Many people confuse the word mobility for flexibility. Flexibility has to do with your muscles where the term mobility is a broader term for many elements that contribute to movement such as your muscles, joints, movement patterns, etc.

For example a person can have flexible hamstrings and calf muscles but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can move well.

Stability is the ability to maintain a position against external forces or resist an undesired movement. An example would be performing a plank exercise holding it against gravity.

Your body is an ingenious system of joints that are either more prone to mobility or to stability. Even though each joint contributes to both, some favor one over the other and they tend to be stacked in an alternating pattern.

The figure above demonstrates which joints are predisposed to mobility or stability.

If a joint is more predisposed to mobility and it does not move well, then the force will attempt to find movement elsewhere. It is usually the joints above or below that don’t tend to favor mobility. This creates movement imbalance and hence injury.

For example,when surfing if your ankle lacks mobility especially on your back leg, you’ll get it from your knee. This compensation will almost inevitably result in some sort of pain/injury.

When we think of improving our surfing performance, we need a controlled balance of both mobility and stability.

In the coming weeks I will discuss some ways to help improve your mobility and stability. 

This will help you to surf longer and stronger well into your golden years.

The post Mobility & Stability with the Aging Surfer appeared first on Maine Surf Info.

We convince ourselves we will finally go in, but we all say “after one more wave”. 

Later that day or even the next day our bodies start to talk to us. Maybe it’s our neck that hurts or our shoulders. It could be our low back or a number of other places. What is going on here?  This pain didn’t happen in my 20’s, 30’s or even in my 40’s. 

Let’s face it — staying in surfing shape is much more difficult as we age. On average, we lose about 30 percent of our muscle strength between the ages 50 and 70. Even worse, as we age we tend to lose power almost twice as fast as we lose strength! Our muscles take much longer to respond to brain signals starting in our 50s, and we begin to lose the muscle fibers that are responsible for making us move swiftly such as in surfing.

Have you ever seen an older surfer paddle or maybe it was you? The forehead is stuck to the surfboard because the rounded posture that we assume all day has created significant muscle imbalances. We now want to take that  jumbo shrimp like posture we assume all day and ask it to do the exact opposite. We get on our boards with significant anterior muscle tightness and weak posterior muscle strength. We now want our bodies to paddle efficiently, powerfully, pop up and turn well, then repeat.Well sometimes our bodies just can’t do what our brain is asking it to.

Improving muscle balance, strength, power and endurance is essential to continue surfing  and reducing injuries into your 60s and beyond.

I will be covering some topics in the coming weeks to help keep you surfing longer and stronger.  

Dr. Rick

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I started Maine Surf Info to provide Maine surfers some information about surf conditions around Maine. Being a Physical Therapist and Strength and Conditioning Specialist I plan on including useful information on surf injury rehab, injury prevention, fitness, conditioning and some other cool stuff.

As an aging surfer it has become more apparent how time has taken its toll on my body.

Back in 2001 I self published a book called a Surfers Guide for Flexibility and Conditioning. It was just a basic program that surfers could perform to help with flexibility and strength.That was almost 20 years ago and to be honest my surf training at that time was very minimal.

Now as I approach 55 my injuries have added up over the years to include 2 herniated lumbar discs, a left shoulder reconstruction, right meniscus surgery and a few concussions.

So stay tuned for some information for you aging guys and gals to help keep you moving better, feeling better and hopefully surfing better!

Dr. Rick

The post Why I Started Maine Surf Info appeared first on Maine Surf Info.