Hello all you paddle boarders, my name is Macaylea and I’m one of our athletic trainers at Tahoe Forest Sports Medicine and we’re going to talk a little bit about paddleboarding and how we can help feel better while we’re out there and prevent some injuries that you may not even think of when you think of paddleboarding. So while it might be a leisurely activity for some, others are cranking out laps against the wind in Donner Lake and it can get pretty difficult. So there’s some good strategies to help kind of warm your body up and feel a little more confident out there and also prevent those silly little injuries and try to keep you from having to come and see us.
But if you do have to come and see us, we’re here for you. So we’re going to talk about all of that today. So it’s important to still get a dynamic warm-up in before you immediately hop out on the water.
A lot of times you have to walk a little to get to your paddle boarding spot so sometimes that can help kind of get your heart rate up a little carrying all your gear. But if not, and if you’re anything like me, having a blow-up paddleboard is a built-in warm-up. Really gets the arms and triceps going.
But there’s also some other exercises that we should be tossing in and incorporating before we get out there. So your paddle can actually be a helpful tool in this and we’re going to talk about some of those exercises. But if you want to start with some gentle back stretches, you can go side to side and get some of that movement in.
If you want to get crazy, you could go behind the back but that’s a little more advanced so don’t worry about that just yet. Some other core exercises to get that warmed up would be some trunk rotations that we can work in there. And then you can also get some scoops to work on getting some lower body dynamic movements going to get your hips warmed up because they’re an important piece of the puzzle too.
You can do some “open the gates” and “close the gates”. We can get some leg swings going. You can go front to back or you can go in and out.
Now you can grab your paddle again and get a little muscle activation going because we really want the trunk and the lower body and your arms all warmed up because they’re all important pieces of the puzzle to maintain good balance. To make it easier, you can kickstand and have your back foot helping support and then maintain a proper posture, back straight, glutes are going back behind you to make that a little easier for hamstrings and glute activation. You can also just do some single leg balance whether you need your paddle to help or not.
You can also give in a little bit of some heel raises, so calf activation and that also helps warm up our feet when they’re doing a lot of stabilization out there on the paddleboard. So some possible injuries that we don’t always think about when it comes to paddleboarding could involve shoulder overuse. So improper paddling mechanics play a role if you have weak rotator cuff muscles.
Any sort of strengthening to do ahead of time to prevent those injuries are great but that could look like pain during paddling, any weakness that you get while you’re out there and any decreased range of motion. We could also see some low back pain and a lot of that comes from not using your core properly when you’re out there because it’s doing a lot of stabilization and if it’s not working properly the low back will start to take on a lot of that pressure. Then once you’re off the water it’s important to have a proper cool down to let our muscles recover and feel good moving forward so that you can keep doing it day after day.
What that looks like is more static stretching. Before we did our dynamic stretches, after we’re done paddling we want to hit more of our static stretches. We can hold each stretch for roughly 30 seconds.
You can start with similar to the scoops that we did in the dynamic warm-up. You can hold a hamstring stretch or you can get both at one time and hold a hamstring stretch. You also want to make sure you stretch out your calves because they’ve just done a lot of work stabilizing.
If you’re near a stair or a rock or even your paddleboard you can prop your toes up and then moving up the chain it’s definitely important to stretch our arms after they’ve just done a lot of work paddling the whole time. So you can get a nice cross body stretch. You can get a tricep stretch. You can get a double pec stretch. If you can get here that’s great. If you need a tree or whatever you have or you can have your paddle anchor and turn to get a chest stretch if behind the back is too much.
Paddleboarding is an excellent full body activity that helps us work on our coordination, core strength and our balance. It’s important to remember to have a proper warm-up and cool down to make sure that you’re paddling safely all summer long. So if you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Tahoe Forest Sports Medicine.
Again, I’m Macaylea, one of our athletic trainers and happy paddling!
