Is kitesurfing is good excercise?

probabaly better workout if you ride in the waves/ chop. Not so much if you spend 2 hours mowing the lawn on your TT

try working your board and kite beating upwind against 6 knots of tide and that gets your heart beating.
crusing on a twin tip does nothing but try working hard throwing 3-4 tricks from shore to shore

we have consecutive posts of:

who's the heaviest kiter in Australia?

and

So what's kitesurfing like for fitness?

nigelw2 said...

There might be a reality TV show in it

Biggest Kitesurfing Loser

If you have consistent wind and get out for an hour and a half most evenings you will get fit. One of the things I have noticed is you don't usually notice how hard you have working until you get into bed and can feel the heat from all the worked muscles on your body. Of course you have to resist the temptation to eat a big meal just because you did 90 minutes of exercise too.

"Mowing the lawn" will give you that core strength, but not so much of an aerobic workout. If you start doing tricks and/or riding waves and chop plus pushing yourself the intensity increases. I found the most physically demanding period was when I was going upwind but coming off a bit and doing a fair bit of body dragging to get back to my board.

Personally I find kitesurfing to be a reason to keep fit, even if it doesn't make me fit. Having good base fitness and strength makes it easier to deal with the stresses and strains, and minimising the extra kilos helps you in marginal conditions. This also applies to other activities I like to do such as skiing, snowboarding and hiking.

Because the last couple of seasons have been crud I have found I have lost fitness over the summer. Mainly because if the forecast is for 20 knot SW seabreeze I pack the gear in anticipation of an after work sesh and drive to work instead of riding the bike the 46 km to and from work. If the forecast doesn't come through then I end up at home on the couch tending to my depression with a tub of Ben and Jerrys (or a pint of beer). In fact in January I was so down on the general conditions in Melbourne I started to ride to and from work regardless of the forecast. If the breeze came in well I just got a good tailwind home to get on the water sooner!

nigelw2 said...

Wouldnt rate it myself. As surfy31 said riding in rough conditions will sort you out and get the heart rate up a bit. Riding flat water with good wind is pretty easy going though, you would need to be out for hours to burn much energy. If you want a good workout try a bit of mountain biking

Agree with mountain biking, kited for many years, thought i was fit, got right into MTB rides few years ago, hard single track stuff, big hills, lots of km etc.
I can kite for hours now with out getting tired, yes choppy ocean, waves, working up wind.

davem207 said...

Hmmm i think you only would loose weight from kiting cause if your like me, when the season is cranking i tend to eat breakfast then dont bother with food all day as im chasing wind and trying to get as much in while the suns up by the time i get home im too buggered to bother cooking and one beer gets me wasted so i crash then wake up and do it all again, so really i only ever loose weight cause im not wasting kiting time, by eating!!

Agreed on the core strength development with kiting, especially if you learn to use you Brody weight and board to edge rather than the depower poo stance.

I was out of the water for 6 months with a bit of pilates just to keep me in check. My first kite back (1hr) had me aching for a week, just core strength stuff, pilates is awesome but the kite puts it back in it's box

An MRI also found I had added 2.2kgs to my fun glands

IMO light wind kiting is much more of a workout than kiting in good wind. You have to work so much more on getting upwind and you are working the kite alot more. Plus you generally have to pump up a much bigger kite. Having said that I think there are millions of more effective activities you could do to get fit.

Kiting does nothing for fitness, I kite 2-3 days a week and big sessions on weekends and i'm a fat loser.

Surf and kite, then you get fit and ripped like me.....

wishy said...

Kiting does nothing for fitness, I kite 2-3 days a week and big sessions on weekends and i'm a fat loser.

But are those weekend sessions emu sessions?

DJF said...

Kiting for fitness? Nah...
Seriously, the biggest workout for many kiters is:
- pumping up
- body dragging
- walk of shame

That's for sure. When your learning to stay up wind it kicks the crap outa ya. But when you get some technique it gets much easier to "mow"

Interesting little link I read about this very topic just last week. Hopefully it hasn't been posted in this thread already

weightology.net/burning-calories-with-kiteboarding/

Yeah.... kiting is not anaerobic

anaerobic = 30 secs max