indeed
indeed yes. like all sports our body and vehicle tends to turn where we look. I remember days of bicycle racing when going down a mountain. I quickly learned never to look off the road or zoom trouble.
Try focusing ahead 30 ft, helps give a sense of balance and perspective. Other tricks include focusing on the pushing hand as it rotates around with the torso rather than punching forward (at least in some versions).
How to slow down
– Last Updated: Jul-16-05 10:32 AM EST –
>Besides pausing before the catch, how else do you modify a good stroke when you have to decrease speed on a group trip?
IMHO -- I'm sure others will have different ideas...
> lower the paddle angle
That will work, up to a point. But after a while you will be sweeping more than propelling forward, wasting energy and squirreling the boat
> decrease hip rotation
If you mean don't wind the hips up as much, this is a viable way to slow down that many paddlers use. I personally try not to do this too much since winding up the hips still leads to the most efficient use of energy. Besides, every stroke is an opportunity for further training in doing it right.
> pull more slowly during the power phase
This makes sense to me.
> change your posture or body position
Not sure what you mean, but I wouldn't deviate from good stroke mechanics just to slow down. Varying the angle is the most I'd do here.
> lengthen the stroke and allowing it to go past your hip
I wouldn't. This is cultivating a bad habit (and modelling same for others) and expending energy for no good reason.
> switch paddles?
I wouldn't.
Other -- do less pushing with the dry-side hand (recommended to me by a couple of good coaches) which, if I understand, reduces the intensity of the pulling without changing the fundamental mechanics.
I'd still put pausing longer before the catch at or near the top of the list.
Of yes, changing boats is not a bad idea. When I paddle with my wife, she takes the faster composite boat and I paddle a plastic Avocet. That equalizes our speed somewhat and she has a better time with less effort.
--David.
Huh?
– Last Updated: Jul-16-05 12:17 PM EST –
No I don't find it lower overall. I'm sure some may limit themselves to low angles. Overall the paddle can be lower to the water (closer grip) - but I'm talking the center of the paddle with no respect to shaft angle.
Same length = shorter effective paddle? Again, no. For that to be true the blades would have to smaller and or not fully buried. The total surface are of the blades can be about the same between EPs and GPs - it's just distributed differently. My GP blades have the same surface area as my old Werner San Juan - and that's a big paddle. With GP fully buried it is as much paddle in the water - though the lever works a bit closer in and FEELS easier. Blades can be smaller in overall surface and still give solid purchase as the works a bit differently in the water. I can also change gears by having more or less in the water (considered bad technique with a Euro but no problem with GPs symmetrical foil shape).
Minor differences really. The big difference in in the cross sectional shapes. A GP is not just a skinny paddle. Much more advanced form. The long skinny Euros don't come close.
None of the above, just…
lower your cadence !
Cheers,
JackL
delayed feedback
Use of torso rotation is simply more efficient at any speed.
It is difficult to master.
The biggest issue is the feedback mechanism. Teach a person a sweep stroke by instructing them to start at the front and go to the back, and they will turn their boat, however sloppily. Now make them experiment with shaft and blade angle, and they will discover in as little as one stroke increased effectiveness that is apparent to them.
But a forward stroke? Change what you will as an instructor, and good, bad, or ugly, it all seems the same to a student. Until an hour passes by, that is.
Having taught beginner through advanced sea boaters, and coached flatwater racers, this comes up all the time. It requires a lot of attention from a coach, and diligence from the student. And true, many who instruct are inneficient-having assisted on many ACA IDW’s, both WW and coastal, efficient use of torso is frequently a big hurdle.
Is it worth it? Well, I only have anecdotal evidence, but with 10 years of it, it becomes a preponderance. The common benificiary is the slight female who can’t keep up. I have worked with a lot of such people, and believe me (and them) it is really worth it.
karl (whose wife is 95lb, and understrokes and keeps ahead of most people)
GP feels easier – why is that?
– Last Updated: Jul-16-05 8:48 PM EST –
> With GP fully buried it is as much paddle in the water - though the lever works a bit closer in and FEELS easier.
That's all I meant. The total blade surface is roughly the same between a spooned euro and a skinny gp. But because of the way that surface is distributed, the gp has the mechanical characteristics of a shorter euro, lots shorter.
A physicist would express that by noting the geometric centroid of the two blades. For a euro, the centroid would be way out near the end of the entire paddle, in the middle of the blade. For a GP, it would be roughly halfway between the end of the loom and the end of the paddle, that is, much closer in to the center.
