Sea kayak roll DVDs?: Jay Babina

greenland rolls with a sea kayak?
have you tried that, wayne, doing greenland rolls with a 17 foot sea kayak and euroblade. Hows that work?

EJ and Babina
It is implied in several of the above posts but I think it is worth making explicit here. The extended paddle roll that Babina teaches and the roll that Eric Jackson teaches are the same roll. Both are either C to back deck or Sweep to back deck or some mixture of the two. The only difference is that in Jackson’s roll you hold the paddle in the normal position and in Babina’s roll you hold it in the extended position. The extended paddle roll is easier to learn and I recommend you do that first. Then move on to the EJ roll. It should be trivial once you have the extended version down. Now you have two rolls in your arsenal. Use the EJ roll for normal situations and the extended paddle version for when you miss the EJ version and don’t want to swim. Now if you want to go on to learn a non layback roll you can always get up if you miss the new roll.

greenland boat does not = seayak
that’s what I meant. Who translatable are greenland rolls with a greenland boat and paddle to people with a long, heavy sea kayak (tempest 170 in plastic) and a werner camano blade? I’ll likely try to find this out myself, but just giving it a whirl.

excellent web resource. thank you.

thanks jay.
It’s great to know your on this board, too.



“expensive”–what I meant was just in comparison to dvd’s of movies, etc. No problem though–it’s value for the money, as you point out, and a less than classes.

works fine…
While I don’t use euro paddles outside of whitewater and tend to use wing and GPs for sea kayaking, I have done most of the rolls with a euro blade in sea kayaks.



Behind the back, behind the head, spine roll, forward finishing stuff, cross arm roll, etc… they all work fine in my 18 ft sea kayak with a euro paddle. The paddle is definitely secondary to your technique and what your lower body is doing.

right on! :slight_smile:

makes me ashamed and frustrated
to be an ACA and BCU certified instructor…



“My largest group of satisfied customers comes from people who paid CERTIFIED ACA and BCU instructors $75 - $150 and never learned to roll.”



WHAT?!?! There is no excuse for that crap. If one of my clients doesn’t learn how to roll in 2 sessions I feel obligated to give them free sessions until they learn (it only happened once). And then I sit down and figure out what I was doing wrong and why I couldn’t teach them. Actually, I do the self critique/analysis after each session, and really beat myself up if it takes more than one session for a student to learn.



I think Jay’s video is great, but it shouldn’t be a last resort after professional instructors have failed.

are you in the seattle area?
as I am?

I am in South Carolina, sorry. NM

foam float as back-up
I used a piece of minicell foam, 4" thick and about 1 ft by 2 ft as I recall (no longer have it around). I put a nylon rope through it to make a convenient handle (using pieces of small diameter PVC so the rope didn’t tear through the minicell). I would put it under bungies either on the front deck or rear deck. If I missed rolls 2 or 3 times and was ready to wet exit, I’d grab it with my right hand, pull it out from the bungies, and let the bouyancy bring my hand to the surface. Then move my hand back away from the kayak so as to get some support from the foam, bring my body up the surface, and do a hip snap to bring the boat up.

If you are trying to roll up in the direction where you’d use a sweep with your right hand going back (which I started with, and I think most right-handed people do), what worked best is having the foam on the rear deck. Then grab it with your right hand by reaching over your left shoulder, let it rise to the surface, and you are in the right position.

I found it made practicing easier since I no longer had to come out of the boat. I would also take it on the rear deck when paddling solo, as a back up for failed rolls. Of course, once you have the extended paddle roll from one side solid, then that’s your back-up as you try other the other side, other positions, front-finishing rolls, etc.

Some of us have long heavy Greenland…
… kayaks! Mine is 19’8.25" long and weighs around 44 lbs. More than 20 inches longer than my QCC700 (not a short kayak) and only 4 lbs lighter (feels a lot lighter though as it balances a bit better and carries a bit easier).



Greenland qajaq are indeed sea kayaks. Commercial offerings being bloated and heavy in comparison doesn’t change that.



What does boat weight have to do with it anyway? In some cases it translates to better conservation of momentum and can help you! (Not encouraging fast rolls - but some rolls are easier if things keep moving).



What does length have to do with it? I don’t know anyone who can roll one on the long axis with out some assistance from a strong wave (and maybe a shallow bottom) and some bad luck/timing!

Not quite
EJ’s is not sweep roll. Paddle basically follows the same path - but nothing happens until it’s out to the side - then a quick brace/hip snap.



