104 Candice Land - Exercise Physiologist for WSL and "The Female Surfer" 4q6s16

Are you training like a surfer—or just training like a dude in the gym? In this episode, exercise physiologist and World Surf League performance expert Candice Land reveals why most female surfers are unknowingly training against their own biology. From misunderstood core stability to the underrated power of the vestibular system, this conversation redefines surf fitness for the modern woman. Learn why your pelvis—not your abs—is the real key to injury-free, powerful surfing Discover the three-pillar training system designed specifically for female surfers across all stages of life Understand how to use your cycle, nervous system, and movement patterns to surf with more confidence and energy Hit play now to uncover the science-backed approach that’s helping female surfers build smarter, safer, and more powerful bodies for the waves. Resources: Visit The Female Surfer for more information on Candice’s programs and resources for female surfers. Follow Candice on Instagram: @thefemalesurfer Sponsor for this episode is Flatrock Wetsuits, head to https://flatrockwetsuits.com.au and use code MASTER15  at checkout for 15% off. Key Points Candice Land, an exercise physiologist for the World Surf League and creator of thefemalesurfer.com, discusses her background and current work in human performance and surf conditioning. Candice Land explains how her background in martial arts and her experience in various sports have influenced her surfing and her approach to training. Candice Land discusses the unique challenges of surfing compared to other sports, emphasizing the importance of the vestibular system and proprioception. Candice Land and Michael discuss the similarities between surfing and martial arts, particularly in of energy transfer and the use of the environment. Candice Land explains how fear and instability can influence movement and performance in surfing, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's own body and movement patterns. Candice Land discusses the importance of movement efficiency and the role of the pelvis in female athletes, particularly in relation to lower limb injuries and overall performance. Candice Land emphasizes the importance of understanding one's own body and training in a way that suits individual needs, rather than adhering to rigid frameworks. Candice Land discusses the importance of vestibular and ocular training for surfers, particularly in relation to balance, vision, and decision-making under pressure. Candice Land provides recommendations for female recreational surfers, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's own biology, physiology, and fluctuations across the lifespan. Candice Land introduces her pillar-based training system for female surfers, focusing on core stability, upper body development, and lower body development.  Outline Background and Introduction Candice Land is an exercise physiologist for the World Surf League and creator of thefemalesurfer.com. Thefemalesurfer.com offers surf conditioning programs specializing in female athletes and recreational surfers. Candice has been in the field of human performance for about 20 years. Candice initially enrolled in sports psychology but ended up in sport and exercise science. Candice was exposed to surfing at the age of 25 while living in Ireland. Before surfing, Candice was involved in various sports including martial arts, rowing, mountain biking, touch football, and netball. Surfing and Martial Arts Candice believes that martial arts, particularly Taekwondo, have helped her surfing by improving focus, calmness, and core connection. Surfing is described as a unique sport due to its reliance on the vestibular and proprioceptive systems. Candice considers herself an intermediate to advanced intermediate surfer. Kelly Slater once described surfing as a martial art, highlighting the similarities in energy transfer and danger management. Fear and Surfing Fear can influence surfing biomechanics and physiology, leading to adaptations such as crouching or adopting a 'poo stance'. The brain's priority is to keep the surfer safe, which can result in biomechanical and physiological changes when feeling fearful. Surfing is a sensory-based sport that relies heavily on proprioception and the vestibular system rather than the visual system. Movement Efficiency and Training Candice and Michael emphasize the importance of movement efficiency in athletic performance, particularly in surfing. They discuss the evolutionary aspect of human movement, designed for efficiency and survival. Candice highlights the importance of pelvic alignment and stability in female athletes to enhance efficiency and reduce injuries. DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization) principles are used to reorganize faulty movement patterns and improve efficiency. Training Female Athletes Candice discusses the differences in skeletal framework and muscle fibers between male and female athletes. She emphasizes the importance of pelvic alignment, core stability, and functional core stability in training female athletes. Candice advocates for a versatile approach to training, incorporating both strength and conditioning with DNS principles. She stresses the need for athlete-centered training that considers individual needs and fluctuations across the lifespan. Vestibular and Ocular Training Candice and Michael discuss the importance of vestibular and ocular training for surfers. They mention the use of strobe glasses, slow blinking, and Z Health techniques to enhance vestibular and ocular skills. Vestibular training is highlighted for its role in improving balance, spatial awareness, and decision-making under pressure. Cognitive training is also discussed as a way to enhance VO2 max and overall athletic performance. Recommendations for Female Surfers Candice advises female surfers to pay attention to their own cycles and biological rhythms to better understand their training needs. She emphasizes the importance of core stability