Learn to Stand Up Paddle Board In Under 5 Minutes! - Ep 1

Hi, I'm Jimmy Blakeney with Aisle Paddleboards and I'm also an ACA instructor trainer. I've trained tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of paddlers over the past ten years through my YouTube videos. And I get a lot of requests for people that want a really simple introductory video to get them started. So first things first, we're going to talk about safety. When you're learning to paddle, always stay in calm, protected waters. Also, you want to always wear your life jacket and your leash when you're out on the water and you're learning. Next, make sure you paddle somewhere where you don't have any boat traffic to get in your way. And finally, always paddle with a friend. Okay, so when it comes to our paddle, we're going to want to size our paddle by placing it in front of our foot, opening the adjustment mechanism on your paddle, and raising up your arm until your arm is just comfortably extended. Once you do that, that's about the right length. Then you want to check your elbows and make sure your elbows are bent about 90 degrees. That's a good reference for how wide you want to hold your paddle. If you hold it too narrow, you're not going to be able to paddle very efficiently. So we're going to put on our leash before we get out of the water. You can wear it around your ankle or around your calf. We're going to find a spot where we have deep water so that the fin doesn't catch. I like to turn the board parallel to shore, and I'll wade out into water that I know is deeper than my fin is long. Then I'm ready to get on the board. I'll place my paddle across in front of the carry handle, and I'm going to put my knees on either side of the handle, push away from shore, and I'm going to stay on my knees. While I'm on my knees, I'm going to focus on three key things before I go to stand up. One is placing the paddle fully in the water before I take a stroke. And I'm going to work on switching sides because we have to be able to switch sides. I take the top hand off, switch over, switch sides. Finally, you'll notice that my paddle blade is canted forward. This is the correct way to hold your paddle. You don't want to hold your paddle backwards where we're scooping the water. And the reason is is because that lifts water instead of allowing you to propel yourself forward when the blade is in a vertical orientation in the water. All right, so once I've practiced on my knees, I'm comfortable on my knees. In order to stand up, I'm going to take a stroke or two because it's going to give me a little momentum. I'm going to place the paddle across the board, look ahead, get my feet flat, be in a squat position with my back straight, and I'm going to come up, and I'm going to quickly get that blade in the water. The quicker you get the blade in the water and take a stroke, the more stable you're going to be. My knees are slightly bent, my tailbone's tucked under, and now I'm stand up paddle boarding. Okay, so we're up, we're paddling around, we're having fun. A few things to consider to be more efficient with our strokes. The first thing is the paddle shaft should be vertical when I take my stroke to go straight, and the paddle comes out at my foot. We don't paddle behind us. The second thing is if I want to turn the board instead of go straight, instead of a vertical paddle, I'm going to have it at about a 45-degree angle. Again, place the blade fully in, and then I'm going to push the paddle away from the board. This is going to let us turn. I can also do that from the tail. So that's the way we turn our board and turn around. That's called a sweep stroke. We're up, we're cruising, we're getting a great workout. We got the blade fully in the water. Another thing to keep in mind to be more efficient, we're going to rotate our hips and shoulders and plant the paddle, and we're going to use our core. We're not just going to paddle with our arms like this. We're going to actually plant the paddle, and we're going to act like we're planting it in cement and pull ourselves past the paddle blade. I've got to rotate my hips and shoulders in order to do this. We just went out, we had a great paddle, time to come back to shore. Before we get too close to shore, we're going to do a squat, drop down to our knees, back to paddling on our knees. I'm going to come in close to shore. At this point, I can let the nose run up on shore. When I'm still in the water, I can easily lift the rail, and the water supports the board. Then I can grab it with the handle and walk up out of the water. There we go. So that's a wrap. If you enjoyed this video, check out the rest of our videos, our better and balanced SUP tips and tricks, and we'll see you out there on the water.