With a sweep roll you can begin rotating the boat while doing the sweep. Spreading the hull righting action out so its more of a unwinding/twisting a continuous release of energy than a quick forceful hip snap. Some say the sweep roll doesn’t even use a “hip snap” - I see ti as a spread out snap. This roll can be done quite slowly and relaxed - or quicker and more energetic. Righting the boat can begin early or late in the sweep - usually I just go by feel depending on boat, etc.

What EJ says and what he shows
I grant you that EJ is apparently teaching a C to backdeck roll. But many of his filmed examples show people doing a sweep to back deck. He adds sculling at times and seems very eclectic. At the same time in Jay’s video he often shows the paddle moving from setup to 90 degrees without ever touching the water and the boat is not rotating much if at all. I think that is fine. Add the boat rotation or not with extended paddle or not. It is all about rolling from any position, which both people advocate.

My Experience
I had instruction from local paddlers. There were pool sessions set up by the local paddle shop. I don’t know anything about who was or wasn’t certified by what organization. All I know was that I came away with a lousy roll.



I bought a DVD and got some good advice from my fellow PNetters and have improved tremendously.



In short; a good DVD can be better than live instruction.

And mine
I learned to roll with the help of a guy in my area who did almost nothing but roll practice. What I learned was the “modified sweep” taught in The Kayak Roll DVD…which was not out yet and I had never heard of.



It was enough to allow me to practice on my own. The roll wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, so I got The Kayak Roll DVD when it came out. That helped quite a bit.



Then I backslid. Roll regressed to its earlier state–I still got up most of the time (did not “lose my roll”) but it didn’t feel consistently strong. And I still didn’t have my “off” side. So I bought the EJ DVD next. I liked some of the exercises and the psychological approach but the DVD didn’t help me strengthen my roll. (Yes, I know it’s not the identical roll, but I doubt that’s why it didn’t help me.)



This year I took a 5-day class with Body Boat Blade. Rolling was not specifically on the agenda but I got some tips that have helped me strengthen my roll already. So I’ll put in a vote for getting good instructors to critique you if you already have a roll of some sort–but it’s better to learn from them in the first place. Another student in my class said, “It’s like they have x-ray eyes, they can tell right away what’s going on” even without seeing under the water.

eclectic

– Last Updated: Jul-13-07 11:40 AM EST –

Yeah - definitely easy to overlap and blend elements.

I tend to see them all interrelated, and I'll mix elements, vary things, toss in more or less sculling, whatever.

Others would just call that lousy technique.

Which view (rigid technique focus or more eclectic experimentation) better serves a beginner would depend on the beginner.

Being able to pick up on these variations in what works for different people and adapting the teaching to suit is where good instructors can blow any DVD away.

Online, and even getting into this stuff probably just confuses - which takes us back to Jay's advice on focusing on one specific roll until it's working reliably enough to allow more play and experimentation. From that perspective, his and EJs are definitely different.

Extended paddle roll factoid
Derek Hutchinson often tells people that he used the extended paddle roll when he got picked up in the middle of the North Sea on his first failed crossing attempt. He had to roll up next to a tanker picking him up when the huge waves threw him over.



If you don’t know of him - he wrote the original book on the Eskimo Roll.

Any way is OK
I have a friend (who’s in my video) who teaches / guides for Atlantic Kayak Tours and he teaches people to roll on both sides at once with good success. Some people are like seals in the water and some are timid, clumbsy and nervous.



The only wrong way is the one that doesn’t work.



I think having sensitivity and flexability about who you are teaching is extremely important.

better instruction!
‘Better instruction’ is great advice, but finding a better instructor isn’t easy. I’ve taken private rolling classes from 3 ACA-certified instructors, and not one of them seemed to care much, or have much sense of what might be going on. My friends have taken rolling instruction from 6 or 7 more ACA-instructors, and not one of them has gotten anybody rolling (those instructors all insist on layback-free rolls).



Jay’s method has worked for 3 out of 4 people here who have tried it–hardly a scientific sample, but a lot better than ACA private instructors up here who insist on starting with C to C rolls, even if not a soul in their classes ever gets it!



The folks who teach rolling at the Ladies of the Lake symposium, on the other hand, have a great track record. They put students in SOF kayaks, give them greenland paddles, teach an extended paddle layback roll, work with them one-on-one, and manage to get everyone rolling. So if you’re a woman on the Great Lakes who wants to learn to roll, consider the symposium this August.