Airs like this need stable knees. How stable are yours? Photo: ASP/ Kirstin Scholtz
The knee is pretty funky. Viewed in isolation, it performs like a hinge (straight forward and backward), but did you know that your knee twists in all kinds of different directions? This is because you have no conscious control of your knee – it all comes from your hip and ankle joint.
Learning to stabilize your knee means looking at what movements and stresses the knee goes through during a functional surfing maneuver. Then you need to replicate those movements to the best of our ability, while trying to avoid listening to the greater majority of the rehab community, who seem to be seriously scared of letting this joint bend through a full range of motion.
In this video, Jonathan wants to know what else he can do on top of his regular squats and lunges in the gym with his trainer, because despite regular training, his stability still isn’t up to snuff when he adopts a functional surfing stance. Jonathan has an existing ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) injury, so has to be sensible in his exercise selection.
Adding stability to your knee can be accomplished in two different ways. You can add stability to your board in terms of volume and shape (which is not ideal, but always a possibility) or improve your intrinsic stability. One thing that most people need to do is stop training on machines. Fixed-axis machine training is the death-knell for surfers. This method of training teaches your body how to get strong globally, while diminishing the need for your stabilizers to really do much at all(1).
This method of training is amazing if your goal is to add muscle size, without functional strength or stability. These are commonly referred to as “mirror muscles,” and are great if you want to perfect your Baywatch beach entry, but are otherwise useless once you start to paddle. Bodybuilding is a sport with no stability component. Get it out of surf fitness, folks!
Surfing happens in multiple planes almost simultaneously. Squats and lunges are referred to as sagittal plane exercises, which means they take place predominantly front to back. They are amazing strength exercises, and will make you a better surfer. I would add further training in the transverse (rotational forces) and frontal planes (side to side forces) as your knee needs to be stable; your knee needs to be comfortable bending in different directions without your body panicking.
In order to properly prime and prepare your nervous system before your next surf trip, you need to have a combination of strength and stability work in multiple planes of motion on an unstable surface. Now, I’m not saying you need to do all your training standing on a swiss ball. That would be stupid. You can (and should) have a mixture of traditional strength training and functional strength training.
The Peterson Step Up
I learned about this exercise on a CHEK Course, and have since perfected it with the help of the video below. If you were to ask me one exercise to help strengthen your knee in all planes of motion, this would be it:
Using moments to create strength
Because Jonathan really feels uncomfortable when his knee does anything other than bend straight forward, we would need to find exercises that train across his knee without his knee bending forward.
There are many different ways of accomplishing this, including cable or resistance band training. The use of a stability cushion under the leading foot will also force his proprioceptors (stability mechanism) from his ankle, all the way through to his hip and core to go into hyperdrive to stabilize that front knee, as it is driven in all planes of motion simultaneously.
Train the front squat as well as the back squat
The front squat should be as much of a staple as the humble back squat for surf strength preparation, as it not only trains the knee as effectively as the back squat, and with less compressive load (3), but also because it requires a healthy level of flexibility in your middle back and shoulders to get into a good rack position. This will be a good cue for your paddling anyway, if you want to avoid injury there.
Multi-directional lunges
These aren’t perfect, but come as close as you can get for dry land static stability exercises. These work the knee in all planes of motion, and train the hip and ankle how to move in a way that doesn’t destroy your knee. You won’t be able to get deep into all these positions, so teach your hip how to release your knee into whatever it CAN do without freaking out, then training deeper as your body allows this function to occur naturally. This might be a slow process, but a road worth traveling, with slow speeds of movement only.
The surfer’s lunge
And finally, once you have a base level of conditioning in all these exercises, I would start you training on an unstable surface in a functional surfing stance that directly targets the frontal and transverse planes, with surfing compressions on a foam roller.
Hope this helps. If you have questions about surf fitness exercises that you can do on dry land to help you when you are surfing, drop me an email at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.comHooroo,
Ash Boddy, The Weekend Surf Warrior
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