Feathering paddle and wrist motion

@magooch said:

@Yooper16 said:
Glad the curtains are shut so that the neighbors can see me practicing while reading your posts.

Wait, what are you practicing?
Guess I didn’t think that one through> :slight_smile:

My contact with the paddle appears to be the same as magooch. In flat water I can get away with the two/three finger approach and push with my top hand open, but the dynamics of waves, wind, and boat wakes changes that. Played around with that last night while a couple of ski boats were out yanking people around…and sliced my blade a couple times. That was disconcerting.

I was looking at some forward stroke videos today and except for a couple of brief frames when explaining how to hold the paddle, the instructors have a full grip on their paddles, albeit lightly.

@Yooper16 How’s the bug situation up there? Are they still in full attack mode?

During the times when I’ve been caught in rough conditions, like the wind trying to blow the paddle out of my hands, I have used a very firm grip. Not quite white knuckles, but close.

Mosquitos are not bad, actually better than where we moved from. We lived in the area known as the Black Swamp in SE Michigan, so most things are an improvement up here.

Black flies, seem to recall them being worse years ago, but we live intown in the thriving metropolis so maybe that helps. Recall them being really bad during our backpacking years.

Mayflies are a bit heavier than I recall the last couple. Or are these Julyflies?

Had a massive infest of army worms this year all over the area. The resultant moths laying for next year are starting to reduce. Overall for us not bad. Have visitors on and off for the next 6 weeks, and probably some of our road trips will come upon swarms of the little darlings.

Hope to get out tomorrow --gonna re read this thread beforehand.

The whole grip thing is getting way overworked here. Most people likely show their whole hand on the paddle in regular circumstances. The point is that the force of the grip can be greatly reduced over what people starting out often assume. To the detriment of their wrist. A good way to find out if more work is being done than necessary is to pull fingers off the paddle side being drawn back to tell how little tightness you can get away with.

There is distance, power paddling and there are exercises to discover more about limits in paddling. Both are a good idea.

Wind forces are minimal on an unfeathered paddle. Only when the wind is directly behind or in front (a rare occurrance, especially when following a coastline) will the wind “catch” the blade, even if the blade is fairly large. On a slim greenland paddle, the effects are considerably lower. There is no need, even in high wind (alone) for a full grip on the paddle. I just curl the fingers and leave the thumb loose. It often will not make contact with the paddle.

When entering/exiting surf, however, or bracing, sculling, and cresting waves, a full grip is necessary. The forward stroke does (unless you are practicing surf or heavy paddle moves, as described above) require anything more than a stable platform between thumb and index finger. The forces involved are such that the paddle does not need to be gripped. The push locks the paddle in place on one side and the pull does so on the other. There may be some wind conditions where a full grip is needed with an unfeathered paddle, but I’ve yet to encounter them.

With a feathered paddle, you pretty much must grip the paddle (though not as powerfully as some seem to think) at all times in winds. In heavy winds, this means holding the paddle quite firmly. Now, the wind has a very easy time getting, and grabbing the paddle. Many capsize when this happens. You cannot (or I should say, I cannot - I won’t speak for others) shift weight quickly enough to lean on the paddle, so I am forced to release the paddle on the windward side. This causes problems, as well, but I can avoid the capsize as the paddle flops over in the air. In my experience, this will not happen with an unfeathered paddle.

The above sentence should read:
The forward stroke does NOT (unless you are practicing surf or heavy paddle moves, as described above) require anything more than a stable platform between thumb and index finger.

I’ve certainly had the wind try to take the paddle out of my hands on several occasions. Sometimes feathering helps this. Sometimes it doesn’t. Depends on wind direction. I tend to paddle high angle.

@Yanoer said:
I’ve certainly had the wind try to take the paddle out of my hands on several occasions. Sometimes feathering helps this. Sometimes it doesn’t. Depends on wind direction. I tend to paddle high angle.

Ditto

I have tied feathering several times, and with the 15° many of my friends use, I notice little difference in back pressure from the wind. What I did notice was going into strong wind the feather tended to push the upper hand inboard on the left, and outboard on the right ( I use high angle). I found that tiring. Without feather, that did not happen.

I am curious about the control hand statements earlier in this thread. Could someone elaborate why one should not use a control hand with a feathered paddle, and what one should do instead to twist the paddle shaft into the correct position before the catch?

I would like to give some background for my question:
When I do a paddle stroke, the paddle shaft twists forwards during the stroke. So with an unfeathered paddle, I will after the stroke have to twist the paddle shaft backwards (bending my wrist up) so I reset the paddle blade position before I do the catch in the opposite side.

Whether this is caused by body mechanics or by a subconscious effort to keep the blade perpendicular to the kayak movement direction during upper body rotation I don’t know. I just know that it happens. I also know that it is not just me who does it this way, because:

2 years ago I joined a wing paddle class. Here the concept of “correct feathering” was explained. The feathering for a right-handed wing paddle is correct when you can go directly from the end of a stroke on your left side to the catch on your right side without doing anything to reset the paddle blade position. So this acknowledges that the above described twist of the paddle shaft during the stroke is actually supposed to happen.

OK. With the basics down, now let us go back to the control hand issue. What happens when we end a stroke with a right-hand feathered paddle on the right side and want to do a catch on the left side?

It should be obvious from the above that we need to twist the shaft backwards a lot - double of what is needed with an unfeathered paddle. Not only will we have to reset the twist we did during the stroke on our right side - we also have to counter the feathering.

I think it is also obvious that our left hand hasn’t followed the twist of the shaft during the stroke on our right side. We push with an open hand, so the shaft will twist freely in the open hand. So our left hand will now be in the wrong position on the paddle shaft.

