Is Kitesurfing considered exercise?

[shawn13]

Ive worn a heart rate monitor while kiting!

[Pippi langsamer]

How are you managing 24m below sea level there?

[shawn13]

How are you managing 24m below sea level there?

MAGIC!!!

Thats a good question. Something to do with the barometric receiver in the unit. When its sunny and clear it seemed to read around 0.

[Westozzy]

Don't forget the pUmPiNg....!!!

Nah just bought an electric pump....dear god I've become one of THEM!!

[Wiski23]

He'll yes it's massively aerobic. I need protein shakes after every 4 hour sesh or I burn too much muscle. Kiting has also given me a flat stomach.
I suppose it can be riding style thou. If you're just riding left to right then you're not doing too much work, but if your constantly boosting or unhooking then you're certainly getting a total body workout.

[Tiago1973]

He'll yes it's massively aerobic. I need protein shakes after every 4 hour sesh or I burn too much muscle. Kiting has also given me a flat stomach.
I suppose it can be riding style thou. If you're just riding left to right then you're not doing too much work, but if your constantly boosting or unhooking then you're certainly getting a total body workout.

i overstated when said it´s zero aerobic, but really disagree when you see it as mainly aerobic, even by un-hooking a lot (aka - riding hard?)

un-hook is a short burst of high energy in very little time, with down-time between tricks to recovery lost ground

if you were swimming or running would be like a series of short sprints with lot´s of recovery time between them

how do you call this aerobic?

not an expert but from a former life i see it more a kind of lactic acid tolerance training, or something


so yeahj, it´s exercise, the harder you go the harder it is (guess as in any sport), but i do not really see it as a very balanced one

[DocDeuce]

i've been kiting steady, year round for almost 3 years. When I started, I weighed about 229lbs...I now weigh between 200lbs and 205lbs depending on how many beers I had that day. I'm 47 and have abs again. I am usually pleasantly exhausted after a day of kiting... so Yes, kiting is great exercise!!

DD

[Starsky]

Don't be daft, of course its exercise. What type and what intensity is all over the map. Burns calories in accordance to how you ride and conditions, and that is the best most riders get out of it. Is it aerobic? Not really. It certainly won't increase your VO2 Max much, but there can be plenty of metabolic demand. Will it make you stronger, improve power or help muscular endurance? It certainly can, but that again is totally variable. The biggest being frequency and then intensity. Jumping in boots is a huge load on the abs. Unhook and it incorporates all your primary engines of movement. Feathering the bar on a surfboard in easy conditions is almost no work.

Complete exercise? far from it. There is definitely room for interesting discussion here! Many riders use very limited range of motion in prolonged static loaded postures that contributes to chronic muscle tension imbalances. Movements are highly repetitive, small amplitude, coping with some high peak loads often in weak anatomical positions. I cringe looking at some of the postures people race in. Add to that random often low frequency and extended duration and you can make an argument that kiting could be pretty rough on you... Plenty of injury thread on here.

No way does kiting alone provide a balanced fitness regime for more than a handful of riders in a handful of locations. Frequency alone is no where near enough for most kiters to stay truly fit. Are there guys who are reasonably fit from kiting alone, of course, but look at the kiting population as a whole and its the exception, not the rule.

Rely on kiting too much for your exercise and you inevitably have times in the years where you seem to start hurting in all your problem spots two weeks into a dry spell when all your ability to buffer those issues begins to wane.

[BWD]

Last session in 39 deg water sure was.
Massive calorie debt.
Ate an extra meal a day for 3 days after.

[Nico]

Naaaah.
It s only fun : )