Surf Physiotherapy in Truro: Improve Your Pop-Up, Wave Reading and Performance With Surf Vision Training

Being the best surf physiotherapist in Cornwall, I deliver surf performance training in Cornwall that improves visual performance so that surfers can react quicker on the wave, lock-in on the best section and dominate the line-up at Fistral, Watergate Bay or Porthtowan.

Let me take you through how to improve your visual-perceptual performance with tailored training principles you can start building into your training today and help you get surf‑fit for bigger waves.

Here is how I build vision training into my surf physiotherapy program in Truro, Cornwall

We can use the modified perceptual framework to structure surf vision training and is underpinned by 3 principles (Hadlow et al., 2018).

The modified perceptual framework structures our approach to surf strength training sessions Truro by breaking the skill down into the three parts below.

1.       The target skill should discriminate between athletes of different skills ie. what are the performance limiters that elite athletes learn to work around or develop that contribute to their performance

2.       Improvements in the skill of interest should be possible through training

3.       Any improvement in skill should transfer to on field performance

Here is how I would program the pop-up.

1.       The target skill should discriminate between athletes of different skills.  The elite surfer can pop up in a breaking section and unbroken section, with or without their full visual field.

2.       Improvements in the skill of interest should be possible through training. We know that pop up time on the force plates in the gym correlate with pop up time on the wave face and the fitness qualities that enable this are trainable – read my article on it here.

3.       Any improvement in skill should transfer to on field performance. What we do in training should transfer to improved pop up on the wave face.

Being a sports physio for surfers near me the spider chart shows how I program the perceptual framework in a practical manner for sports vision training. This is underpinned by the three stages to visual-perceptual skill development (Renshaw et al., 2022).

Stage one: Development of coherence between task stimulus and targeted visual skill. Exposing the surfer to far-skill activities for basic visual skills and training stimuli which encourages them to learn to pick up visual cues from the environment that are fit-for-purpose i.e. successful outcome of the task at hand.

Stage two: Shifts the focus on becoming perceptually attuned to environmental stimuli. We shift to near-skill activities where the training stimuli, visual anticipation and decision-making take centre stage. Here the focus is on fine-tuning their attention to pick up perceptually relevant information from the environment that expands their affordances for action.

Remember, the surfer who can tune into the possibilities for action (opportunities on the unbroken wave face) before they have even popped up, is going to be more likely to succeed!

Stage two should expand, not shrink, the number of contexts the athlete performs near-skill activities in as we are looking to increase their affordances for action in all contexts for their performing activity.

Stage three: Expansion from far- to near-skill activities in the primary response aspect of the visual-perceptual framework in Figure 1. In my mind, the development of this stage last makes sense.

Why? Our visual-perceptual capacity is what allows us pick up the right cues from our environment and gives us the affordances for action, the action (i.e. human movement) is what then allows us to attain the goal at hand.

Any inability to pick up the relevant visual-perceptual cues will coincidently impede the success of any movement toward the intended goal as there is a greater number of unknowns at any one point in the system, which in the wicked learning environments of sport (see Kahneman et al., 2011) spells trouble!

The fewer correct perceptual cues picked up, the more rigid, predictable and likely poorer fit the subsequent movement will be relative to the task. In terms of the pop up performance – this probably sets you up for a worse position on the wave face and less time to react and take advantage of the breaking wave face.

Here is what a simple progression I use in my physiotherapy clinic in Truro would look like using the bear crawl as an example.

Phase 1: I would have the surfer hold the bear crawl position, there would be three colours placed in front, far left and far right. The phone app would randomly show one of the 3 colours, and they would have to look at that colour then return to the middle position. If I wanted to progress their anticipation and decision making, I could have them move their right leg to a cone on the left side of their body if the phone called out a certain colour that wasn’t on the mat and vice versa for the other side.

Phase 2 of building into the response similarity i.e. popping up to a finished position, each colour would indicate a pop up to the left, right or straight ahead. The randomness of the phone application means the surfer doesn’t know which way they go until the colour pops up. This is now simulating the action of popping up, whilst building on the visual-perceptual reactive component from phase 1.

Phases 3 and 4 would involve destabilising the pop-up surface using towels, foam pads or bands that create small perturbations whilst the surfer pops up to simulate the oceans changing surface tension. They would still perform the drill that has been built up in phases 1 and 2.

If you are ready to take your surfing to the next level with the best surf physiotherapy in Truro, then book with the surf injury physio Cornwall now.

References

Kahneman, D. (2011). Fast and slow thinking. Allen Lane and Penguin Books, New York.

Hadlow, S. M., Panchuk, D., Mann, D. L., Portus, M. R., & Abernethy, B. (2018). Modified perceptual training in sport: a new classification framework. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 21(9), 950-958.

Renshaw, I., Davids, K., O'Sullivan, M., Maloney, M. A., Crowther, R., & McCosker, C. (2022). An ecological dynamics approach to motor learning in practice: Reframing the learning and performing relationship in high performance sport. Asian Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2(1), 18-26.