Learn To Surf Ski
Preparing for a race and don’t know the best way to get ready? Need good training and practice sessions but can’t find the time? Do you even recognize that practice and training are two different things? It doesn’t matter if you’re an intermediate paddler or just a beginner, if you surf ski for leisure or serious competition or sport, you have to train and practice. Here are some pointers to keep in mind during surf ski training.
The difference between training and practice. Do they seem the same to you? If they were, they won’t be called any different from the other. Think about other sports. Basketball players can train in gyms, but they can’t practice their sport there. They build up their bodies, stamina, and strength in training, but what they do in practice is what they’ll be doing in the hard court. It’s the same with surf ski training. You can train in gyms, or simply run for aerobic leg exercises that give you stamina, and build up muscle groups in your legs. You can train different aspects of your paddling, like breathing, full shoulder turn, and full arm extension in flat water. But when you practice, you duplicate the environment or the conditions you will be under during the competition you’ll be joining in. What you do in practice is what you’ll do in the actual event. How you will play is how you practiced.
How much training and how much practice. Practice is preferably done during weekends—or whenever it is you don’t have work for the day. You’ll need more hours in practice than in training, though training should be more intense. Training schedules can stretch for one to one and a half hours during a regular day, but as mentioned before, should be intense enough to build up your paddling capacity and acumen. That being the case, training sessions should not be done too often, and never when you’re tired to begin with.
A good surf ski prep week. So keeping all these in mind, if you plan a seven day surf ski preparation regime, you should distribute the days to three things: training, practice, and rest. You can allocate three days to training separated by two rest days, and the remaining days (presumably the days when you don’t have any work to do) should be spent on practicing. Training sessions should be done both on water and on land for paddling specific training (like technique and skills) and body training (for stamina, strength, resilience).
