We learn from our mistakes, or at least we are supposed to. However, I suspect I am not the only one who doesn’t learn enough from them when they are made.
Let me explain, starting with some mistake history
As a teenager, I was a competitive swimmer, not great but quite good, fractions of a second away from County level in the UK. My family and I didn’t have the last few per cent of determination needed to take things to the next level. Swimming, and swimming fast, remained my primary exercise for a very long time, I returned to the pool as a Masters swimmer in my late 30s and was quick enough to get a spot in my clubs squad for relays, much to the amusement of other clubs at swim meets.
Swimming is a great exercise, and swimmers have great flexibility. This is important for later.
In my late teens / early twenties, I became a cyclist, initially because I could no longer afford to maintain my rusting Alfasud (what a car!) which eventually went to the scrap yard. I could not afford a replacement car, so I bought an inexpensive mountain bike with the money from the yard and started to ride everywhere.
This was long before social media was a thing, and sadly, I have no photos of the Purple Dawes One Track, the only bike in the shop large enough for me!
 |
| Cyclocross bikes were made for this |
That cheap bike was upgraded and then replaced by a better one, I got to know the riders at my local bike shop, and I went to a few mountain bike races (just for fun!) and joined the crew working on the Grundig World Cup mountain bike course in Plymouth, trail building. Happy days!
My new mountain bike was joined by a road bike and a cyclocross bike and then different mountain bikes, full suspension and a 29er or two, and I was covering tens of thousands of km every year and taking cycling holidays in Europe, mountain biking in Spain, road cycling in France and trips to mountain bike trail centres all over the UK.
I became proficient at bike maintance, to the point where I was fixing and maintaining friends' bikes for them, but I failed to maintain myself and was, unintentionally, loosing all that flexibility from my swimming days. Then, one morning before a bike trip, my hamstrings said ‘Enough!’.
I could not stand up straight and had to get some help.
 |
| The dusty side of UK MTB riding |
It took some time to correct my hamstrings; luckily, there was no lasting damage, and stretching after every ride became part of the routine, learning from my ignorance and my mistakes. And I rode on, problem-free for years and years, until an accident in a car I was a passenger in. That crash damaged my neck, and riding, especially on drop bars, became painful as a result.
 |
| One of the last cycling events I took part in, the 2014 Ronde Van Vlaanderen, 6 weeks after the accident, with a lot of pain relief!! |
Luckily for me, I had a SUP and slowly that took over from cycling.
 |
| Summer 2013, South Devon coast |
SUP is a fantastic exercise and a full-body workout, but it can put a lot of stress on the body. We all know we should warm up and cool down after sessions, and you will now work out where I am going with this brief Jones sporting history.
2024 was, for me, a year about distance. My primary goals were more KMs than I had ever done before, and I hit all of those goals despite the slow start to the year. The pressure I put myself under to hit those goals resulted in a lot of time on the water in the second half of the year, and that’s when I let my already minimal post-paddle routine slip away.
 |
| 2024 Goal more than completed |
At first, it made no difference; I was paddling in all weather and enjoying myself, and it takes time to lose flexibility. Then, near the end of the year, I started to get some mobility issues with my left arm, only noticeable on longer paddles when there were no rests, the 10km Time Trial, for example. But when winter turned up, the problem went away because I was paddling less.
The damage was done, though, as I had got into the bad, very bad, habit of not stretching after a workout.
 |
| There should be some SUP Images in a SUP blog |
This spring, I started to get the same issue with the right side, again, only on longer training sessions with no rest, the 10km Time Trial.
I discussed this with Michael, and we made some changes. On the equipment side I removed the thick grip I had been using on the paddleshaft, now replaced with a much thinner one to reduce my grip pressure and relieve tension in the forearm. This improved things a little, but on 10km Time Trials, I was still struggling in the last 2km to maintain pace due to discomfort when paddling, not fatigue.
One of the major changes Michael introduced was to have long sessions completely focused on technique, repeating the drills he taught the group last year at the Booth Training clinic in Copenhagen.
And this is where I had a “Eureka!” moment: The reach in my paddle stroke was shorter than it used to be.
Not by much, but it appeared to be the same on both sides. That realisation was enough to make me think about it and work out what was going wrong with my stroke.
I have lost some mobility.
Not learning from mistakes
I started to stretch again, after training sessions and at home. Long sessions on the floor, joined by my new dog, Bongo, who thinks that any time I am on the floor it is an invitation to play! Dog yoga on the internet never shows a 33kg ‘puppy’ who is determined to sit on top of you all the time, but he makes it more fun.
 |
| This is how you will find me, with a dog on top, every evening |
You can find this 8-minute video from Quickstep on YouTube here
Of course, I am no expert on stretching and, obviously, I am not doing enough of it, but over the last 4 weeks, things have started to improve. I still have to correct the bad habits I have picked up since Copenhagen, but today my reach was a little further than last week, and I have noticed less discomfort on longer sessions.
The lesson here, STRETCH! Especially after sessions.
I have found precious few good stretching routines for SUP paddlers available on the internet. Boothy has included some stretches in one of his older videos here on BoothTV and Juliette DuHaime recently shared some of her warm up routine on Instagram. Your Google Searches may be more successful than mine
But for the most part, paddlers seem to miss this important part of the routine, or they put them in places that are hard to find! And brands seem to focus on equipment and equipment maintenance, not paddler maintenance.
Yoga for cyclists from Adriene
So I use cycling resources for my stretching routines. Luckily for me, there are a lot of stretching for cyclists videos available.
Here is a word of caution: when undertaking any new exercise, take it easy! You can cause more problems by getting it wrong or pushing too hard, and no one wants to do that. If you can get to a Yoga class, then do it; you will benefit from it in so many ways. But if you cannot, then find an online practitioner you feel comfortable with and join in from your own home. Take time for your own body maintenance, and you will feel the benefits.
Images used are all from me except the feature image, taken by Brydon Cheyney in June 2011.
Invest in Yourself!
Investing in yourself is the BEST upgrade you can make, with no exceptions. And that is what this series of blog posts are all about, investing in this paddler with the help of World Champion Michael Booth.
You can find out more about Michael's training on his website Booth Training, from his Booth Training Instagram account and on his YouTube channel BoothTV.
You can find me running the Facebook group SUP My Race and now, occasionally, on Instagram.
You can read the previous training logs here Training Logs and you can get to individual blog posts using the labels in the sidebar.
See you on the water!
Finally, here is Bongo. He was destined to be a guide dog here in Sweden, but failed his medical and ended up living with us.
