How to Choose your Stand-Up Paddle Board

Our range of beginner SUPs is expertly designed to ensure ideal stability for first-timers and has everything they need to get on the water.

Created by our team of expert paddlers, we've developed a touring stand-up paddleboard perfect for half-day trips. It's made for beginners of different weight classes. Not only is it built with a pointed, aerodynamic design for cruising, but it's also fitted with a foam deck for comfort, grip, and transportation.

Once you feel more confident about your SUP skillset, it may be time to start looking for a new board. An intermediate-level paddleboard will provide increased performance for both speed and agility. The board will offer the paddler a better platform to practise new skills, such as pivoting and reverse paddle turns. The more competent you become, the more the paddle-boarding world will open itself up. Let’s look at the different styles of intermediate paddle boarding.

If you’re unsure exactly what type of paddle boarding you want to get involved with, an all-around intermediate board will work with various conditions. For instance, the improved agility and speed will help riders navigate a line-up far more easily when catching waves and manoeuvre more challenging rivers.

By now, you’ve been out touring for more than two hours a day and can travel long distances. It’s time to find a board with higher glide capabilities. Streamlined, longer, and more lightweight boards set themselves apart from the beginner board. It’s also a good idea to bring a leash, as you would with the beginner board (and for all safe SUP boarding).

Ready to take things up a notch? Known in some circles as SUPXROSS, SUP racing is usually done on a long stretch of water, such as rivers or along the shoreline of lakes and coastal waters. It’s typically done on the same closed-course race track used in watercress with jet skiing. Much like usual stand-up paddleboarding, you will need a good glide, lightweight board with a longer SUP and a leash for safety.

A combination of traditional surfing and stand-up paddleboarding, this pastime is popular for those with physical limitations such as hip and shoulder injuries and one that will only be possible once you’ve reached a fairly good SUP standard. Instead of lying on the board and paddling out using their hands to reach the waves, they use the paddle to reach surfable waves, and then, similar to normal surfing, the paddleboarder steers the board to catch these waves.

As you will likely be looking to surf waves up to 1 metre, you need a board that gives you good manoeuvrability. Your best bet is to choose a SUP board with a curved nose that is shorter and thinner than other intermediate offerings. And again, for safe stand-up paddling, don’t forget your leash.

As your skill level increases, so do our SUPs. Each paddle board comes in a selection of different sizing, meaning you can find a board that works for you and your paddling style.

To be considered an experienced paddler, you will need to have spent considerable time on the water, honing your skills and understanding what type of wet locations you feel confident in. Some like to focus on speed, glide, and manoeuvrability when choosing their next paddleboard, whereas others want a model that ensures efficiency. There are also experienced paddlers who will use their board as an affordable extension of their hobbies.

An experienced paddleboarder with the right board should be confident, whatever the conditions. Although we've already talked about some of our SUP models for touring, racing, and surfing, they can also be used for hobbies such as fishing and yoga. Let’s look at what type of SUP works best for these pastimes.