Kayaking is an outside sport loved by many. It additionally has large advantages in your coronary heart, joints, and higher physique power.
Whether or not you’re a leisure paddler or a aggressive athlete, kayaking has rather a lot to supply in your well being and well-being. Right here’s all the pieces you’ll want to find out about this heart-pumping (but stress-free) water sport.
What Is Kayaking?
At first look, kayaking could appear indistinguishable from canoeing. Nonetheless, there are key variations that make kayaking distinctive.
A kayak is a smaller, extra compact watercraft than a canoe, and riders are strapped into particular person seats. Due to a kayak’s smaller dimension, it’s finest steered by a double-sided paddle. As you kayak, you’ll maintain this paddle with each palms, dipping it into the water on alternating sides to propel you alongside.
Many kayaks are for solo riders solely, however you’ll additionally discover tandem kayaks that seat two folks (and even, sometimes, three folks!). When paddling with a associate, the individual seated within the entrance controls the rhythm of paddling, whereas the individual within the again follows the sample of their strokes.
Tools Wanted for Kayaking
Earlier than you head out for an aquatic journey, it’s essential to equip your self with the precise gear. For the perfect kayaking expertise, be sure you have the next gadgets:
- A kayak to seat the suitable variety of folks
- One double-sided paddle per individual
- A life vest or different flotation gadget
- Spray skirt (elective, to maintain your decrease physique dry)
- Water bottle
Well being Advantages of Kayaking
Kayaking combines cardiovascular exercise with low-impact power coaching for an all-around wonderful exercise. Listed here are among the well being advantages you possibly can count on out of your time on the water.
Improved Cardiovascular Well being
In search of an thrilling technique to get your beneficial 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio exercise for the week? Kayaking might be your new go-to sport.
“Cardiovascular train is exercise that will increase your coronary heart charge and respiration charge for 10 minutes or extra. Kayaking, as a result of it’s a rhythmic train the place you preserve a reasonably regular tempo, matches the invoice properly,” says Los Angeles-based private coach Laura Flynn Endres.
As you navigate your chosen physique of water, the tempo and depth of your kayaking are as much as you. The tougher you paddle, the extra you’ll improve your coronary heart charge—however intervals of lighter exercise include benefits, too.
“Sustaining a gentle tempo (and even alternating between slower and quicker intervals) will get the guts pumping and make this a implausible low-impact train possibility for bettering coronary heart well being and burning fats,” Endres says.
Elevated Higher Physique Power
Clearly, your higher physique sees nearly all of the motion in kayaking. The movement of elevating and dipping your paddle, plus the resistance of the water mix to strengthen the muscular tissues in your arms, shoulders, again, and chest. It’s not stunning {that a} research of Olympic kayakers discovered that their physique, on common, leaned towards a bigger higher physique girth.
Elevated Power in Legs, Glutes, and Core
Regardless of its obvious deal with the higher physique, kayaking doesn’t go away the decrease physique with no exercise of its personal.
“The muscular tissues of the again, shoulders, arms, and abs are the primary drivers, sure, however correct and environment friendly paddling kind requires using leg and glute muscular tissues, too,” says Endres. “Constructing muscle power and muscle endurance in these physique components will make it easier to preserve correct kind, preserve a gentle tempo, and use environment friendly and efficient paddling strokes.
Together with leg and glute muscular tissues, the back-and-forth movement of seated paddling additionally engages your core, selling stronger, leaner abs. Your indirect muscular tissues—the muscular tissues accountable for rotating your core—are notably engaged with the movement of paddling to the left and proper.
Low-Influence Motion That is Simple on the Joints
Excessive-impact train isn’t proper for everybody. In actual fact, in some seasons of life, or for folks with sure well being situations, low-impact exercises are a much better alternative.
Not like working, tennis, and plenty of group sports activities, kayaking doesn’t contain any pounding of your limbs towards the bottom. This low-impact train is mild on the joints, making it appropriate for folks with arthritis or these prone to damage.
Low-impact actions include the extra benefit of much less restoration time post-workout. And a 2015 research within the journal Sports activities Drugs Open even discovered that low-impact train promoted cognitive well being in older adults.
Time Spent Open air
In our high-tech, fast-paced world, who couldn’t use extra recent air? Analysis reveals that simply 20 minutes in nature can assist scale back markers of stress. Getting out on a lake, river, or pond in your kayak might be a much-needed antidote to the stressors of day by day life.
As you enterprise out, paddle in hand, you may additionally rekindle your sense of journey and curiosity. (Who is aware of the place your kayak might take you, or what you’ll see alongside the way in which?) Moreover, the head-clearing silence of alone time generally is a highly effective technique of re-centering and reconnecting along with your inside self.
Put together for Kayaking
Except you reside proper subsequent to a lake, it’s possible you’ll not be capable to get in your kayak day by day. However that doesn’t imply you possibly can’t carry out workouts at dwelling or on the fitness center that prep you for the times on the water.
Endres suggests a number of off-the-water workouts to get (or keep) in kayaking form. “A stable core goes to be your basis, your powerhouse, so strive together with planks, lifeless bugs, hollow-body holds, and bicycle motions in your obliques.”
She additionally advises working the higher and decrease again with rowing workouts utilizing dumbbells, a barbell, bands, or cables. Workout routines for strengthening biceps and triceps can embody bicep curls, tricep extensions, and tricep bench dips. “And don’t neglect to work legs with squats, lunges, deadlifts, and step-ups, and work glutes with hip thrusts, clamshells, and bridges!”
When you’d like to spice up your ability even additional, you would possibly even contemplate digital kayaking. One small research discovered that individuals who engaged with a digital actuality kayaking simulator elevated their enjoyment and studying progress with the game.
A Phrase from Verywell
For a low-impact sport that may get your coronary heart pumping and your muscular tissues toned, contemplate dipping into kayaking. It could require an upfront monetary funding, however the bodily and psychological well being advantages could make all of it worthwhile.
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