A Surfer’s Workout for Healthy Joints

Surfing will make its Olympic debut this summer, but the two members of the U.S. men’s team, John John Florence and Kolohe Andino, have been plagued by knee and ankle injuries. These types of injuries are extremely common in surfers, according to Kevyn Dean, the San Clemente, Calif.-based high performance coach and medical director of USA Surfing. Limited range of motion and control in these joints is often the culprit, he says. “Athletes spend most of their time targeting muscle strength,” he says. “Joint strength occurs as an afterthought.”

Surfers’ ankles have to be mobile enough so that their knees pass over their toes when they stand up on the board, says Mr. Dean. This requires the ankle to dorsiflex, or bend backward toward the shin. “If you can’t get your ankle to dorsiflex, you will bastardize the stance by squaring the back foot off and dropping the back knee inwards, which puts your MCL at high risk,” he says. The hips, he says, are what drive the lower body and initiate maneuvers. If the hips are tight, the body compensates by recruiting other muscles, which can lead to injuries.

While you can’t prevent injuries, you can mitigate them by working on mobility and building control in ranges of motion you don’t typically use, he says. The average person may not be riding waves, but the same principle applies when you step off a curb and roll your ankle, he says. “When you train in the range of motion you got injured in, it trains the brain to have control in that awkward position and quickly get out of it the next time.”

The term mobility, he says, refers to the ability to have control through an entire range of motion. Try to dorsiflex your foot by raising your toes toward your shin. Then reach down and pull the toes. They can probably lift a few degrees higher, says Mr. Dean, but you wouldn’t be able to hold that position without assistance because you don’t have control in that range. The following exercises build joint strength by working the ankle, knee and hip joints in their end range of motion with control.

The movements might be small, but they should not be passive, he says. When performing the exercises, try to contract all of the muscles in the body. “This will produce more pressure, ramp up the nervous system and make this more of a workout,” he says. A good starting point is to squeeze all muscles—glutes, core, hamstrings, quads—at 20% effort, he says. Remember to breathe throughout the movements. Perform each exercise for one minute as a warm-up before activity, or follow the suggested reps below to make it a workout.