Jim Ohho ... I suspect I may have opened a can of worms here with my discussion with John Winters. Here is a reply if you think it is worth posting! Dear Bob, If the flatwater canoe and kayak clubs in your area are anything like the ones in Australia, there should be a coach who has at least some experience with correct paddling technique, especially with prop or wing blades, and my experience is that he/she will help you free of charge. That is certainly the way we operate here in Canberra. The first step is to rock up at a flatwater club and ask. Bear in mind that flatwater coaches often do not have much idea of all the conditions sea kayakers experience and will probably be totally fixated on making boats go fast, so some time is needed to familiarise them with your specific needs. Regarding video taping ... it is a great tool. With regard to "models" to copy ... Australian Canoeing has technique video tapes and posters for sale. If you are interested I can send you more details. US Kayak also has tapes, I believe they are produced by, or at least show, Greg Barton, at work (Greg is the only USA Kayaker to win back to back gold at an Olympic Sprint meet). I suspect Canadian Kayak do too. Again I have contact email addresses for the above if you are from these areas and interested. About fitting paddles to paddlers or paddlers to paddles ... My experience is that the guidelines are really quite broad and, in my arena, they have been wrong more than once! The ideal situation is to have a collection of different paddles available for the beginer ... paddles with different shaft lengths and different size blades and also an ability to alter blade angle. Let the beginner muck about until they find something they feel comfortable with. Then work on technique for a few months. At this stage of technique learning, the paddlers is learning the general basics ... the kinds of things that are pretty much standard across paddles of a given general shape (and I'd define there being two general shapes - flat and prop - although I am a bit out of touch with the latest in flat blade design, how ever I suspect they work the same at first cut). Then go back and relook at the paddle size, shape and angle. This is an iterative process ... technique does not lead the paddle and paddle does not lead the learning of efficient technique. They interact with each other and with the natural optimisation process that the paddler inacts to produce an efficient end result. I have had several paddlers who started off with one kind of prop blade design and loved it. Then they became stronger and in the next iteration tried a more "powerful" design and never went back. Their style changed slightly to accomodate the new blade design but mainly in the fine-tuning mode. As a coach gets more experienced, he/she is able to circumvent some of the iteration based on the requirements of the student. I am sure that some of this experience is there in your club or group ... someone just has to accumulate it! I would be interested in seeing such an accumulation of paddle length and size for flat and prop blades for the sea kayaking environment. For flatwater paddling I use the following general ideas ... for a flat blade, the length should be quite long ... stand barefeet on the ground and reach up, your fingers should just curl over the top of the blade; for a prop blade, the top of the blade should be around the top of the thumb joint. I am abit out of touch with current flat blade sizes, but I would start small and move upwards depending on strength, and strength is biceps, triceps, forearm, wrist, and latimus muscles for flat blades. For prop blades, the paddler also needs strong long and short bicep tendons and greater latimus muscle strength. Prop blades pack quite a punch but most respectable agents will tell you the sizes that are appropriate for kids, women and small men, and then the large man variety. I have those numbers somewhere if anyone is interested. You can tell if someone is too strong for the paddle. They will be able to pull it through the water easily, creating slurps and pockets of air immediately behind the blade. Be careful though because the same can occur if the blade is not put into the water at the correct angle to the direction of the boat. In general, with any paddle, if you want to rate high, you use a short paddle and if you want to rate low, you use a longer paddle shaft. If you have strength to spare, you use a larger effective blade area. I have found though that if the intention is to make the boat go as fast a possible with minimum effort, there is a balance between rating and power and several combinations will do the trick. The most efficient one inevitably depends on the paddler and what he/she likes or believes in. There are no truths, we are dealing with a complex human machine and experimentation is the name of the game. Margi Bohm Flatwater Coach Burley Griffin Canoe Club Canberra, Australia *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Margi Bohm wrote via Jim Croft; -(SNIP) > >About fitting paddles to paddlers or paddlers to paddles ... My experience >is that the guidelines are really quite broad and, in my arena, they have >been wrong more than once! The ideal situation is to have a collection of >different paddles available for the beginer ... paddles with different >shaft lengths and different size blades and also an ability to alter blade >angle. Let the beginner muck about until they find something they feel >comfortable with. Then work on technique for a few months. At this stage >of technique learning, the paddlers is learning the general basics ... the >kinds of things that are pretty much standard across paddles of a given >general shape (and I'd define there being two general shapes - flat and >prop - although I am a bit out of touch with the latest in flat blade >design, how ever I suspect they work the same at first cut). Then go back >and relook at the paddle size, shape and angle. > >This is an iterative process ... technique does not lead the paddle and >paddle does not lead the learning of efficient technique. They interact >with each other and with the natural optimisation process that the paddler >inacts to produce an efficient end result. I have had several paddlers who >started off with one kind of prop blade design and loved it. Then they >became stronger and in the next iteration tried a more "powerful" design >and never went back. Their style changed slightly to accomodate the new >blade design but mainly in the fine-tuning mode. > I wonder if Margi is talking only about low aspect ratio paddles or if she is also including high aspect ratio paddles. I found it difficult to use the wing stroke with a high aspect ratio paddle of typical length for the type. When I wrote to Margi I said that I thought the paddle influenced the stroke mechanics. It still seems that way to me. Perhaps Kevin or Julio who both have more experience with the high aspect ratio paddle can elaborate on this. The stroke they described (if I read it properly) seems different from the stroke that racers use. Is the difference due to the paddle influence? Could one effectively use the low hands stroke with a wing paddle? It didn't seem that way to me. If I recall correctly Bruce said that his stroke mechanics changed with the effort he put out. I think Kevin said something similar. Maybe it is effort that determines the stroke mechanics. As an aside, those of you with access to C.A. Marchaj's "Sailing Theory and Practice" might find the graph on page 154 interesting in terms of lift and net driving force coefficient. Cheers, John Winters Redwing Designs Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft http://home.ican.net/~735769/ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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