fitness
I paddle in an old oak barrel with pie tins as a paddle. It is an awesome workout. I did .5 km yesterday and burned 1300 calories.
Very Funny
You crack me up, staff at work are wondering why I am snickering.
:-)…hee hee
Donna
Simple
I bet the first time you get your butt into an ICF racer and manages to make 5 consecutive powerful strokes without capsizing - then you’ll know the answer.
The payback for the power you put into your stroke is simply so much bigger - especially for a sea kayaker - it’s really enthrilling.
Here’s a bit of ICF racing pr0n:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFi7k6_oM4
See what it’s all about?
/Peter
L
So you can look cool!!! nobody looks cool in a FAT SLOW boat!!! Just like nobody looks cool in a “Pacer” or “Grimlin” or mini-van Its all about looking cool. To quote “style man” you really should have known!!!
Now
that would explain why so many race paddlers wear sunglasses… 
yep
but they have to mirrored!!!
I Can Attest…
swimming is the hardest, expecially in ice water. I hate it. I keep thinking that I gonna die if I stop. Also, just not cool to have that panicked look all over my face.
sing
reductio ad absurdum
Good way to test an argument is to take the process to the extreme to see how it behaves.
Sooo…
rather than just paddling a shorter boat to achieve the greater resistance, save all that money on a boat.
Sit on the dock, and pull hard!
Great workout, no dealing with putting away a boat with tired arms, and the money you saved can be put into a proper liquid carbohydrate replenishment (usually brown and fizzy).
Funny thing is (I will catch hell for this), when I used to race surf skis and sprint kayaks, the local dragon boat team (these are the really wide boats) kept trying to enlist me. My reply, year after year, was that it looked about as much fun as paddling a dock.
Fast boats are just fun!
That said, a common training trick in a K-l was to tie some thick cord around the hull to increase resistance. If we really wanted to hurt, we would tow tennis balls tied to the stern with bungie cord. It was never very much fun, as I recall.
karl
get a bathtub
I lost 50 lbs by paddling an Aquaterra Keowee fourteen miles a day three times a week.
Not many boats come as close to being in the shape of a bathtub as that one.
Best excercise boat out there. No repetitive strain injury. The more I worked out the more I could deal with the resistance. I started slow and moved to planing speed eventually.
Its all about paddle angles and technique for gong straight, not the boat. Coracles do go straight you know.
Ummnn…
Did I read that right? You can get a Keowee to reach, umnnnn…planing speed? I’m sorry, you get your steroids from where?
I understand the small boat
for excercise argument, maybe like hiking with ankle weights, I’ll often grab the CD Kestrel for a paddle. My longest swim is 6 miles with many 4 milers along the way. Have you ever swam a mile wearing a sweatshirt? If you want a killer workout just tread water for 20 minutes wearing a hooded sweatshirt.
Remember that the paddle stroke begins with the legs, combine a 4 mile course with a good roll session and you are total body 'specially if you did a good session of stretching before and after.
Short=wide=bad form=poor work out
Ice has it right, but I suspect few want to hear it. Effort alone is not the issue, properly applied effort is - and to do that require narrow hull (and good seat/foot position). The other comments about being able to maintain proper aerobic zone stroke rates at sustainable effort levels are also key. Paddle matters to, but only in context as part of a matched system. As beams drop and sped increases, more bite is needed to apply same power per stroke - hence the popularity of wings for fitness/racing. The small paddle argument can be sound, but depends on speed desired. Most useful for heavier/wider sea kayak and slower longer distance paddling in ski/race kayaks.
exercise isn’t shoveling sand
“Is this because the exerciser is really after the thrill of percieved speed rather than exercise?”
No, motivations can vary. The recomendation for an efficient hull is the same as putting proper air into bike tires and proper seat/bar positioning. Exercise is enjoyable when good technique is applied. Exercise usually involves aerobic output.
“Do longer and faster boats really have any exercise advantage over shorter and slower boats other than allowing the paddler to cover more territory while exercising?”
what is “exercise advantage”?
