Nothing could be so relaxing than basking yourself in the rays of the sun and enjoying great activities like surfing for recreation. If such activities could provide you some health benefits, it would be even better.
Surfing is an amazing sport that gives you a lot of physical and mental health benefits. You have to pick your skimboard or surfboard, know how to do it, and start indulging in surfing to get an amazing result. Here are some physical health benefits of surfing.
Boost the immune system:
If you immerse yourself in the cold water, you would get some major benefits. Surfing in the cold water is much like a cold therapy that helps to activate the natural healing power of your body and could relieve the symptoms of different medical conditions.
It improves your lymphatic and immune system and also your blood circulation. The pressure of the cold water could help to ease pain and headaches as it is anti-inflammatory. That’s why doctors suggest taking a bath in the cold water after having any physical injuries.
Cardiovascular, heart, diastolic and systolic:
Paddling against the waves is difficult and requires good physical fitness. When you paddle consistently, your cardiovascular muscles would pump hard whereas you use your back, buttocks, arms, and shoulders.
Thus, it is like an exercise. When you start controlling your breath for a long time, it would lower the blood pressure and heart rate that reduces the risks of stroke, heart attack, and so other diseases.
Surfing helps you to improve your cardiovascular strength as well as keeping your body healthy and fit.
Back and shoulder strength:
Functional movements like shoulder dislocation are normal when surfing and paddling over the waves would strengthen your shoulders and arms. You repeat this movement again and again and it contributes to your overall strength and tone of the pectoral, rotator, and deltoid cuff.
When you lay your face down on your surfboard, this supine position engages your lumbar muscles that would work for strengthening your back. A strong and steady back could lead you towards flexibility, endurance, and stability that are important for surfing.
Leg and core strength:
One of the great benefits of surfing is leg strength. Having long sessions of squat burpees or jumps would change levels constantly and you have to press your chest to the ground and fully extend your legs in such sessions.
This is much like a leg strengthening workout that you may have done in your gym. To stabilize yourself in a firm position including standing, sitting, or lying on the surfboard, you use your abdominal muscles. You improve your overall balance with the help of your core and this core is being exercised in almost all sessions of surfing.
Burn calories:
You could burn your calories while surfing and you don’t have to go to the gym or work out for hours. How many calories you burn totally depends on your body shape and weight,
but surfing could burn about 130-260 calories in thirty or sixty minutes of surfing session. You would be able to burn calories fast with fun. Surfing for about one hour in cold water could burn around 500 calories.
Vitamin D:
You should not avoid sun rays while surfing because everyone knows that sun rays are the best source of vitamin D in your body. Vitamin D could regulate the phosphate and calcium amount in your body.
It also keeps your muscles, bones, and teeth healthy. Moreover, you would not feel a low mood, low energy, and fatigue. Thus, spend some time outside in the sunshine when surfing and get these benefits.
Tone your body:
Your physic remains trim while constant surf training because you would use the overall weight of your body. If you want to tone your bum, legs, back, and arms, surfing would be great for you.
So, you should not miss any single opportunity and start paddling whenever possible. First, try to paddle without waves for about 20 minutes in one session.
Sleep better:
Surfing could improve sleep quality as it could increase the melatonin hormone that is mainly blamable for a healthy and quality sleep pattern. Any kind of physical exercise including surfing is the cause of physical exhaustion and this helps you to fall asleep quickly.
You would be able to sleep longer, faster, and deeper. Your body wants proper sleep for repairing your muscles that work while surfing. Being outside in a cold environment and being tired by facing the waves, you lose your energy. To gain this energy again, you have to eat healthy with a quality sleep pattern.
Improve balance:
Surfing improves your entire body balance and without agility and balance, you could not remain standing on your surfboard among the waves. Improved balance is needed in your everyday function like bike riding, yoga, skateboarding, etc.
Encourages to eat healthily:
After a long session of surfing, you may feel like starving as your calories get burned. Your body needs to be balanced to face big waves again on the next day. it requires energy and this energy would come from the foods.