Though it's a simplification, the effective mechanical length of a blade is roughly the length out to the centroid. That's because the force exerted by the blade is roughly the same as if you were exerting all the force via that single point, the centroid of the blade. So a GP of the same length *feels* easier, as you observed, because it feels shorter, and that's because that centroid actually is closer in.
From that follows that you can afford to use a lower angle with a GP (or as you say, hold your hands lower) which gives more effective body mecahnics when rotating to power. In general, the tradeoff from holding your hands lower is that the paddle sweeps out further, and thus more energy is lost to yawing pressure and less is available for forward propulsion. But with the sorter effective blade of a gp, the yawing effect is greatly reduced, and you can hold it lower and push it out farther to get even better body mechanics.
And that's why, all other things being equal, a good gp-er will indeed hold their paddle lower (use a lower angle) than a ep-er in the same situation.
Of course, if you want maximum oomph over a short distance, you hold the blade close to vertical with either type, pull/rotate like crazy, and don't worry about long-term body efficiency. You're willing to expend disporportionate extra energy to for a short burst to get the speed you need.
Actually, what you also do in that case is shorten your stroke and raise your cadence, so that more effort than usual is going into the sweet part of the pull, way up front, right after the catch, where your mechanical advantage is the greatest (or thus say all the good coaches I've worked with).
If you still don't understand all this, I suggest you contact your friendly local neighborhood physicist to draw some force diagrams. ;-)))
--David.
Out on a very thin limb.
I’ll go out on a very thin limb and say that most of the recreational kayakers I see (2-3 a week?) aren’t paddling for New York-to-Miami efficiency. They are out to enjoy the outdoors. They don’t know about torso rotation, and don’t care–the paddle is moving their kayak through the water, and they are having fun.
I’ve practiced my forward stroke and torso rotation upstream on the river near my home, and I’m convinced it is more efficient in the long run. But if I zone out and start concentrating on fishing or something else more important, the paddle in the water is what gets me where I’m going.
I have a friend who arm-paddles. He can beat me anywhere under a mile, in spite of the fact that his boat is almost identical to mine, because he is bigger and stronger. After a mile, his conditioning and stroke get the better of him, and I can keep up or even exceed his speed easily. But for under a mile, he still smokes me.
I’d say it’s a little like car engines. Most of us don’t need a V8 or even a V6 to tow us or our families around either, but we needlessly use this power anyway (arm paddling) rather than taking the time and discipline to move more efficiently (say, with a 4 cylinder or an electric car–or better yet, a bike!).
So, teach all the complicated kinesiology and hydrodynamic physics if you must. Paddles still move boats. Come to think of it, I should not have told my friend his first time out that he was holding his asymmetric paddle upside down; maybe I could still keep up over that first mile…
A good portion
– Last Updated: Jul-17-05 12:58 PM EST –
just about all the kayakers i paddle with regulerly,use torso rotation to some degree.
i don't use it as well as i should. but still do all right. my paddle stroke is a wide/long sweeping motion. so i work harder if i don't rotate like i should.
Difference
Lower angle and lower height are completely different things.
I get what you’re saying about centroid - and force vectors, etc. That applies regardless of the angle of the shaft relative to horizon.
Numbers
I can’t give you any numbers, and everyone’s vary, but I can highly recommend using a heart rate monitor and either GPS or knotmeter to give a frame of reference. Perceived effort is VERY misleading.
hands high/low; paddle vertical/horiz?
> Lower angle and lower height are completely different things.
OK, sorry for missing your point. But I don’t follow that. What am I missing - what’s the difference?
I visualize the blade buried in the water up to the same point, but in one case the hands are high at least at the beginning of the stroke, the paddle sharft near vertical (left-right) and the blade near the boat. In the other, the hands are low, the shaft more horizontal, and the blade farther away from the boat. So, I’m not understanding your point about how hands high/low does not necessarily correspond to angle more vertical/horizontal.
Thanks. --David.
Greyak, save your typing …
The “But as I understand it, a low stroke is good for body mechanics, a high stroke for boat bla bla bla” part should have given it way…
Or use a outrigger canoe paddle!
Added benefits are it winds up all the purists in the group while you still stay ahead of them.
water-walker… did not forget about sending you one.
Re:Icemans comments
and, the incorrect technique which places all the emphasis on the shoulders and upper arms (and I stand as a prime example of someone who ‘perfected the totally wrong technique’ and now must unlearn 5 years of paddling)may be one of the leading culprits in rotator cuff injuries and shoulder injuries in general.
