Who doesn’t love spending time in nature? People love to be outdoors, whether they’re an adventurer or just a casual person, the allure of the sun spares no one. It’s simply part of what humans are.
Paddleboards have been sweeping the nation the past year with sales skyrocketing, making them one of the most popular outdoor activities right now. So, what’s so great about them? There are tons of benefits of paddle boarding, so if you haven’t tried yet, you’ll see just how beneficial it can be.
1. Exercise
One major benefit of paddleboarding is that it’s a wonderful way to exercise. It requires you to stand for however long you’re on the water, which works every bit of your body to avoid back pain when combined with the act of paddling.
Your core is involved in many different ways. First, the very act of standing up requires your abdominal muscles, and standing up for long periods keeps them tight. Your core is also worked out when you paddle; every stroke of the paddle takes a little bit of energy from your core.
Your upper body is also getting a workout. While paddling uses your core, it also relies on the strength of your arms and shoulders. Over time, you’ll build strength by paddle boarding, which helps you both on the water and off the water.
Your legs are getting a consistent workout as well while you’re keeping your balance. Balancing on a paddleboard requires your legs to constantly move to keep you right-side up. Even when the water looks flat, there’s still enough going on that your legs are constantly working.
These physical benefits of paddleboarding affect your everyday life, helping you by providing you strength as well as good looks.
2. Balance
Standing up on a paddleboard requires balance, and if you’re someone who isn’t the most coordinated, paddle boarding can help you with that. Falling while standing and tripping over the pavement can be embarrassing, and paddle boarding helps you develop that stability that prevents that.
Even if you’re not abnormally uncoordinated, practicing your balance is important so that you can keep it. Balancing yourself has health benefits and can help your body, mainly through your back through posture and alignment. By practicing your balance, you’re slowly fixing any issues in your posture. Improving your balance improves how equally you distribute your weight on each of your legs, which helps align your back. This helps you avoid back pain,
If you play any sports that require balance, recreationally, or on the local team, then keeping your balance on a paddleboard will also assist you in those. Even if you just enjoy yoga in the morning, paddleboarding can help develop your stability to make these activities even better.
3. Mental Clarity
One benefit of paddleboarding and the benefit of being out in nature, in general, is that it lets your mind settle down. Disconnecting from the rest of the world is a great way to relax or ponder any issues in your life. Paddleboarding allows you to be in nature, standing on water essentially.
This sublime feeling paired with the monotonous action of paddling allows your mind to clear as you look at the world around you. Thinking about everyday problems is left on the back burner as you get in touch with your natural self.
Mental clarity is essential for your health; without it, people struggle through the day, and it can make small decisions seem larger than they are, causing more stress in their life.
4. Stress Reduction
Stress is one of the most detrimental things to our bodies. It can cause almost anything to happen to your body, common mental health issues, diseases, and premature aging. While there’s typically another reason that you’re stressed out, by keeping all of that stress, you’re causing your body to react to stress worse. It’s a downward spiral that can easily lead to a heart attack, so reducing stress is vital.
A major benefit of paddleboarding is that it reduces stress, combining multiple proven tactics to reduce stress. Exercise, in general, is a common way that people deal with stress, and paddleboarding is a form of exercise. Being in nature is another way that health experts say reduces stress, and paddleboarding requires you to be out in nature.
By reducing your stress, paddleboarding is again helping your body.
5. Community
Another major benefit of paddleboarding is found among the people who enjoy paddleboarding. Since the paddleboard market boomed, thousands of people have taken to the water to use those paddleboards they bought. People are loving the calm sport, and there are tons of forums, clubs, and websites that will allow you to meet others in your area who love paddleboarding.
This sense of community breeds happiness and eradicates loneliness. Humans, by nature, are social creatures, so even if you prefer the tranquility that paddleboarding can bring, you can try it out with a friend. You may even find your best friend or spouse through these communities.
It’s also a great way to try new gear. Like other sports players, paddleboarders often let others borrow their equipment, letting you try other types of paddleboarding equipment before you buy them!
6. Heart Health
While it’s already been established that paddleboarding is a form of exercise, it’s important to note how it helps your heart as well. A huge benefit of paddleboarding is that it’s an exercise over time, meaning that you aren’t using up all your energy in a short burst. Instead, you’re maintaining a constant energy flow to paddle.
These kinds of exercises work out your heart the most, improving the regularity of your cardiovascular system with even a small daily workout. The more you’re out on your paddleboard, the more challenging you can make your workout, which allows you to work out even better if need be.
7. Vitamin D Intake
Another benefit of paddleboarding is the natural amount of sun you get. The sun gives you vitamin D, an important vitamin for your bones. Vitamin D is also extremely difficult to get through food alone, so outside activity is a must. Without vitamin D, you can also become fatigued easier, depressed, and bothered by chronic pain. The world that we live in today is surrounded by concrete walls, which is often how we work and live. Getting outside and getting that vitamin D requires you to make an active effort to do so.
Paddleboarding puts you outside on a body of water; there’s no hiding from the sun there. Absorbing all of this vitamin D is beneficial to you, and paddleboarding provides the perfect outlet to do so.
8. Navigation
One benefit of paddleboarding is that it expands the kinds of activities you can do. The more experience you have paddle boarding, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll naturally get better at navigating through waters, so after some time you’ll be able to brave coastlines. These different waters are all vacations in the works, and wherever you do go on vacation probably has water for you to go out on.
Paddleboards are easy to transport, some deflating to roll up, and sit in your backseat different type of experience while others are light and can be attached to the roof of any car. By being so easy to carry different types of experience around, there’s nowhere you can’t go to navigate new waters!
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9. Flexibility
A benefit of paddle boarding that isn’t clear at first glance is that it helps you become more flexible. It’s already established that paddleboarding helps your physical state through exercise, but how does it help you get more flexible? Paddleboarding requires your body to constantly be in motion and to adapt to any and every scenario on the water. Oftentimes, you’ll probably end up sitting and/or laying on your paddleboard depending on the roughness of the water around you. This action pushes your body to move through a range of movements, increasing your ability to do that as you do it more and more.
Your shoulders are also going through a range of movement as they rotate to work the paddle. Over time, this builds up the flexibility of your body and gives you a better range of movement. Flexibility helps you in everyday life as well, preventing injuries since your body is used to the movement. Being flexible also prevents back pain and helps you balance, another benefit of paddle boarding talked about earlier. If you play any other sports, being flexible can help those as well.
10. Versatility
One benefit of paddleboarding is that it offers you a variety of different avenues for activity. If you’re someone who gets bored easily or likes to change things up every once in a while, paddleboarding is calling your name. After you learn the basics, it’s easy to start branching out. For example, the different kinds of water you’re paddling in gives you a different type of experience. Rough waters allow you to surf some waves, while calm waters let you race yourself (or friends from the paddleboard communities). You can even fish off some paddle boards!
There are also different kinds of paddleboards and paddles that you can try out. Paddleboards vary in length and weight, all riding differently. Different paddles also change how you paddle yourself and can change the way that you use paddleboards.
There’s a ton of different ways and benefits of paddleboarding, and they all come together to give you a wonderful, natural adventure.
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