Last week I looked at six simple leg exercises that you can do virtually anywhere that are effective for developing the strength and power endurance you need for SUP paddling. You certainly don’t need access to a gym on a regular basis to train your legs for SUP.
The same can be said for your upper body – you can find exercises to do without access to a gym and using minimal equipment that you can keep in your house or apartment. If you can’t afford a gym membership you can still train strength effectively, although because personally I enjoy strength training and going to the gym I put a pretty high priority on finding a good gym to train at.
Whether you are training at a gym or elsewhere you need to consider the following muscle groups – pushing muscles, pulling muscles and core muscles. Since I discussed legs last week I’m omitting them from this week’s conversation, but in any discussion of strength training for SUP they should be included.
Examples of pushing muscles are found in your chest and shoulders, as well as the triceps. Pulling muscles are found in your back and your biceps. Core muscles are basically found in a ring around the middle of your body and include abdominal muscles, oblique muscles found on the side of your torso, and the muscles of your lower back. I also include hip flexors when I’m discussing core, but they get addressed when doing a lot of legwork so won’t include them here. Let’s look at exercises you can do for these groups of muscles without weights and machines that you find in the gym.
Pushing
The most basic pushing exercise you can do is the push-up. Can you expect to have the strength and power endurance to be a high level SUP racer by just doing simple push ups? I’d say no, but you can add levels of complexity to your push-ups that make them much more effective allowing you to develop more of the strength you need. Without going into a lot of detail here are some tips for taking the simple push up to a higher level:
- Elevating your feet increases the load on the pushing muscles. It can also be used to change the angle at which they are working, similar to the effect of doing incline press instead of bench press.
- Elevating your feet by putting them on an unstable platform introduces a lot of core stability. You’ll be training your core at the same time.
- Placing your hands on something unstable is a great way to train functional strength. Basically functional strength is the strength required when we are performing complex real life movements as opposed to just performing an exercise with limited degrees of freedom of movement like a bench press or a push up. Finding a way to introduce more degrees of freedom of movement when doing your exercises allows you to train your functional strength. Putting your hands on something unstable like medicine balls or a balance board is analogous to using dumbbells for your pressing exercises rather than a using machine or a barbell. You have to work hard to control the dumbbells or your hand position on the medicine balls, and you do this by using supporting and stabilizing muscles in a similar fashion to the way you do when you are doing a real life movement such as paddling. In this way you are training your functional strength. Just be careful that your hands don’t roll or slip off of whatever you’ve placed them on as it would be easy to injure your wrists if they did.
A couple of years ago during March break I went to Newport Beach to train with Jimmy Terrell, Jamie Mitchell and Jay Wild. Chris Aguilar shot a cool video he called my “Push-Up Progression” in which I explained a few ways that you can add complexity to your push-ups. I’ve included it here thanks to Quickblade Paddles. It will help give you some ideas on how to add complexity to your own push-ups. You’ll find that trying to add new levels of difficulty will give you some goals in your training, give you better strength gains and add a lot of variety to your training. Be creative and use your imagination. Because you aren’t adding additional weight to the exercise you’re doing it is hard to really hurt yourself, so have some fun and try different things and see what works for you.
Instead of buying a gym membership or a
home gym with lots of equipment you can instead spend at most a couple of
hundred dollars and purchase an exercise ball, a BOSU ball, and a couple of medicine
balls and you’ll be set to do virtually every variation of a push-up
imaginable, and you’ll use most of that equipment for your core exercises as
well.
In addition to doing push-ups a great way to develop your pushing strength is by doing dips. You can do them on a bench or chair or you can do parallel bar style dips if you can find a place to do them in. I remember as a kid doing them in the corner of a L-shaped counter in my mom’s kitchen.
Pulling
Although the most fundamental pulling exercise for paddling is the bench pull, you can easily build a chin up bar and make that the foundation or your pulling. Some pipe mounted in the basement rafters works great, but if the homemade approach isn’t for you then you can purchase one that fits in the doorway at any exercise equipment store for an affordable price. Although the one I have prevents the door from closing it takes less than 5 seconds to remove and stuff in the closet.
