The Sport Science institute of South Africa, located in Newlands Cape Town, was everything I expected and more, it is like a full on hospital dedicated to sports medicine, high performance training and testing, rehabilitation and research.
I was invited by Surfing South Africa to sit in on the women's high performance camp at SSISA yesterday, such an incredible opportunity. The girls went through a series of surfing specific testing to determine fitness, strength and to ultimately design specialized programs for each of the invited surfers on the camps.
The testing included:
- Anthropometry ( height, weight, skin folds)
- A 10 second all out paddling sprint on the egrometer, to determine maximal power out put when paddling.
- Vertical jump and squat jumps to measure leg strength and explosiveness
- Balance tests
- Core strength testing (variations of Planks and superman's)
- Sub-max Vo2 testing on the paddle egrometer at intensities of 5% 10% 15% and 20% of their max power out puts.
The camp also had two work shops one on Mental Strength and sport psychology and a interesting presentation by Karline Smit on nutrition.
It was so good to see surfers being treated as real athletes and we seem to have finally broken away from the stonner /beach bum stereotype, and I finally feel as though sport science and surfing as a sport are linking up, and hopefully this will help prepare the South Africans more adequately to compete on the international level and furthermore excel.
Being a Sport Scientist this is an extremely exciting prospect and hopefully I will be able to assist this movement and be apart of the high performance training and research of the surfers.
Big up to Surfing South Africa and SRSA for putting on these camps and to SSISA for seeing our surfers as athletes and taking the time to work with them
The future is looking bright
Wade Botha
BSs Sport Science, HONS Exercise Science UKZN