as a foundational element for injury prevention and performance enhancement. Candice developed a female surfer screening protocol and the pillar system to help female surfers identify their specific needs and improve their surfing. The pillar system includes courses on core stability, upper body development, and lower body development. Transcription Michael Frampton So now I'm here. Oh, cool. So what, by way of intro, could you tell us a little bit of your background and what you're currently doing? Candice Land Sure. So I'll flip it around and start with the end first. I'm currently managing Female Surfer, which is something I created to ensure that female athletes and female surfers have the toolkit that they need to perform at their best. So that's currently what I'm doing. But I've been in the world of human performance for about 20 years now. So I've been in exercise, which seems crazy, actually. It seems like I just graduated from uni yesterday. But yeah, I've been an exercise physiologist now for nearly 20 years. So delving into the world of human performance and how we can make that better. Michael Frampton Oh, wow. So did you dive straight into that world as soon as you left school? Candice Land Fun fact, I actually was initially enrolled in sport psychology. I was always an athlete at school, so I always had that kind of interest. I don't understand how we're supposed to even know what we want to do when we finish high school. For some reason I didn't get into sport psychology, but I'm so grateful that I didn't. I ended up getting into sport and exercise science with a good friend of mine. She went on to physiotherapy and I stayed on as an exercise physiologist. And I'm one of those lucky people that this is my ion and this is what I love. So from the get-go, this is what I've been, I guess, I feel pulled to do. So I just stayed an exercise physiologist that whole time. Michael Frampton Yeah, awesome. When did surfing come into the picture? Candice Land Late. I played a lot of sports growing up but living in the tropics, obviously we've got the Great Barrier Reef. So I wasn't exposed to surfing until I lived in Ireland when I was about 25. So that's when I got exposed to surfing because I said to myself, when the weather is good, I don't want to be in a capital city. I want to be out enjoying this beautiful country, and I ended up in a small fishing village in Kincasslagh and was just like, wow. Firstly, the beaches are stunning. And secondly, I wanted to do something really random. So I was like, I'd love to just learn how to surf over here. And then I ended up living with the lads that ran the surf school. So I just got to tag along with them. Michael Frampton So at 25, that's not very late. Candice Land Yeah, that was only five years ago. No, it was a while ago. Longer than I would like to mention. Michael Frampton Yeah. What was your main sport before surfing came into play? Candice Land Before I went travelling overseas, I was big into martial arts. I actually represented Australia in Taekwondo. So that was my ion. But prior to that, I was competing in rowing and mountain bike riding, played touch footy, netball. Name it, I did it. Yeah, so a bit of an all-rounder when it comes to sport. Michael Frampton Do you think your high-level athletic background helped you to learn surfing faster than others? Candice Land No. I think surfing is really unique as a sport. In some ways, yes. I think martial arts, which I still train to this day, really helps my surfing. It really helps with focus and being able to stay calm in the water as well, and it also helps me to feel more connected on the board as well. There's a lot of breath work and stuff that goes in with Taekwondo that I think really helps with that core connection. But I feel like surfing is such a unique sport because nothing is ever the same and you don't surf how you look. It's such an internal representation on the brain. So you know when you surf and you think you surf a particular way, but then you see a video of yourself and you're like, well, that's not how surfing feels to me. It's the way the brain puts it all together. It's so reliant on the vestibular system and the proprioceptive system that it's a very internal visual thing. So for me, surfing, I would say I'm an intermediate to advanced intermediate surfer, but I wouldn't say that I'm epic at it, and it's something I'll have to spend my whole lifetime learning. So it's been the hardest sport for me to do well. Michael Frampton Mm, it is hard. I think Laird Hamilton once said that surfing is a martial art. Candice Land Interesting perspective. Michael Frampton Mm, I think, and especially, I mean, he's a high level. I think you also hear high-level martial artists saying that when you get to a certain level, it's kind of like you're dancing with danger, with your opponent. And I think that's why Laird described it like that, because essentially the best surfers in the world, they surf closest to the power. Did you do video analysis in the martial arts world as well and was it a similar thing? Candice Land No, interestingly my martial arts felt like the way that it looked. I don't know if it's because it's in a more closed environment, the floor surface is always the same, you can orientate yourself better in space because the world around you isn't shifting, the horizon's fixed. That enabled me to have a more realistic representation of where my body was in space. So when I did the martial arts I knew when I was executing a move. And also it's so easy to repeat it in the same environment. It's such a repetitive thing, so you get to really hone in and focus your technique so you get used to the sensation of feeling that it is, whereas unless you're a surf athlete that gets to experience or surf very consistent waves, 15–20 hours a week, you don't get that opportunity for repetition. So I don't know whether those things kind of play into it, where it enabled me to have more movement accuracy. So it felt like the way that it looked. I'm not sure. Michael Frampton ([email