FAQ re learning to stand up paddleboard

It’s really easy. But one important thing is that it’s also really easy to get it wrong. If you teach yourself without any guidance, you’re almost certainly going to be making mistakes and making life harder for yourself. We see this at every lake or bit of water we go to where there’s paddle boarders. You can tell the ones that have taught themselves. It’s not necessarily a problem; they’re having fun but their paddling is a lot less efficient, and more likely to result in injury. And it also means that if the weather suddenly turned bad and they have to paddle back to shore against a really strong wind or current, their paddling is not going to be up to the job. So we strongly recommend learning how to do it right, which is why we have created this paddleboarding course.

There is indeed a huge amount of information on the internet, for sure. But much of it is wrong, obsolete, or lacking context. There is no one right way to do things. What works for one paddler isn’t right for the next.  Learning from random videos is the easiest way to pick up bad habits, or indeed to injure yourself. Our course is structured to ensure you’re on the right equipment and doing it the right way for your own personal requirements.  

No! It’s really important to get the right equipment for your own specific requirements and environment.  We spend a lot of time helping you to learn how to do this in the course.  If you buy equipment without this knowledge there is a very high likelihood of getting the wrong equipment. 

Don’t worry. In the course we will talk about how to assess whether your existing equipment is suitable for you, and what changes you can make, if necessary. 

Unfortunately, it’s not impossible that what you have is not going to be suitable for learning on. But it’s much better that you learn this now, rather than trying to use it and getting disheartened, or ending up getting into difficulties.

This question we hear all the time. So many people think they’ve got bad balance and therefore assume that they can’t get into paddle boarding. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Paddleboards come in all shapes and sizes. If you’ve got bad balance, you start with a paddleboard offering more stability, and you will be fine.  

The really important thing to understand about balance is that it is purely about training the brain. You don’t need to increase your strength, strengthen tendons or sinews to improve your balance. Balance is really just about your brain knowing which muscles to fire in the right order, and you can learn – or relearn – that at any age. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you can always improve your balance. And paddle boarding is a fabulous way of doing that.

So if you’ve got bad balance, get into paddle boarding! As long as you’re on the right equipment, your balance is going to improve.

Don’t worry about it. Yes, if you absolutely hate the water, then paddleboarding’s probably not the right activity for you! But if you’re just not really competent in the water in terms of swimming, don’t stress.  Lots and lots of people go paddling who are not comfortable in the ocean or lake. Wear a life jacket, so if you fall in, you’re not going to get into trouble. As long as you’re wearing the appropriate safety gear you can make that problem go away entirely.

It’s also important to understand that stand up paddleboarding is actually not a getting wet sport, once you’ve passed that initial learning phase. You stop falling off very quickly. 

OK, great question. If you have really bad knees or bad hips, can you paddleboard? The acid test is simple. Can you stand up? If so, you can stand up paddleboard. If you can stand up from a chair or ideally from a kneeling position, then you can definitely paddleboard.

If your hips or your knees are fused absolutely solid and you can’t bend your knee through 90 degrees, then it’s going to be tricky. We’ve taught plenty of people like that, but we’ve had to work out specific routines for them. It will be a bit more of a challenge, but solutions can usually be found.   However, if you do fail the ‘can you stand up’ test, then our recommendation would be to start out working with an experienced instructor, rather than trying to work it out for yourself. 

Any experienced paddleboard instructor will have plenty of anecdotal evidence that paddleboarding is really good for your back. It’s a really common scenario in paddleboard schools – clients arriving for their first lesson announce that their back hurts, the full range of various non specific pains, aches and twinges. The usual kind of thing that so many of us suffer from due to spending too long in the office sitting down, resulting in a loss of strength in the core support muscles.

Well the good news is that paddleboarding will sort that out. We hear it time and time again that after a few paddleboard sessions, the client says, you know what? My back has stopped hurting! I’m waking up in the morning and my back isn’t going, oh, oh, oh. So if you’ve got those non-specific back issues due to everything just being weak and under used, paddle boarding is really going to help.

However, if you have a specific injury to your back; you’ve slipped a disc or you’ve had some sort of trauma injury to your back, then it’s a 50 50. Sometimes paddle boarding will help, other times, no, it’s just causing too much aggravation to that part of the spine. Talk to your surgeon, your chiropractor or whichever medical professional you trust, and see what they think. 

Yes, not a problem at all. Just wear a spec saver with your glasses. As previously mentioned, a really important point to understand about paddle boarding is that actually it’s not a getting wet sport. Once you’ve gone past that early beginner stage for normal paddle boarding, you’re not falling in. There’s no need to. You don’t go paddleboarding to fall in (unless you actively choose to!), you go out, you stay dry, you come back. You’re only going to get wet if you’re doing something like surfing or white water paddling where falling in is very much part of the fun. So wearing glasses is really not an issue.

We do most of our work in the South Pacific where to be honest, if you weigh less than 100kg you’re considered undernourished. There’s plenty of big people around, and getting them paddleboarding, not a problem. Again, it just comes down to having the right size of board. There are boards for every size of person and big people can go paddle boarding just as well as small people. That’s not a thing to worry about.

There is indeed stuff you need to learn, in order to be safe on the water, but that information is easily available. And in our how to paddleboard course, we’re going to take you through all that kind of knowledge that you need.

There are transferrable skills and knowledge and what you know about holding a paddle is definitely going to help.

However, there are some significant differences between kayaking and paddle boarding so you will have to change a few things, but just the fact that you’re already comfortable on the water with a paddle in your hand will be a great help.

Many paddle boards nowadays actually come with a kayak conversion kit anyway; a seat that goes on the board, a second paddle blade to turn your SUP paddle into a kayak paddle. So stand up, sit down – it’s up to you. We definitely recommend standing up – you don’t get the wet butt; and it’s better for your back unless you’ve got absolutely perfect kayaking technique. Standing up is a more comfortable natural body position.  Be warned that you may well find that after you start paddleboarding, you don’t do too much kayaking any more!

As a surfer you are really comfortable in the ocean and not afraid of getting wet, so you’re going to take to paddle boarding real easy. However, it may be slightly more tricky than you think at first. As an experienced surfer your balance is all about standing on the centre line, one foot behind the other, leaning into the turns, that sort of thing. You think in terms of front foot and back foot. When we paddle boarding our balance is more side to side, so your surfing skills aren’t 100% transferrable; you are going to have to learn some new balance techniques. But overall, you’ll find it an easy transition for sure.

Again,  as an experienced sailor you are going to understand the water and the weather, which are really useful skills. If you’re a wind surfer that’s even better because then you are already used to climbing on and off a board. So absolutely you’re going to find paddleboarding easy.

Paddleboarding gear can be anywhere between a hundred  dollars up to thousands. There’s a huge spectrum of cost of gear and quality of gear. The cheaper gear tends to be lower quality in terms of construction and accessories, and won’t last as long. We will give some recommendations within the course.