Cardio for Winter North Shore Oahu Surfing Preparation

Aloha Tribe,

Darrick Doerner (DD - World Famous Big Wave Surfer and one of the orginal group of the Strap-In Crew who developed the sport of Big Wave Surfing)  who is my Surfing and Watergirl Mentor has me doing lots of cardio for preparation for my trip to the North Shore of Oahu for Winter season surfing.

Naturally, I'm surfing as much as possible, as well as swimming as much as possible, in as many different water conditions as I can, In addition though, I'm spending a lot of time hiking mountains for several  hours most every day, mountain biking up to 24 miles a day, as  well as rowing.

I'm also doing lots of balance training, focusing mostly on tightrope and slacklining, which, while not exactly cardio, certainly are intense workouts, especially when done for several hours every day.

In addition, I'm doing a bit of running as often as I can throughout the day. That being said, I'm a much better swimmer than runner, running being my weakest skill, thus, just like what I read that Kelly Slater did when he trained, I am trying to do as much of my weakest skill as I can to improve that, then, I move to my next weakest skill.

With all of this exercise, I'm also doing lots of flexibility training for hours, focusing on Tree Yoga and Slackline Yoga.

During my "downtime" each day, I'm training my Freediving.

I realize, of course, that many people say that the best exercise for surfing is, surfing. But, as my Coach and Mentor says, as he shared  a direct quote from our friend Gerry Lopez, "surf for tomorrow." Basically, that means be careful when you surf and train. Not so much that you don't push the limits, of course, but, not to take silly chances.

In the last few weeks, I've now had, frustratingly, about 17 broken bones. Fortunately, using the Chi Gung that I have studied since I was aged 5, I have been able to heal each of them in a matter of days.

This brings me to an interesting dream of mine, one thing I so hope with all of my heart to do is to help and heal sick and hurt surfers using my Chi Gung skills. I truly believe that each of us of The Tribe, needs to use our own unique Gifts in any way we can to help those surfers around us, thus, in our own way, making the surfing world and thus the world a little bit of a better place. Bottom line, it's all about caring. Which, begins with ourselves. And that's the point of this post, we need to push and train and prepare ourselves to the best that we can for whatever kind of surfing we plan to do. In this way, we can surf strong, and to the top of our potential, my dream for myself, to surf beautifully and with receptivity to the sea.

While my training seems scattered in its variety, if one looks at it carefully, it is seen that each and every skill is geared specifically to improve my surfing, and, in the case of this post at least, for improving my cardio. Which, brings up an interesting point. I truly believe that one of the best cardio training methods a surfer can do is to spend a lot of time in the water, hours and hours every day, preferably in the roughest seas possible, doing lots of ocean swimming for as long and as hard as possible every day. With that, living in the Pacific Northwest, I am blessed with some of the wildest seas on the planet in the Winter, so intense, Oregon and Washington are the places where the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers train. Golly, I'd love to be one of those guys, well, in a girl sort of way, of course.

Bodaciously Stoked,

Lily of the Valley