Figuring Out Your Fitness Plan For Kayaking
If you’re getting serious about kayaking, it will be a very good idea to invest in some fitness training that will help strengthen all the muscles you’ll use on your kayaking trips. When you aren’t as strong and flexible, you’re going to find that you’re more limited with what you can do, and you’ll also see an increased risk of injuries.
Suffering from an injury at the beginning of the season would really put a damper on the enjoyment you’ll have during the year and since the peak season does only last for a few months, it’s critical you’re doing whatever you can off-season to prepare yourself.
By following a well-planned fitness workout program, you’ll be all ready to go by the time late spring rolls around and you’re prepared to get back into your kayak.
Here are the main fitness components you should be thinking about.
Muscular Endurance
Having muscular endurance is going to help you when you’re on a longer run on the river by preventing lactic acid from accumulating in the muscle cell and causing fatigue. When your body isn’t trained for muscular endurance, you may find that after a few short minutes on the water you’re feeling very tired and even have to stop and rest.
By training for this aspect, the muscle fibers will become better accustomed to removing the lactic acid, decreasing fatigue.
To train for muscular endurance, perform your weight lifting exercises into the higher rep ranges of 8-12 or even 15 reps per set. Note that you’re not going to get extremely strong by using this technique, but that’s not the primary focus at this time.
Muscular Strength
Second we come to muscular strength. This is where you will place the focus on getting a great deal stronger, which will help you generate more force and power when you’re out in your kayak. This can come in handy as you battle the higher class rivers where you’ll experience greater tension forces from the water acting upon you.
To promote this aspect of fitness development, shift your rep range with your weight lifting exercises downwards, moving them to the five to eight rep range. This allows you to lift a much heavier weight, generating peak strength in the process.
Don’t be surprised if you do see yourself growing in this portion of your workout program provided you are taking in enough calories since this variation of training is more geared towards muscular hypertrophy (size growth) as well.
Cardiovascular Endurance
As much as you may hate sessions on the bike or treadmill, bringing up your cardiovascular endurance will also be important. Much of kayaking is a strength based activity, but having good cardio conditioning behind you will be nothing but beneficial.
This also helps out with reducing the amount of fatigue you’ll experience and you’ll find that when you’re well conditioned, you’re able to go kayaking for hours at a stretch without needing extended rest periods.
The best way to increase your cardiovascular conditioning for kayking is to perform longer duration, moderate paced workouts (20-40 minutes) or you can also lean towards working your sprint ability by shifting the sessions towards one minute hard intervals supplemented with two minute ‘easy’ paced intervals (do 5-10 of these intervals each workout).
A mixture of both types of sessions will give you the best of both worlds.
Shoulder and Torso Flexibility
Finally, the last aspect of fitness for kayaking that must be in place is a good stretching program for the shoulders and torso. If you watch a kayaker in the water, you can clearly see how much twisting movement can go on and having a longer range of motion will be helpful as you attempt different paddling strokes.
Good flexibility in this area also helps to prevent injury as well, since inflexibility is one of the primary causes of a pulled muscle.
Spend at least 10 minutes after each workout session going through flexibility movements (such as side bends, torso twists, shoulder stretches against a wall, etc) to improve your abilities.
Getting on well-rounded fitness program during the months you take off of kayaking will not only maintain your fitness level over the winter, but will make sure that the season ahead of you will be your best one yet.
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Tags: fitness for kayaking, kayak, kayak alberta, kayaking, kayaking workout programs