Paddling (canoeing) For Rowers

[old] ancho · Post by **[old] ancho** » September 29th, 2005, 5:21 am

Hey, my oldest son (9) has just started in the canoeing club which is next to the CEU-rem boat house. As he loves canoeing, yesterday I went out with him on a K1. Although I think I'm in pretty good shape (lots of OTW and indoor rowing and running), yesterday I did about 4k paddling, and today I'm half dead (my son feels ferpectly well). Suppose there are lots of improvement potentials I'll sure will give it another try, any suggestions?

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » September 29th, 2005, 6:17 am

Hard to say without knowing more about what you did. I assume you went out in a fairly stable kayak (in the US we use "K1" generally to refer to super tippy Olympic style sprint boats)- if not, then just keeping upright can be very tiring if you are not used to it. As with rowing, there is tons of technique to kayaking, and you can spend your whole life perfecting the forward stroke. My guess is that you had a conventional paddle, rather than a racing wing- often what people will do with conventional paddles is to pull with their arms, rather than driving from the legs, rotating the whole torso, and powering the boat with your big muscles rather than the arms. Using only your arms can be very tiring. Andrew

[old] Great Dane · Post by **[old] Great Dane** » September 29th, 2005, 1:19 pm

Agree with Andrew. I'm a second year sprint kayaker (K1) and still working on my technique. Technique plays a big part in the boats speed. A friends wife compared kayaking to golf, where you can waste alot of time on simply trying to get the technique smooth. My summer was kayaking, and in the past few weeks I have moved inside to the rower. Although I felt in shape from kayaking, the first weeks on the rower were tough. So a combination of technique and different movement/muscles likely. Andrew; I'm about the same age, height and weight as you (172lbs / 5'11" / 38 years old), but my 2K time is quite a bit slower -> 7:14, so you've given me a realistic target to train for. Thanks. Have you ever tried to go lightweight as your time would put you in the top 15% of lightweights? Or is too much stress on the body to drop 5-10lbs?

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » September 29th, 2005, 1:41 pm

Actually, I'm more like 180 these days, sort of oscillate between 175 and 183. I got a bit below 175 for a while about 6 or 7 months ago, and I was incredibly hungry all of the time, especially for protein. I suppose I could have another go at it now that I've plateaued out a bit, weight-wise. I like to do well on the rower, but I don't worry all that much about my rankings, so making myself miserable just to make lightweight doesn't sound like that much fun. I feel like I'm at a good weight for paddling right now- light enough not to be dragging a lot of fat through the water, heavy enough to fully weight a 21' surfski. Thanks, though. If you are at 7:14, you should be able to break 7 without much trouble at all. I was never below about 7:10, and then just made up my mind to break 7, and did it on the first try. Actually haven't tried to break that since then. What worked for me was trying to do a real "relaxed" just under 1:43 for the first 1000 and then let it drift to 1:45 for the next 500, and hold on for dear life for the last 500. As they say, "all pain eventually stops". You can do it. Andrew

[old] Alissa · Post by **[old] Alissa** » September 29th, 2005, 6:03 pm

Ok, Andrew and Great Dane, you both have me quite curious. How do you use your legs in kayaking? In rowing, you keep your pelvis stable (from left side to right) and legs are used by allowing the knees to rise and then extending the leg against the footboard (driving the stable pelvis back from the footboard). Not having every "kayaked", my impression is that the legs stay flat the whole time. Is that wrong? If it isn't, how do you: "driv[e] from the legs, rotating the whole torso, and powering the boat with your big muscles"? Are you shifting the pelvis, "walking" it right and left as you move your torso in the opposite direction? or how does it work? Curiously... Alissa

[old] Great Dane · Post by **[old] Great Dane** » September 29th, 2005, 8:03 pm

Geez, "Great Dane" sounds so snobbish. I feel I must explain the nickname a bit - I'm the son of a Dane, and we owned a Great Dane dog.... ...so "Great Dane" I was... I'm a relatvie novice to sprint kayaking, but am coached so I've heard what I should do often. A K1 kayak (sprint / olympic kayak) has a foot rest within the kayak where your feet are strapped in. The start of the stroke is to bury the paddle and then start the twisting action. The twisting starts with a push off with the feet. I have a few clips of athlete's and you can really see their paddle-side knee being bent (the opposite leg is straight), as the paddle passes through the water the leg straightens. All the power from kayaking is from the legs/torso/shoulders. I only wish sprint kayaking had a "Concept 2 like" forum. The KayakPro / Speedstroke seems to be like the Concept2, but there's no support network, RowPro, forums, etc. Hope a novice explanation helped, Doug.

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » September 30th, 2005, 5:57 am

Essentially what he said. It really helps to be able to see it. I have some fabulous video of the Olympics that I can send you (.wmv) if you email me. I can't figure out how to post it here. afolpe@emory.edu andrew

[old] DavidA · Post by **[old] DavidA** » September 30th, 2005, 1:17 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(Alissa @ Sep 29 2005, 05:03 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Ok, Andrew and Great Dane, you both have me quite curious. How do you use your legs in kayaking? </td></tr></table> I was wondering the same thing. David

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » September 30th, 2005, 1:30 pm

I can't quite figure out how to post a movie to this site, but I can tell you where to look to see an expert paddler (Grayson Bourne) in action on a kayak erg. His form is excellent. Go to: <a href='http://www.pogies.com/speedstroke/speedstroke_movie.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.pogies.com/speedstroke/speed ... htm</a> This should bring up a movie of the Speedstroke. If it doesn't work, go to KayakPro.com and look for the Speedstroke links. Andrew

[old] DavidA · Post by **[old] DavidA** » September 30th, 2005, 1:34 pm

Thanks Andrew. David

[old] Great Dane · Post by **[old] Great Dane** » September 30th, 2005, 2:19 pm

Thanks, too, Andrew. Here's a site with olympic caliber athletes kayaking and canoeing. <a href='http://www.kayaksport.net/' target='_blank'>http://www.kayaksport.net/</a> click on Home->Technique->Movies Doug.

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » September 30th, 2005, 2:34 pm

the olympic videos i have are on the site doug mentions, so just go there to check them out. the k1 1000m is a great race. andrew

[old] Alissa · Post by **[old] Alissa** » September 30th, 2005, 10:56 pm

Thanks Andrew & Doug! Beautiful...and fascinating. The skirts I've seen on kayaks were clearly hiding quite a lot of activity. I can see why you would enjoy that sport too... While I was looking at the videos, I started to wonder if the shoulder would be more susceptible to injury in kayaking. (Since instead of using back muscles to hold the shoulders down for the most part, as in rowing, the shoulder instead allows the the arm to extend up above shoulder height which looks like it would make the shoulder more vulnerable.) At any rate, that's what I was thinking. While I was looking around the site I found a PDF on strengthening shoulders in the library area. Quite interesting to me, since one of the reasons I started lifting weights a while ago is that I felt like I had too much "play" in my shoulders. So I have another reason to thank you! Finally, as long as I'm giving my curiosity a free rein, I thought I'd ask, if either of you also used a kayak erg, how your experience of one compare to the other? At any rate, thanks again for the links. Alissa

[old] afolpe · Post by **[old] afolpe** » October 1st, 2005, 11:19 am

I think everyone has some element of shoulder tendinitis after a while, but not too many real injuries. Actually rowing has been very good for my shoulder- worked out some muscle imbalances I had developed. The two sports complement each other well. I would love to learn to scull, but there just aren't enough hours in the day, as it were. I have used the KayakPro erg briefly. It was very nice. It's also pricey, and I'd rather use my disposable income for real boats. andrew

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