Darryl Johnson wrote: > I would disagree that "nothing heats up, so no energy is lost". Exercise > does create heat in the muscles, else there would be no need for profuse > sweating to cool the body down during strenuous exercise. We were specifically talking about the energy that's lost while _relaxing_ the muscles and letting the paddle drop. While your point is valid for exercise, it's not for this specific case of rest. > > But I suspect the amount of energy referred to is small. I doubt you > could get a kayak to move forward by just using the potential energy > stored by the effort of lifting the paddle up. Even on a completely calm > day. You must have missed my calculations. In my own stroke, analyzed in my own video, I put close to 30 watts into lifting the paddle, while 30 watts drive a kayak at a speed of 2 kts. There will be losses, but still: 30 watts is a significant amount of power. > My point of view is something like this: the muscles in your shoulders > (used for lifting the paddle) are weaker than the core muscles used to > power a forward stroke using rotation. Therefore, one should reduce the > work done by the shoulders (and arm) muscles to as great an extent as > possible, and rely instead on the core muscles to do the work of moving > the boat forward. I addressed this in my video. WHY use big muscles when small muscles can do the job? In almost every other activity, we learn to turn to the _smaller_ muscles that can do the job, so why not here? > > You might gain some small advantage by lifting the paddle to a slightly > greater extent, but I suspect this to be of relatively short duration > and the advantage would reduce as the shoulder and arm muscles tired. > During a longer paddle, the gain would be so small as to be non-existent. If you look at my stroke in the video, you'll notice that I have a pretty average forward stroke. (It's at 7.50 minutes, and for your convenience, here's the link once again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aB0rdn4UnQ ) I'm not promoting a new stroke; I'm not urging you to raise the paddle higher. I'm just asking: Why DO we raise the paddle that high? > > But I am open to arguments proving me wrong. Lord knows, at my age, I > can use all the advantages I can get to keep up with my younger paddling > friends. > Why not try? Paddle your boat into the dock, see if you can find the vertical rest, and see if you can put it to use. Niels *************************************************************************** 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 Apr 28 2011 - 13:35:15 PDT
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