On Saturday, I had the opportunity to meet up with Becky Molina at her and Marks house and took two hours of instruction. Actually it ran to almost three hours with a little break in the middle.
Becky teaches very very well. Her descriptive commentaries were very succinct and helped me visualize the moves. She was very good at identifying weaknesses and making suggestions to improve on them.
She gave me absolutely no slack though. Even though I was pretty comfortable with a bunch of rolls, she made me do each one of them on my off side also and I was successful with everything except the chest scull which I will work on religiously. Mostly I found that it was a mindset more than anything else that had been preventing me from doing them. So big success that way.
I also learned and practiced two new norsaq and hand rolls (my favorite being the mummy roll which is just plain fun! along with several others that I can’t even remember the names of.
Charles Despres (uncle Charlie) was there taking mental notes and will work with me some more. He is going to coach me when we get together again.
Her comments to me were very supportive and I was gratified to hear her say that there were no bad habits to unlearn. I guess watching the Maligiaq video until my wife wants to scream pays off. 
Every single muscle really really hurts right now and I am going to have to take at least two days off to try and recover.
I would do it again in a heartbeat
Paul
More on chest scull?
I am just now starting to figure out some of the really Greenland stuff - just got my first GP and have had just a couple of sessions with it. So my terminology etc is not there, hence probably a dumb question. But I’ll go anyway.
Was the chest scull with your back or side in the the water and you facing up or forward, or were you over on your chest facing down? Reason I ask is that I have been trying to push my torso over more towards the last, but am still finding myself falling in at a certain point as I start to flatten forward. I figure it’s mostly that I am letting go of my lower body hold, but my persnickity side keeps mumbling that there has got to be a way.
Chest scull=chest to the water…
…face down with paddle extended out ~90 degrees to the centerline of the boat.
Ah - extended GP
Been trying to go there with a not-extended Euro blade, since I just got the GP. While I am sure there is still the issue of lower body control to work on, using a non-extended Euro has maybe made it a bit tougher at least to start.
Thanks!
chest scull
not sure I understood the lower body control issue?
Lower body
I presume that you still want to be kicking the boat back to or if possible past on its side via lower body control (the clip didn’t play on the computer I used earlier today), yes? So I am assuming that part of my issue is that when I start over onto my chest, I am not holding the boat back properly with my thighs as I do when I am on my back.
I am working with the slightly less friendly boat of my two for this stuff too, but the Vela is shorter and just a lot easier to haul in and out of pools than the Expl LV. So the balance point where the boat will stay on its side pretty much by itself is thinner and more eaily lost.
I suppose
you are right, but I never thought about having to push the boat back from that position. hmmm. Now I am going to have to think about it tomorrow morning during practice and I will write back.
lower body on recovery…
While it’s always important to focus on tilting the boat upright while sculling (and even more so on the recovery), I think hand position is more important for the chest scull. Since you’re sculling for the most part with your head in the water, the focus is more on keeping the inboard hand lower in the water than the sculling hand. For me, I can chest scull with the boat tilted up or not. It doesn’t make much of a difference until you recover from the scull. Of course if I’m doing the chest scull with my head out of the water, I need to tilt the boat upright a lot more than normal.
Thanks
Upon my assembling the correct equipment tro start with, being more relaxed about what is happening with the lower body may help.
three days later
Finally recovered enough to go out and practice all the rolls I was working on with Becky Molina. I got off on a shaky start with the offside scull but settled into it pretty well after a couple of dunkings. (I concentrated on the offside rolls this morning) I managed to balance brace holding the paddle but not without it. the butterfly roll was no sweat, the standard greenland and back deck rolls were ok also. Chest sculling was good but I was probably not at a good angle from the boat with the paddle…should be at 9 to 10 o’clock an I was probably at 1100 or so.
Did a norsaq roll on my offside for the first time!
Then I did all of them and more on my onside and came up sighing and wondering if I would ever be as smooth on the offside.
Then I praccticed the mummy roll and did three in a row and then the fun one. I think it is called the continuous storm roll on the Walden site where they have a team of three doing it. You capsize leaving the padle laying on the hull and reach around and grasp it from under the water on the other side and basically chest scull up…Lost the paddle a couple of times but it was fun trying to get it to look smooth.
Paul