You need to fuel your body parts by having healthy foods including mushrooms, beans, broccoli, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and protein-rich foods. These foods could nourish muscle fiber and provide you with enough energy for the next day.
You may eat healthily and slowly for about 30 minutes to avoid being overly exhausted and feeling sluggish.
Hair and skin health:
Salt or sea waterworks like a natural exfoliant and it could detox the pollutants that you gain from chemicals, pollution, and products. It is also exfoliant to your hair and scalp, naturally, clean the hair from the root to the tip.
Many skincare products are using seaweed and saltwater but you could get this for free when surfing. Enjoy surfing and have perfectly smooth hair and skin.
Coordination:
Surfing is an amazing way to teach your body and brain how to coordinate in different environments. In every session of surfing, you would have to cope with different environments and create new experiences. You could train your body and brain to adjust to a new environment by surfing.
Temperature tolerance:
Surfing also helps to cope up with various temperatures. Our body temperature normally is 36.5 to 37.5 Celsius or 97.7 to 99.5 Fahrenheit. When you soak in cold temperatures, your comfort levels would rise and it could boost your immune system.
Stress relief:
Stress could hurt our bodies. Surfing is an excellent way to reduce your mental stress. It could clear your body and mind with immediate results.
The refreshing water, crashing waves, and other unexpected situations could provide the brain an amazing sparky boost and also improves your self-awareness. You could forget everything that causes stress and feel more alive. Surfing is a good medicine against stress and depression.
Improves reactions:
While surfing, you need to decide at the last moment and quick decision-making is required. To read and catch waves, avoid and turn on other surfers, and other unpredictable environments- all of these things could change your reaction immediately.
The surfing thrill could discharge adrenaline into the body system. This increases the heart rate that in turn could improve the reaction time.
Builds confidence:
Surfing could be beneficial for anyone’s confidence level. There are so many challenging things in surfing that could increase your confidence level. You have to paddle out the scary waves or prevent them from falling.
Even an efficient and successful duck-dive and turtle-roll could equate to feeling confident. Spending more time in the water is a big challenge itself.
Self-gratification:
Surfing is difficult to learn and it takes more time, perseverance, and commitment to progress. Once you overcome and commit this hurdle, you could get huge rewards.
You would get all the mental and physical benefits that it offers. You could prove that you could achieve your goals when it seems unattainable.
Better flexibility:
Surfing could increase your flexibility. You have to position yourself on the top of the surfboard as you do in yoga. You should practice how to be flexible on your surfboard to prevent injuries while getting off and on your board.
Proper nutrition:
Surfing is an excellent exercise but you have to treat the body with enough food. Allow the body to repair and regenerate itself. Keep in mind that you have to follow a healthy diet that contains low fat and high protein.
Eat a lot of fruits, grains, and vegetables. Drinking enough water is also essential to keep yourself fit. If you want to make yourself fit, do regular surfing and eat after every session.
Surfing helps to discover spirituality:
Spirituality is such a sense of calmness, openness, realization, perspective, and self-reflection that helps connect with the whole world. You can find all these things when surfing.
You would be with the ocean which is the most beautiful gift of nature. You disconnect yourself with all of the struggles that you get from modern society and get connected with beautiful nature. You could even sit beside the sea and do meditation for some time after a long surfing session.
Additional tips:
- If you are a beginner, never go in the middle of the sea or deep water and stay close to the coastline.
- You should not do surfing alone for the first time, it is better to take someone’s help and surf with your friend or surfing guide.
- Eat healthy food after surfing.
- Drinking a lot of water is important.
- Get a surfboard that suits you well and you feel comfortable on it.
- Learn the tricks to adjust yourself to the waves.
Conclusion:
The benefits of surfing are too many to describe. Whenever you feel anxious or upset about something, jump on the seawater with your surfboard and get relaxed and stress-free. If you haven’t started surfing yet, just start surfing to get all of these physical health benefits above