We recently had personal trainer and Olympic 2016 hopeful, Phil Taylor, stay with us on his recent Surf Holiday in Morocco. After a week’s surfing, he was kind enough to write a guest blog for us with the best surf-specific exercises to get you in tip-top shape before your surf holiday here at The Spot Morocco!
“After recently taking up the decathlon to chase my Olympic dream, I decided that 10 new skills wasn’t enough and chose a weeks holiday to learn how to surf with THE SPOT MOROCCO. After a few wipeouts I managed to stand up and ended the first day feeling pleased with myself but absolutely exhausted. As a personal trainer my mind immediately started racing with various exercises that would prepare the body for this kind of holiday.
Firstly the paddling, easily the most tiring part of surfing. As you struggle against the breaking waves, it is important that you still have the energy and endurance in your muscles to get to where you need to be to catch that dream wave. The best and in my opinion the only way you can prepare yourself for this is in the water, at your local pool, doing front crawl using just your arms and a float to hold your body up.
You will then need to be able to stand up on the surfboard. Here you can use the following:
Press-up lean
Whilst in press-up position keep your arms straight and lean as far forward as you can, pushing your shoulders forward.
Elbows in press-up
Get into press-up position with your hands underneath your shoulders, keep your elbows tucked into the body, lower yourself to the floor then push yourself up.
Elbow in leaning press-up
Get into press-up position, then lean as far forward as you can, keep your elbows tucked into the body, lower yourself to the floor then push yourself up.
As you pop up onto your board your legs will then need to be able to get into position and take your body weight very quickly, these exercises will help to prepare:
Surfing squat
Position your feet as you would on a surf board (see video), move your pelvis towards the floor as low as you can get keeping your shoulders up. Hold your arms out in front as if you we’re surfing (see video). Then return to standing.
Surfing squat jump
Adopt the same position as the surfing squat, however instead of returning to standing position, push your legs as fast as you can lifting yourself off the floor then land in the same position with soft knees.
Surfing burpee
This is a combination of the press-up lean and the surfing squat jump.
I would recommend doing all 6 of these exercises in a circuit, 10 reps each with no rest between each exercise, then repeat 3 times with a 1 min rest in between each circuit.
I hope you enjoy Surfing in Morocco with The Spot Morocco, as much as I did. Feel free to track my Olympic progress on my blog at www.dreamdecathlon.com “