Personal Advantage
Funny, same dialogue happens in biking. I have one memory jumping up here - one season (when I was on my road bike for much of the time I am in a kayak these days) I happened to be on a lot of weekend rides with a guy who regularly annoyed the heck out of a lot of us no-longer-20 riders by going up every darned hill without ever changing gears. And he wasn’t dropping speed significantly to do it. He was on a decently light bike, but not particularly more so than what the rest of us had.
On the second ride I found out what was going on - turns out he commuted to work several miles each way at least three days a week on a good but not super-light, fat tire commuter bike. His ride was mostly flat even, but the sheer repetitive work in his legs left him able to go out on a weekend in his road bike and not even notice a hill unless it was like half a mile long.
His spin rate wasn’t anything a racer would write home about, and a close look at his legwork would have shown him to be an old-fashioned churner. But he could plow right by many of us in the same age cohort as himself - mid-forties - when the incline or distance started to wear because his muscles and ligaments and tendons etc were so well habituated to that kind of work.
He wasn’t going to win any races with that form, but by the end of a 30 mile route he had a definite “exercise advantage”. And did what he wanted to do, which was to just get out on his bike for a nice ride that didn’t include fighting commuter traffic.
was he riding
without toeclips and tires underinflated?
??
Not exactly sure of why the question, since in addition to being unduly silly an under-inflated tire would also be more prone to punctures and hence stoppage of riding. That’s not fun. And I don’t recall whether current clip-in pedals or the more old-fashioned clips.
I was not interested in continuing an argument, or starting a new one. Point was that speed/exercise/training goals are often pretty personal, so a lot of the comment in this kind of thread goes to revealing individual goals rather than coming around to anything universal. (tho’ there will always be those who feel that their point of view should be regarded as such)
that’s the one situation…
- ice cold water - that I just can’t seem to drop my heart rate in, as I can in other “panic” situations. I can stay relatively calm, but I just want to get the hell out and back in my boat.
agreed the goals can be personal
the original post was pointing to that in a roundabout way by dismissing the focus on efficient kayaks and advocating inefficient kayak for higher outputs. In a way you’re both talking about personal goals but I don’t think your weekend warrior was going to ride with an inefficient set-up as advocated by the opening post.
I wasn’t advocating inefficient kayaks
in the original post. I was just wondering if there is any real advantage of exercising by using a using a narrow and efficient boat and a heavily loaded paddle versus a shorter, wider and less efficient kayak with a less heavily loaded paddle, since most people posting on p.net asking for suggestions for an “exercise” boat seem to believe that such a boat must be narrow and long in order to be good for exercise. My question is whether that belief was founded on physiologically sound basis or was more mythology/perception.
Some people already have the shorter and wider boats, but can’t keep up a high cadence long enough to get their heart rate up very high because their paddle is too heavily loaded and their muscles tire out too easily. The solution most often here is to recommend a longer, more efficient and more expensive kayak and a matching more heavily loaded and more expensive paddle to go with it, rather than another option, even if just an intermediate step, of a less heavily loaded paddle in order to get higher cadence and higher sustained heart rates without having to change boats.
With multi-speed bicycles, one just needs to change gears to change rpm/cadence, they don’t have to change bikes. Why not suggest to those that already have shorter and less efficient kayaks that they start out by getting a smaller bladed, less heavily loaded paddle (change gears)to increase their cadence and maintain a higher heart rate rather than immediatley suggesting a longer and more (often much more) expensive kayak as the first step? It’s much easier to store a second paddle than it is to store a longer kayak for most people. For those with unlimited money and unlimited storage space, most of the suggestions and points I’ve made here are irrelevant, but most paddlers, especially beginners, don’t fit in to the unlimited space and unlimited money category. Lets keep them in mind also.
ok
I think you are mixing together different topics. If a person can’t buy a more efficient boat AND they have a poor blade/technique that’s different than the reasons people advocate a particular style of kayak “for exercise” when they come in to buy one.