How to Reduce Penalties and Major Time Errors

 

Here is a systematic way of reducing both your penalties and major time errors in races.  Get a notebook and after every race, make a little diagram of the gate sequence where you had problems.  Do this for every touch (penalty) or major time error.  Have arrows showing what the sequence was and make a note of which pole was touched and what it was touched with (boat, body, or paddle).  Then, write your analysis of why this happened and what you can do in the future to avoid it.

You won't want to do this probably.  You feel that you already know what went wrong.  But, by writing down and analyzing every error, you will reduce your errors systematically.  Eventually, you will have made every error and analyzed them all and filled up your notebook.  At that point, you will be making very few errors.

Another method is to have someone take videos of you and the top boaters at every race.  Then, you can analyze the runs by watching the video after the race.  Video analysis should be part of your training.  The more you learn by analyzing videos, the better you will be at analyzing race courses ahead of time.

A very important skill in our sport is being able to look at a course and figure it out from shore, before you take your run.  You look at the gates, the water, etc. and based on your prior experience, you know what you need to do and where you need to go through the entire course.  The most experienced boaters are better at this than less experienced boaters.  But you don't have to just wait for the passage of time to get this experience- you can do training and analysis that will help you acquire this skill more quickly.

Try to get as much race experience as you can on good, hard courses.  Do race simulations and full lengths in practice on good whitewater slalom courses.  Plan out your runs extensively in practice, just like you would in a race.  Analyze your runs afterwards with videos.  And keep a notebook of all penalties and major time errors and your runs will become more and more perfect. 

Here is a systematic way of reducing both your penalties and major time errors in races.  Get a notebook and after every race, make a little diagram of the gate sequence where you had problems.  Do this for every touch (penalty) or major time error.  Have arrows showing what the sequence was and make a note of which pole was touched and what it was touched with (boat, body, or paddle).  Then, write your analysis of why this happened and what you can do in the future to avoid it.

You won't want to do this probably.  You feel that you already know what went wrong.  But, by writing down and analyzing every error, you will reduce your errors systematically.  Eventually, you will have made every error and analyzed them all and filled up your notebook.  At that point, you will be making very few errors.

Another method is to have someone take videos of you and the top boaters at every race.  Then, you can analyze the runs by watching the video after the race.  Video analysis should be part of your training.  The more you learn by analyzing videos, the better you will be at analyzing race courses ahead of time.

A very important skill in our sport is being able to look at a course and figure it out from shore, before you take your run.  You look at the gates, the water, etc. and based on your prior experience, you know what you need to do and where you need to go through the entire course.  The most experienced boaters are better at this than less experienced boaters.  But you don't have to just wait for the passage of time to get this experience- you can do training and analysis that will help you acquire this skill more quickly.

Try to get as much race experience as you can on good, hard courses.  Do race simulations and full lengths in practice on good whitewater slalom courses.  Plan out your runs extensively in practice, just like you would in a race.  Analyze your runs afterwards with videos.  And keep a notebook of all penalties and major time errors and your runs will become more and more perfect.