I’m always happiest outdoors and ideally on the water any time of year. While I’ve stayed close to home because of travel restrictions for over a year, and I’m grateful to be able to train and explore outdoors again in the warm weather and get back to scuba diving or river rafting.
One sport that I want to try this summer is Stand up Paddleboarding (SUP), and it seems I’m not the only one. There’s been a massive increase in interest in SUP in the US, Asia and across Europe since the start of the pandemic, with board manufacturers reporting record growth in sales. There are good sites in India, especially on the west coast of Kerala, where Stand up Paddle boarding is allowed.
There is something very calming about watching someone standing and gliding on the water on an SUP, and it’s also an excellent workout. Enthusiasts claim that one-hour on an SUP board can burn 700 calories, which is about the same as jogging. And while you’re building upper body strength by paddling, balancing on the board is helping you strengthen your core.
We humans have been transporting ourselves along rivers and coasts on wooden or bamboo rafts, powered by a pole or paddle for thousands of years. SUP traces its origins to the surfing scene in Hawaii in the 1940s, and it’s since evolved from being a fun leisure activity into a sport. Today there are competitions worldwide, world championships, and fans are hoping it will become an official Olympic sport in time for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Originated in Hawaii, SUP can be a comparatively new sport to a lot of outdoor and water sports fans. It puts people to new challenges of using strength and skills to stand up on a floating board meanwhile carefully maintaining a series of upper body movements. For those who love to explore the nature, it offers a new and different view of the water under your board and the horizon afar.
Over the years, SUP has been attracting big sports sponsors too, so it seems a natural fit that leading global wearables brand Amazfit is sponsoring SUP competitions. Recently it sponsored the Zavidovo SUP challenge on the River Volga in Russia, one of the five largest competitions of this kind of sports in the world. Amazfit also sponsored a team, whose members all wore its new Amazfit T-Rex Pro, a rugged sporty smartwatch with a water resistance of 10 ATM and a host of functions and features.
I’m impressed that smartwatches after wearing it myself for over a week and apps are now able to track so many different water sports – the Amazfit T-Rex Pro includes open water swimming, surfing, sailing, kite surfing, boating and SUP among its 100 sports modes.
It’s amazing to have so much information about my health, fitness and well-being at my fingertips on my wrist. Having a water-resistant smartwatch is a small but essential piece of kit to wear when you swim or engage in water sports, and you also want it to be rugged enough for outdoor challenge or extreme conditions in the water or on land.
The Amazfit T-Rex Pro has passed 15 military-grade tests and can withstand most challenges. The brand says the watch has toughness built in from the inside out, which sounds like what I need in a smartwatch, and it should be ideal for all outdoor sports. The Amazfit T-Rex Pro also includes support for four global navigation satellite systems, a barometric altimeter. It also records your distance, speed, heart rate changes, calories burned, and other exercise data so you know your achievements. You can check your blood-oxygen saturation too, which is useful if you’re feeling unwell when working out.
Additionally, Firstbeat™ algorithm embedded in Amazfit T-Rex Pro takes things to a new level when assessing specialized data such as my maximum oxygen uptake, full recovery time and training load, and lets me know my progress and accomplishments.
Another thing I like about the Amazfit T-Rex Pro is that as well as helping you to track your health and fitness, it also inspires you train harder, get outdoors, go further and ‘Explore Your Instinct’. But you don’t have to be into SUP or water sports or an athlete to wear an Amazfit T-Rex Pro – it’s a great looking, rugged smartwatch for anybody who wants to express their personality or live a more active lifestyle.
Maybe one day, I will compete in an SUP event like the Zavidovo SUP challenge closer to home. For now, I’m waiting for the pandemic to disappear and just indulging in swimming to focus on improving my balance and looking forward to seeing the world afresh from the top of a paddleboard one day soon.