A Coruña, Feb 17 (EFE).- Surfing made its debut as an Olympic sport in Tokyo 2020 and now it also aspires to be a university student. He is the star of a novel postgraduate course at the Faculty of Sports Sciences and Physical Activity at the University of A Coruña. There was nothing like it in the world, explains the promoter of it, Pedro Reimunde, to EFE.
“Bringing science closer to surfing is the main objective, so that decisions about how to train a surfer or the physical rehabilitation process (after an injury) are not made based on beliefs and traditions but on scientific knowledge,” he maintains to his 41 years, this graduate in sports sciences, physiotherapy and medicine and, of course, a surfer.
He jokes that he was a doctor (in human physiology) before he was a doctor (he read his thesis before graduating in medicine) and now he also aspires to anticipate the lesson with the postgraduate course he has in hand.
He came to pass through the lower categories of Deportivo, left football at the age of 30 and surfed intensively for ten years. From that relationship with surfing arose the need to promote a postgraduate course on this sport that has caught the good wave.
A couple of nationally competing surfers asked him for help in the process of rehabilitating their spinal and knee injuries, respectively. “There I realized that, surprisingly, surfing, despite already being an Olympic sport, had a relatively significant lack of scientific evidence regarding training methodology and physical preparation,” he says.
It is the paradox of surfing. The scientific knowledge of physical preparation lags behind the research that supports its innovative technical materials.
With that sea in the background, a year and a half ago it was launched after having evaluated it together with other professionals.
He had the collaboration of the Galician surf coach, Uxío Rodríguez; the coach of the Spanish Federation, Rafa Sellés; the dean of the Faculty of Sports Sciences of A Coruña, Rafa Martín Acero; and Joaquín Gómez Varela, co-director of this postgraduate course.
They surfed for a “disruptive” idea and launched a course that has the support of the Spanish Surf Federation.
“On a global level there is nothing of these characteristics in the university. We have to give value to doing this in Galicia because we are very used to these ideas coming from countries like the United States, Australia, Germany, England… Here we have equal or better professionals and what we lack is the pragmatism to carry out these initiatives,” he defends.
The postgraduate not only has professors from Spain, but also from Germany, Portugal, Brazil and the Netherlands. It deals with 15 subjects distributed in 3 modules, one on the scientific bases of surfing and physical preparation, another on the methodological proposals and the third, on surfing and health.
Coaches, surf professionals, sports technicians or graduates in physical activity and sports sciences are some of the recipients of this innovative course.
Carlos Alberto Fernandez
