5 Tips for Performing at Your Peak

Photo: Greg Panas

Becoming the best in sport doesn’t happen overnight. Just ask Candice Appleby ­­— the world’s top female SUP competitor and all-around superhuman. She has optimized her performance over the years with good old hard work, trial and error, wins and loses, triumphs and heartbreaks, and continuous introspection. Intrigued by her success, we asked her to share five tips for performing at your peak.

1. Make a training plan and do your best to stick to it. Sure, things come up and you might miss a session from time to time, but don’t waste energy beating yourself up. Accept the fact that life happens and put your full effort into your next workout.

2. Confidence comes from preparation, not performance! If you show up, put in the work and do everything within your power to be ready to go on race day, chances are you will do well. If something happens out there on the water, and you don’t get the results you were hoping for, at least you know that you did everything within your power and gave it 100%.

3. Recover! Proper recovery and rest is 50% of training.  When your body is hurting, rundown, fatigued and telling you NO, listen and treat it with respect. Allow your body to rest, take a day off, get a massage, stretch out, or see a chiropractor if necessary. Most importantly, get a full-night of sleep! 

4. Don’t waste time worrying about what your competition is doing. They’re not you! What they do on the water and how they train doesn’t have anything to do with your own performance. Focus your energy on the positive things you can do to achieve your own goals.

5.  Find your purpose! Focus on something that inspires you and motivates you to be the best version of yourself and let that drive you. Understand that the most important thing about paddling (or racing, surfing, any competition) is that paddling is NOT the most important thing.