Why Less is More: The Surprising Link Between Surfboard Design and Swimming Excellence

In surfing, choosing the right board is essential for achieving stability, control, and manoeuvrability in the water. Surfboards come in various shapes and sizes, with each design intended to provide a unique experience based on its surface area, buoyant force, and how it responds to the surfer’s movements. Larger surfboards, like longboards, offer greater stability and buoyancy, while smaller boards, like shortboards, provide agility and responsiveness. This concept of size, surface area, and buoyant force also applies to training aids for swimming, such as ONCORE, which is designed for specific muscle engagement and feedback, in contrast to traditional, larger kickboards.

In this article, we’ll look at how surfboards of different sizes serve different purposes in surfing, how buoyancy and surface area play into these designs, and how these principles relate to ONCORE, as compared to conventional kickboards.

The Role of Surfboard Size: Different Boards for Different Needs

Surfboards are generally categorised by length and surface area, each affecting their buoyancy and how they respond to the surfer’s movements. The bigger the board, the more stable it is, while smaller boards are typically more manoeuvrable.

1. Longboards (9+ feet):

Purpose: Longboards are ideal for beginners and surfers in need of extra stability. The larger surface area provides a higher level of buoyancy, allowing surfers to stay afloat more easily. This buoyancy helps beginners maintain balance and catch waves without expending too much effort.

Characteristics: Longboards have a high buoyant force and a broad surface area, which distribute the surfer’s weight evenly and make it easier to paddle, pop up, and glide on waves.

2.   Funboards (7-9 feet):

Purpose: Funboards are versatile, combining the stability of a longboard with some of the manoeuvrability of shorter boards. They’re often chosen by surfers who want a balance between easy paddling and a board that can turn and react a bit more quickly than a longboard.

Characteristics: Funboards offer moderate surface area and buoyant force, making them more responsive to directional changes than longboards but still buoyant enough to provide stability.

3.   Shortboards (under 7 feet):

Purpose: Shortboards are designed for advanced surfers who want to make quick turns, cutbacks, and perform on the waves with precision. These boards are highly responsive and require more skill to control due to their reduced buoyant force and smaller surface area.

Characteristics: With their minimal surface area and buoyant force, shortboards provide less float but excel in agility and manoeuvrability, allowing the surfer to cut through waves sharply and swiftly.

Surface Area and Buoyancy: Serving Different Training Purposes

In surfing, buoyancy and surface area are essential for staying afloat and having stability on the board. Larger boards with more surface area and buoyancy offer an easier ride, while smaller boards require more skill and control. These principles also apply to swimming tools like kickboards and ONCORE, each with specific surface areas and buoyant forces that serve different training purposes.

ONCORE vs Kickboards: Contrasting Benefits

When it comes to swimming aids, traditional kickboards and ONCORE serve distinct functions that cater to different aspects of training. Just as longboards provide stability for beginners and shortboards challenge experienced surfers, kickboards and ONCORE offer contrasting benefits for swimmers.

Traditional Kickboards:

Purpose: Kickboards are designed for buoyancy, supporting the swimmer as they practice their kick and build leg strength. The larger surface area and high buoyant force make them easy to hold onto, providing stability in the water and allowing the swimmer to isolate leg movements.

Characteristics: Like a longboard in surfing, kickboards have a broad surface area and buoyant force, keeping the swimmer afloat and stable. This support, however, limits core engagement and doesn’t challenge stabilising muscles significantly. While this can be helpful for building leg strength, it doesn’t promote full-body integration or precise control.

ONCORE:

Purpose: ONCORE is designed not as a buoyancy aid, but as a skill acquisition tool to promote core engagement, muscle activation, and body alignment. Its smaller surface area and reduced buoyant force require swimmers to actively engage their core and stabilising muscles to maintain control in the water.

Characteristics: Compared to traditional kickboards, ONCORE is more similar to a shortboard in surfing, demanding a higher level of skill and control. Its smaller surface area reduces its buoyancy, forcing swimmers to activate their core and shoulder stabilisers when submerging it. This setup encourages swimmers to feel and adjust their alignment and positioning in real-time, improving body awareness, technique, and muscle memory.

The Benefits of ONCORE’s Reduced Buoyant Force and Surface Area

ONCORE’s design enhances skill acquisition through feedback and core engagement, which are not possible with traditional kickboards. Here’s how ONCORE’s unique design works to build a more skill-focused swimming experience:

Improved Core Engagement: The smaller surface area and reduced buoyant force of ONCORE mean that swimmers can’t rely on it for support the way they can with a kickboard. Instead, they must actively engage their core and stabilising muscles to maintain body alignment, similar to how a shortboard surfer needs to stay engaged and balanced on the waves.

Enhanced Feedback for Skill Development: ONCORE’s textured surface and smaller size provide swimmers with immediate, tactile feedback, allowing them to feel subtle shifts in their body alignment. This direct feedback aids swimmers in correcting form and technique, leading to more refined body control and efficiency in the water.

Strengthening of Muscle Cross-Connections: ONCORE’s buoyant force is positioned to activate muscles in the arms and shoulders, but it also promotes full-body engagement. This differs from a kickboard, which isolates leg movements; ONCORE requires swimmers to use cross-connecting muscles, improving functional strength and supporting technical skill acquisition.

Building Body Awareness and Control: Similar to how surfers develop body control through different surfboards, ONCORE enables swimmers to gain better proprioception and body awareness in the water. The smaller surface area allows swimmers to feel when their body position shifts off-centre, helping them make adjustments that can transfer to swimming without ONCORE.

Build Awareness and Control: Become an Agile Swimmer

Just as surfboards vary in size and purpose to cater to different levels and styles of surfing, swimming aids like ONCORE and kickboards offer distinct benefits based on their surface area and buoyant force. Traditional kickboards, with their larger surface area, provide a stable training tool for isolating leg movements, akin to a longboard’s stability in surfing. ONCORE, with its reduced buoyant force and smaller surface area, is more challenging, promoting full-body engagement and core stability.

By encouraging core activation, providing direct feedback, and requiring real-time body adjustments, ONCORE supports swimmers in developing essential technical skills, body awareness, and muscle memory. In the same way that skilled surfers use shortboards to refine their agility and control on the waves, swimmers can use ONCORE to enhance their alignment, stability, and efficiency in the water, leading to a faster, more streamlined swimming technique.