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Hi, my name is Rob Case, creator of XSWIM and Surfingpaddling.com.
In today’s video I want to cover two things.
First, I am excited to announce the dates and times of the free webinar series on surfing paddling technique have been set.
Nothing for sale here, just valuable content that will help you with your paddling.
For each of the sessions, I am going to go through a few topics and then open it up for questions and comments so that we
can have a bit of discussion.
To register go to surfingpaddling.com or
there is a registration link in the description of this video on YouTube.
If you want to attend, but don’t think you can make it, go ahead and sign up anyway because if I record it,
then I can send you a link to that recording later.
The second thing I want to cover in this video is I want to begin laying the foundation for what we are going to be
talking about during the webinar series.
I want to get us started on understanding
what good surfing paddling technique entails and that way you will get an idea of what the webinar is going to be like
and whether or not you want to attend.
Like I said I am very excited about this.
I’ve been researching the link between swimming and surfing paddling for over 15 years
and I’m now finally ready to share my findings with you.
So let’s go ahead and get started.
The first item we need to cover is what is so important about surfing paddling?
Why focus our time improving this aspect of our sport?
What’s the big deal?
Based on time and motion studies by the University of Western Australia and the Auckland University of Technology,
we paddle approximately 85% of the active time during our sessions.
This can also be viewed as about 60% of the actual time out in the water.
From a Surfrider Foundation and Surf First study,
the average U.S. surfer surfs about two and half hours per session.
That would translate into paddling an hour and half in the entire session.
An hour and a half in a two and a half session!
1.5 hours paddling, 45 minutes sitting around waiting, and 15 minutes actually riding waves.
What do you think we should spend our time trying to improve?
We’ve got to make sure we improve our paddling
because that sets up any improvement we have when we are riding waves.
We’ll catch more, so we can practice more;
we will be in better position to catch the waves, so we’ll catch more.
And at the very least we have to make sure we are using proper technique.
Because since most of us aren’t pros, we’re not surfing twice a day.
From those same studies they found the average surfer surfs between one and half and three times a week.
Because we are so sporadic with surfing activity,
we actually are more susceptible to injury.
And, of course, if we are not as fit,
paddling exhausts us quicker.
Maybe you are brand new to surfing and you’re also having problems catching waves.
Or maybe you surf at a spot that has a lot of current or it just feels like you aren’t going anywhere when you paddle.
Or maybe you are a very experienced surfer that is having shoulder problems or want to avoid shoulder problems.
A rotator cuff surgery can be very expensive
but more devastating for surfers is time out of the water.
Average recovery is 4 or more months and the average cost is around $6,000.
Okay, now that we know what the big deal is, let’s set some goals.
There are three main objectives for achieving smooth, powerful paddling for surfing.
The first is, how do we paddle, at any given speed, using less energy?
If we can learn to paddle with less energy, how does that help us?
Catch more waves, be more active in the lineup, increase our confidence in bigger waves,
fatigue slower than our competitors during a multi-day contest,
and last longer out in the lineup.
The second goal is, how do we paddle faster?
Increasing our velocity will help us catch faster moving waves,
catch more waves (once again), maybe beat a competitor out for priority, beat getting caught inside,
and for some, get into waves sooner.
And finally, how do we do all this, and stay injury free?
So those are the big questions.
How do we paddle, at any given speed, using less energy,
How do we paddle faster,
and how do we avoid injury?
Well, I’m not going to dilly dally, here’s the answer.
Decrease Resistance and Increase propulsion.
By decreasing resistance and increasing propulsion,
we will end up increasing our speed,
and if done correctly, we will use less energy,
and reduce the probability of injury.
Everything I will be covering in HOW we reduce resistance and HOW we increase propulsion is based on the
3 Laws of Motion. I’m not going to go deep into this but
what you need to know for now is this.
The first law, which has to do with inertia, says that an object wants to sit still until a force acts on it.
Once it’s in motion, the object wants to stay in motion until a force acts on it.
An object wants to stay in the state that it is in and only changes when a force acts on it.
The second law says that Force is equal to mass times acceleration,
and what that translates to is that in order to accelerate an object,
you need to create more force (assuming the mass stays the same).
Want to accelerate your paddling?
Paddle with more force.
The third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Swimmer pushes against the wall, she moves backwards.