protected]) Yeah, I think that's got a lot to do with it for sure, because, you know, you might be into surfing and maybe if you're lucky two minutes of that is actually surfing a wave. Candice Land Yeah, time on the wave, that's right. Michael Frampton Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, I think, I've had a lot of footage of me taken through coaching sessions and stuff. And I think anyone who's seen themselves surf will relate to the fact that it looks completely different to how it felt. And even the pros. I Matt Griggs mentioning that Mick Fanning often found that, and Taylor Knox as well. And they said they often found that sometimes the footage they watched that looked the most extreme, like had the most spray and looked like they were doing the biggest turn, was the wave that actually felt the smoothest. Candice Land Yes. Michael Frampton Not necessarily the most sort of stops, where you think there might be more spray. Candice Land Yes, that doesn't surprise me one bit when you understand biomechanics and human movement and the design of the human body and how we're designed for variability of movement. We're designed for efficiency in movement. That's what the human body is designed for. So when you hear comments like that, that makes perfect sense to me. Michael Frampton Yeah. Do you think that part of the reason that we sort of have that mismatch in internal and visual representation? Do you think that's part of fear as we sort of crouch down and we feel safer when we're surfing, we end up in a bit of a poo stance? Candice Land This is really interesting because this is bringing up a conversation that I had with one of the surf coaches from Surfing Australia very recently, and we were talking about these sorts of things, like what we're talking about, in the context of stability and core stability and how underestimated it is in surf training and surf conditioning. And what is the actual purpose of surf conditioning and what should it be involving and all those sorts of things. And movement is a communication mode in the body, right? So movement tells the brain lots of different things, but it works the other way around as well so that your cognitive processes can very much influence your movement. So, for example, for me, I know when I feel uncertain, unstable, I'm in a new environment, the wave feels a little bit different, or I'm on a board that's a little bit funky, I don't think I've got the right board for the conditions, my surfing style, I'll compress far more because there is a lack of trust through the nervous system based on those parameters. So I do think that fear can definitely, it has to be able to have that sort of influence because it's all, it's like this cyclical communication because the brain is always trying to figure out what is the best movement option. The main priority of the brain is to keep you safe. So in that time, if you're feeling fearful, there will be a biomechanical and physiological adaptation to that because it's the number one priority. Michael Frampton And that's happening whether you're aware of the fear or not. Candice Land Exactly. Yeah. It's a very perceptual thing. Surfing is very much a sensory-based sport. You don't have a lot of time to think on a wave, and the brain is picking up a lot of information and we manage a lot through proprioception and the vestibular system, more so than the visual system, and more with those two elements of nervous system control. So, it's so cool how you need to do this as a... Michael Frampton So, what were you looking at, the discussion you were having with this person you mentioned just at the start of that bit? Any conclusions or? Candice Land Yeah, we're both big believers in creating a more efficient athlete. I'm a big believer in the fact that we have more available to us than we realize. If we just look at emotions or maybe like a framework issue like misalignment or something along those lines, there's factors that can play into how efficient we are as athletes. We're so—I'm generalising by saying we—but I'm concerned that as a culture, now we're so motivated to just kind of go hardcore and to go straight into strength and conditioning and to look at strength and to look at load and to look at high-performance training and to do all those sort of things without understanding or realising what we've already got available to us. And when you look at the best surfers, or if I'm at a contest and I see a surfer that's completely on fire, it comes down to how efficient they are with movement because movement efficiency allows them to collect energy, to transfer it into something else, and to turn it into power. So it's the timing on the wave, it's the smoothness and the way that they can draw down into their turns to collect energy and then turn that into something else and explode out their spins, whatever it might be. So we're both big believers in that side of things. Yes, go to load. Yes, do all those things. Absolutely. We have to have strong athletes, but it's part of the spectrum of training so that you're not missing out on everything that you've got available to you over here. That's our approach. Michael Frampton Hmm. Yeah, I totally agree. And I'll give you a short story that kind of exemplifies that. I was working with a very high-level athlete a few years ago, a rugby athlete. And at the time, I'd just done three DNS courses and I was heavily into DNS stuff. And the first time I had him in the gym, I just wanted to watch and see what he could do, what he was doing already. And he was deadlifting about 120 kilos. And then all we did was some DNS-based tweaks to the way that he was holding himself. And it's because he was such a high-level athlete, he just picked it up straight away. He's like, all of a sudden could organise his body in a new way. And then I was like, okay, well, let's try deadlift with those positions in mind. And then he went, he literally went from 120 kilos up to 160. And I was like, okay, we've got to stop now because you've never lifted that much. He's