Paddlers often spend months building their base in the off-season, prior to the racing season. They believe that slow aerobic paddling is the best base to build off of. However, this approach leads to a decrease in power and speed and technique, because those elements are neglected. Paddling at speeds slower than race pace is not an effective type of base training.
Power, speed and technique are the most important factors in success in whitewater racing. Rather than reducing those during the off-season, power, speed and technique should be developed and increased during the off-season. Instead of a base of slow paddling, racers should aim for a strong base of technique, speed and power during the off-season.
Some have called this reverse periodization. That may be a misnomer though because periodization is just doing different things during different periods of the year. And base-building is doing different things during different periods of the year. So, it is still periodization. But, the base is built on building the important factors in the sport (technique, speed and power), rather than unimportant factors such as training the muscles to paddle slowly.
Track coaches might call it a short to long approach. Short to long is sometimes contrasted to long to short in track. Instead of training for a half-mile or mile and then working on speed to run 400 meters, you train for speed first, like a sprinter and then once you have the speed, you increase the distance to develop endurance.
To develop speed you can do short segments, up to 30 seconds at all-out efforts with complete rest. Ideally, there should be some work on straight, all-out speed training (sprints without gates), and some specific slalom gate training where there are current differentials, turns, upstreams, varied strokes, etc. to develop speed, acceleration, power and agility.
In slalom, there are frequent decelerations of the boat speed, requiring various strokes and re-acceleration. This is called agility, which is somewhat different from straight out sprinting where the boat speed remains high, except at the start. Agility is very important in slalom, yet rarely discussed in training.
To develop power, general strength is often developed first by resistance training. Power can then be developed by plyometric exercises or through in the boat training with resistance. Someone can hold the boat in place so it doesn't move and the resistance is increased. Do repeated sets of 30 strokes with the boat stationary. Or tow another boat for 30 strokes. This should be done in repeated short (30 seconds or less) sets so that maximum force is applied and then complete rest between sets.
As for technique, there should be varied forms of feedback to develop and improve technique. Forms of feedback include video analysis, coaching, counting times and penalties, and observing other boaters. Ideally, each of these forms of feedback would be used weekly. Bringing a lot of attention to the task (focus) is important in developing technique.
Paddling slowly for hours in the fall and winter accomplishes none of the important base-building factors needed for success in slalom racing. There should be weekly workouts emphasizing speed, technique and power. Regular feedback by using video, coaching, and paddling with others is important. It takes a great deal of time to develop the speed, power and technique necessary to win in slalom racing. There simply isn't enough time to adequately develop speed, power and technique in the spring- it's too short. The off-season is the long period of time when speed, power and technique can best be trained.
Comments