Many of us believe that surfing lives up to the title of Leonard Lueras’ brilliant book, “Surfing: The Ultimate Pleasure.” While others may not regard surfing as the ultimate, even the most cynical will probably rank it in their top five of joyful pursuits. While pleasure and health don’t always intersect (your vices are none of my business), in the case of surfing, they are heads and tails of the same coin.
While this summer might rightly be tagged “The Endless Fog Bank,” sufficient doses of vitamin D are nonetheless offered freely to those not wearing full wetsuits. Another often overlooked health benefit of surfing are the anti-bacterial qualities of salt water. Then, there are the mood-elevating negative ions produced by breaking waves.
Known alternately as “earthing” and “grounding,” touching the earth with the skin, as we do each time we trod barefoot on the sand, apparently causes the body to be grounded and produces a wide variety of health benefits. While I have no proof of this, I would imagine being immersed in a conductive element like water would yield similar results.
Recently, exposure to cold water has been heralded for its amazing healthy benefits. (That theory was tested in the last few months as ocean water temps plummeted from the low 70s to the low 60s.)
The above are shared benefits of anyone entering ocean. As for surfing itself, the benefits of burst training, where a cycle of intense workouts are followed by a period of low exertion or rest, have been found to be highly beneficial.
Surfing checks this box because most of a surfer’s time is spent paddling out, paddling into position and paddling for a wave. This can leave a surfer breathless as they sit in the lineup waiting for the next wave to arrive, providing the ultimate (there’s that word again) setting for burst training.
The only downside to surfing’s version of burst training is that all that paddling produces a surfer’s triangular build where arms, chest and shoulders are all well-developed and muscles below the naval look proportionately thin. Correcting this can be done through bike riding or climbing those pesky wooden stairs common at many North County surf spots.
The leash is to surfing what the golf cart is to golfing. While each make their sports more convenient, they also decrease the amount of exercise achieved in a session. Prior to the invention of the surf leash, a lost board meant that a wipeout left you swimming. Being an average surfer meant that I swam a lot, and so I was always in shape for the next winter swell.
While I don’t know the science behind flirting with gravity, I suspect it floods the body with beneficial chemicals. It sure feels like something good occurs internally whenever we drop into a wave. I am also unfamiliar with any benefits of an adrenaline rush, the types you get when a big set catches you by surprise and sends you into survival mode. A more pleasurable way to achieve an adrenaline spike, however, is by racing a fast folding section.
Surfing is extremely healthy, but even if it were as unhealthy as smoking, we would do it. The ultimate pleasure may prove to be the ultimate workout. That makes surfing about the best thing you can do with your spare time. Leave the dumbbells to those named after them. I’m off to the world’s largest and oldest, best gym.
