More Thoughts on SUP Technique – Part 2

First off, let me say thanks to everyone who read the last post and to those who provided feedback on it or asked questions.  I’m stoked that so many people found it interesting and hopefully helpful, but I am aware that there might be need for clarification on a few things.  As well, some of the comments I’ve received have made me go back to the program to see if there is any more data of interest that I can present.

I think everybody understood the main point – that there is no one correct technique.  There are fundamental principles that are universally accepted such as pulling your board by your paddle as opposed to your paddle through the water, using big muscles preferentially over smaller muscles, maintaining positive blade angle as long as possible, and using minimal effort to go as fast as possible.  A paddler’s technique is simply his or her interpretation of how to move to best achieve those principles.  Because we’re all different both in terms of our strength and fitness, and our anthropometric measurements, we’re all going to approach achieving those principles differently.  The result is that Connor Baxter paddles differently than Danny Ching who paddles differently than Dave Kalama.  What they all have in common is that they are fast.

When analyzing someone’s technique I honestly believe that most people tend to look too readily at how a paddler’s body moves rather than what their paddle is doing and how their board is responding.  Small differences between individuals in hand position, bending at the waist, leg movement, rotation etc. aren’t necessarily the first thing we should look at because they may be irrelevant.  The movement of the board is what is we’re concerned with.  We should look at that first and consider both how it appears to ride and how fast it is going.  We should also look at the effort the paddler is putting into making his or her board move.  Heart rate can be used as a reliable and easy way to measure that.

If a paddler is moving his or her board fast with little effort, then some unorthodox movement we’ve identified is most likely of little relevance.  It’s most likely just a little idiosyncrasy of that individual’s technique.  However it’s when the paddler has issues in how their board moves, or is working too hard for the speed they are going, that we need to start looking more closely at what their paddle is doing and how their body movement is affecting it.  Then we can help them make specific, intelligent changes to body movements to get the paddle to do what’s required to get the board to move faster, while at the same time allowing them to paddle with a better speed to effort ratio.

More on where to exit

So when someone asks me, even after reading my last post, where I think they should exit I can’t really answer that question unless I watch them paddle.  I can’t say whether they should exit with their paddle before their feet or with their paddle past their feet.  There is no rule.  I can only watch them, see what type of success they are having with what they are doing and then go from there.Before looking at the exit, I would encourage everyone to think more about how much they load their blade at the catch and build on that load through the pull until the point where their blade is vertical.  Remember this is the part of the stroke where you can accelerate your board the most.  Once the blade is vertical I’d suggest you begin to unload your blade as smoothly as possible without rushing it, but at the same time without delaying it.   Unloading the paddle should feel natural and in rhythm with the entire stroke.   While there is no question that a paddler should be thinking of exiting after passing through vertical with his or her blade, if the blade has been loaded effectively and is unloaded smoothly it is going to take time to exit.  During that time your blade is going to be approaching (and perhaps passing) your feet.  As we’ve seen, a paddler just needs to keep some pressure on the paddle and it will keep the board accelerating through to the exit. There is nothing to be afraid of here.  It’s not going to slow you down.  When you’ve unloaded your blade in a way that feels natural to you and moved your body to set up your exit, you’ll find the blade popping out of the water with little effort.  You’ll know when to exit because it will feel right.  The exit almost happens by itself.

To exit earlier you’ll have to unload the paddle more quickly which, while possible, often leads to a paddler placing less load on the blade in the first place.  This may not be what you want to do; as it will very likely lessen the acceleration you are able to get in the first half of the stroke.  You’ve got to experiment and play around to find the optimal load and optimal exit.  You’ll recall in the last post I mentioned a trade-off.  There is a definite relationship between the two.  I just don’t think you should be paranoid of pulling past your feet every time you stand on your board.  It isn’t that critical.

While I’ve just tried to answer the question “when should I exit?” by explaining the feeling of loading and unloading the paddle, those who are more mathematically inclined might better relate to the concept of diminishing returns.  Basically you need to exit when your blade reaches a spot in the stroke where you’ll gain more from starting a new stroke than finishing the stroke you are on.  At some point the acceleration you continue to get by leaving your blade in the water will decrease to a point where it just isn’t worth the effort.  It’s better to start a new stroke and get the maximum acceleration that next stroke can offer.  The caveat is you just need to understand that if you exit too early you are very likely going to end up having less weighted, less powerful strokes.   These won’t accelerate your board as much so you’ll have to take more strokes to go the same speed, hoping that your board will decelerate less between strokes because of that.  It’s like riding a bike in a lighter gear.   If this lighter load feels better on your muscles and makes you feel better on your board, and if you can aerobically handle the faster stroke rate, then that is probably right for you.  If you prefer pulling a little harder but less often then you should probably exit a little later.  You’ll find it harder on your muscles but probably easier on your lungs.  By experimenting with load and stroke rate you’ll get a good idea of which approach seems right for you pretty quickly.  Just remember whatever stroke you choose has to be sustainable for your entire race.

Acceleration and it’s relationship to board velocity

Someone who gave me feedback suggested that it would be good to see velocity data as well as acceleration.  I didn’t include it in the last post because the report we run to get a stroke profile doesn’t consider velocity.   I’m not sure why but it may have something to do with velocity being recorded by the GPS portion of the device as opposed to the accelerometer.   While the accelerometer part of the unit collects information at 200 Hz, the GPS portion gathers it much more slowly at 10 Hz.  Therefore there are a lot of points to plot for the acceleration curve and the curve shows all the small variances in acceleration and is essentially more accurate, while the velocity curve has far fewer points to plot and is therefore much smoother.   This means we cannot determine exact velocity for any given point on the curve but we can assume that the value we get from the curve is very close. I’m glad I looked for the velocity information provided in the data, as it is quite useful.  Additionally for good measure, and since the ride of the board was part of our original discussion on where to exit, I extracted some information on board pitch as well.

