Dan Hagen makes some very good points as to the biomechanical advantages associated with proper torso rotation as it relates to paddling efficiency. It's true that the bulk of paddling power comes from the torso and not from the arms, however, Dan neglected to mention a couple things - specifically: 1) Rotating the torso in order to look at the paddle (or beers tied onto the paddle) in the manner that Dan describes requires that the torso be rotated past the point of maximum efficiency, specifically 53.2 degrees from the bow. For maximum paddling efficiency, the paddle should be withdrawn from the water at about 90 to 105 degrees port and starboard from the bow and his system seems to imply that we should look at the beer to the detriment of our paddle craft, although I could be mistaken in my evaluation of his system. The head may rotate as much as 90 degrees but the torso, defined herein as the pectoral plane, should be limited to about 50 degrees either way due to obvious constraints associated with flexibility, old age & related topics. 2) Since Dan used a differentially corrected GPS display with "heads up" display it may be assumed that his results may not have been adequately corrected for other system variables. The "heads up" display is inherently faulty in that no adjustments or corrections are applied for parallax, commonly described as "perceived error caused by improper viewing angle" and this can add more error than all the GPS error budget items combined. I would ask that other, more knowledgeable, list participants please comment on this issue. Craig Olson *************************************************************************** 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 23 2001 - 16:35:38 PDT
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