What's stopping you from being faster/fitter?

Being satisfied with my own performance... unless I am not

Not a competitive person, as long as I'm paddling into some beasts and stoking myself I'm happy.

When people rock up and start getting really serious I tend to go to a different place to get away from those guys

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Downwinder said..

chrispy said..

You come up with some truly remarkable moments for tbe WTF are you on about again awards. Yet this little piece into your mind has left me laughing at you louder than ever before

hahaha I'd knew you'd bite crispy thats why, you unhappy legend.

um ok champ,you got me again.

I forgot about your delusions of being perry mason . Yep you got me real good lol

Work, kids sport & buying a house.

wanking.

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Kami said...
Too much glasses of red wine before and during dinner time instead of drinking fresh water to lubricate back my old worker joints like hips. As I paddle for wave and rarely for race, I have to do more stretching to enhance my paddling in a prone position feet on stringer to catch wave earlier to get higher line as possible.

Sounds like you need to substitute your red wine with a youngbreezy special green and gold latte - the turmeric is amazing for joints and inflammation and the other active ingredient well I'm sure most of you are already familiar with the effects

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PeterP said...
Lack of cross-training....SUP requires very limited movement in legs, gluts and hips. If you don't cross-train then your hamstrings start pulling up and all-round performance goes out the window. I know, because I don't cross-train and my hammies take a hammering if i try and run. I can's stand yoga so I'm pretty buggered.

I reckon running, yoga and diet and you'll be a better paddler without having to paddle.

Yep me too. The trouble is that I like SUP too much. Whenever I get a chance to exercise, I want to SUP. And I surf, DW and do flat water too so there's virtually no conditions when I can't. But only doing one exercise leads to a body that has a very narrow range of tolerance, and stressing the same bodily systems each time doesn't give much time for recovery, and I find myself prone to injuries and overtraining-type problems. Now my hamstrings/back are crazy tight (I can barely touch my knees) and I can't run for more than about a mile without straining my calves. When I do swim or (especially) cycle on my non-paddling days I pretty much instantly notice an improvement in SUP performance. But since I've got limited time (a 6-hour round trip commute to work, kids etc) and am a typical old geezer with too many exercise miles on the clock, when I do get the chance I want to SUP, not "waste my time " doing other activities like yoga etc which actually would be far better for me, and make me faster and fitter. Stupid, really. I tried a Pilates class a few times but I have such poor flexibility that I actually can't do the simplest stretching exercises and it is just plain embarrassing.

What I probably need to do is to find stretching and bodyweight exercises that I can do in the "dead time" in my life. For instance, I noticed an improvement in my SUP balance when I started standing on the train when commuting not holding into anything for 1.5 hrs each way rather than sitting. There is also a stairway that has 186 steps on it near work and I'll sometimes go up and down that once extra just to get a bit of extra exercise. It would be good to find stretches etc I could also do in a similar way anywhere without looking like a freak.

The other thing that people don't talk about often is the extra need for sleep required if you are exercising hard. It seems to me that for every hour of hard exercise (eg. HR above 85% of Max), you need an equivalent amount of time in extra sleep. So if I normally sleep 8 hours a day, then if I do 2 hours of hard exercise then I expect to need to sleep 10 hours that night or I'll feel groggy. This amount of extra sleep can sometimes be hard to fit into your life. Hell, it's hard enough just to get 8 hours sometimes. Yet exercising without enough sleep seems to increase my chances of injury. And when you get older, getting fit seems to be as much about avoiding injury as it is about training. Recovery takes so long, and you lose fitness so much quicker when you stop exercising than you can gain it when you don't.

Anyway, basically what is stopping me from getting fitter and faster is that I like SUP too much, and I need to do it less if I want to get better. But I'm not sure that I care about being faster and fitter that much. I'm addicted.

Before being in a wave-blessed place, boredom was what prevented me from training.

But now that I live in Hossegor, and sup-surfing as much as I can (while still working), I feel 20 years younger...

I tend to be fitter and faster when there are others who are as keen as me. We all tend to push each other to be motivated. Just lately most of that group aren't participating as often and I'm finding it harder to stay keen.
still get in the water but on those days when it's marginal, it's easy to find a reason not to go.

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Area10 said...

PeterP said...
Lack of cross-training....SUP requires very limited movement in legs, gluts and hips. If you don't cross-train then your hamstrings start pulling up and all-round performance goes out the window. I know, because I don't cross-train and my hammies take a hammering if i try and run. I can's stand yoga so I'm pretty buggered.

I reckon running, yoga and diet and you'll be a better paddler without having to paddle.

Yep me too. The trouble is that I like SUP too much. Whenever I get a chance to exercise, I want to SUP. And I surf, DW and do flat water too so there's virtually no conditions when I can't. But only doing one exercise leads to a body that has a very narrow range of tolerance, and stressing the same bodily systems each time doesn't give much time for recovery, and I find myself prone to injuries and overtraining-type problems. Now my hamstrings/back are crazy tight (I can barely touch my knees) and I can't run for more than about a mile without straining my calves. When I do swim or (especially) cycle on my non-paddling days I pretty much instantly notice an improvement in SUP performance. But since I've got limited time (a 6-hour round trip commute to work, kids etc) and am a typical old geezer with too many exercise miles on the clock, when I do get the chance I want to SUP, not "waste my time " doing other activities like yoga etc which actually would be far better for me, and make me faster and fitter. Stupid, really. I tried a Pilates class a few times but I have such poor flexibility that I actually can't do the simplest stretching exercises and it is just plain embarrassing.

