Do Swimmers Surf Better?

Can Swimming Help Your Surfing?

Most surfers know that being fit helps your surfing. But when it comes to training out of the water, it's worth being clear about what you're actually trying to improve because not all cross-training gets you to the same place. Swimming and paddle training in particular, overlap in some ways and diverge in others, and understanding the difference helps you use both more deliberately and efficiently.

What swimming gives you

On a recent podcast with pro-surfer Garazi Sanchez, we spoke about the benefits of swimming as surf training. It builds general cardiovascular fitness and works many of the same muscle groups involved in paddling: the shoulders, lats, and back. It's not a perfect overlap, but it's not useless either.

However, the most underrated benefit of swimming for surfers isn't actually fitness, it's comfort with moving through water. There's a difference between someone who can tread water and someone who knows instinctively how to orient themselves, control their movement, and stay calm when the ocean has other plans. Swimming builds this second kind of comfort.

Where paddle training is different

Paddle training targets something swimming doesn't: the exact mechanics of paddling on a surfboard. When you’re paddling, your body is in an arched position; chest up, lower back engaged, head raised. You're not streamlined the way you are in a pool. The stroke is shorter, the recovery is different, and the muscles doing the most work are being loaded in a way that swimming simply doesn't replicate. Training that mimics this position, whether on land or in the surf itself, builds strength and endurance in the exact muscles that are needed for getting into waves.

If you’re looking for the best land training for surfing, it is important to keep in mind that paddle speed and endurance are the most performance-limiting factors in surfing. If you can't paddle fast enough to catch a wave, technique for what comes after you pop-up doesn't matter. If you're gassed after twenty minutes of paddling, you'll also reduce the amount of time you could be spending improving your technique in the water. Paddle-specific training improves speed and endurance in the right muscles, through the right range of motion.

Additionally, the recovery stroke (the phase of the paddle where your arm exits the water and resets to the top) is also something you can only really train by paddling. It's a subtle but important part of paddle efficiency that swimming doesn't address.

Both, but with clarity

Swimming makes you a more capable, more comfortable person in the water. It builds breath control, reduces fear, and develops a general fitness base that supports everything you do in the surf. Those are real gains worth having for surfers, and if that’s your focus then go for it. 

But if your goal is to specifically get better at catching more waves, last longer in the lineup, and build the strength that allows you to stay in an arched position on a board, paddle training is the more direct route. It's not that swimming is inefficient; it's that it's solving a different problem.

Done together, they complement each other well. Swimming takes care of the water confidence and aerobic base, while paddle training takes care of the surf-specific strength and mechanics. If you only have time for one, and your main frustration is missing waves or running out of steam in the lineup, paddle training will move the needle faster.

Enter the Basis Paddle Trainer.

I've gone months without surfing and rolled up to pumping swell and surfed 3 hr sessions, multiple times a day, day after day after day, by using the Basis Paddle Trainer.

Train anytime, anywhere, so you can catch more waves and have more fun.

Unlike elastic resistance bands, swimming in the pool, or funky gym workouts these things actually work.

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For a deep dive customer testimonial from one of our early beta testers check out: