Regarding the push on the forward stroke - Hold the paddle as if to make a forward stroke but put the blade into the water about at your knee instead of your ankle. Now push as fast and hard as you can with the top arm but do not move the lower one at all. Use the lower hand as a fulcrum but do not move it. The boat creeps about ten inches forward. Now extend the top arm with the elbow locked straight so that it can only give a little push downward. Then twist your upper body and pull with your lower arm as in a normal stroke. Or do a normal stroke with as little help from the top arm as possible. The boat will jump forward about a boat length. Or more! Because body types are so different - long arms with long torso, short arms with short torso, etc. - there is not, and never will be, a perfect stroke. In rowing there is a perfect stroke because the oar is fixed to the boat. Muscle strengths and weaknesses, body make up and balance will all affect the forward kayak stroke. Especially balance. In the late '60s when I raced and coached sprint kayaking there were three general types of strokes. One was the "Scandinavian" stroke. It was also called the "sway-impulse" stroke because the elbows hardly bent at all, the power came from torso rotation and the top arm was nearly passive. In fact, the top arm was hardly on top, they kept both arms about an inch off the cockpit throughout the stroke. And they had really high seats. Those guys won a lot of world championships. As did the outstanding 500 meter guy from Poland named Stefan Kaplanak who told me the push was 75% of his power. He was so strong he would break footbraces or snap the seat right off its mounting. No one stroke style will ever be best for everyone. 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 Thu May 10 2001 - 14:18:56 PDT
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