Gripping the Paddle
The borrowed paddle was round in the middle and squared toward the ends. I found that my natural hand placement was well into the squared part. Is that normal?
Oval Or Square Loom
gives indexing. I tried the square loom but Personally favor the oval (or rounded rectangular) shape loom. Find it’s less likely to give me blisters over a long trip. And the indexing is less confusing for me.
sing
Gripping a GP
Grip is different with a GP. You generally don’t hold a GP with all fingers on the paddle shaft. Your thumbs and forefingers encircle the shaft with your other fingers draped over the blades. There is no “one” shape to a GP shaft. They vary from a rounded rectangle to round. I prefer a shape between oval and rounded-rectangle but for a forward stroke the critical area is the shoulder (where the shaft transitions into the blade).
There is a lot of variety and personal preference in the paddle shoulder shape. This can vary from unshouldered (shaft flows smoothly into blade) or shouldered (a more abrubt transition).
Paddle fit with a GP is as critical or even more critical than with a GP or a wing. If you paddle with a Euro, think about how long it took you to find the right lenght, blade shape and paddle feather. You need to expect a similar time to find the right characteristics of a GP. Otherwise, it would be blind luck for someone to pick a GP out of a pile and have a good fit.
Greg Stamer
GP shoulder
How do you mean that the critical area is the shoulder? Since this part of the GP can vary from a quite pronounced shoulder to no shoulder at all, does that mean that it is critical for the individual paddler to find which shoulder type best fits him or her, or that there is some more widespread /standard design features in this area that every paddler needs to consider?
Also, does this critical area extend to the loom length (or width between shoulders) ? I feel that since my hands tend to move about on a GP (there’s no right one place for them to be) the loom and shoulder seem not to be big factors. But I’m not a GP expert , so is there something other than that “it feels right” aspect to be looking for in the shoulder area of a GP?
Shoulder
Or shoulderless, there is a transition area from the loom to the generally blunt “diamond” cross section of where the blade begins. With the hands gripped loosely over that area, there is indexing to affect the cant of the stroke.
I have both shoulder and shoulderless paddles. The shoulder provides a very clear area to tell the hands where to grip the blade. The feedback from the shoulderless is not as dramatic but there. The shoulderless does facilitate slide stroking for that reason. In terms of shoulders, I prefer mine to be off less acute angles, i.e. minimally shouldered.
sing
sing