saying it's easy, but no, we've got to stop. So just by organising his skeletal system in a more efficient position based on the DNS stuff, his strength went up. So I think strength actually has a lot more to do with efficiency, really. Candice Land Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And it's got to do with the eccentric phase before the concentric phase. So how you set up a movement is really important. And that's where movement efficiency comes in, because if you break it back down all the way back to human evolution, it always comes down to survival. So for humans, the way that our bodies evolved, like I said before, was to be able to find food in lots of different environments. So we have this body that's designed to be able to do all sorts of varieties of movement—jump, run, spin, swim, you name it—so we can find food in all sorts of different environments. The other thing that we got designed into our framework and into our physiology was to be efficient. So that to me is what we're designed to actually be—efficient. That's the way our whole body was designed to work. And so that comes down to how do you load into the body and how do you eccentrically load and how do you collect energy within the body. Because if there is a breakdown in that, it's too calorie expensive. So the movement is costing you more than it should. And you can see that. You can see people are strong and they can muscle their way through movement. Michael Frampton Great. What's the cost of that? Hmm. I'm going to ask you, so I love the sort of evolutionary biologist sort of background to what you just said there. It leads me to ask you the question, because that makes me think of sort of the hunter-gatherer world, and whereas the men typically were the ones who were running, jumping, climbing, doing a lot of the heavy lifting per se, so it makes complete sense to train a male athlete like that. But is the same true for female athletes? Candice Land It is. We have a dual-function pelvis, so our pelvis evolved to be wider, because the pelvis for a man is just going to enable you to be bipedal, walk, run. For a female, we had to be bipedal, but then we also had to carry and birth a child. So the shape of our pelvis is different. The other thing that's different is the shape of the actual bony structures around the shoulder girdle. So it tends to be a shallower t. And there's some differences around muscle fibres and things like that. But evolutionarily, we're still designed to do those two things as a species, yep. Michael Frampton Okay. So when it comes to training the female athlete, how do those differences change what you do? Candice Land I'm a big believer in pelvic alignment and pelvic stability. I have a DNS background as well, I've done a few of the DNS training. So I'm a big believer in trunk stability and core stability, functional core stability in of making an athlete more efficient and being able to transfer load. For women, I feel that because we can't rely on fast-twitch muscle fibres and big muscle mass necessarily—we can train and develop those things to an extent—and I feel that that's an area that female athletes can really encapsulate: the ability to transfer load so that they work really efficiently mechanically and they connect all the dots in their body. That's our world where we can really capitalise on the power that's available to us. So I will try to incorporate that. And a big key component to that for women is the pelvis. To me, the pelvis is like a keystone t. Like, did you do any of the footwork stuff with the DNS community with Marco Rintala and his online stuff? Michael Frampton A little bit. I've also looked at the foot through other modalities, yeah. Candice Land You know how it's like a bridge, right? And you've got the keystone in the bridge and how well that keystone works determines whether the bridge stays up or whether it collapses. I consider the pelvis also one of the keystone ts in the body. If it gets stuck in a certain position or if it's destabilising before it needs to, if it gets stuck in what we call like a swing phase of gait instead of being able to be stable and handle stance and single-leg load, it interrupts the whole mechanics of the body. It can drive you into neck pain. It can drive you into shoulder pain. And so for women, where we have this wider pelvis and we have this Q-angle where the knees come in a little bit, that to me is an area that we really need to focus on with female athletes as a potential powerhouse and in reducing low limb injuries. So I will look into that as well. But that's first and foremost before I will even go into like shoulders and things like that. For me, it's about again making female athletes more efficient, and how do we protect the female athlete, how do we protect the female body, and how do we make it more robust and more adaptable? How do we power up this body? So those are the two things that I would tend to look at initially. Does that make sense? Michael Frampton Definitely. Michael Frampton That's essentially, that's very much DNS thinking as well, just in general. Do you find that the female athletes are actually more open to diving into some of the more subtleties of DNS than the male athletes, who just want to do some deadlifts and do what they do on TV? Candice Land I think it's hard to say. I've got male athletes that I've worked with over, like, oh, it's nearly a decade now. In the surfing scene, I see them at the contest and they come and say hi. I catch up and see how their bodies are going. And you've always got to get that athlete buy-in. The athlete buy-in is the results and the change that they get. So if you can get that—regardless of gender—if you can get that with an athlete, then they're more inclined to understand the value and benefit of that form of exercise. Are women more open-minded to it? I would say that it depends on their background of training they've had and also the influence of the coach. I've actually had instances where the coach hasn't allowed the athlete to do anything outside