Stroke Mobility

When you watch most paddlers in whitewater, their range of motion is very restricted.  You teach them all the strokes and how to get good extension on flatwater, but then when they get on whitewater, then end up with about 2 strokes and no variety in their strokes.

I'm not talking about just beginners, but even solid racers.  They never get the paddle far from the boat for maximum turning effect and then neve have the paddle very vertical.  These moves may feel safe on flatwater but when they tense up on the rapids, they forget they every learned such strokes. 

Everyone needs to keep going back and practicing the strokes on flatwater so your body gets more and more used to them.  And keep trying to use them on whitewater.

I sometimes have the paddlers practice 2 extremes of stroke mobility.  The stroke under the boat and the stroke away from the boat.

For the stroke under the boat, I grab their bow and push their boat away from shore and have the paddler paddle back at me with just one blade.  To do this, you need to rotate the shoulders and place the blade underneath the boat so the paddle is past vertical.  Don't reach far forward or angle your paddle- just reach under the boat with the blade.  Then, finish the stroke with a rudder at the stern, not a back stroke that slows the boat, but a rudder stroke that is parallel with the direction of the boat.  Unless you are a good c-1 paddler, you probably won't do this well at first.

The stroke away from the boat is the middle portion of the sweep stroke.  You reach out to the side and do a stroke about 3 feet away from the boat.  The paddle is more horizontal for this stroke and you reach out to the side as far as you can.  This stroke is very useful for course corrections whenever the boat veers off to one side, or to prevent it veering off to one side, as when you do a downstream gate in an eddy and you do the stroke away from the boat as you first enter the eddy to keep the boat from spinnning out.  The stroke away from the boat is better than a traditional sweep in this situation because it does not weight the bow as much as a sweep stroke does.

So, practice these 2 strokes when warming up and remember to have a variety of strokes you use when you move to whitewater.  Keep practing them so that your body gets more and more comfortable doing these strokes.

 

Comments

[Ron Lugbill]

Thanks for commenting. Good idea to write a post re: power and efficiency on the offside in c-1. Please also read my post re: cross sweep stroke in c-1. Thanks.

[C1er]

Ron, maybe you could do a post about getting more power and efficiency from the offside for a c1er?