Some of us older paddlers are still using 90 degree feather blades. I started racing [sprint and distance] in 1967, stopped in 1994 [slalom by that time] and still paddle 150 days a year. Always with a 90 degree feather. And never a sore wrist, even after 35 mile races. If you put your arm flat on a table and cock the wrist back, you will see [get a protractor if necessary] that the human wrist cannot bend back 90 degrees. So there has always been a "fudge factor" in wrist rotation, usually by letting the paddle slide ever so slightly through the fingers. Hence the huge callouses, I think. Really good technique means doing what your body and muscle types let you do naturally, always building up slowly. It takes a really insightful coach or instructor to be able to adjust the basic tenets of good form to the body type of the student. Because the paddle is not fixed to an attachment, as is an oar, there will not be a "perfect forward stroke". A person with long arms and torso will have to paddle differently from a person with long arms and a short torso or short arms and short torso. Watch Olympic sprint racers and you will see great variations in techniques. And they do nothing but forward strokes, so they should be pretty good at it. In my non-humble opinion, almost everything for newer paddlers ties in to balance, or lack of it. A newer paddler keeps everything [elbows, hands, torso] close to the center of gravity. As balance improves, stroke technique should change by extending. Jim Tibensky _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com *************************************************************************** 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 May 09 2001 - 09:42:15 PDT
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