Another great pulling exercise that you can do if you can get creative and find a place to do it in your home or garage is the body row. You’ll need a bar like the chin up bar but you’ll want it waist high instead of overhead. Hang from the bar with arms extended and your body rigid with your feet in front of you. Then, keeping your body rigid, pull yourself up till your chest touches the bar, then lower and repeat. You are doing body rows.
Core
I won’t go into any detail here as there are a ton of exercises that you can find by doing a quick Google search. You’ll be able to use most of the equipment I suggested you purchase for the pushing exercises that will allow you to do core work to your heart’s content. I might suggest that you purchase a mat or yoga mat because you’ll be on the ground a lot. You’ll want to be comfortable and at the same time don’t want to get your carpets all sweaty.
TRX
A really cool innovation is the TRX system which is basically a couple of straps which hang with handles on the end of them which you can grab or place your feet in. You can purchase some TRX straps and mount them somewhere in your house or you can pretty easily make your own. You’ll be able to do variations of all the exercises I’ve mentioned here as well as a ton of others that are quite useful.
Public Fitness Trails and Stations
A lot of communities are building fitness trails or stations in parks or at beaches. They usually allow you to do most of the exercises I’ve discussed here in some variation or other. Use them! There was great trail along the side of the course in Duisburg, Germany, that I saw when I was there a month ago, and I’ve included a brief video clip of a few of the members of the National Team and me taken at one of many fitness stations you find every kilometer or so along the beaches in Rio when we were there last fall. I’m sure if you look around your community you can find something similar.
In addition to doing push-ups a great way to develop your pushing strength is by doing dips. You can do them on a bench or chair or you can do parallel bar style dips if you can find a place to do them in. I remember as a kid doing them in the corner of a L-shaped counter in my mom’s kitchen.
Pulling
Although the most fundamental pulling exercise for paddling is the bench pull, you can easily build a chin up bar and make that the foundation or your pulling. Some pipe mounted in the basement rafters works great, but if the homemade approach isn’t for you then you can purchase one that fits in the doorway at any exercise equipment store for an affordable price. Although the one I have prevents the door from closing it takes less than 5 seconds to remove and stuff in the closet.
Another great pulling exercise that you can do if you can get creative and find a place to do it in your home or garage is the body row. You’ll need a bar like the chin up bar but you’ll want it waist high instead of overhead. Hang from the bar with arms extended and your body rigid with your feet in front of you. Then, keeping your body rigid, pull yourself up till your chest touches the bar, then lower and repeat. You are doing body rows.
Core
I won’t go into any detail here as there are a ton of exercises that you can find by doing a quick Google search. You’ll be able to use most of the equipment I suggested you purchase for the pushing exercises that will allow you to do core work to your heart’s content. I might suggest that you purchase a mat or yoga mat because you’ll be on the ground a lot. You’ll want to be comfortable and at the same time don’t want to get your carpets all sweaty.
TRX
A really cool innovation is the TRX system which is basically a couple of straps which hang with handles on the end of them which you can grab or place your feet in. You can purchase some TRX straps and mount them somewhere in your house or you can pretty easily make your own. You’ll be able to do variations of all the exercises I’ve mentioned here as well as a ton of others that are quite useful.
Public Fitness Trails and Stations
A lot of communities are building fitness trails or stations in parks or at beaches. They usually allow you to do most of the exercises I’ve discussed here in some variation or other. Use them! There was great trail along the side of the course in Duisburg, Germany, that I saw when I was there a month ago, and I’ve included a brief video clip of a few of the members of the National Team and me taken at one of many fitness stations you find every kilometer or so along the beaches in Rio when we were there last fall. I’m sure if you look around your community you can find something similar.
I continue to maintain that strength is vitally important in stand up paddling. Despite everything I’ve mentioned here if you want to be a high level racer I honestly think you’re deluding yourself if you think you can do it without getting a gym membership. There’s just so much more you can do to develop the strength required for high-level SUP racing in a gym compared to what you can do at home. However if you’re into racing but not quite as serious about it, or just want to be a better paddler, I think you’ll find that you can do a lot to improve your strength with some of the simple suggestions I’ve made here.
Have fun!