What I probably need to do is to find stretching and bodyweight exercises that I can do in the "dead time" in my life. For instance, I noticed an improvement in my SUP balance when I started standing on the train when commuting not holding into anything for 1.5 hrs each way rather than sitting. There is also a stairway that has 186 steps on it near work and I'll sometimes go up and down that once extra just to get a bit of extra exercise. It would be good to find stretches etc I could also do in a similar way anywhere without looking like a freak.

The other thing that people don't talk about often is the extra need for sleep required if you are exercising hard. It seems to me that for every hour of hard exercise (eg. HR above 85% of Max), you need an equivalent amount of time in extra sleep. So if I normally sleep 8 hours a day, then if I do 2 hours of hard exercise then I expect to need to sleep 10 hours that night or I'll feel groggy. This amount of extra sleep can sometimes be hard to fit into your life. Hell, it's hard enough just to get 8 hours sometimes. Yet exercising without enough sleep seems to increase my chances of injury. And when you get older, getting fit seems to be as much about avoiding injury as it is about training. Recovery takes so long, and you lose fitness so much quicker when you stop exercising than you can gain it when you don't.

Anyway, basically what is stopping me from getting fitter and faster is that I like SUP too much, and I need to do it less if I want to get better. But I'm not sure that I care about being faster and fitter that much. I'm addicted.

It's a drug.....and I'm an addict

I started stretching for about 15-20 minutes late in the evening. The stretches I do are very basic. But, they sure do make a difference, both in how well I sleep and my flexibility.

i'm extrinsically motivated - so have always struggled in individual sports. Put me in a team sport where I feel someone else is relying on me and i'll be fine. So I think for me it's more of a headgame to get up and go training. Surfing is fine as I don't find that a grind!

Since finding a passion for endurance racing (ironman) I've had less time on the water and i found last week when i got the board out for an intended 5km flat water TT i was absolutely the slowest ive ever paddled, so even though im fitter and lighter than i have ever been it has affected my paddle fitness tremendously. My cadence was half of what it was 6 months ago. Might have to start finding more time to get on the water more.

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Kierannq said...
Since finding a passion for endurance racing (ironman) I've had less time on the water and i found last week when i got the board out for an intended 5km flat water TT i was absolutely the slowest ive ever paddled, so even though im fitter and lighter than i have ever been it has affected my paddle fitness tremendously. My cadence was half of what it was 6 months ago. Might have to start finding more time to get on the water more.

This is the big mistake people make with training , I've been trying to tell my nephews this for ages. The body adapts and becomes more efficient at the task you are basically programming it to do.Ice if you want to become a good runner , run , paddler paddle , better at lifting weights , lift weights.Better at ironman do ironman , its that simple.The way to improve once genetic potential fitness wise is reached is improve technique , improve range of motion , improve efficiency.Its amazing how many coaches , trainers , just don't get this.

I think that maybe all that you are noticing is how enormously sport-specific "fitness" is. There are general aspects to fitness that cut across most activities that you can do (eg. to do with how much blood your heart can pump round your body, or your lung capacity, etc) , and for people who aren't very fit, it makes most sense to concentrate on those because they will give gains across many different disciplines. But once you are generally pretty fit, then what you notice are the other, sport-specific, fitnesses. And here, it is remarkable how little that gaining eg. speed on a bike might translate to speed on a SUP. Indeed, in some cases improvement in one sport can actually HURT your performance in another. To take a simple example, putting upper body muscle bulk on for weightlifting might be absolutely necessary for that sport, but that will likely make you a slower cyclist. Most top triathletes are pretty slim in their upper half since two of the activities are strongly weighted towards those who aren't carrying too much upper body bulk. But SUP has a lot more upper-body involvement than eg. running or cycling, so it might be that once you have become pretty competent in your sports, there is then a certain trade-off in terms of speed or endurance between the different sports. If Connor Baxter was a better distance runner, maybe he'd necessarily be a slower paddler, even if he could still SUP as much as he currently does.

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Kierannq said...

teatrea said..

Kierannq said...
Since finding a passion for endurance racing (ironman) I've had less time on the water and i found last week when i got the board out for an intended 5km flat water TT i was absolutely the slowest ive ever paddled, so even though im fitter and lighter than i have ever been it has affected my paddle fitness tremendously. My cadence was half of what it was 6 months ago. Might have to start finding more time to get on the water more.

This is the big mistake people make with training , I've been trying to tell my nephews this for ages. The body adapts and becomes more efficient at the task you are basically programming it to do.Ice if you want to become a good runner , run , paddler paddle , better at lifting weights , lift weights.Better at ironman do ironman , its that simple.The way to improve once genetic potential fitness wise is reached is improve technique , improve range of motion , improve efficiency.Its amazing how many coaches , trainers , just don't get this.

Agree, my swimming, riding and especially my running have improved out of sight as these three disciplines are my number 1 priority and im putting in time to improving. i still want to paddle though and would love to at least be able to maintain what i used to be able to paddle at for a 5km TT. im just not sure how i can improve my range of motion, efficiency for paddling if i don't or can't find the extra time i need to? i thought being fitter i would have at least been able to sustain the same cadence.

You hit the nail on the head mate , you won't improve or even be able to match your old times paddling , if your focus is on another discipline. take track runners as a good example , a top class 100m runner may also be a great 200m runner , but will get smashed by a top class 400m runner , similarly a 400 runner would get smashed over 800 by an athlete who trains specifically for this distance.In sup races are a combination of distance and short course , I won't say sprints because that's not what a say surf race is , its still a distance race.sup is a hard one as it involves not only fitness ,but surf specific skill and ocean knowledge in some races.But the premise is the same , you can only become so fit , cardiovascular wise , but you can become much stronger , and efficient by improved sport specific strength , range of movement and improved technique.specativity is key.In my opinion anyway.