Photo 2
Photo 3
An athletic, balanced stance on skis permits a wide range of movements. The same is true of a neutral stance on a paddleboard.
Take that same stance to a paddleboard floating on flat water.
Because you’re standing on a floating platform that can roll, pitch, and yaw just like a plane or boat (fig. 1), you’ll need to constantly make small micro adjustments with the muscles in your toes, feet, ankles, legs, knees, and hips just to stay balanced. If the board begins to roll right you adjust by slightly shifting weight to your left foot. If the nose of the board pitches up, you shift your weight fore to absorb the board’s movement and stay centered.
Figure 1: Yaw, Pitch, and Roll Yaw
Rotation top View Pitch Profile Front View
All of these balancing movements and you haven’t even added the paddle yet. With every paddle stroke you’re pushing the blade against the water to propel the board forward, using your entire body as a large lever. Tis means that, for every stroke, you make a counterbalanced movement with your core to transfer that force from your arms down to your feet and into the board. Because you paddle off-center, to the left and right of the board, you also introduce yaw, which wants to turn the board away from the paddling movement.
34 | 32 DEGREES • SPRING 2017 Roll
Snowboarders stand more sideways on their equipment, but still work from an athletic stance that supports versatility of movement.
HOW SUP SKILLS TRANSFER TO SKIING & SNOWBOARDING From the minute you step on a paddleboard and get in a neutral, athletic stance, you’re immediately in your ski or snowboard stance. Instructors often use teaching for transfer – for example, using movements from basketball, soccer, or another sport to encourage similar movements when sliding on snow. With paddleboarding, there’s quite a bit to transfer back to skiing and snowboarding. Perhaps more than any other off-snow activity, the combination of fitness and balance training is unparalleled in its ability to promote the small micro movements that skiing and snowboarding both rely on. From your neutral stance, flex your ankles, knees, and hips to
drop your center of mass toward the board, putting yourself into a muscularly supported stance. Any movements you make on your paddleboard will train the same muscles you use when skiing or snowboarding.
Skiers Facing forward, the similarities to your alpine stance are readily apparent. Imagine making a large-radius carved turn to the left. From your lowered stance on the paddleboard, flex your left ankle/ knee/hip while extending these same joints on your right side. Tis will tip the board, rolling it to the right, and allow you to hold the position just like in a carved turn with pressure on your downhill ski. Or try dynamic short turns, using quick flexion and extension movements and rolling the board with pressure from the inside of your right foot to the inside of your left foot and back.
Skier-Specific Parallels To relate SUP movements to a neutral, reference-alignment snowboard stance, it just takes a slight shift in perspective as you
SCOTT D.W. SMITH
SCOTT D.W. SMITH
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