Crunches, lunges and leg lifts belong in one category of exercise.

Standing up on a board and paddling on water belongs in another.

Sunny Steurer combines it all in her exercise classes off Fort Lauderdale beach.

Stand-up paddleboarding -- a hybrid of surfing and paddling -- has surged in South Florida in recent years. One South Florida group launched a racing series this summer, and surf-shop dealers report more patrons interested in buying paddleboards, which cost about $1,000.

On flat water, paddlers can glide along and catch the sights. On the ocean, they can ride the waves and tap into their inner surfers.

As part of Steurer's classes, you paddle out about 100 yards and follow her lead as she does stretching, squats, crunches, pushups, situps and Pilates and yoga moves while balancing on a board. This requires balance similar to standing on a BOSU ball.

Sounds tough, but Steurer says most people pick it up in the first one-hour class.

``If not, you can take a break and sit on the board,'' she says.

Steurer instructs the students to take a wide stance, maintain their balance, and, well, if they don't . . . ``Go ahead and fall into the ocean,'' she tells them.

Steurer launched the stand-up paddleboarding classes last year and gets about a half-dozen students a session. (In Miami-Dade, Kite Shop Miami offers paddleboarding classes on South Beach, though without the exercise element.)

A personal trainer for 27 years, Steurer owned a gym in Germany for 17 years and finished 12th in the Miss Olympia contest in 1990.

She kicks your butt.

``I get in the car after class and my thighs are quivering,'' says Kelly Preas, who lives in Norway but is spending a year in Fort Lauderdale.

She's in her 50s and likes basking in the ``salt air, the sea breeze and the sun'' while also working new muscle groups.

``Nothing like learning a new sport,'' says Debbie Voecks of Fort Lauderdale, who's also 50-plus and likes to snow- and water-ski and inline skate.

Surfing instructors began stand-up paddling in Polynesia and Hawaii in the 1960s as a way to better see the incoming waves and their students. It made the California scene in about 2000, Steurer says, and surfer Laird Hamilton brought more attention to it when he paddled across the English Channel in 2006.

Jodi Crespi, 49, says Steurer's class builds her core strength. She added it to her tennis game and three workouts a week with a personal trainer.

``I now definitely respect surfers a heck of a lot more, and being in the sun and on the beach is so invigorating,'' she says. ``That's why we live in South Florida.''

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