Usually, when we go surfing, we enjoy the many emotions that this wonderful sport provides us. However, it is important to know what muscles our body is using during our time in the water. Even if we might not realise, when we surf, we use almost every muscle we have in our body. In the following post, we, at Surfintrip, are going to analyse which are the most used muscles while surfing and some of the best ways to warm up and exercise our body to be able to give it our best when in the ocean.
Most used muscles while surfing: which ones do we use more?
The first thing you should know is that surfing is a very complete sport because we use most of our muscles, tendons and bones when practising. That’s the reason why surfers usually have very good strength, resistance and flexibility: because they know how to get fit for surfing.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty! When we paddle to catch a wave we are activating the following muscles: deltoids, biceps, triceps, core, dorsals and trapezium. As you can imagine, all of these muscles need a proper warm up in order to function the best way possible and to avoid injuries. Not only is a thorough warm-up necessary, but the more we train these muscles, the better performance we will have in the water.
After paddling, we have to catch a wave and stand up on our surfboard. During these moments, the muscles that we use the most are: deltoids, triceps, chest and dorsals, and when we are actually standing on the board, we use most our calves, gluteus and our quadriceps. You can see that our body is using a very high number of muscles while surfing, so remember to warm up every time you hit the water.
Recommended workouts and warm-ups
We don’t want to specifically describe any kind of targeted exercise or warm up here because a single post won’t be sufficient to describe the infinite amount of workouts and pre-surf warm-ups that exist. What we want to do instead is give you the information on the areas that you want to focus on and some guidelines to be able to do an efficient warm up.
Regarding the pre-surf activities, we suggest warming up your muscles and articulations in an active way before hitting the water and never in a static way. Remember that a good warm up should always have a general phase and then a targeted one. The general phase has the purpose of “activation” of our body in order to bust our blood flow and feed more oxygen to our muscles. The goal of the targeted phase of the warm-up is to accustom our body to the functional movements needed when using our muscles while surfing.
In a previous post, we already discussed the many exercises that are specifically targeted for surfing. Thanks to the very professional figure of Cristiano Gennaro, SFG instructor with more than 20 years of experience as a trainer, we found out that the main components for effective surf training is focusing on: strength, aerobic movements, mobility and stretching. In fact, strength is the component on which all others are based on and with the help of mobility we reduce the chances of getting injured. One more very important thing in exercising our mobility is that it is going to help us maximize our exercises, giving us a greater muscular range.
Did you find interesting our explanations on the most used muscles while surfing and the best way to warm up and exercise your body for surfing? Trust us, and we ensure that following our suggestions you will take your surfing at the next level! Surfintrip is waiting for you with our diverse surfing courses in Fuerteventura, carefully prepared for all levels by our amazing team of professional instructors!
