[Paddlewise] Heavy cheap paddles and wrist problems

Niels wrote:
>>>I myself use heavy paddles strictly because they're sturdy and cheap.<<<<<

So every stroke you lift that 1.3 kilo club of a paddle and both your heavy
arms up 30 to 40cm? How many strokes
 do you make in a day? How much is that costing you in energy? How much time
and energy (and money) did you put
 into making a paddle rest to help you hold up this beast of a paddle. How
much time
 did you waste trying to come up with justifications as to how this weight
helps
you propel your kayak? How much will the joint problems you may create cost
later in doctors bills?
I suggest you borrow a lightweight paddle and give it a try ASAP.
You might find that it solves most of your paddling problems and in the long
run will be a lot cheaper even if you purchase a lightweight paddle new.

Well, maybe it won't solve quite all your paddling problems. Looking at the
video of you paddling right feathered I see you bend your right wrist
back to push the paddle. Likely this is what you have been taught to do (and
I'll bet you also teach your students). Not only does that wrist bending mean
that you have to lift that clunker paddle even higher, but once you get a
lighter paddle, and will thus be able to save the
energy you have been wasting lifting and holding it up, you will be able to
use that
saved energy to put a little more oomph in your paddle stroke and then the
extra pressure on your
bent right wrist may well result in a repetitive motion wrist injury.

I would suggest that, instead of using right hand control, that you simply
switch to "low hand control". Whichever hand is nearest to the blade in the
water controls the paddle. That will leave your right hand free to open up and
relax as you paddle. Not only will you no longer have to transmit power
through a weak bent wrist as you push with the right arm (but rather will push
through what amounts to a straight punch--where your wrist bones and paddle
shaft are lined up with your forearm and elbow), but you also won't have your
pushing wrist being bent side to side as the paddle angle changes during the
time the kayak moves past the paddle during the stroke. With low hand control
and an open pushing hand you could paddle with your wrist in a cast. In fact,
imobilizing the wrist might even help you learn it.

If your paddle blade arcs through 60 degrees when paddling (I'm making an
equilateral triangle for simplicity's sake) during a forward stroke (an I'll
bet it is less than that if you are taking the blade out at your hip) then the
blade tip is moving no further through the water than the distance from the
pivot point to the tip. Even with more than meter long narrow blades it would
be hard to move the blade tip a meter through the water during a stroke
because the pivot point would probably move down to being well underwater. My
paddle blades are less than 1/2 meter long and there is likely little more
than 1/2 meter from the blade tip to the pivot point, so I don't think, as you
suggested, that we agree here at all about the tip moving about a meter
through the water.
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