Improve your stand-up paddling skills: Train with a balance board
Can you still remember the feeling when you first stood on a Stand Up Paddle board? You probably had shaky knees, didn't know what to do with your arms, and wondered how on earth to avoid falling into the water. "Standing" on the water is an unfamiliar position for us, especially since the water is moving and not standing still.
To paddle long tours and keep your balance even in choppy water, plenty of balance training is necessary, and many people wonder if you can improve your balance outside of SUP training sessions, as there isn't always the opportunity to fit daily Stand Up Paddle sessions into a busy schedule.
The solution: train your balance flexibly at any time and in any place with a balance board!
What is a balance board?
A balance board is a piece of sports and training equipment used to improve balance and train core muscles. With advanced skill levels, the balance board is also suitable for learning tricks – in the broadest sense, similar to skateboarding.
Simply put, a balance board is a board used to balance on a roller. Balance exercises on these boards are a good starting point for many different sports and are also used in therapy or rehab facilities when the goal is to restore and improve coordination and balance. Reaction time and motor skills are also promoted during balance board training, alongside numerous different muscle groups.
Advantages of balance boards
Balance boards are also called wobble boards, and they are a piece of training equipment that can be used both indoors and outdoors to perform balance exercises. Balance boards are small, lightweight, easy to store, and offer countless possibilities for training and learning tricks.
Balance boards are particularly widespread in the surfing community, as they are an ideal supplement to wave surfing when you don't have the opportunity to surf. But these boards are not only popular in the surfing scene; they are also enjoyed by people who have discovered Stand Up Paddling for themselves in recent years.
To train with a balance board, you only need enough space to lay out your mat and, at the beginning, perhaps a chair, a wall, or a sideboard you can hold onto. The balance board is ready for use immediately; you don't have any setup or teardown times, making it very easy to integrate training into your daily life.
On YouTube, you can find countless instructional videos on which exercises you can do and how to learn proper tricks.
A balance board is a fun way to train, and you increase your concentration because you have to focus completely on the workout. Children also enjoy training with the balance board, and it offers a good balance to sitting for hours in school.
The advantages of a balance board at a glance
- Affordable purchase costs
- You can train anytime and anywhere
- You don't need any prior experience
- You improve your skills for other sports
- Coordination, motor skills, balance, and concentration are promoted
- Many different muscle groups are trained
- Training is independent of weather
- Age-independent – a workout that is fun for young and old
- Versatile training with higher difficulty levels possible, e.g., learning tricks
Balance Board: A useful supplement to a Stand Up Paddle board
A balance board is the optimal supplement to a Stand Up Paddle board and arguably the best alternative for "dry land training" if you don't have the opportunity to complete a SUP session. Training with a balance board has many positive effects and can significantly improve your skills on a SUP board. Furthermore, a balance board is lightweight and can be taken anywhere – even on air travel or camping trips.
The first attempts on a balance board will feel similar to your first paddling attempt. Wobbly, you might fall off the board at first, and you might think about how you will ever learn it. But like everything in life, training on a balance board is a matter of practice, and you will make progress.
If you don't have any Stand Up Paddle experience yet, a balance board is a good way to train your balance beforehand. This makes starting the sport much easier! Additionally, you train your core muscles – this is not only important for Stand Up Paddling but also a good counter-balance to a sedentary desk job in the office.
Balance Boards: Effective winter training for Stand Up Paddlers
For most, the Stand Up Paddling season ends when water temperatures turn cool in the autumn and only begins again with spring-like temperatures. It would be a shame if you lost the skills and muscles you built up over the summer by training on a Stand Up Paddle board during the winter months.
But even if you paddle during the winter, there are times when it is not possible to get on the water – for example, when it's so cold that the lakes are frozen or it rains for days on end.
With a balance board, you can train effectively indoors in almost any location – regardless of the weather. All you need is a balance board with a cork roller and potentially a mat to protect delicate floors from damage.
Once you have practiced for a few hours on the balance board and "normal" balancing seems too easy, you can challenge yourself with further exercises and practice standing on one leg, do squats with or without weights, or practice push-ups and planks.
