Surf Journalist pushes to never-before-seen fitness achievement, paddles further than he ever has by carefully gauging body’s recovery!

Pump it up.

It is flat in Southern California and has been for quite some time now. No waves, not a ripple, nothing even the world’s most popular surfer Ben Gravy could milk.

Like a pancake but these are the days that greatness-bound surfers train, push, prepare. But how hard should a great-adjacent surfer train, push, prepare? Would be quite the shame to injure oneself kettlebelling and have to sit out the next swell event.

Thankfully, my WHOOP strap constantly measures how my vessel is handling itself, when I should go big, when I should go light.

The general category is called “recovery” and reflects how well prepared a body is to take on strain, and is a measure of a body’s “return to baseline” after a stressor.

“The size of these stressors,” according to WHOOP, “which can range from illness, exercise, psychological stress or sleep deprivation – determines how much a body needs to recover.”

In other words, when “recovery” is high, a body is primed to take on strain. When “recovery” is low,  greater risk for injury, or overtraining (during intense workouts), might be nigh.

Well, I bent my ear and listened carefully to my personalized digital fitness and health coach and, last Monday had very high recovery so took my 5’11 Album surfboard into the lake-like sea and paddle and paddle and paddle and paddle some more. Body primed, shoulders well-oiled, and I paddled all the way from the dangerous Cardiff Reef to very near San Elijo State Beach.

For those who don’t know the area, nearly a mile of paddling with man-eating Great Whites circling.

Wow.

A never-before-seen fitness achievement.

Yesterday, though, I witnessed that my recovery was very low. Instead of pushing through and hurting myself and making myself not great, I allowed a day of rest wherein the only workout I participated in was yelling at impolite pre-teen hordes on electric bikes.

Those things, man.