As the sport of stand up paddle boarding progresses and gets more popular, people come up with more iterations of the sport. The most challenging out of these iterations is said to be doing yoga while riding your stand up paddle board. If you want to know how to do your yoga poses on your paddle board, or you are curious if you can do yoga on an inflatable paddle board, and how wide should a paddle board be, then read on!
How Do You Pose on a Paddle Board?
Doing yoga on a stand up paddle board is admittedly a tad more difficult than, say, doing it in a nice, air-conditioned yoga studio. The yoga poses and body position may be the same as what you do on land, but the keys to doing the poses correctly on a floating board include being more mindful, focused, and balanced. It would also require you to have breath skills that would enable you to continue the practice even on the surface of the water.
There really is no guidebook on how you would do yoga poses on a paddle board. But SUP yogis recommend that you should practice being mindful of all the elements around you, focus on your breathing, stop thinking that you would fall in the water, and just have fun!
Can You Do Yoga on an Inflatable Paddle Board?
You can definitely do yoga on an inflatable stand up paddle board. In fact, inflatable SUP is said to be a great board for SUP yoga. One reason is that doing yoga on an inflatable SUP adds another level of intensity to your practice and it engages your core a lot.
Aside from that, the inflatable stand up paddle board is great for yoga because of its softer surface making the inflatable SUP a comfortable board to practice yoga in. Inflatable SUP is also designed to be a lot more stable than hard board paddle boards.
How Wide Should the Paddle Board Be When Doing Yoga on the Board?
Your paddle board should be at least 31 inches wide to be able to accommodate all the different yoga poses that you will be doing. Your board also needs to have plenty of room for you to be able to comfortably practice yoga. If you think that you will be committing more time to do yoga on top of a stand up paddle board, it is recommended to get a board that is at least 33 inches in wide. This is because it is a lot more stable than narrower boards.
Aside from the width, you should also consider the thickness of the board and the proportion between the two. It is recommended that you should look for a paddle board that is at least 6 inches thick, however, this is not always the case.
Although owning a 36-inch paddle board is great for its stability, you should rethink your choices if it is 6 inches thick because they are not proportionate and can result in more splashes on the water. A board that is 34 inches in width and 5 inches in thickness is more proportionate and would offer more stability to you.
