Surf and Yoga in Kissamos Crete
We often get asked what other sports compliment surfing, and it's not the ones that first come to mind: windsurfing, snowboarding or similar. It's swimming and yoga! Swimming of course helps with paddling technique and strength in the arms, shoulders and torso. Yoga actually has similar poses to exercises in surfing: the Cobra, the Upwards Facing Dog, the Warrier. Yoga also helps with flexibility, core strength and upper body strength with all the different poses where your body weight is on your arms. And surfing is much more upper body centered than lower body.
First day for the group of Studio Yin from Finland. We are happy to welcome you in Kissamos, Crete, still uncharted surfing territory. We started our lesson today with a theory covering safety and a warm up. Because everyone had different previous experience the first half of the water portion of the lesson we spent learning or getting back in the flow of catching the wave. Catching waves is most energy efficient by pushing & jumping on the board. This technique is ideal to train using the power of the wave and finding quickly the right position on the board. The second half of the lesson we learned and optimised our pop up and trained riding the wave. The conditions today were ideal! Big waves were breaking far out in the bay of Kissamos and then rolled as white water to the shore. Powerful white water or small green waves are ideal for the first day exercises. We look forward to the next lesson.