Surfing Product Reviews

The Surf Stronger DVD ($29.95) is a fitness routine tooled to build the muscle groups that a surfer uses in order to protect them from injury and to improve their surfing skills. The routine is 45 minutes long and designed to be done 3 days a week. The only thing you need is the DVD, a mat (a towel did nicely), a couple of dumbbells, and one of those “fitness balls.”

A little background on the reviewer here. Over a year ago I tweaked something in my back while surfing. After a few months of on and off re-injury, I worked with a Physical Therapist to first work out the kinks and then do specific exercises to strengthen the muscles one uses during surfing. One year and $500 later my core is strengthened to both prevent injury from happening again and to allow new surfing maneuvers. My goal in reviewing this DVD was to decide if going on the Surf Stronger program would of prevented my injury and improved my surfing, along with saving me $500.

The simple answer is yes. We think the Surf Stronger DVD will teach you some simple stretches you can do to prevent injury as well as a slew of strengthening exercises to build up your core muscles you use during surfing. First, a warning. If you’ve already have some pain from surfing (especially if it is nerve related) you ought to consult a physical therapist if you have any pain while doing this program.

Surf Stronger is broken up into several sections:

0. Tips and Instructions. A little music video introduciton with the Mother Hips providing the soundtrack followed by some quick tips.

1. Warmup. A “dynamic warm up” you can do on the beach before surfing or before you do the workout.

2. Workout. A series of exercises focused on your surfing muscles. Most of these exercises use a set of dumbbells and/or the fitness ball to work your key muscles. This section has two groups, group 1 for beginners and group 2 for advanced. Starting with Group 1 is a smart way to start on your first workout to get an idea of what is in store.

3. Cool Down. A yoga type time to calm the inner shredder.

What We Thought
It’s a good gig. Even if you are one that thinks video workouts are a little too reminensecnt of Jazzercise, you’d benefit by watching this a few times and memorizing the key workouts you find help your surfing. The workouts do move a little fast, which makes it a bit rushed when running through the whole video. The benefit of this though is since it’s a DVD you can easily skip around and pause with your remote. This is handy if you’d like do as many reps as you want, skip the ones you think you don’t need, and build your own custom workout.

Bummers
It wouldn’t be a Santa Barbara Surfing review if we didn’t dig up some bummers thrown in here, but they were few.

Weights. Would be nice to have a few tips on what size weights one should start out with and what the goal should be to work up to, if there is any at all. Could be said the same on the reps.

Cheat Sheet. Not really a bummer, but a feature request. Would be nice to have an included print out sheet which has the names of the exercises written down for easy access. This would be nice for when traveling or when trying to do some of the exercises away from the TV.

Summary:
We like the Surf Stronger DVD. It is worth the price to learn some tools to improve ones surfing and ones ability to still surf without injury.

Where To Buy
Wetsand.com
SurfStronger.com