Swimming - The Kickboard

Regardless of the sport you do, swimming is arguably the best offseason activity you can do outside of the sport itself.  Swimming does wonders for strength, endurance, and can even promote healing of minor injuries.

Swimmers use the kickboard, a small foam board that floats, to take their arms out of the equation and concentrate on their kicking technique.  For us snowboarders, the kickboard let's us target the part of our body we use the most: our legs. Using the kickboard, you can give your legs an awesome workout emphasizing strength, endurance and explosiveness while putting virtually no pressure on your crucial joins (knees, ankles, hips).

Another bonus for broke snowboard bums, kickboards are super cheap, usually less than $10. You can probably even borrow one from your local public pool for the day free of charge.

There are three main kicks to practice, each with specific benefits to your riding...

The freestyle kick is straightforward.  If you know how to swim, you likely learned to do it using the freestyle stroke.  The kick is done by simply alternating your legs.  This exercise let's you work each leg individually, strengthening the quads and hamstrings (two vital muscles for absorbing terrain in snowboarding).  These small, quick kicks will also give your legs greater endurance on the slopes.

The breast stroke kick is the most complicated of all of the exercises.  I'll let the video above explain the finer points of doing this kick properly, but you should note that the motion is somewhat similar to jumping minus the impact and pressure put on your knees.  The breast stroke kick not only builds explosiveness with its snapping motion, but the general technique is also good for stretching and loosening areas that get beaten pretty good during the season.

The butterfly kick is a powerful kick that uses both legs to boost you forward in the water.  For this kick to be truly effective, you really need to explode from the quads, making it an awesome strengthening exercise.  Your core also comes into play in timing and initializing the snap, as well as stabilizing your body in the water.

It's a sweltering 110º+ daily where I live, and from what I understand those of us not in the southern hemisphere are all suffering from a miserably hot, hot, hot summer.  For just about all of us, swimming is the only exercise we are going to get until winter finally comes back. And who wants to spend the first few weeks of the season sore as fuck?

Don't forget your Speedo!