Now…that said; what I’m wondering is: Are the wider rec boats contributing to folks using a pulling stroke (upper shoulders and arms)rather than rotating the torso.
Reason I ask is: Now in a relearning curve (if I want to continue paddling at all)and splitting paddling time between the artic tern and the perception america, I find it infinitely easier to rotate the torso in the tern than in the much wider america.
Low angle vs low grip
On a GP, your hands are closer together than on an EP (In my case MUCH closer), thus allowing the paddler to keep their hands lower and still use a higher angle of attack on the water.
The style I use with a GP is moderately low hands and about a 45 degree angle of attack for normal cruising. Of course, a narrow boat helps, too, which many GP’ers prefer.
The angle is varied much more with a GP than with an EP for different purposes. I find the stereotypical “low angle” stroke to be less efficient than the angle I generally use, but I know people who blow right past half a group with a really low angle, so it’s really all what you prefer, IMO.
Wayne
Tried it
After reading this post I went out yesterday with some friends and tried the torso rotation thing again. Of course, I was in an O.T. Loon 138, a wide rec boat, and my paddle is probably a little too long. I discovered that I was the victim of almost every pitfall of torso-rotation-paddling that has been mentioned. Most of these could be remedied fairly easily with a little…OK, a lot of practice and re-learning to banish ingrained bad habits. One of the most interesting things I noticed was that I tended to go faster. Maybe this was because I seemed to have more power for the same energy expenditure, I’m not sure. It just seemed as if I were “sprinting”. I tried to “slow down” by decreasing my effort and then by decreasing my cadence.
I need to practice this torso rotation thing more. It seems like it could be a wellspring of endurance, power and speed for me. Thanks to all who posted for sharing your insights and thoughts.
"increased resistance …
– Last Updated: Jul-17-05 3:14 PM EST –
...making torso rotation more necessary"
Yeah, that's what I was getting at talking about keeping a decent pace vs. lily dipping too. Maybe train with a sea anchor? *L*
Also agree some rotation feels better - and 100% decreases back, butt and other pressure, strain, and circulation related discomforts.
I've stopped replying to a lot of posts about back, butt and leg issues (and the related seat, back support, and cushioning issues) as rotation and posture is the cure (not padding and seatbacks)- and lots of people will just never get it. Pretty much cured my chronic and frequently disabling lower back problems.
Technique & Equipment
– Last Updated: Jul-17-05 4:23 PM EST –
Yes, a strong yes.
As envyabull also discribed, there is a strong correlation between equipment and technique. The wider the boat where the paddle entries the water, the more difficult to perform a good technique.
If you have watched Brent Reitz video on forward stroke, you had to have realized that during the video he constantly hit the deck of the boat with its paddle. For a paddler like him used to narrower hulls, he was rotating "too much" and the boat design did not allow it.
Anyway, a typical Sea Kayak should allow a pretty decent technique helped by increasing the length of the paddle and reducing the size of the blades in order to not to overgear.
Regards,
Iceman
Your response is a gold nugget!
You are most welcome!
“a wellspring of power, endurance, and speed”! Now that is a motivation for folks to hang in there, for many paddlers wishing to increase their ability as they move into bigger conditions!
I have held my own thoughts here in order to be a better listener. My own sense of this is that the benefits are moderately felt at first, but the very muscles in the torso that will provide the biggest benefits must be conditioned for many paddlers before the paddler gets the big benefits. Unless the paddler is a weight lifter, or cross trains in a sport with upper body conditioning, switching from arm paddling may actually be more tiring at first.
This matches many student’s experiences. They feel akward going from arm paddling, but the biggest hurdle is that they tire quickly using torso roation! The big benefits come as these torso muscles tone up and then the power, speed, and ENDURANCE really hooks up. Thanks every one here I learned a great deal from these posts.
g2d
Exactkly my point in a thread i posted called over-rotation to which no one has responded yet. I think people are over-rotating, and losing power. I’ve witnessed the pros and I do not see that extreme rotating at all. I see that with slower paddlers, and some tourers. If I think about my chest (torso) when paddling hard it may rotate 20 degrees each way. By that time my blade is out of the water. I’m not a racer, but a tourer with a few thousand miles of paddling over the last 20 years, and surf kayaker. I’m no expert, but really question the rotation obsession. Doesn’t make sense to me to over do this from any standpoint.