I've found that the most powerful part of the stroke is the beginning of it. As Brent Reitz puts it, "the plant", spear the paddle into the water so that the whole blade is submerged _before_ you do any pulling on the paddle. Then pull 'til the hand is next to your hip and slide the blade, sideways, out of the water. This results in a moderately short stroke, and the paddle comes out of the water sideways/edgeways not lifting water on the flat of the blade. I've found that if I pull really hard with lots of force my stroke makes more noise and more vortices are generated and lots of energy is used up, but I don't go any faster. The highest boat speed is when form is close to perfect, force is moderate and stroke rate is high. Pulling too hard is a waste of energy. You should be able to tell by the sound of the stroke. If it starts to sound loud, don't pull so hard. Fair winds and happy bytes, -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Flory, San Jose, CA. daflory_at_pacbell.net Go Sea Kayaking!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dictated on a Mac G4 Cube using MacSpeech iListen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jan 31 2001 - 08:53:53 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:37 PDT