The importance of paddling to surfing performance: Insights from elite athletes, coaches, and performance support practitioners

Although paddling has been widely studied, there remains a limited understanding of how a surfer's paddling ability directly influences their wave-riding performance. Using an ecological approach, this study examined the importance of paddling to surfing performance from the perspective of elite Australian athletes, coaches, and performance support practitioners. Ten elite Australian surfing coaches, ten elite Australian surfing athletes, and eight performance support practitioners completed semi-structured interviews. This approach underscores the significance of incorporating experiential knowledge from coaches, athletes, and performance support practitioners, particularly in surfing where the nature of high-performance sport requires a multi-disciplinary approach and highlights the potential value of qualitatively exploring expert perspectives. Findings showed that all participants agree that paddling is an integral aspect of surfing performance despite not being directly scored in competition. The ecological dynamics approach provided a framework for understanding the function of paddling as a tool that enables surfers to exploit the affordances of the environment and support positive performance outcomes under highly variable conditions. The findings highlight the complexities of the performer-environment relationship in surfing and draw attention to the potential for improvements in surfing performance that may be elicited by enhancing a surfer's paddling ability. This study contributes to a growing body of sports science literature investigating paddling performance in surfers and underscores the importance of paddling to surfing performance.