The evolution of paddle sport racing is pushing the limits of endurance competition, where training technology and data-driven coaching play a significant role.
April Zilg, world champion paddle athlete, joins the show to share her journey from “couch potato” to the top of the stand up paddle board (SUP) world—all powered by smart training, dedication and data. In this episode, April reveals how technique-focused coaching, a science-based approach to training and leveraging TrainingPeaks shapes her work with athletes of all levels.
Get a crash course in the many flavors of paddle sports—from lightning-fast sprints to epic 1,000-mile adventures—and how race type, equipment and environment shape effective training strategies. April stresses the importance of tracking progress, balancing intensity and recovery, and being open to new technology, including heart rate and (soon) power meters on the water.
Whether you’re curious about SUP racing, endurance coaching, or just want a peek behind the paddle, this episode is full of valuable coaching and training tips.
Standout Quotes
Efficiency vs. Intensity: “So it’s a completely different stroke, and it’s a lot more intense to hold your speed versus an outrigger canoe where you can kinda let the boat glide in between strokes so you can really work on efficiency, and timing and be a little bit longer in the water, quick in the air, and and get the blade back in. And you start to really see your speeds come up with less effort sometimes.”
Hidden Dangers of Overtraining Across Different Sports:
“I had become pretty badly overtrained because I was trying to match ramp rate for a sport, which I realized, like, if I had logged my same activity as a cycling event or a running event, it would give me a vastly higher TSS.”
Push and Pull Balance in Training: “But balancing those two in such a way because you’re sitting in the canoe or you’re standing, even worse, on the stand up paddle board, and you’re leaning over and you’re falling onto that blade and grabbing all that water. You have to have really strong core.”
“That imbalance of push and pull is what’s gonna tweak you.”
Importance of Balanced Strength Training
From Couch Potato to World Champion: “It was because people had followed along with my story from holding paddle backwards, not finishing race to, you know, taking my science background and putting that 100% into testing and trying again and failing and testing and trying again and failing over the course of a decade to literally go from couch potato to world champion.”
“Just because you think you’re moving slow as molasses in January, if your lactate levels are at four or five, it’s not 2.5, and you’re not getting the intended stimulus.”
Misconceptions About Workout Intensity
