SURF FIT by Clive Rodell (personal fitness Guru)
article No.1 Jan 2019
Happy New Year to all the readers of Baliwaves.com
I trust you all survived the Festive Season, your religion looked after you, you negotiated the social and family expectations well and if you over indulged you have recovered or are well on the way.
The last part brings me to the first snippet of ‘Clive’s World’ Training view-points for 2019.
The World Title Race ended with a Brazil Nut taking the title. Gabriel Medina’s Pipeline surfing was for the most part sheer brilliance. Felipe obviously has brilliant moments, sometimes far above the rest, but consistency wins the day usually. Just look at ‘Kelly the Calculator’. An Aussie in the mix helped the drama and tension. Julian once again, hampered by injury early on and suffering inconsistencies. Funnily enough for me, two of the results I disagreed with involved two of the above. Whilst Gabriel showed genius in Hawaii, I felt Jordy got burned and whilst Julian surfed extremely well in France, I feel the fog on the beach may have undermined ‘Mr Nice Guy’ Ryan Callinan. (I was standing on the water’s edge for that one).
So… back to my job! A few sore heads I’m sure after France and Hawaii and now the recovery and pre-training for the WSL Season of 2019. I’m excited!
Down Time and Recovery are important elements. The little mini WSL drama featuring Lakey Peterson, has a comment from her relating to training and how much surfing she was doing in France. Interesting considering the outcome. Perhaps that comment holds more weight than first thought?
The balance of training and competition is such a delicate balance. Throw to the Tour de France. The best goes into a three-week torture fest ‘underdone’. If they were at their peak at the beginning, they wouldn’t be after 3,500 klms. Remember the Aussie Swimmers breaking World Records six months out of the Olympics? That rang huge alarm bells for me. Unfortunately, I was correct.
Over the last three years I have put a lot of time and effort into canvassing, observing, questioning and forming opinions about some of the training being done by the WQS and WSL Tour Competitors. I have offered my services to some of the Competitors and Coaches, so far, no takers. I also think this is an area where Sponsors might like to take a little more interest in their investments.
One World Championship winner said, thank you, but I get too tired if I train and surf competitively. My thoughts; wrong training. Training at the high end, is about winning, not training ‘for the sport’.
Two others I have observed have postural question marks for me and would have surfed better with some corrective therapy. One of those was shown on the web on someone’s page, the training was reinforcing those postural issues in my opinion. I spoke to that person in France last year, they are currently off the competitive scene with back problems. Co-incidence?
Another competitor this year making a come-back from serios injury looked somewhat robotic in the water and lost some of their previous flow. I don’t think they were being cautious, I think they were TOO strong, but had lost their quickness. Strength and Power are not the same thing. That same competitor usually starts the year extremely well, but perhaps loses some momentum towards the end of the season. I would be questioning their ‘on tour’ training.
Any training must be constantly monitored and tweaked, often daily. A serious Athlete does not skive or shirk hard training. If you have good rapport, they should feel able to approach their coach/trainer etc and ask for a programme to be modified. There are 365 days in most years, don’t make it a Leap Year before considering giving them a day off!
Many moons ago, I was responsible for training an amazing Australian Olympian. Her programme was organised on a day basis. I used to write 3-4 months with every day calculated. It involved her Competition schedule (serious), her competition schedule (not so serious), her specific sport training/practice, her resistance training schedule and her cardiovascular training schedule. Writing her programmes was a daunting and arduous task, as all the components had to interweave and morph to get the required outcomes at various stages. I remember once, she came to me and asked if she could do less bike work on her ‘easy/recovery’ days. The reason was; she said she couldn’t read for that long! I agreed. Mental aspects are paramount.
To summate the above;
If you’re a high-level athlete and some gives you a couple of sheets of paper with a programme on it for the next 3 months…I’d be looking for another Trainer.
If you’re a recreational athlete and someone sets you training without understanding your day to day commitments…you guessed it.. ditto!
If you get training and no one fixes postural issues, movement pattern problems (often referred out)..ditto! Because you’re a Health Care Professional’s (Physio, Chiro etc) source of constant income.
Listen to your body, have good rapport with your Trainer, choose an experienced Trainer (a proven track record of at least 10 years), be realistic with your goals and outcomes.
It’s actually better to go into competition ‘under-done’ than over-done’.
Happy 2019 Clive Rodell
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