Keeping Active for the fun times ahead

Home workout 101.

When you're confined to a small compound by foreign police in the sweltering heat of Sri Lanka with a full government Lockdown in process the future can feel pretty uncertain. Worse still, you can see your surf kayak propped up in the corner and the sound of waves thumping the coastline just out of eye sight and the reach of your paddle.

So we have some time to talk about off the water paddle fitness. Let's cover the basics to stop you from losing some of those hard earned paddle guns.

By no means am I a professional fitness coach, but over the years I've developed a bunch of tools to keep me in shape for paddling when the river is just out of arms reach.

The pillars of the body is your core and your lower back. For a kayaker, your core is the money maker followed closely by your back and chest. You can always spot a paddler in night club, lats wider than the world and perfect posture.

So lets work of five simple exercises to do at home to keep the body somewhat tuned up while we wait out the curfews.

Dynamic press-ups

The idea of the dynamic press-up is to engage the core while working the chest and all the little stabilizer muscles in one go.

We have used a bottle of water for this one but anything will work, packet of biscuits, can of beer, whatever you have to hand.

Start the press-up as normal with a bottle on the floor in one had, after completing an entire press-up, push the bottle to the other side of your body and hold it under the other hand, repeat the process. Two press-ups, two bottle shifts and your done one rep. You may chose to adjust the hand stance of the press-ups depending on your core strength.

Wide grip chin-ups

The chin-up, the most simple yet effective way of working your back out, pick a door frame, or chin-up bar if your lucky enough to have one, se your hands about the same length apart as you would hold your paddles and pull your chin to the bar in a slow controlled movement. Rep out as many as you like.

Leg raise, bottle transfers

Pulling abs through a full range of movement is key to a simple yet effective home core workout. Of course you can go nuts and do hundreds of different exercises. But this one is a nice easy all rounder.

Lying on your back lags out in front of you arms above your head with a bottle of water in your hands. Bring your arms and legs up keeping them straight meeting in the middle, transfer he bottle from your hands to scissor between your feet, bring it all back down to an almost relaxed position, then back up to the middle and transfer the bottle back to your hands and back down. Again crack out as many of these as you can, but remember going slow and ensuring you core controls all the movement.

Lying back extensions

Here is a really simple exercise that strengthens your lower back and gives you a wicked stretch. Its as simple as it sounds, Lie on the floor on your front, arch your back so your legs, arms and chest come up off the floor, hold it for a second and then return to the floor. Repeat as many times as you like.

Bottle weighted Arnold press.

Arny is about as famous as you get, even more so when you talk about picking up heavy stuff. So we turn to the Arnold press. This one is great because it really gets your internal shoulder muscles, yep the ones that stabilise you through your kayaking career.

I've got a bunch of bottled water here so I'll use this for weight. Of course you can add more, pick up a chair what ever, but water sloshing around in the bottle adds to the stabilisation muscles firing up.

From the starting position bring the weights up to your chest, then turning your arms out, including the wrists and reach for the sky. To complete the exercise, it’s a reverse of the first.