Just Got Home from Roll Practice
at the local lake.
Lessons learned:
Just Got Home From Surfing
Franklin swells. I have not a clue how many rolls I did, nor types though they tend to be C2C, followed by back deck rolls and then layback rolls. And then there were those weird braces after capsize that would just catch some wave force and popped me back up.
I am big believer in moving the practice to small surf or easy white water after one gets a roll pretty much down. Working with moving water is a whole other ball of wax that has to be developed. It’s about sense and intuition and technique almost becomes secondary.
sing
definitely
Practicing rolling in a dynamic environment elevates the rolling steps from 1. setup 2. sweep 3. hipsnap to 1. feel (the wave or current) 2. react (brace, scull, etc.) 3. roll (no real knowledge of how but using steps 1 and 2, your body somehow rolls you up).
What Worked At The Lake
1) Paddle way up high, getting a good bite on the water.
2) Lean BACK. When you finish the roll, be leaned BACK.
Yeah... monkey brained fear. My buddy and I talked about that some. I was able to hit all my 2nd attempts. My buddy wouldn't try 2nd attempts. He said a little panic was starting to creep in. He said he was going to do some breath holding and time keeping to give himself a little more confidence. I'll post if it works for him.
totally missing the boat!!!
Literally!
Re-read the post:
“But not all rabits rest once ahead. Those who continue to work on it will be even better off.”
You too, made a blanket statement assuming success MUST bread additional interest. So quick learner of rolls MUST be interested in learning additional rolls. The assumption is not valid.
How many of you ride bicycles? How many of you pratice riding a bike up and down the stair? It can be pretty useful in a lot of situations. And it isn’t that hard to learn either. For the trial specialist, the trick is the fun part of cycling. For the rest, riding is the goal and special bike handling is just part of the tool kit. Same with kayak rolling. Some find it fun, others do it out of neccesity.
Some quick learner do stop. That just happen. For the same reason not everyone find riding a bike backward fun, not everyone LOVE rolling either. WW paddler, by and large, enjoys the rivers more. For many of us, rolling is a tool. Not the goal. While rolling “can be” fun when the river is frozen, I would go to the river over praticing rolls in a pool every time. There’re plenty of us who don’t bother with every kinds of rolls. Just one on each side reliably so we can get back up! And it just happens some paddler don’t dump often enough their roll gets out of pratice.
Out of neccessity, many slow learners HAD TO work on their roll, or they’ll be too busy dumping water out of their boat instead of playing in the rapids. Still, there’re those who give up on rolling because they lost it faster than they can master it.
There is no correlation of fast vs slow learner to the amounts of follow-up pratice. As observed by the previous poster, some quick learner do loss their roll due to lack of pratice. And I can see why. You have completely miss the point of the post.
check this thread
9th reply, by ericnye
http://www.paddling.net/message/showThread.html?fid=advice&tid=358328
Assuming you secure the weight with an air bag, sounds a lot safer than being next to a dock with all your floats, lines, etc.
I only got comfortable with rolling after I learned my offside roll. I was doing C to Cs, came up on the offside first few tries, then couldn’t keep it reliable. Tried a screw roll for the first time on the offside, and it worked great. Now I don’t HAVE an offside, and I need to see if I can still do a C to C, just for the heck of it.
I had watched the video “The Kayak Roll” a number of times, they show keeping the blade flat. I didn’t do that, I used a planing angle on the blade per Derek Hutchinson’s book “Eskimo Rolling”. (That book may be a bit old, but you can still order it and its good reading, as well as great sketches and instruction. Don’t miss the details of his sketches, Some of them are really funny.) Its easy enough to get a planing angle, just start with the blade level with the water, then rotate your wrists outward a bit. For someone who isn’t as flexible as you youngsters, the screw roll seems to be easier than setting up for the C to C, I have trouble getting my paddle to the surface with that one.
Someone here said that rolling was sort of “unwinding” from the setup, thats what it feels like. After I got more comfortable with rolling both sides, I slowed down the unwind a bit to try to figure out exactly what it was I was doing, and I noticed that my head was pretty much following the paddle, like someone else had said here.
As for practicing alone, I do it, am not comfortable with it, and probably won’t be until I have more practice. I practice very close to shore, and check the water depth and check for underwater obstacles first.
What I said is:
“You can twist this stuff around to suit whatever BS you’re trying to sell yourself. There is probably an example of someone that fits any variation.”
Keep the change.