Fast Surfing Fitness & Snowboarding Work Out

I recently returned from surfing on snow in Japan and luckily scored incredible powder. Even better, my body held up strong – all day long. The crew I was boarding with were riding pretty hard and fast (including off piste guides) and they wanted to know how to improve their conditioning for better performance, especially leg strength and endurance. So how did I prepare?

If you want to gently snowboard down reasonable slopes and perform basic turns while gravity pulls you down the mountain, then snowboard strength and conditioning may not improve your performance by a large percentage. However, if you want to push your limits, tear the mountain up and defy gravity (i.e, falling and impacting the ground at speed with a mindset to repeat and improve) then sport specific fitness training prior to being on the mountain, will have a huge impact on performance and recovery. And lets face it, faster recovery means more energy, less physical pain and more fun on the mountain regardless of your ability or athletic dreams.

Note: Luckily Japanese culture embraces natural ONSEN baths that greatly help with recovery and relaxation after a busy day dodging tree’s, floating with deep powder and racing at warp speeds down a mountain.

Your physical body (how if functions) is very dependent on skeletal alignment. If you perform any surfing or snowboarding conditioning exercises with a misaligned body – any training may exacerbate the misalignment and thus be counter productive.  It’s like trying to surf a twin fin at a right hand point break yet the left fin is missing. No amount of surfing will improve the situation – you must get that left fin corrected first, so the board can line up on take-off. So… always check your alignment with a professional coach or therapist and then get into the following surfing workout that will also greatly improve your snowboard conditioning and fitness. This is one of my GO TO surfing and snowboarding body weight training routines – make sure you read the last point on Base Fitness 🙂

You want results right? We all do. However many people ask for surfing and snowboarding conditioning secrets without realizing that base fitness is crucial. If you let yourself go for months on end and then decide prior to surf season, ‘now I will get surf fit’ or think something like, ‘I have 6 weeks until I go snowboarding – now is the time to get snow fit’, results will be severely impacted. 

Base fitness is something you maintain year in year out so you can build on it to perform at a higher level when required. Base fitness is useful for every surfer on the planet (improved confidence, efficient heart function, enhanced detoxification, maintaining good blood pressure & blood sugar levels, etc.) So for the record please note that you will have significantly better results when you add this training to your BASE fitness program.

The beauty of this training is that no equipment is required and the entire session is time efficient and delivers full body strength and conditioning for surfers and snowboarders. For those of you that want an explanation of why these movements are so beneficial for surfers and snowboarders please see below.