Why don't we spend more time discussing fitness and nutrition?

I've been toying with this idea for a while, and it sort of hit home yesterday during a surf.

I was sitting out in the lineup on a relatively windy day, with the surf running a weird chest-high or so. It was breaking really weird, though, with sets breaking outside and inside, almost as if there were two swells in the water.

Regardless, it was just a hell of a workout to maintain position against the wind and current, and also get far enough outside. I'm usually out there surfing if it's any good, but I was just getting my ass kicked. Meanwhile, I'm watching this guy a bit of a ways down on what looked to be a sub-6' board, and he was basically paddling and surfing in circles around me. He was catching 3-4 waves to my 1 consistently.

It's possible he just surfs more than me, but unless he's out there every dribble day, that can't be it.

And so I start thinking about what this guy is doing when he's not surfing to keep himself in the kind of shape where he can glide through the water with such stamina, while I feel like my arms are going to fall off.



Surfing is an inherently difficult physical activity. So much of your body is employed in surfing. In most sports, you don't get better at the sport just by doing the sport. Football players, for example, don't just scrimmage; they spend time in the gym as well.

A simple Google search of surf fitness will pull up some info. But it's really hard to find info on what professional and everyday surfers actually do for fitness. Sure, we'll get the usual swim, run, I just surf, etc., but when it comes to specifics, it's hard to find concrete info. What is your actual workout routine? How many days a week? What is your daily nutrition like? Do you supplement? Etc.

For something as physically demanding as surfing, it's just surprising to me that we don't spend more time discussing what we can do to improve ourselves physically. For almost any other sport I can think of this info is easy to find, but for some reason for surfing it's just not discussed much. I wonder why that is?

 

If you plug a surf fitness search in YouTube, you'll find some really interesting videos. I somehow stumbled upon a few with Laird Hamilton in the gym, doing some really hard, really innovative (to me) workouts.

But I'll be damned if I can find something I can post on my wall to follow, like a P90X or something.

 

Ah, only yuppie surfers work out. Ok, got it. That explains it then.

 

Ok, here's an example.

Being in New England, I just plugged a quick "Tom Brady off-season workout routine" into Google and got a complete workout listed on a site on the first page.

Try the same with "Kelly Slater workout routine" and the best I got was a link to some Chia something or other, and a commercial.

I know the types of exercises to do. My question is more geared towards why we don't spend more time on the specifics, and discussing it.

I'm struggling to think of another physical activity where people discuss their off-season preparation less. Rock climbing? Snowboarding? What?