Ralph said: Your anatomy, your muscle structure, your degree of stamina, your aches and pains and flexibility and lack of flexibility that you bring to the water, which is always changing under your paddle, which itself is not uniform; and all of this is going on in not a standard boat but rather a range of 100s of different models with different shapes and lengths. I say: Yes, thanks for saying better what I attempted to say. It takes a lot of experience to understand that good teaching in this sport comes when the teacher is not too dogmatic. There are good outlines for strokes but there are no templates. Watch the good paddlers when they are next to each other, like in a race or at a symposium. They don't do the same stuff with their bodies or their blades but they all paddle well. All my racing career people, but not coaches, told me that my stroke was pure crap and I should go back to Frisbee. But I did good at racing and I've been hired year after year to teach advanced paddlers. [At Madawaska Kanu Centre if anyone cares] I know from my own experience that stroke technique is strongly influenced by body mechanics. My body type may be pure crap also but I've managed to find a way to make it work in a kayak. The moral of the story is, there really are many paths to the top of the mountain. (Please remind me of this next time I get dogmatic.) And I truly believe that great paddlers don't even need a paddle to do great things in the boat. Watch Eric Jackson run Great Falls [pardon the succession of "great"s] without a paddle and you can appreciate what I mean. What we do with our legs, our minds, our hips, our attitudes and our boat leans [maybe even our spirit] can be much important than what the paddle does. But maybe that's my whitewater bias showing. Thanks for listening! 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 Fri Jun 15 2001 - 12:28:49 PDT
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