Dynamic Dryland Training
For NaishSurfing.com by Suzie Cooney, Naish Team Rider and owner of Suzie Trains Maui, LLC
These exercises will help you increase your overall SUP performance. They are presented with a clear progression from easier to advanced. All levels of paddlers can take away a few new training tips and techniques.
As a trainer and paddler, I want to introduce a new concept that will help keep your brain and stand up paddling skills extra sharp in all dimensions.
What I mean by this is that we live and paddle in one dimension. We walk forward, we swim forward, we surf forward and we all can say we paddle forward. Sure we turn, we cut back and I have seen some paddle backwards to goof off, but we usually train and paddle in one dimension.
Now I have experienced, not on purpose; the act of sliding sideways on a big downwind glide. It’s almost like drifting in a race car or doing what we call in the rally world, a 4-point drift! (Best freak’n, exciting rush ever!) Have you ever felt your board skid sideways? What did you? How did you react? Did you fight it or did you think it was way cool and go with it?
Have you practiced time and time again to step up; hop up over that small or medium sized wave or beach break attempting to get out, only to find yourself quickly stepping off the nose or back of board? These exercises will help you get up and over that small or medium side chop or wave.
Do you know how to brace yourself with your paddle before you fall? Can you instinctively plant your paddle without looking and confidently know it will be exactly where you need it, without falling off your board? Are you having trouble with quick turns into a wave or around a buoy? If so, these exercises will help you improve those skills too.
I want to tune you in to something that I do here in the studio or at the beach with some of my SUP folks and they don’t even know it. I’m training their brain to paddle and be in all dimensions at every moment. It’s not voodoo or island magic, it’s called training in different “dimensions or planes” of motion. I do this with force, no force, with weights or without weights.
For example we paddle forward on the right or left side of board in the sagittal plane, then we look and twist with our lower body to catch a wave or turn around a buoy in the transverse plane or lower superior of body. Sometimes when you’re doing a cut back, you’re paddling in all planes at once. As your board is sliding or floating across the lip of the wave you are now in the coronal or frontal plane.
Be sure to check out all the gear at http://www.naishsurfing.com my websites are http://www.standuppaddlingfitness.com and http://www.suzietrainsmaui.com
Mahalo for watching, Suzie Cooney Thanks also to Simone Reddingius: Camera “woman” !
Photos by Erik Aeder
