surf health

Take care of your health while surfing and experience the benefits of the sport

A healthy lifestyle

Surfing must be one of the most fun ways to stay healthy on the planet. It has so much going on when it comes to health and conditioning. Surfing and paddling bring much overall fitness to the average person. While challenging at first, it will eventually become second nature.

Just like with any other sport or physical activity, you must take care of your health. In surfing that includes your safety in the water and recovery after your surf sessions.

surf trips

Surf travel Insurance

Learn what to look for in surf travel insurance and get familiar with the best insurance providers for surfers.

surf camps

Surf Recovery

Learn how you best recover from a long day of surfing and how to recover after any surf-related injury.

surf hotels

Sun protection

Learn how to take care of your skin as a surfer and explore the best reef-friendly sunscreen products on the market.

Staying healthy while surfing

The average surf session is only a few minutes of actually riding. All the rest is paddling, duck-diving under waves, positioning, and some more paddling. There is also the sprint paddling in front of oncoming waves and the adrenalin of catching a wave. Ultimately, however, one needs to be paddle fit to enjoy surfing and benefit from surf health.

To be a good surfer also entails having certain flexibility, but the actual act of surfing keeps people flexible. The pop-up and certain surfing moves need extra flexibility and strength. By repeating them repeatedly, you can maintain a fitness level while having more fun than most other sports offer.

There are also the added benefits of vitamin D from the sun and being in the ocean, which is beneficial for mental health and stability. Although surfing is an individual sport, it is also a social sport. There is much positive interaction and banter in the water and on the beach to maintain surf health levels of all kinds. 

The positive benefits of surfing

The benefits of surfing are both physical and mental. The actual act of surfing is rigorous and challenging and involves many different physical movements and actions. You need strength in your arms to get up to a standing position using a pop-up method. You also need the flexibility to ensure that you can twist and contort through your moves. Finally, you need a strong core. Your surfing, direction changes, and turning off the bottom and off the top are all controlled by your core muscles. Having these physical traits are the by-product benefits of surfing.

The Health benefits of surfing are many, from being outdoors in the sun to keeping supple and being in the ocean. Always moving, constantly flowing with the waves and the tides. The health benefits of surfing outweigh so many other sports because surfing is done with nature. The health benefits of feeling the wind in your hair and the sun on your face as you embrace a session of pounding surf and hard paddling.

These physical benefits of surfing keep us younger and allow us to live our lives without too much stress and tension. There is nothing as good as a hard and fast surf to keep the spirits high and the body tingling. After a long session in the water, you can feel the physical benefits as your body is sapped of strength and needs to recover. These physical benefits of surfing are addictive and are what keeps bringing us back to the ocean.

It is hard to count the mental benefits of surfing because there are so many. Surfing lifts the spirits when they are down and makes people smile and be happy. Surfing also releases endorphins – the feel-good chemicals – into the system. Even more potent than endorphins is dopamine. This chemical is secreted after you do something high-risk and rewarding, like catching a big wave or getting a good tube ride. Surfing simply exudes these mental benefits for surfing. 

Surfing As Therapy

The concept of surfing a therapy has gained momentum around the world the last few years, as the pressure of day-to-day life has exacerbated. Surfing provides the vital release, the break from the daily grind, that people need for mental health.