The Final Instalment of Jacko’s Gym: Day Six
Boss Man’s note: All this week we’ve been following Paul Jackson and his elite SUP race training squad as they prepare for the Battle of the Paddle.
These guys train harder than 99.9% of any other stand up paddlers, anywhere else in the world. This week’s intense Stand Up Paddle race training regime isn’t something you drive straight into if you’re a beginner, but it’s definitely something to work up towards. It also shows some of what it takes to become an elite SUP champion, so we hope it’s given you some inspiration and motivation.
While the week-long “Jacko’s Gym” series may be finishing today, Jacko and his crew will start a similar regime all over again on Monday. So no matter when you want to start getting (very) serious about your SUP race training, you can always check back and use this six-day workout as an excellent guide.
This is Day 6, so be sure to check out Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5 if you missed ’em.
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Day Six (morning session)
It’s Saturday morning. Last day of the week!
It’s the last day of training for the week and the body should be feeling a little tired, so this is where you have to lift and push through the pain while still keeping a good technique throughout the whole session!!
We set a mini Battle of the Paddle-style course, with each lap around 1.2km.
500m warm-up paddle- 4 x BoP laps (4.8km)
- 5 minutes rest
- 1 x BoP lap (1.2km)
- 5 minutes rest
- 2 x BoP laps (2.4Km)
- 5 minutes rest
- 1 x BoP lap (1.2km)
- 500m warm-down paddle
So all up we did just over 10 k’s of paddling this morning, which is a little over the average size of a BoP course. Plus we got plenty of buoy-turn practice in along the way.
As I was saying yesterday, we like to train in the surf as much as possible (to replicate Battle of the Paddle race conditions), but the weather was pretty bad this morning so we decided to stay in the protected flat-water.
You can still set a BoP style course though; just place out a few buoys in an “M” shape. That way you can practice your sprints and buoy-turns, the only thing that’s missing is the waves. Anyway this is how our practice BoP course turned out…
And here’s how our session looked on the GPS:
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Day Six (afternoon session)
Rest session! Take tomorrow off as well, because it all starts again on Monday 😉
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OK so that’s it for the week-long training regime.
This is just a guide on what one of our normal weeks looks like. As you can see not every session needs to be hard and working the small things is just as important as anything else. Also remember everyone is different and some might like to train more or less. The main thing is listen to your body and if it feels tired and needs a rest then give it a rest!!
We will repeat this weeks training one week out from the Battle of the Paddle and see if we can get improvements in any areas, so keep a eye out on SUPracer.com for the next installment!
The sessions for this week were put together by myself and our coach Pete Dorries from Quantum Coaching.
Also a big thanks to my sponsor Fanatic for letting me test out what works for me and for making the world’s best SUP race boards in general!
Cheers,
– Jacko
