For some people, Stand up Paddleboarding starts and stops with being able to balance on the board, have an awesome day out with friends, paddling around flat water in some beautiful locations.
For others, their fun is in Whitewater Paddleboarding.
Whitewater paddleboarding (often called whitewater SUP) is exactly what it sounds like: taking a stand-up paddleboard off the calm lakes and ocean flats and dropping it right into turbulent river rapids.
Think of it as a hybrid between surfing and whitewater kayaking. It’s fast-paced, highly engaging, and requires a mix of intense core strength, quick reflexes, and a willingness to get wet.
Some like SUP freestyle
If whitewater paddleboarding is the aggressive, rugged cousin of the sport, freestyle paddleboarding (or Freestyle SUP) is the figure skating or skateboarding equivalent.
Instead of trying to travel from point A to point B, freestyle is entirely about artistic expression, flat-water tricks, and acrobatics. It is a rapidly growing, highly creative discipline where the goal is to test the absolute limits of your balance by manipulating the board in ways it was never technically designed to move.
All the above need some finer balance skills, and the ability to move around the board, to be able to jumps, to paddle in a surf stance, and to be dynamic enough to deal with some random unstable movements.
This weekend we got the chance to work on those.