of strength training because, "This is the Olympic model," or, "This is the high-performance model, so this is what we're doing." I'm concerned about the rigidity that's coming into the surf training model. But then you've got role models in the sport that are still doing their own thing and still getting really good results with that. So I think that helps as well. But if they're more open-minded to it or not, I couldn't say whether women are a lot. Michael Frampton Yeah, it's a shame that there are so many studies out there saying how bad heavy weightlifting is—not just for athletes like surfers, but for almost anyone really. Candice Land Yeah, I think there's a time and a place. There's been a lot of research to show the benefits of load training, and I think for female athletes it's really important because, especially as we change across the lifespan, we get to this point where estrogen isn't such a dominant hormone anymore, and estrogen has a really protective effect on muscular tissue, so we'll lose muscle mass quite quickly. And so that has a ricochet effect through the body in of injury as an older athlete and in of just being able to do the sport the way that you've always done it. So strength training, I think, has a little bit more—no, not a little bit more—I just think it's important, an important ingredient for female athletes to consider. But I think it's also important for surf athletes to understand their own body and to have the ability to work with what works well for them, rather than having to fit a rigid framework. And you need a versatile practitioner and approach to be able to understand that spectrum and for it to be a very athlete-centered approach to training. Michael Frampton So you mentioned DNS? Candice Land Yeah. Michael Frampton You still use a lot of that? Candice Land Heaps. I still use a lot of it. I find it as a reorganization tool in of faulty movement patterns. Yes. It was embedded so early into our central nervous system from a developmental perspective. You couldn't learn a movement pattern until you stabilized in a particular way. The body had to get stabilization first before it could develop the next motor pattern, as you know. So if we can draw back to that organization, you still see the body able to let go and come back to improving motor patterns. So I find it really good at unlocking things and creating change in a very short amount of time. So when I'm working at events, I'll use that as a modality. I use quite a lot of different modalities, but I will still use DNS principles. Michael Frampton Yeah. So what are some of the other courses that you've done over the years and, in particular, which ones had the biggest influence on what you do now? Candice Land I first—you know, I am absolutely fascinated by the nervous system. I first became exposed to the nervous system when I was doing my post-grad in occupational therapy, of all things. And I delved heavily into the nervous system from a developmental perspective and dealing with pediatric health, then also dealing with things like stroke recovery. That to me, I couldn't understand why—that was a game changer for me. It totally changed the way that I saw movement. The muscles are the end point of the story. So it changed the way that I assessed and it changed the way that I prescribed movement. So I've been interested in that. And then through pediatrics, I've also been interested in the developmental stages of movement and how that all kind of gets integrated and where it can go wrong as adults, what we can kind of pull back through. So those two things. I've done additional training around integrated neurology stuff. I'm fascinated with the vestibular system, so I'm diving into that a bit right now. But then I also don't want to pull too far away from the strength and conditioning side of things as well. Because I have to span the spectrum of injury prevention and injury recovery into managing complex injuries and complex movement patterns all the way into high-performance training. And that's just in the realm of musculoskeletal—that's not even including everything else that I need influence from a physiological perspective. So we just look at that. So I want to make sure that I fill that spectrum. So some of my training has also included things like kettlebell training courses and additional strength training courses just to know that I can still communicate with that audience and I can still bridge that, and then I bring it all. So I'll still manipulate some of these exercises. I say to people, "Right, you're at the point now where we're going to go to the gym. I'm gonna give you your strength training program, but it's gonna be your nerdy strength training program," okay? So that I can bring in some of those postural elements and some of the DNS stuff and some of the pelvic restoration stuff into your strength-based program. Sometimes I try to the specific names of courses, but I can't. Michael Frampton I like that approach, and I agree. I didn’t mean to sound anti-strength training before. It's just I think you see a lot of athletes just overdo the deadlift, the bench press, and the squat, and you can see, and then they just end up getting big without necessarily getting functionally strong. Candice Land I think I can understand and see how that holds athletes together in bigger, more powerful surf where they have to be working against some pretty big external forces. But I do also think that we don't operate that—we’re not—I think sometimes of load as sound. So that when we're under load from a nervous system perspective, if we think about it in of sound, it's very high volume, very noisy. So you're under this load, you've got weight on your body, your brain knows where everything is in space, the volume is being turned up, and it's a noisy, loud environment. If you think about how often we're in that context in surfing, when is that? When are we getting the most input and most noise into our body from a movement perspective? Michael Frampton I would say in heavy surf or wipeout. Candice Land Yeah, yeah. If we're dealing with a wave that wants to compress us, and we have to kind of resist against that, if it's a lot of water moving, and we really have to load into that bottom turn to really be able to manage that power and control that power, it would be when we go to execute a turn, where the timing is, or if we need to, again, load back into a bottom turn to collect energy. But then what's happening in between that movement? Unless it's on a big, heavy, powerful moving... Michael Frampton ...wave, the volume turns down. Candice Land Yeah. We need to be able to have strategies that enable us to work on the high-volume situations and low-volume situations and then be able to dial the volume up and the volume down. Michael Frampton Yeah. I guess I kind of think of high-level top-to-bottom surfing as kind of jumping and landing based really. Candice Land On and off. