Image source: Pixabay
Paddleboarding is a water sport that has taken the world by storm. It’s an easy and fun way to boat around on the water, explore new places, and exercise at the same time! The sport requires you to paddle your board while standing on it. It isn’t so easy, but with time and practice, you will be able to do all sorts of tricks in no time at all!
For paddleboarders, the most challenging parts of paddleboarding are often things that seem simple to others. The truth is there are many challenges that come with paddleboarding, especially for beginners! In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the hardest things to do when learning paddle boarding and what you can do about them to make your paddling experience easier and more enjoyable!
Balancing and Moving With the Water
The biggest challenge paddleboarding beginners face, no matter where they’re paddling, is maintaining balance and moving with the water. Maintain balance when paddling has something to do with confidence and comfort, which is why we recommend learning paddleboarding in an area you’re familiar with.
Just like veteran sailors will tell you, the key to moving with the water is gaining confidence and being comfortable being on the water. Even if you fall a few times before finding the flow and maintaining balance, gaining the ability to ebb and flow with the water movement will help you achieve balance in no time.
Understanding the Elements
Even the experienced paddleboarders who try paddling on a low tide and hit constant sandbanks don’t enjoy the paddling experience. Depending on where you’re learning paddleboarding, it’s imperative to familiarize yourself with how waves and other elements such as wind affect the area. Most paddleboarding beginners forget to check how these elements affect their preferred paddling spot, making their training session quite challenging and tedious.
If you’re going to learn paddling near a river mouth, you should understand that currents with powerful tides can be strong for beginners. If you’re going to paddle at the sea or lake, understanding the wind directions and wave strength before hitting the water is essential. Before picking your board and heading out onto the water, always ensure you have gathered weather reports and forecasts to know the safest spots to maximize your paddleboarding training experience.
Establishing Excellent Paddle Performance
Learning to hold and use a paddle can take even minutes but establishing an excellent paddling performance takes time. You can control your paddle like a pro and understand what it takes to get around, but mastering a stroke can be a little challenging for the first instance.
The mistake you can always expect to make as a beginner is failing to paddle vertically in the water before you start the forward stroke. You’ll instead find yourself bending your elbow, which will move the blade at an angle where the board will start turning rather than moving straight.
Without enough capabilities to paddle efficiently, you’ll also find it hard to play with some tricky paddleboarding turns and miss enjoying some adventurous paddling too. The perfect way to achieve an ideal paddle stroke is to get expert guidance and head out a few times by yourself to get comfortable and polish your technique. You’ll undoubtedly get the most value if you keep perfecting your paddling performance.
Maintain an Upright Posture
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While on your board, it’s vitally important to avoid looking down on your feet as you paddle. Of course, this may seem obvious since you’re in a less stable position, and you’ll be focused on maintaining your balance. Unfortunately, the opposite will likely happen when learning paddle boarding, and you’ll fall off the board.
Maintaining an upright posture and avoiding looking down is hard, but you should focus on other things around you besides your feet to stay balanced. This includes something on the shore or in the water. Then keep on paddling towards your target object as you stick your eyes on it. By doing so, you’ll keep an upright posture, stay balanced, and avoid falling off your board.
Paddleboarding With Your Partner, Kid, or Dog
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Paddleboarding is a great water sport you can enjoy in the company of your loved one. Most boards are wide enough to create a room for one more person to join you on a paddle tour. Some boards can even accommodate 3 to 4 people at once.
Unfortunately, paddling with your loved one is one of the hardest things to do when learning how to SUP. It’s not only a challenging thing to do but also a risky thing to do during your paddle boarding training. If you want to spend quality time paddling with your partner, kid, or dog, you should first master every aspect of excellent and safe paddling before bringing your loved one.
Bottom Line
Learning a new sport can be challenging! Paddleboarding is no exception but knowing the potential challenges before learning can help you ease those nerves and be a little more prepared. This post explores some of the hardest parts about learning paddleboarding to help you know what to expect!