Extreme Sports
Beginner adventure

Barbados Surfing conditions are ideal for any level of surfer. Barbados is almost guaranteed to have surf somewhere on any given day of the year. Coral reefs practically encircle Barbados’ coastline giving the island the Caribbean’s most consistent surf conditions with swells all year round. You can find point breaks and reef breaks on the island, rights and lefts. To cap it all off you can travel to anywhere on the island in 45 minutes or less.
Check our list of hotels that are popular for the surfers who visit the island
Whether you are a beginner or advanced surfer there is something here for you, also available are surf lessons and surf tours. Even the most advanced surfer know that there is nothing like local knowledge of a break. Zed is the man to talk considered by many to be one of the top and most knowledgeable surfers on the island he can organize a surf tour for you to suit your skill level.
The premier Surf Spot in the island is the Soup Bowl, which is like a magnet, if there is swell out there the Soup Bowl will catch it. The east coast boasts the most powerful and biggest waves. Sitting on the eastern coast of the island this is where the Atlantic unloads it’s power. With an offshore wind this is the spot every surfer dreams of riding. Careful this is an advanced spot and should not be taken lightly.
The north and west coasts of Barbados have some great spots as well, like Mullins, Sandy Lane, Batts Rock and Tropicana to name a few, but these only go off with a north swell.
On the South there are breaks like South Point, Freights, Brandons and Surfers Point. Check our listings of Surf Breaks for more information on these and other beaks on the island.
The warm waters of the Caribbean and laid back lifestyle of the people coupled with the stunning tropical scenery make this a surf destination well worth your time. Beware many who make the trip return again and again and again……..
While Barbados has swell all year the best time for solid ground swell is from October to March when waves can range anywhere from 2 to 12 ft in the north and east of the island and 2 to 8 ft for other breaks. This is also the time for the West to cash in on north swells. From April to September the surf is between 2 to 6ft, coupled with lighter winds, especially in the summer this can make for near perfect glassy conditions - ideal for a great surfing vacation.

In climbing, there is an old adage stating that “climbing is the best training for climbing,” an adage used by many to make excuses for not training outside of climbing. I personally disagree with this philosophy as I will explain.

When we are speaking of the exact skills needed in climbing, how and when to step, climbing techniques and mental skills, there is no substitute for the activity of climbing itself. However, in order to develop strength levels specific to the sport of climbing such as improving grip strength and upper body strength and endurance climbing will produce very limited or even no results or improvements.

One of the main reasons climbing isn’t good for strength training is because in climbing failure is not an option. If you have muscular failure while climbing, it may very well prove fatal. So the goal while climbing id to avoid this completely. Alternatively, when one is strength training for climbing, one wants to reach and even pass the point of muscular failure as it is this very act that causes the body to respond with an increase in strength to adapt to the stress being place on it. So the two methods are mutually exclusive and you will never achieve maximum strength by climbing alone.

Another example that reinforces the disparity between climbing and strength training for climbing is the way in which you grip the rock. In climbing, the rock demands the climber to use a random variety of many different grip positions and, at times, you may even deliberately vary the way you grip the rock. As a result, it’s unlikely that any single grip position will ever get worked maximally and, therefore, the individual grip positions (e.g. crimp, open hand, pinch, etc.) are slow to increase strength.

This should help you understand why a full season of climbing may indeed improve your anaerobic endurance (i.e. endurance of strength), but do little to increase you absolute maximum grip strength. Therefore, varying grip positions is a great strategy for maximizing endurance when climbing for performance, but it will never work for training maximum grip strength. Effective finger strength training demands you target a specific grip position and work it until failure, which can only be done safely in a non climbing environment.

Finally, it could be better for some climbers to participate in cross training with other activities that are not particularly sport-specific. As an example someone who needs to lose weight should spend the majority of their non-climbing time performing aerobic activity to burn off the excess body fat as it is essential that a climber be as lean as possible for optimum performance. If someone is totally devoid of at least some modicum of fitness, they would be better off doing some circuit training that will give them both strength and aerobic benefits.