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Frampton There's a nice smoothness. Candice Land It's like the same thing with walking. You know, walking is meant to be so efficient that it costs you very little energy. But we're not doing that. We're not doing that, are we? But if I—you know, faulty movement patterns I see just in walking. You know, and that bipedal gait, that opposite arm to opposite leg situation, is prevalent in so many other activities that we do in the real world. And I think, you can squat this and you can bench press this, that's awesome. But you can't get this? You're not stable on a single leg. So we kind of need to look at this as well. Michael Frampton Yeah, and you mentioned neurological side of things a lot there as well. And I certainly—the type of training that I've done personally that affected my surfing the most was when I was doing a lot of DNS. I was learning it and working with clients as well as seeing someone one-on-one at least once a week. And I was doing a lot of vestibular and ocular training at the same time. And I actually got to the point where I was able to go—I went to Fiji on a surf trip and I was really nervous because I get seasick in a bath. But I think because I'd been doing so much vestibular and ocular training, I just didn't get seasick. Candice Land That's awesome. Got to keep that up because that deteriorates as we age. And for women, that change fluctuates in a single cycle. So women will have changes in their particular capacities within a single cycle. So all of those things kind of come into play. So then, knowing that, then, does that shift and change how you would develop your own training program? Michael Frampton I would think so. You’d want to be cycling in time with the moon, personally. Candice Land But also, now knowing how the DNS work that you did and the vestibular and ocular work that you did, how that enhanced your performance—would you be more inclined to go to the gym and focus on strength? Or would you be more inclined to do that training that you did prior to Fiji? Michael Frampton I'd do a mixture of both. Yeah. Candice Land Yeah. Michael Frampton Yeah, definitely. Candice Land Yeah. Michael Frampton Just, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Candice Land And I think that’s fun. I think that makes it fun. I think if you can work across the whole spectrum, it makes training a journey, not just a routine. Michael Frampton Definitely. I mean, I challenge anyone out there to stand on one leg with your eyes closed. That's not as easy as you think. Candice Land I'm doing it this morning. I was like, okay, we need to do some work on this. Michael Frampton Yeah, it's hard. And then try and do it with your eyes closed and your head moving. It's interesting because I've had the pleasure of working with some high-level athletes. That's a test I'd always do. And some of the best athletes, they're just like, oh yeah. They'll just stand on one leg with their eyes closed and just do it. Even though they've never trained to do it, they're just naturally gifted. They've been gifted with a great vestibular system through their genetics or their background or whatever. Candice Land Yeah. And I think if you took a surfer and you did it on a flat surface, they would manage differently on an unstable surface. Michael Frampton Mmm. Candice Land The surfer is always on a surface that's moving. Michael Frampton Don't you think the vestibular system would be pretty quick to learn that though, like if it's a high level? Candice Land It's adaptable. Yeah, if it's adaptable. And there's things that kind of play into that. Michael Frampton Yeah. Mmm. I think it also, like someone who's got an incredible vestibular system—I mean, you look at a surfer going through a barrel section with lots of chandeliers, with vision gone—and they just come through. It doesn't seem to bother them. Candice Land And they always know where they are in space to be able to land that exactly where they need to be landing that, to then go into another turn straight away. I love seeing that. Are you doing much sort of isolated vestibular work with any athletes? Yes and no. I want to upskill in that area before I do whole people work in that area because I do think it's high risk. So I tend to baseline set it up through the highest cervical area and then do some eye tracking training and then also eyes closed, eyes open, that sort of thing. I think it's a really unique skill set. Michael Frampton Yeah, there are also ways to sort of—you don’t necessarily have to isolate it—you can add in fun little stuff so they don't even realize they're doing it sort of thing. Candice Land Very true. Yeah, like strobed glasses are a great way to do that. Or get them to blink, blink slowly, or yes. Michael Frampton Yeah. Just jump into—I don’t know if you have discovered Z-Health yet, but they’ve got heaps of cool stuff on that website. You're giving me so many cool things today. So that’s Dr. Cobb. He's a chiropractor neurologist guy who, oh man, years ago, decided to start training personal trainers in neurology. And in particular, you know, the vestibular and ocular system. So he's got a