Aerobic fitness: Your foundation for peak surfing fitness!

Aerobic fitness is the core around which you're overall fitness is built. If you can build a strong aerobic base it will increase your stamina, endurance, and recovery times when surfing.

While many surfers think strength and power is all that's needed when surfing, Even bodybuilders work on their aerobic base to allow them to get the max out of their anaerobic, or strength training, without "hitting the wall".

Building your aerobic fitness first will provide you the endurance to work longer and harder on other aspects of your fitness. Which will allow you to more rapidly increase your overall surfing fitness.

Now anytime you are working out you are going to be taxing both your aerobic and anaerobic systems but in different ways depending on the type of exercise.

Your aerobic system is taxed most heavily in extended duration, medium to lower intensity workouts.

Now I know you may be saying that surfing is high intensity with only short bursts of work, and you'd be right.

But by building your aerobic fitness you can lower the intensity relative to your abilities and allow more of the work to be done aerobically, which will help keep you feeling fresher and stronger much longer.

Your aerobic system is much more efficient at using fat and glucose stores than your anaerobic system. It also aids in speeding the recovery from an intense anaerobic workout.

So if you can lower the amount of anaerobic taxing and increase the recovery when you are using it, you will greatly increase your stamina and endurance in the water.

Now let's get to how were actually going to go about doing this.

I have experimented with many different methods and approaches to try to find my peak surfing fitness, but everyone's mix will be a little different based on things like body type, past exercise history, current fitness levels, genetics, etc.

So use my experiences as a guide more than a prescribed formula. You will need to experiment and see how your body responds to different workouts and routines to find your optimal mix.

Aerobic exercises typically consist of low to medium exertion rates for extended periods of time, typically over 20-30 minutes. Some common aerobic workouts are: Running, Swimming, Biking, Hiking, and Walking.

To really build your aerobic fitness I would suggest doing AT LEAST 3-4 times a week for 30-45 minutes of moderate, continuous exercise. Less than this will generally not allow you to see large aerobic gains.

If you are really dedicated, I would suggest moving this to 5-6 times a week for over an hour for 4 of those days.

Aerobic exercises are great in that you can typically expect to get out exactly what you put in. The only thing is that to really realize these gains, CONSISTENCY IS KING!

When you take a break from exercising, your aerobic fitness is the first thing you'll lose. A general rule of thumb with aerobic fitness is that in just two weeks off,you will lose aerobic fitness gains of the last 6 months.

However you can counter this by doing even small workouts just to keep your body fresh. 15 minutes, 3 times a week in periods where your just trying to keep your fitness together and not trying to build will make a HUGE difference and slow your fitness losses.

I personally have over 7 years of distance running experience which provides a pretty strong aerobic fitness base to build on. While this is great, I still found that I would tire relatively fast in the water.

This is because while running provides a solid full body aerobic workout, the majority of the work is being performed in your legs and core.

Surfing relies heavily on upper body and core endurance and strength.

Since running wasn't providing the surfing endurance I was looking for, I began swimming. I have personally experienced the most success aerobically with swimming. I also tried biking but found similar results as running.

Since I began swimming I have seen great increases in my endurance in the water. But swimming, or any other aerobic workout you find will not provide everything you need for complete surfing fitness.

For that, you will also need to build your:

Anaerobic Fitness - The power of your surfing

Flexibility - For maneuverability and speed in the water

Core Strength - For balance and control

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