We push water back when paddling, we move forward.
Now, we achieve greater gains in forward progress by reducing resistance –
reducing resistive drag.
Why?
It has to do with our 3 laws of motion and the types of resistance we are dealing with.
Water is 1000 times more dense than air.
Because of this, there is this major force opposing our motion forward.
Every stroke we take, we battle with this dense matter (
and this is in calm water! – the ocean is never calm, especially when there are waves).
But we can also use this density to move forward.
Water must be pushed back or pushed aside for us to move forward.
That’s propulsion. We USE the resistance of the water to move us forward. Action – Reaction.
Problem is that each time we take a stroke, we decelerate a lot until we take another stroke.
That’s because the dense water slows us down.
If we were shaped like a dolphin or a seal,
we could take better advantage of the inertia once it’s set in motion.
But we’re not shaped like that, and on top of that problem,
we also have small surface areas to use as propulsion (our hands, forearms, and feet).
So we have a lot of stop and start motion going on in between strokes.
Think of start and stop driving and how it uses more gasoline –
you actually get better gas mileage on the highway because there are less speed fluctuations.
The speed fluctuations that we experience naturally while paddling
uses more energy than if the forces were applied more evenly.
For example, how often do you see only a two bladed propeller on a boat?
You most often see three or four blades to make sure that there is always a force applied as evenly as possible.
Physiology dictates that humans only have two arms to use to propel ourselves forward.
Because of this, there is this stop and go speed fluctuations that use lots of energy.
That is why making sure we have reduced resistive drag as much as possible,
while disturbing alignment just enough to create propulsion,
is the most energy-efficient way for us to move through the water.
So we want to learn how to reduce resistance first,
then how to increase propulsion.
The fastest boats have the least resistance in the water.
In order to reduce resistance, we need understand a little bit about resistive drag.
There are three main types of resistive drag we deal with while paddling with the 1st and most important being
Form Drag represented here with the blue arrows.
Form drag is the space our bodies and boards take up in the water
AND the shape we present to the oncoming water.
The space we take up is horizontally and laterally.
The shape we present to oncoming water can be thought of with these two objects.
Same surface area, same mass, different drag coefficients - the tapered surface having the least drag.
The other two types of drag are called frictional drag (or skin drag) and eddy drag (or vortex drag).
Frictional drag is the friction between our skin and water molecules
and the friction between the board and the water molecules.
That’s why we don’t wax the bottom of our boards!
Eddy drag (or vortex drag) is caused by the water that is not able to fill in instantaneously behind poorly
streamlined parts of the body and board.
Those are the types of drag we will need to understand.
Finally, it should go without saying that there is one more key to smooth, powerful paddling,
in addition to reducing resistance and increasing propulsion –
this critical success factor achieves all three of our goals of conserving energy,
paddling faster,
and preventing injury.
And that is to increase our fitness level.
This is like an iceberg – what’s under the surface is much larger than it seems above the surface.
And we want to improve not just our paddling fitness, but also our surfing fitness.
Fitness could be another set of training in itself,
so we are going to postpone discussing that part of the equation for another time.
For now, it’s time to figure out HOW to reduce resistance and increase propulsion
and that’s what the focus of the training will be on -
HOW to reduce resistance and HOW to increase propulsion.
And because surfing involves several different types of craft,
there are slight variations when it comes to how you reduce resistance and increase propulsion for each type of craft.
Shortboards, longboards, and paddleboards are the three types of craft
I will focus on and the two scenarios we will try to define are
paddling out (or cruising speed), and catching a wave (sprint speed),
and for a paddleboard, if we have time, we will cover prone versus knee paddling.
At the end, we are going to try and fill in a summary like this that you can use as a reference later.
Keep in mind this will only be used as a guide – general guidelines.
We are going to focus on learning not only how to do something, but why it works, why it gets results.
If we know why something works, then we can adapt to any given scenario.
Everybody has different scenarios, everybody has different board lengths,
and board designs, and different body types, and different surf spots,
but if you understand why something works that helps you move through the water,
you can make adaptations to whatever you come across.
As you can see there is a lot to cover.
Be sure to go to surfingpaddling.com to register.
Or click on the registration link in the description of this YouTube video.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me.
In the meantime, I’ll see you in the water.