My boyfriend and I had a slightly heated discussion the
other night. The preliminaries for the Japan nationals are to be held this
weekend, weather permitting of course. He has been preparing for this for a
while now, and is constantly talking about how he really wishes he could get a
sponsor and turn professional.
I know absolutely nothing about surfing, but it seems to me
that becoming a professional in any sport is next to impossible. You have to
practically live and breathe the sport, devoting all your spare time to getting
just a few seconds faster or a slightly smoother movement. Your mind and body
must be at its peak. Your diet and exercise routines should be flawless. If
this were not the case, surely anyone could become a professional athlete.
After a particularly energizing yoga class on Monday night,
I decided to bring this up. I will admit that I didn’t approach the situation
very well. “Don’t you think you should be doing a little more than just surfing
for a few hours a day to prepare for this? Like, don’t pros do muscle training
and follow nutritional programs, and stuff like that?”
His response was, “the best muscle training a surfer can do
is surfing.” I was sceptical. “Are you sure? Have you actually researched this?
When I was training for my half marathon, my sister (who is a personal trainer
in Australia) told me that just running was the worst thing I could possibly
do. She said I needed to do strength and endurance exercises as well, to build
a body that could actually handle running a half marathon.”
“Having excess muscle is a bad thing for surfers. We need to
be light and fast,” he said. I started to get a little pushier. “You know,
muscle training isn’t just about gaining muscle mass. There are many different
kinds of training. Are you sure you don’t want to research a little bit more?”
Naturally, this is
when his defences kicked in. “I don’t need muscle training. I just need to surf
more. If you wanna support me more, why don’t you come and take videos and
photos for me? That’s one thing that would help me a lot. Watching videos of my
surfing will help me find area’s that I could improve on.” He then sent me a
link to an article written by a pro surfer that supported all his claims, which
was pretty hard to argue with.
So, thanks to my big mouth, I am now the official camera
woman. If he does become a pro, I might have to start charging a fee for my
services.
If you are looking for some advice on how to improve your
surfing, here is the link that he sent me.
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| My new official job.. taking pictures and videos. At least I will have lots of pics to add to my blogs! |
