Surf Stronger

June 01, 2015

Thanks to our Guest Blogger: Todd Walsh, Entrepreneur, Co-Founder Surf Stronger™

To check out more about them visit: http://www.surfstronger.com

The Surf Stronger™ training program was an invention of necessity.  In the late 90s, I was living in San Francisco and regularly surfing Ocean Beach with my co-founder, Scott Adams. Back then, we trained and raced a triathlon in the spring and summer, and surfed hard in the fall and winter. What we found was that by being in good shape, we had a distinct advantage surfing Ocean Beach. At a challenging and sometimes tricky beach break like Ocean Beach, being in good shape can mean the difference between making it out or not! And, once out in the lineup, fitness, it seemed, was a key to catching waves and having an enjoyable session. After a season of this, we came to the basic realization, “Better fitness equals better surfing!” We then took it a step further and asked ourselves, “What if we trained specifically for surfing? Would our surfing -- and the whole surf experience -- be better?” At the time, there was really limited information on how to properly train for surfing, so we set out to create our own original program.  Scott has a background in exercise physiology and strength and conditioning training, and I have a background in competitive swimming and water polo. We figured if we could design a program that helped us get more fit for surfing, surfers worldwide might also benefit from such a program. And that idea spawned the world’s first follow-along surf training video, Surf Stronger – The Surfer’s Workout.  We’ve since created and released multiple titles and surf fitness content.

Our training programs draw on research-based principles of exercise science and our extensive surfing experience.  The foundation of our programs is to train movement, not muscles. The idea is that if you can train movement, and movement under load, then you can train to perform that much better and stronger out “on the playing field.” Another key element to our programs is simplicity. From day one we designed our programs to be easy-to-follow yet interesting and as challenging as you want!

The experience of creating the Surf Stronger brand and programs has been fantastic. We know that we have made a positive impact on the surf community. We hear from our customers that our programs have helped them get back into surfing, surf better, be less prone to injury and basically have more fun in the lineup. It’s been a real blessing.