements in packets of information known as Motor Engrams. Think of this as your muscle memory. When you go to perform a cutback, your body knows to adopt a certain posture, and then to move, stabilize and sequence movement through that posture. The more you perform this packet of information, the more easily your nervous system batches and sends this information together.
What we need to do, then, is create lots of repetitions of this movement so that it becomes automatic in our muscle memory. This, coupled with a conscious intent to practice this when he is surfing, will also be of maximum importance. The dry land training will set the foundation for his technique correction when he doesn’t have regular access to waves.
Step one: Moving slow – the first steps to a new motor pattern
In order to overwrite old information and motor patterns, we need to make the new pattern seem automatic. We do this by practicing it a lot.
Every exercise in this program will need to set him up to have the postural flexibility to get there and then replicate that movement. This starts with slow, deliberate movements.
Surfing is a kinesthetic, tactile, or “feel” based sport. If you want to learn to move quickly and smoothly, then first you need to learn to move slow. There are so many ways of doing this, and what I demonstrate in the video is just one method. Other methods would include body weight exercises, swiss ball exercises, and very light weight endurance training.
In my opinion, I like to feel every aspect of the movement. The subtle movements, and sequencing of the head, neck, shoulders, middle spine, lower spine, abdominals, hips, legs, and weight shift patterns through the feet all need to be felt together. If you are learning a new movement, this is best done slowly, and with an absolute, consciously incompetent awareness.
You may even need to start with just the head, neck and shoulders coupled with breathing. It all depends on how messed up your current movement sequencing is. Here is one example of how to do this:
Try closing your eyes and feeling the movement. Visualization exercises coupled with actual movement are also a highly effective form of ticking off those 5,000 reps as this trains the neural pathways and motor sequencing.
A number of studies have now clearly demonstrated the efficacy of this form of training. This can also be highly useful on the beach, during your warm-up, before you first paddle out, or while sitting on your board between sets.
It all counts.
Step two: Add complexity
Only once you have the simplicity of the movement mastered should you then add complexity to it. When you are reprogramming muscle memory, you want that info to be pretty awesome. Once you have the foundation of the flow of the movement, you can then build strength on it. Think Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid.
This is where you can start to add weight training – cable or resistance band, medicine ball, or dumb bell – loads with moderate speeds of movement. Again, keeping movement sequencing the same.
Complexity can also be added by adding instability. In the video, I show how to use a foam roller or an Indo Board.
By now, you should have those 5,000 reps by the balls.
Step three: Add awesome
By now, you should have mastered unconscious competence. Go for your life.
Add speed to the movement. Get it moving smoothly, and start teaching your body how to do it with speed and power. Watch your cutback go from a pretty good lean back to a torquing thing of beauty.
You may have noticed a theme running through all my training blogs:
1. Start by identifying simple elements of a complex movement
2. Master them through as much training variety as you can
3. Add awesome
If you have surf fitness questions that need answers, send me an email at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com.
If you know someone who would benefit from this blog, please share it with them!
-Ash Boddy
