Fitness for poling a skiff means training grip strength, pulling power, core flexion, balance, and shoulder health off the water so you can push a boat ten hours a day, two hundred days in a row — faster, without fatigue, and without overuse injuries. For a long stretch of my life, poling a boat was the only way I made money. In this Physical Friday I answer listener Kyle's question with the exact exercises and two complete workout formats I use to train for it.
Watch now: press play in the player above and follow along.
Poling is grip, forearms, shoulders, lats, core, and legs — all of it, all day. You are pulling down on the push pole and walking down it to propel the boat, finishing each push with a full body curl through the trunk, holding a half squat as you drive the last push out, and balancing with your feet together on a rocking platform. Shake hands with a guide who poles 310 days a year and you will feel it: I have never met a fishing guide without strong hands.
Grip-focused pulling is the core of it. Hang two 1.5 inch manila ropes off a pull up bar and do rope hang pull ups — the rope is roughly the diameter of a push pole. Push a sled 50 feet with a long manila rope attached, then pull it back hand over hand, exactly like poling. Add rope climbs, regular pull ups and chin ups, core flexion work like sit ups and band body curls, squats with weight and air squats, and the SkiErg by Concept2, which mimics the downward pull of cross country skiing.
No, and hearing a famous guide call it that still makes me upset. Poling a skiff in the Florida Keys means driving the boat into the tide, across the tide, into the wind, downwind, in deep water and in water your push pole can barely reach the bottom of. You take that boat exactly where you want it to go despite the conditions. It is everything but a controlled drift, and that is exactly what we are training for.
Train the opposite direction and take care of the small muscles. Poling is almost all pulling down, so balance it with pressing — shoulder press, dumbbell press, push press, jerks, handstand push ups. Then add Crossover Symmetry, the light band system used in baseball, swimming, and CrossFit; 5 to 10 minutes a morning in your tackle room goes a long way. Joe Hippensteel's Ultimate Human Performance stretching program also helped me overcome the shoulder issues I got from too much poling.
Set a 20 minute clock and do as many rounds as possible of: 5 rope hang pull ups on manila ropes, 10 band body curls kneeling with a band anchored overhead, and 15 squats. When you come back to it, swap the movements — regular pull ups, sit ups, sled pushes — to keep building the same engine with variety.
EMOM means every minute on the minute: each minute you start a new exercise, and whatever time is left after the work is your rest. For poling, try EMOM 40 — minute one: 50 foot sled push; minute two: hand over hand rope pull bringing the sled back; minute three: 20 calories on the SkiErg; minute four: 5 pull ups, then repeat for 40 minutes. It is fine to make one minute pure rest. The format builds conditioning specific to the work you do on the platform.
Here are the two complete formats I give in the episode, built from the poling-specific movements.
Grip, pulling, core, balance, shoulder care — that is the whole system. I demonstrate the movements and talk through the strategy in the episode above.
Fishing guides who make a living poling do not cancel because it is a little windy — or a lot windy. You pole into the tide when it runs like a river, across the wind, downwind, in water too shallow for the motor and in water where the pole barely touches bottom. Ten hours a day, two hundred days in a row. Understanding that workload is the starting point for training for it, and I break it all down in the episode above.
Shake hands with a guide who is on the platform 310 days a year and you will know immediately — strong hands, strong forearms, every time. If I met an inshore guide with a soft handshake, I would be wary. Grip endurance is the single most important quality for poling, which is why everything in my program starts with ropes: rope hangs, rope pull ups, hand over hand sled pulls. I show the setups in the video above.
Poling is relentlessly one-directional — pulling down, flexing forward. Train only that direction and you are writing a prescription for overuse injuries. That is why I press as much as I pull: shoulder press, push press, jerks, handstand push ups. I do Supermans and back extensions to counter the forward flexion. The goal of off-water training is a longer career on the water, and I explain the balance in the episode above.
A lot of guides have shoulder problems from poling, and I was one of them. Two things got me out of it: Crossover Symmetry, the light band system from baseball and swimming that trains the small shoulder muscles in minutes a day, and Joe Hippensteel's Ultimate Human Performance stretching program. Joe has been on this podcast several times — an undersized decathlete who fixed his own broken body and then mine. The details are in the episode above.
Thanks to Kyle for sending this question through Instagram — though the text line at (305) 930-7346 will always get you a faster answer. This is exactly what Physical Friday is for: getting better at the things we love to do outside, prolonging our careers, and getting stronger so we can do more.
If you build your own poling workout from these movements, text it to me. I hope you get out there this weekend and do a lot of whatever you love — fishing, hunting, hiking, poling. Press play above for the full breakdown.
poling a skiff · push pole · Florida Keys · grip strength · manila rope · Rogue Fitness · rope climbs · sled pulls · SkiErg · Concept2 · AMRAP · EMOM · Crossover Symmetry · Joe Hippensteel · Ultimate Human Performance · glute ham developer · Bosu ball · Indo Board · Physical Friday
Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series for fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen — the training, nutrition, and mindset to stay in the game for life. Watch and listen to every Physical Friday episode from Tom Rowland.
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's Physical Friday series I share the training, nutrition, and mindset that keep fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen strong for life — short, practical episodes you can put to work in your next workout.
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