How to Select the Best High-Performance Inflatable SUP for Your Needs

A high-performing piece of equipment that has been well chosen is crucial to the paddle boarding experience for some paddlers. You may intend to utilize your stand up paddle board blow up more intensively, advance your skills quickly, push yourself, and paddle competitively. Alternatively, you may prefer to adjust and maximize your ride and enjoy the equipment element of the sport. Let's investigate what to look for in a high-performance SUP board. 

Advanced Fin Setups: If you'd like more flexibility over how your equipment performs, look into a board that has a fin system that you can swap out to customize the board for various venues, styles of paddling, and individual tastes. You won't have to stick with the one fin that comes with the board if it has a fin box and side fin boxes that are FCS compatible. This will let you utilize alternative fins for different situations.  

A performance board should, at the at least, have a center fin box that can accommodate the various fin types you plan to employ. This allows you to shift a fin forward or backward to influence the board's ability to track straight or turn effortlessly. 

Adding side fin box pairs that fit several kinds of detachable fins takes fin system customization to the next level.  This allows you to configure the board with a wide range of centre and side fin length combinations, each of which has benefits under various circumstances. 

A board can be made quicker by running it with only two short side fins for fast turning, three short fins for shallow water adaptation, or a single long centre fin for straighter tracking. With a changeable fin system, you may adjust the fins' sizes, shapes, and flex patterns to customize the board's performance to your specifications.

Optimized Board Shapes: A fan seeking an advantage in speed and performance will want to understand how the board's dimensions, rocker curves, and outlines affect its agility and speed. A board designed for speed would often have a streamlined profile with a narrow nose. Agility-focused boards will typically be rounder and shorter.  A board with stability in mind will be wider, particularly at the tail. A mix of board forms intended for speed, agility, and stability characterizes a true crossover/performance board that excels in multiple categories.  

This is the most difficult kind of board to design and construct due to the necessity of deliberate choices to achieve the ideal performance blend. Nevertheless, when everything comes together, you have a board that is enjoyable to ride and functions well in a variety of water conditions and environments. 

Decked Out Deck Pads: A paddler who intends to go whitewater or surf will want their deck pad to draw a lot of attention.  For customers who value performance over ease of use, a diamond or square grid layout with deep grooves provides the best traction for rivers and turbulent water.

Another improved feature that is included on a small number of boards is a detachable grip on the carry handle, which allows you to remove obstructions to more complex paddling in situations when a protruding grip in the middle of the board might interfere with your footwork.  

A performance board's tail section of the deck pad could also have some additional features.  A board featuring a raised rear edge and a contoured tail pad section to prevent your back foot from falling off the board during pivot turns or tail drops.  

More sophisticated boards also have an arch bar, which is a slightly elevated rectangular bump in the tail section of the deck pads that allows you to feel where your back foot is on the board without having to turn around and look down.  

Improved Components, Riggings, and Accessories: The materials and construction of SUP enthusiast boards are meant to withstand harsher circumstances than those of regular boards. Certain boards can be made more rigid by adding detachable battens to the edges or stiff material strips to the top and bottom that serve as stringers in specific regions of the board. 

Some manufacturers bond an additional layer of material to the entire board, improving durability and stiffness simultaneously. This update can be a little pricey but has the benefit of changing the board's overall rigidity rather than only concentrating on individual spots.  

Boards designed for enthusiasts typically have characteristics that they would desire for their own cushion and are also developed by enthusiasts.  This results in features like an adjustable fin system, improved structures, and contoured tail pads that are desired by picky consumers. 

If you pay close attention to a board's shape, fin system, dack pads, features, materials, and other components, you can more readily determine whether it provides the extra performance you desire. 

What then defines performance, and which board should you select? It depends. Many boards fall into other categories, like touring and all-around inflatable stand up paddle boards, so you should really think about how you want to utilize them. 

At Aquaride, we suggest you examine and determine aspects, choose the area and type of water you wish to paddle in and search for actual features that meet your needs.  Your true performance board may be a paddle board with the level of adaptability you desire and can be used in the conditions and places you intend to paddle.