Fitness
Fitness Training
How Travis Rice and Kai Lenny build fitness routines
How a snowboarding legend and surfing champion stay disciplined with their fitness routines all year long.
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There’s a reason the phrase “practice makes perfect” is cliche: because it works.
When it comes to building and maintaining a fitness routine, the philosophy remains the same. Gains and losses occur with consistent effort over time - repetition, repetition, repetition - the premise behind this year’s Red Bull Zero Missed Workouts Challenge on Strava.
Learn more about Red Bull Zero Missed Workouts
Kai Lenny and Travis Rice snowboarding together in Valdez, Alaska
© Chad Chomlack / Red Bull Content Pool
But not all fitness routines are created equal.
For friends and fellow Red Bull Athletes Travis Rice and Kai Lenny, establishing a fitness routine that never misses is the result of prioritization, dedication, and thinking about their future selves.
That’s why Lenny’s first step of the process is setting goals.
“I’m very goal oriented, so goals really help me push through challenging moments,” Lenny said. “I want to learn new maneuvers because I know they’ll feel good to complete, and there’s also the satisfaction of going on the journey of improving myself.”
What helps Lenny craft a winning fitness routine is focusing on a variety of different athletics, which keeps his goals as diverse as his exercises.
“Since I focus on many different sports, I never get bored or stuck in a rut,” Lenny said. “As soon as I start to feel that I am, I can shift to something else, which refreshes my surroundings. My motivation really comes from the goals I set.”
Kai Lenny surfing at Mullaghmore, Ireland
© Gary McCall / Red Bull Content Pool
Kai Lenny foil surfing in Pe'Ahi, HI
© Jake Marote / Red Bull Content Pool
Kai Lenny big wave surfing at TUDOR NAZARÉ Big Wave Challenge in Portugal
© Hugo Silva / Red Bull Content Pool
Kai Lenny wingboarding in Barcelona, Spain
© Samo Vidic / Alinghi Red Bull Racing
For Rice, it all starts with developing good habits.
“When I was young, I’d do a little bit of running around pre-season, but rode so much that was the training,” Rice said. “The older you get, the more you need to put in twice the effort for half the result. You get a little smarter as you get older and start tinkering with diet and training. But there’s nothing worse than being injured, so a lot of what I do in my routine is focused on injury prevention.”
Rice is a master of the basics, staying hydrated and staying flexible, but he also incorporates technical elements like focusing on core and lower back support. After that, his fitness routine opens up to training to support strength through flexibility.
Travis Rice staying motivated between his workout with Red Bull Zero
© Marcus Chambers
“We’re always forming habits that can affect posture, like sitting around too much and working at a desk,” Rice said. “If you don’t address that stuff, it’s going to stick with you your whole life. Then your body will create pathways that try to circumvent that preventative knot or preventative lack of mobility - things that compound over time.”
Similarly, after his goals are set, Lenny breaks down his workouts into targeted action items when he hits the gym, envisioning how the work will help specific areas of his body once he’s on the water, and then choosing an activity that addresses that area.
“It’s not working out for the sake of working out, it’s working out to be better on the water,” Lenny said. “You’re always pulling back to what you’re trying to do with it. For example, I might get creative and run in deep sand because I know I need to get all the ligaments and tendons in my ankles really strong so that if I fall going really fast on the board, it doesn’t hyper-extend.”
While injury prevention sits at the epicenter of both Lenny and Rice’s fitness routines, they’re also aware there’s nothing to prevent if there is no routine. That’s why they both prioritize exercise at least once or twice per day.
“I’ve got a rhythm with snowboarding that’s a certain pace and form function in winter,” Rice said. “Being in the mountains, snowboarding, snowmobiling, hiking in snow and everything that comes with it - all of that generally has an ‘inward’ rotation habit pattern. Water sports, like surfing, tend to have more of an ‘outward’ rotation pattern - with laying on the board, and being in a prone position. For me, that’s a huge part of my therapy - breaking the asymmetry that comes with snowboarding, as it’s a very asymmetrical sport.”
Travis Rice at Natural Selection Tour Revelstoke, Canada
© Chad Chomlack / Red Bull Content Pool
Rice spends the spring and summer working in the ocean on strength and flexibility patterns that target those outward rotations, giving him a natural balance between inward and outward habitual patterns.
For Lenny, snowboarding cross-pollinates to his surfing work as well, even if it’s just watching Rice on the slopes.
“I see what Travis can do on a giant mountain, and I’m like, ‘There’s no reason why I can’t do that in giant waves,’” Lenny said. “Initially what inspired snowboarding was surfing, and it comes full circle because now what inspires my surfing is snowboarding. You just need to get inspired from somewhere, and it doesn’t always have to be from surfing.”
Whether in the surf or in the snow, Lenny and Rice compliment their fitness routiness with a Red Bull Zero on hand.
“I think it’s unmatched in its efficacy for me as a second wind,” Rice said. “In the afternoon on big days or evening workouts, it’s an incredible tool for that.”
Like Rice, Lenny also finds himself reaching for a Red Bull Zero in the afternoons.
“In the morning I’m warming up, but by the afternoon, I’m firing on all cylinders,” Lenny said. “When I’m out on these big waves I’ll take a sip of Red Bull and all of a sudden I have that power, that second push for the last hour. It revitalizes your mind and gives you that extra little boost when you need it.”
Kai Lenny during his workout with Red Bull Zero ready for his next set
© Marcus Chambers
For both Rice and Lenny, the key to maintaining a consistent fitness routine that doesn’t miss is to keep it varied.
“It’s about being creative and not doing the same thing repeatedly when it comes to workouts,” Lenny said. “As you saw when Travis and I worked out together, he’s doing two very different things than what I was doing. As I evolve as a surfer, an athlete, and a water man, I have to change the way I work out in order to accommodate that evolution so my body doesn’t become used to the workouts.”
It’s why Rice’s hidden secret is Active Isolated Stretching (AIS) - short two to three second varied stretches - that he’s incorporated into his routine since the age of 18 - the x-factor he attributes to being able to take a hit and not get injured throughout his career.
According to Rice, it’s the stretch time that needs variance because if the muscle is in a stretched position for roughly three seconds, it starts to automatically fight the stretch.
“You do reps of 5 to 10, but it’s active because you contract one muscle while you allow the opposite muscle to relax and stretch,” Rice said. “So doing 20-30 second stretches like you’re taught in school is not nearly as beneficial as using something like an AIS, which aligns much more with how muscles actually work.”
The best piece of advice from Rice and Lenny for maintaining an effective fitness routine is to stay focused and committed to the training. Whether it’s working in the gym, working with a healer, completing self-therapy, or actual body work, both athletes encourage using all methods, tools, and techniques at one’s disposal for sustained wellness. It comes down to simply taking the time to do it.
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