Building arm strength for riding?
 

What are the best ways to build up your wakeboarding muscles in your arms for riding? Apart from riding of course. What are the best excercises/machines to use in the gym and the best way to use them to build up riding fitness. High weight low reps, high reps low weights etc? Not weights at all?

Also I'm interested in which muscles specifically are key to wakeboarding fitness?

I spend a lot of time using a Handle pass trainer that I made. Its great for muscle memory. Basically its a Handle with a bungee attached to the end. Then a Gallon jug full of sand. The idea being that you pass it around your self like handle pass, increasing speed as you go. The bungee creates more and more weight as you pass. Then I start turn my body as well increasing the speed even more.

The best (Strength) exercises for wakeboarding are going to be pull patterns. Any kind of pull pattern exercise will use back, biceps, and posterior shoulder, which hits the muscles used in Wake.

The most relevant is probably the body row. It uses all of the muscles mentioned above, but also forces you to engage the erectors (lower back) to keep you upright. Very similar to the resistance you experience while riding with the pull from your boat. Focus on keeping the body flat (no sag) like the guy in this image.

Here's an image: http://journal.crossfit.com/images/t...w.257db6af.png

Of course you can also isolate each of the muscle groups above if you want with Biceps curls, reverse flies, and lat push downs. But the integrated exercise is more similar to actual wakeboarding.

Lower back is something that I personally over looked. Abs play a big part in insuring that you have a strong lower back as well, having a soild core is the base to build a more physically fit body.

Crossfit is pretty good for everything

Cable row pulls,squats,lunge,reverse flys and back exercises.

heres one of several that they have at wake2wakefitness that help improve your wakeboard specific strengths

http://wake2wakefitness.com/2010/12/...ing-band-rows/


The alternating band rows are a great way to add a rotational component to what can be a very basic exercise. The slight rotation and the pulling of the handles toward your hip/ribcage area is also very similar the initial movement of a lot of wakeboarding tricks (especially any tricks that involve spinning.)

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Ride more...

By far the best exercise that has worked for me is TRX. I take classes twice a week and I can definitely feel the difference. Google and find a local gym that offers the set up, you won't be disappointed.

p90x has done wonders for my riding. I have had to restart the program though, didn't make it through phase 3, but my riding was just consistently better the more I worked out with the program.

I started doing crossfit this year and it is amazing how much everything has improved. Stamina, balance, recovery etc... I am 31 and I feel better than I did riding at 25. I highly reccomend.

Or just buy the TRX and set it up at home. It comes with a DVD, and there are tons of exercises on youtube. I have a TRX at home. .

The alternating band rows are a great way to add a rotational component to what can be a very basic exercise. The slight rotation and the pulling of the handles toward your hip/ribcage area is also very similar the initial movement of a lot of wakeboarding tricks (especially any tricks that involve spinning.)

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The bands exercise above is good, but in my experience bands are kind of weak for a back exercise. I've yet to find a band that has enough resistance to make the exercise challenging. It seems like the lower back would fatigue before the upper body group. Not a bad thing necessarily guess.

You could do that same exercise single arm with a TRX (leaning away from the wall), which would also add transverse plane resistance.

The bands exercise above is good, but in my experience bands are kind of weak for a back exercise. I've yet to find a band that has enough resistance to make the exercise challenging. It seems like the lower back would fatigue before the upper body group. Not a bad thing necessarily guess.

You could do that same exercise single arm with a TRX (leaning away from the wall), which would also add transverse plane resistance.[/QUOTE]

I agree, bands are great for smaller muscle groups, like shoulders, but the back is such a large group of muscles that more resistance is typically needed. Another key thing is to work your forearms to help resist straining injuries like tennis elbow and micro fractures in the ulna that feel a lot like shin splints. TRX is great, but I typically use a much higher resistance exercise than just body weight, mixed in with TRX and other body weight exercises. Building your muscles will also help protect against injury and allow you to withstand harder crashes.

Large amounts of alcohol and really late nights seem to be our training weapon of choice ;)

In addition to rows, lat pulls, and various curls; "mower starts" is what I call them. good for back, shoulders and biceps. kneel on a bench and put a dumbell on the floor. pull it to your hip. need to get back on P90X but I'm back in the gym after a 3 year hiatus and feeling better every day.

Wakeboarding uses pretty much every muscle group except for your chest (ie...pushing movements.)

For wakeboarding you want/need to have strength as well as endurance. Therefore you should work on both of them. I recommend working a combination of both. Use a rep range of 6-10 reps per set. (Don't do the same amount of reps every workout for an extended period of time. Change the rep range occasionally.)

Work on a lot of pulling, shoulders, rotational, core stability, and explosive leg exercises. That will target the main muscles that you use wakeboarding.

Concentrate on using multi-joint, compound movements (Squats, lunges, pushups, rows, pullups, etc.) That is how your body works when you wakeboard, so that is how you should train.

Don't always train in 1 plain of motion. For example, with your legs, you can do crossover squats, crossover lunges, crossover step-ups, etc. That will ensure that you can engage and properly utilize your muscles when not moving in a straight line (which is a great majority of the time when you are wakeboarding.)

The TRX is great because you can do a wide variety of pulling and core exercises with it.

As far as resistance bands, if you get the correct bands, they offer plenty of resistance. The only ones that I use and recommend to my clients are "JC Bands." You can find them at performbetter.com and power-systems.com (Perform Better calls them "All-Purpose Bands.)

IMO, JC Bands are the most durable, last the longest, and offer the most resistance.

Three things worked best for me. 1- Seated rows with some 1 minute sets where you hold the handle with bent eblows (builds endurance, especially in the forearms). 2- P90X Yoga (core) 3- Wall squats (hold the position till failure a few times 1-legged, 2-legged).