As I see it, we now have two choices when we want to bring our left hand into the correct position on the paddle shaft and twist the paddle shaft before the stroke:

  1. We can twist the shaft backwards with our right hand, letting it slide in our left hand. The right hand is probably already in a good initial position for this, because it will have followed the paddle in its forward twist during the stroke. Now both the paddle and the left hand are in the correct position.
  2. We can bend our left hand forward - a lot. Then grab the paddle shaft and then twist back the paddle shaft. Now both the paddle and the left hand are in the correct position.

To me, method 1 seems to be a much simpler and easier movement than method 2. And method 1 is the control hand method as I understand it.

So those of you who use a feathered paddle without a control hand, do you really use method 2? Or is there a method 3 which I haven’t considered?

I acknowledge that this topic will be difficult to discuss, because most of us don’t really think what we are doing when doing a movement. And we will often vehemently claim that we are doing the movement in one way while we are in fact doing it in a completely different way.

My favourite example of this disconnect between what we do and what we think we do, is making a turn on a bicycle. Most people will deny that when they want to turn to the left, they start by turning the handle bars to the right. They will claim that they turn them to the left. But to keep the balance during the turn, you need to lean to the left. And the way you make yourself and the bicycle lean to the left is by turning the handle bars a bit to the right.

Control hand thing, talking about me l presume. Fyi l watched this whole dialogue play out in a class with Ben Lawry. My recall is that he paddles with a feather, but its been a good long time so that could be wrong.

When l do mess around with feather l think l use number 1 above. Can’t vouch for whether the left hand gets a bit involved in returning the paddle to a forward angle as l finish the stroke though. I would have be on the water to check it out.

But l have never once thought of my more functional hand as being controlling nor been required to. As the stroke moves from side to side with a feathered paddle the shaft has to rotate for a good entry into the water. I happen to be right handed so that determines which end spins how, but in the power phase each hand is alternately doing the same work.

To me the shaft rotation is just something l do to get a clean blade angle and the hands are the servant of that goal. It may partly come from my earlier paddle boat time being a sit and switch canoeist. In my younger days l putzed around over moderate distances without any training. So l never learned a j stroke then. Speaking of something that is difficult on my aging wrists…

Back to the start of this thread, for someone starting out new calling one hand a control hand has two risks. One is exactly what the oper states he is doing, bending his wrist back and forth with likely a tighter grip than is needed. Not good for the wrist. The other is that it can take focus away from things like torso rotation and blade placement that will pretty much set up the rest of,it.

In wind, I do not paddle with a high angle. I’m not sure I ever do except for steering manoeuvers in moving water. This may be why I have fewer issues with wind with an unfeathered paddle.

I think we’re over-thinking this and my head hurts.

Me too. I guess we’re not great thinkers.

@Celia said:
But l have never once thought of my more functional hand as being controlling nor been required to. As the stroke moves from side to side with a feathered paddle the shaft has to rotate for a good entry into the water. I happen to be right handed so that determines which end spins how, but in the power phase each hand is alternately doing the same work.

To me, it sounds like you are paddling with a control hand. You just avoid thinking about it as a control hand.

I don’t think that the difference between what your two hands do is caused by you being right handed. I am pretty sure that it is caused by the paddle being feathered for a right hand person. If you feathered it for a left hand person, your hand motions would switch sides, even though you are still right handed.

“Or is there a method 3 which I haven’t considered?”
Method 3.
You are at the end of your power phase on the right side. Your left blade will need to rotate to be in position for the catch. But what else needs to happen?
Your right blade needs to be lifted from the water into the air.
At the end of the stroke, if I keep my wrist straight, and do nothing but a straight-wristed curl with my right hand, from the extended position in the water, all the way up onto my shoulder, I have rotated my left paddle closer to 180 degrees. This is obviously too far, and that’s not how you want your right hand to end up. But it illustrates that you have a whole lot of rotation that can happen without flexing your wrist. With a high angle stroke, keeping my elbow down, I would rotate well over 90 degrees. Now I don’t keep my elbow down when I raise my right hand. I lift my elbow as well. So what happens is that in between raising my hand, and raising my elbow, I end with the proper amount of rotation for the left-hand stroke. None of this involves bending my wrist to control blade angle.
If you think of the paddler’s box, and rotation, and how the blade face angle needs to remain constant in relation to the water while changing in relating to the direction your arms are pointing, that’s a good way to think about the whole thing. I don’t know anyone who describes that as something that they actively control with a firm grip and shaft rotation as they progress through the stroke. Most seem to say the power-face locks in and finds it’s way with a loose grip and proper solid rotation. I find that to be true. Likewise, I raise the shaft on my thumb with both hands, with well-developed calluses on the thumb of each hand. The control of rotation is loose and not concentrated upon. The control is subtle, and doesn’t require something so deliberate as a control hand with a grip and wrist twist.

“I will after the stroke have to twist the paddle shaft backwards (bending my wrist up) so I reset the paddle blade position before I do the catch in the opposite side.”

A different version: When I raise my hand from the water, the shaft will rotate backwards with my hand without bending my wrist. The higher angle I lift to, the higher I will need to raise my elbow to control over-rotation, so I reset the paddle blade position before I do the catch on the opposite side.

Cape Fear. Thanks. Yes.
Alanoleson, my husband was left-handed. Neither of us found any use for thinking of a hand as controlling.

@string said:
Me too. I guess we’re not great thinkers.
me three, for heavens sake, been paddling around 35 years, feathered (right & left), unfeathered, euro, wing, greenland (not so much), and couldn’t tell you anything about a control hand (hey, get your mind out of the gutter).

It probably says more about why I can do but not teach.

@magooch said:
I think we’re over-thinking this and my head hurts.

Ditto.