5 Tips to Improve your Technique

These are just a few ideas that I have come up with to try help out and maybe get some younger paddlers thinking more about their Technique.

Posture

• Our posture is really important! As a kayaker, most of us learn poor posture when we are young and it never gets addressed. It is important to help prevent injuries and to get the most out of your body. Keep your pelvis tilted slightly forward. Many juniors mistake this and lean forward and have a large curve in their back rather than from the pelvis.

Rotation

• When pulling your paddle through the water it is important to pull from your upper back muscles and rotate from your lower back. Most people only use their arms to pull and this can be very inefficient.

Smooth and Efficient

• It is very important to try developing grip and the feel the water. This can be achieved by practicing drills around moving your paddle through the water. Try moving your blade in the draw position up and down parallel with your boat and slowly moving your blade out in the draw positions. When moving in your boat try and keep your movements as subtle as possible as any lunging movements can cause the boat to stop moving and therefore slow it down. Play around with paddling courses with the least amount of stokes.

Balance

• It’s very important to work on your balance when working on your technique. A key indicator if your balance is good is that you keep you body over you boat, rather than leaning outside your boat. Play around by paddling with your edge up, with and without your feet on your foot pegs. Try doing courses like a C1 and paddling only on one side or only with cross bow strokes. These drills will help develop your balance.

Play and have fun

• Always have time to play around on the white water and try new things.