lot of really—he starts base level. So there’s heaps of free videos on his website as well, and he's got a course on vestibular training and vision training as well. Candice Land Yeah, awesome. Yeah, a bit in of—yeah—and the concussion side of things. Yes. It’s good that it’s developing as a treatment like that, modulating. Michael Frampton Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And for prevention as well, like I know if you get concussed without seeing it coming especially, your concussion is worse. But it also actually narrows your peripheral vision post-concussion, which makes you more susceptible to another concussion, because your center vision—essentially you lose part of your peripheral vision. So if you're training your peripheral vision to rehab your peripheral vision and even improve it, that can help as well. They talk about that on Z-Health a lot as well. A friend of mine who did the Z-Health stuff, he’s now into cognitive training as well. So it’s really interesting, man. You should have a look at his website too—SomaNPT. He’s got an app that’s got all things like strobe, so Stroop tests and visual reaction, audio reaction, yes/no, go/no-go sort of drills on that app. Really fascinating stuff. He’s working with some of the football teams in Europe and the Formula One drivers in Europe with all that sort of stuff. Candice Land Yeah, awesome. All that responsiveness and that decision making that you don't even have time to make—that lightning stuff that you need. Michael Frampton Hmm. And what's really fascinating about that—he’s doing a lot of studies with universities at the moment too—is they'll test VO₂ max and the athlete won’t change any of their physical training, but they start adding in the cognitive training whilst they might just be on the bike or a treill doing their standard cardio training, but they'll add in the cognitive stuff so they might be doing Stroop tests or visual reaction tests, and they're seeing an increase in their VO₂ simply because the prefrontal cortex is dealing with the whole thing better. So it’s fascinating. Really cool. Yeah, really cool. Candice Land You’ve added to my diving list. Michael Frampton Oh, there’s so much out there, right? Candice Land Yeah, I spent all morning reading articles. I’m like, oh, brain. Come on, brain. Michael Frampton Keep going. So let's speak to this—the average recreational surfer that might be listening now, the female one in particular. What considerations should they be making to their training and in recommendations? Like what should they be doing and not doing for the average athlete? Candice Land Yes. So for the average athlete—I think as a female, sometimes the hardest thing is that we don’t necessarily know what we’re dealing with. We haven’t had a lot of time to really understand our own biology and physiology and how to manipulate that in the world of exercise prescription that suits us the best. We've kind of just been basing it off research, as you know, that’s been predominantly done on men. So there’s a lot of mistruth and misunderstanding. So I think as the recreational female athlete—and even the elite female athlete now—is in this really cool realm or this really cool time where we can really begin to understand ourselves. So it means that you just need to cue in and listen to yourself. You are going to have fluctuations. You are going to be in states of evidence low. But just clue in and monitor yourself and get in touch with yourself and start to understand your own rhythms, rather than kind of blowing them off as if they’re nothing. So for example, I didn’t realize this until I started, you know, tracking my own cycles and getting a good understanding of my own rhythms—why I would turn up to, let’s say, Cabarita, and it would be two- to three-foot glassy, sunny day, similar conditions to where I was a week ago, and I wouldn’t want to go surfing. Like I would actually be anxious about going surfing. And I'd just be like, what are you doing? Like, I’d talk so—I'd be so hard on myself. What are you doing? Why don’t you want to get in the water? You’ve only got this amount of time, get in, go, go, go, go, go. But inside, my body’s like, no, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go. I didn’t realize that shift in anxiety was actually a cyclical pattern for me. So in understanding that, I could prepare myself better for those moments so that now I don’t experience that so much. But at the time I was able to bring in strategies to help me manage that a lot better. So I think paying attention to your own cycles is really, really important and what you experience. And just get your head around who you are personally as an athlete, because regardless of what—the one consistency in the research around female athletes is—it’s still very inconclusive. It’s still very much based on the individual athlete. So we have a responsibility to really understand ourselves. So that would be the first thing. It’s a really cool time to explore who you are as an athlete. And I think the other thing to know is that as women, we have these significant changes across the lifespan as well. So for me, another journey that I’ve experienced personally as an athlete as well is the discrepancy between what I was like as an athlete at 25 and what I’m like as an athlete now at 40-something. What used to work for me and what I used to be able to tolerate at 25, and what I can tolerate now at 40-something—there's a big difference there in of fatigue profiles, in of the way that I need to manage myself nutritionally, in of my stress profile and cortisol and what I can tolerate in an exercise session and what will burn me out. There's big differences there. So we need to understand that we also fluctuate across the lifespan. So be prepared to be able to adjust the way you're surfing. So if you started surfing at the age of 45, but you're watching what a 25-year-old would do on social media for their surf training, and if it’s not the right fit, then don’t beat yourself up about that. You might be in a different