Short for stand-up paddle-board, a stable floating platform that combines the cool of surfing with the practicality of a spin workout. SUP has its , where native people have used paddleboards for centuries and modern versions began to appear in the 1940s. How it became a worldwide phenomena 60 years later depends on who you ask. Two competing narratives persist: The first has adopting SUP during Hawaii鈥檚 聽contest in 2003; when the surf media picked up a photo of the moment, the sport had its fertile seed. The second, more Hollywood-friendly version stars a little-known 聽who brought an enormous 11-foot SUP from Hawaii to California in 2000. He then had a friend handcraft a paddle so he could surf waves 鈥渢he old way.鈥
Whichever is true, the resulting interest from mainstream media (this magazine featured Hamilton on a SUP on its cover in 2002) and passionate practitioners made the sport a rare growth area during the recession. In just eight years, SUP went from being a fringe pursuit with effectively zero participants to a widely uttered acronym with 1.9 million devotees. In 2013, paddleboarding grew 29 percent, outpacing all other sports tracked by the , with oft ridiculed offshoots like SUP yoga continuing to thrive as well.