We’ve passed the halfway point, and now the world’s best surfers are heading to Lower Trestles at San Onofre State Beach from Sunday, September 16th – 22nd for the Hurley Pro competition, the 6th of the 10 ASP World Tour events. It is a critical stop in the quest for the 2012 ASP World Championship title, with the event victor ultimately winning the ASP World Title the past four years.

At this point Aussie Mick Fanning is in the #1 ranked position, just slightly ahead of his country mate Joel Parkinson. John John Florence (HAW), Kelly Slater (USA), and Taj Burrow (AUS), currently ranked 3, 4, and 5 respectively, threaten to steal the top spots held by the Australians.

This year the world’s surfing elite will tackle the surfing’s “Center Stage,” in a brand new World Tour seeding format and the most progressive judging criteria in the ASP’s history. For only the second time, the Tour will narrow its participants to just 32 instead of the usual 44.
Last year’s Hurley Pro set a historic record, offering the single largest first place and overall prize purse in ASP World Tour history; $105,000 first place prize and $400,000 overall. This year’s first-place check has yet to be determined.

Lined with cobblestones, San Onofre State Beach – Lower Trestles is California’s premier point/reef break and a world-class showcase for high-performance surfing. It is considered almost unanimously to be the most high-performance wave in the world, and where the most futuristic maneuvers in surfing are attempted and perfected.

With waves that’s propelled surfing careers, let this critical week at Trestles begin!
Continue reading →

A team of scientists out of Auckland University in New Zealand recently conducted studies of the actual physiological demands of competitive surfing, and have proven that overall fitness is important to surfing success.

The studies, which were published last month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, recruited 12 professional New Zealand surfers, outfitted the surfers with tiny, sophisticated, waterproof heart rate monitors and GPS units and then simply let them ride. The surfers wore the various monitors during three heats at two separate competitions in the surf off the New Zealand coast.

The discovery: to be a fit and functioning competitive surfer, you’ll need a “high endurance for paddling with bursts of high-intensity activity and short recovery times.”

The study breaks down the standard activity of a heat into four parts. The surfers spent 54 percent of the heat paddling, 28 percent of the time stationary on their boards, and only 8 percent of the heat spent actually riding waves.

Forget the perception that surfing is calm and meditative. According to the GPS data collected, over the course of a 20-minute heat, the surfers traveled an average distance of about one mile (two thirds of that covered while paddling). The average paddle speed for the surfers was 2.3 mph and the average high speed while riding waves was 20.75 mph, with the top recorded speed of the event clocking in at 27.96 mph. Throughout the heat, heart rates stayed in the moderate- to high-intensity range for two-thirds of the time, with surfers’ heart rates soaring to 190-plus beats per minute during the competitions and rarely dropping below 120 beats per minute. Thus, surfing is a quite a workout requiring high-level aerobic endurance, given that the heart rate stays above 120 beats per minute at least 80 percent of the time, and given the amount of time spent paddling.

Surfing also requires muscular power, particularly in the upper body. In the second of the new surfing studies, elite surfers visited the group’s lab, turning paddles rapidly with their arms to simulate ocean paddling. Those who could generate the most wattage while paddling were also the highest-ranked surfers of the group.

So what should you do to optimize a surf-specific workout? Do exercises emphasizing aerobic conditioning, fast recovery times, and high-intensity heart rate workloads. This could include press-ups, bench presses, squats, abdominal crunches, pull-ups, and general arm exercises, and power training exercises such as jumping onto and off boxes or stair steps. Surf-specific training could include paddling with resistance in a pool or on a rowing machine in a gym.

Finally, you’ll need to put in hours of running, bicycling or swimming to build the endurance required to reach the good waves.
Continue reading →

Peruvian Surfer Cristobal de Col Sets New World Record and Carves One of the World’s Longest Waves 34 Times in a Single Run ISA World Surfing Games Junior Champion Cristobal de Col recently pushed through fatigue, mental pressure and a jellyfish plague to set a brand new world record by performing 34 carved turns on the longest wave in the world at the Red Bull Chicama Challenge.

Chicama, a surfer’s paradise located in the north of Peru, is known for its waves that run for over two minutes, earning its reputation as the longest left-hand wave in the world. Endearingly called by the locals as “Malpaso”, “Keys”, “The Point”, and “El Hombre,” locals claim to have achieved a single ride all the way from the top of the cape to the pier, for a distance of about 2.2 km, in 10 foot swells.

So there was no better place for the Red Bull Chicama Challenge, in which Peruvian surf star Cristobal, his team, and family spent two full days attempting to set a brand new world record for the most maneuvers performed on a single wave.

“All the while I was counting and my mind was only focused on that moment. When I reached 25, I really started to give it my all. I chose to do carved turns because it’s the maneuver that fits best to this type of inconsistent wave,” explained an exhausted Cristobal, who is now a happy world record holder.

Cristobal accomplished the feat on August 25th in 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

Check out this video where you’ll see Cristobal perform the 34 cutbacks he pulled off in Chicama. So awesome and congrats!

Continue reading →