Surf Life Physio

Stand up paddle board training – A balancing act

Anyone who has gone near a stand up paddle board will know that you require a good sense of balance to get going – that is blatantly obvious to both amateur’s and pro’s. In this blog I’m going to explain why balance is the key to faster paddling from a physiotherapy perspective, but first of all, we need to understand what balance actually is!

Balance is ‘made up of’ the following systems:

• Vestibular (inner ear)
• Visual (vision)    
• Somatosensory (muscle, joint and sensation feedback)

If any of these systems are not working well, or are challenged, so too is your balance. If you are unbalanced on your board, there is no way you are a fast paddler because you’re losing energy through your stroke by using inefficient patterns of movement.

Let’s think about SUP – you’re on a very unstable surface that is in a constant state of change. Therefore your somatosensory system is being flogged because your muscles are working hard to control your position and feeding back information to your brain! Again, you’re on a constantly changing surface with a relatively fixed background (which is why people get sea sickness) and therefore your visual system is getting flogged! Finally, even on the board your head and body is constantly moving in different ways relative to the surface you’re trying to stand on and so your vestibular system is constantly trying to work out where the most neutral position is for your body.

These three systems are responsible for telling your brain how to move your centre of gravity (COG) over your base of support (BOS) which is demonstrated below:

In the most basic example of how to improve balance, we usually do two things that are demonstrated in the above picture and that is to lower your COG or increase your BOS – or both at the same time. Now whilst this works well on a stable surface, we know that water is constantly in a state of change. This means that even though you might lower your COG and widen your BOS, you still are unstable on a SUP. Then think about the limitations on a racing board - if you’re on a racing board, the widest your feet are able to be will be roughly 28 inches apart…

So if the most basic strategies to improve balance aren’t going to cut it on a SUP and all three systems that are responsible for balance are challenged, how can we improve our balance?

Neuromuscular training.

Physiotherapists are experts in prescribing this type of exercise that improves the ability of your muscles to provide feedback to your brain about the position of your body, whilst undergoing a challenging task. At the clinic I have a range of equipment designed to challenge all three systems mentioned above and consequently train them in isolation to improve your balance. Your balance is the foundation upon which effective stroke mechanics are built. If you want to get faster, improve your balance.

Josh Carter

Doctor of Physiotherapy

BExSSc (Clinical Exercise Physiology), DPhty, APAM, ESSAM