At 10:29 AM 8/11/99 -0400, SKILLIANS_at_aol.com wrote: >Thank you, thank you for your words on unfeathered paddles. Recently I've >been kayaking with an awful lot of people who hint that unfeathered paddles >are only for newcomers to the sport. I would definately disagree. At the beginning of the summer a good friend of mine opened a new kayak shop in town. I have been down there almost every weekend helping out with rentals and help out with lessons once or twice a week. Before we put people in a kayak for the first time we spend 5-10 minutes going over the use of a feathered paddle. So far nobody has asked to use a feathered paddle but we would certainly accomodate them if that's what they want. For lessons, however, teaching everyone basic strokes with a feathered paddle has worked out well. What I see more often, primarily from those that primarily paddle whitewater kayaks is the contention that "feathered paddles with more than a 60 degree feather causes wrist problems". Feathered paddles don't cause wrist problems; the action of repetitively forcing your wrist to the maximum it will bend causes wrist problems. Try this simple experiment. For this example we'll use a feathered paddled set up with a right handed control. Hold the paddle out in front of you with the knuckles of your right hand lined up with the top edge of the right blade with the powerface towards you. Straighten your arms and then bend just your wrist backwards so that the left blade is now vertical. With a 90 degree feathered paddle you need to really bend your wrist back to get the left blade in a good catch position. Now go back to the start position but this time only bend your elbow so that your right hand comes up to your shoulder. You've got to bend your elbow quite a bit but you can get the left blade in a good catch position just by bending your elbow. Then try placing the left blade in the correct catch position by bending both your wrist back and by bending your elbow. In this case, neither your wrist, nor your elbow are being bent to the maximum range and this is going be easiest on both body parts, even with a 90 degree feathered paddle. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Aug 11 1999 - 09:55:09 PDT
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