lifespan where you need to your body in a different way. So to understand that. And another thing is—if I was going to pull this back and go, this is actually—this is the number one question that I get asked from the female surfer community. The number one question is: where do I start? How do I get started? This is recreational athletes from the age of 20 through to 55. And so that’s the number one question. So I developed from that two things. One was a female surfer screening protocol, which is designed around age, around the female biology and physiology and how our bodies work, and matching that against the demands of that particular athlete’s type of surfing so that they can figure out from that assessment screening, oh okay, I need to work on my balance, or I need to work on my fitness, or whatever it might be. It’s a way for them to really hone in as an individual. And the second thing I did was develop the pillar system. So the pillar system is based off screening hundreds of female surf athletes from beginner level to CT level and understanding from injury data and the injury information that we get from a competitive perspective and understanding the challenges that female athletes experience with progressing their surfing. And if I had to pick the top three things, what would they be? And out of those top three things, what would be the most important? So the neuro root, you know, is core stability. So if you’re going to start somewhere and you had no idea where to start, pull it all back—come back to core stability. It’s a really important injury prevention capacity for female athletes, particularly when it comes to lower limb injuries. It’s really important for powering up our surfing and being able to transfer load and to manage the demands of surfing, even though we might have a smaller shoulder muscle mass size. So I will always start with a female athlete—if they only have limited time and they only have the mental capacity to do one thing—that would be where I would start. Michael Frampton Okay. Does that help? Candice Land Definitely, definitely. So it sounds like you alluded to some programs that you have on your website. Michael Frampton I do. I have programs that actually—I always rehash them and redo them. So they’re actually all about to be updated. But I have the pillar-based system on the website, and the surfer screening is also on the website. And then we’ve been doing some really fun surf trip preparation training, which is orientated around preparation for surf trips, and that in itself now is going to be designed into another program because that’s actually been running really well. Michael Frampton Okay, what’s the pillar program? Candice Land So the pillar program—there are three short courses that you can do. Each course is designed to last for four weeks. You start with core stability, then you go into upper body development, and then you've got lower body development. The lower body development is really about helping female athletes power up their lower limbs for force and speed generation. And so we’d be looking at things like we were talking about early on in the podcast around eccentrically loading. How do we collect energy? Where do we need to be stable to do this? With the upper body stuff, it’s around being able to improve our paddling capacity, popping up, all that sort of stuff. And duck diving, and the challenges of making sure that you have the strength to be taking off in the most critical part of that wave and also getting yourself out of trouble. So that’s the upper body course. And the first one is the most important pillar, which is the core stability. So that was set up to—again, if you were going to cover the foundations—you would actually be dealing with those three courses and in that order of importance. Michael Frampton Yeah. How do you describe the core stability? Candice Land Oh, yeah. I have an educational component about this in the course, and it’s the Female Surfer approach to core stability. For me, it’s very much orientated—I won’t go into too much detail—but it’s very much orientated around the axial skeleton, because that is the axis of movement. So that’s what core is to me. It’s from head to pubic bone. It includes the scapula, it includes the shoulder blades, it includes the pelvis, it includes the organisation and the alignment of the spine, it includes the jaw—all those sorts of things. Michael Frampton Okay, so we’re talking not just sets of planks? Candice Land No, no. And I know there’s a—yeah, I’m not a big believer, again, in bracing when it comes to core stability. Bracing is a strategy that the body uses, again, under heavier load. But if you’re doing things like planks, then that’s not necessarily making you adaptable in your core. Core is designed to enable you to stay upright and stable in space, and it’s designed to help you transfer load, and it’s there for movement efficiency, basically, yeah. It makes a more robust and more powerful athlete. But you know when it’s dysfunctional, as you know. You know when it’s not working for somebody—you can see it in the movement. Michael Frampton Yeah. Yeah. And what’s the name of— Candice Land Your website? Thefemalesurfer.com. Michael Frampton Perfect. I will put links to that in the show notes. And you’re on Instagram as well. Remind me of your handle? Candice Land @thefemalesurfer. Michael Frampton Too easy. Again, I’ll put links to that in the show notes. We could talk for hours, but it’s coming up to the top of the hour, so we’ll leave it there for today. Candice Land Yeah. Well, yeah, wow. Cool. It’s been fun to get on again. Michael Frampton Yeah. Love to have you on. Candice Land Cool. Michael Frampton Well, thank you so much, Candice. Candice Land Thank you. Michael Frampton For the listeners, go check the show notes out. Candice Land Cool. Too easy. Michael Frampton Thanks so much. Candice Land No, thank you. 104 Candice Land - Exercise Physiologist for WSL and Creator of "The Female Surfer" For the ionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced. 4e2h4w