What you see below are two graphs of acceleration (black), velocity (red) and board pitch (blue); one for Jimmy Terrell and one for me.  For me there are six full strokes included and for Jimmy, since his stroke rate was marginally faster than mine, there are six and a small part of a seventh. 
    

 The acceleration curves should look familiar from the last blog post, though this time they are shown for one stroke at a time instead of a series of strokes that lay over top of each other.  Jimmy accelerates his board more quickly and we see he has greater peak acceleration, which again speaks to his technical strength as a sprinter.  My board actually accelerates for a longer period of time which is represented by a more stretched out curve.  Jimmy has a greater peak deceleration and his board is in deceleration for a slightly longer period of time.  What is new and interesting here is what we can see about the board velocity.

By definition, velocity should continue to increase as long as there is acceleration.   Therefore we should see peak velocity at the end of the period of acceleration or when the acceleration curve crosses the X-axis.   For both Jimmy and me you can see this is basically what we have.  Peak velocity for each of us is pretty close to the point where the acceleration is zero and deceleration is about to begin.  Where there is some variance from this point in a particular stroke it is due to the lack of sensitivity in the velocity readings mentioned above.  If the GPS had been able to gather velocity readings at a greater frequency the velocity curve would be more accurate and we would see peak velocity at the point where the board is just about to start decelerating.

For Jimmy, we see his velocity curves are steeper than mine meaning he reaches his peak velocity more quickly.  This should be no surprise based on what we have already noted about his acceleration.  Again, this suggests his technique is well suited to sprinting.  Jimmy’s velocity curve reaches its peak and then begins to drop fairly quickly; his velocity curve is steeper than mine on deceleration side of peak velocity as well.  In contrast, my curve is not as steep indicating I reach peak velocity more slowly.  What is interesting is that my curve is much more rounded at the top, to the point where for some strokes the top of the curve appears almost flat.  Since you achieve peak velocity when your board stops accelerating, but begin to lose speed the moment it starts to decelerate we know that flat tops to the velocity curve like we see here are by definition impossible unless the acceleration curve is flat along the X-axis.   So what we are in fact seeing is that my velocity is very close to peak for a considerable period of time.

Another interesting thing in the comparison of Jimmy’s and my velocity curves is that my curve doesn’t drop as low between peaks.  This is due to a) Jimmy having greater peak deceleration and b) a longer period of deceleration.  This causes Jimmy’s board to slow down more and for a longer period of time than mine resulting in the difference we see in our two curves.

Minimal velocity should, by definition, be at the point where deceleration stops and acceleration begins.  Again we can see this for both Jimmy and me within the margin of error due to the slower rate of collection of velocity data.  For both of our graphs the lowest velocity occurs just as the acceleration at the beginning of the stroke begins.

While we should have been able to infer this from the acceleration curves alone, the velocity curves show us the board moves fastest at the end of the stroke and slowest just as we are about to catch.  What is interesting is that, according to theory, the board is supposed to slow down if you pull past your feet.  However in this case the board of the paddler who pulled through further slowed down less.  We also see that the paddler who pulled it through further had considerably more time close to peak velocity than the paddler who exited earlier.   Maintaining near peak speed for longer and more speed between strokes are both significant.  Not only they do they mean you are going to complete a given race distance more quickly, maintaining more speed between strokes also means that you have less work to do to accelerate your board again at the beginning of the next stroke.  Provided you didn’t expend too much energy at the end of one stroke to keep your board running between strokes, you can enjoy notable energy savings over the course of a race.  Even if Jimmy and me are expending comparable amounts of energy each stroke, he is expending his relatively more at the front and me relatively more towards the back.  Again, this is an example of two different approaches to making the board move.

According to this data, for Jimmy to maintain more speed between strokes he would have to paddle with a higher stroke rate than he did for this test.  A faster recovery, which would allow him to get to the next stroke sooner, would mean there was less time for his board to slow down between strokes.Here is some quantitative data for each stroke.

	Peak acceleration (g)	Peak deceleration (g)	Peak velocity (m/s)	Minimum velocity (m/s)
Jimmy 1	0.37	- 0.19	3.27	2.35
Jimmy 2	0.39	- 0.24	3.14	2.35
Jimmy 3	0.33	- 0.28	3.18	2.24
Jimmy 4	0.26	- 0.24	3.17	2.37
Jimmy 5	0.32	- 0.30	3.11	2.25
Jimmy 6	0.32	- 0.23	3.13	2.36
Jimmy Ave.	0.33	- 0.25	3.17	2.32
Difference		0.58		0.85
Larry 1	0.36	- 0.15	3.53	2.68
Larry 2	0.32	- 0.19	3.32	2.63
Larry 3	0.33	- 0.15	3.26	2.60
Larry 4	0.30	- 0.17	3.28	2.68
Larry 5	0.29	- 0.18	3.47	2.56
Larry 6	0.31	- 0.13	3.37	2.50
Larry Ave.	0.32	- 0.16	3.37	2.61
Difference		0.16		0.76

            

In km/h the average velocities are: Jimmy peak 11.41, Jimmy minimum 8.35, Larry peak 12.13, Larry minimum 9.40.  Jimmy’s average velocity for the trial was 2.81 m/s or 10.12 km/h and Larry’s average was 3.06 m/s or 11.02 km/h.

I think it is safe to conclude that the fact that my board is not slowing down as much is because I have managed to widen my acceleration curve and have a smaller, shallower deceleration curve (meaning I accelerate longer and decelerate less).  I believe that has been achieved by pulling a little longer and not worrying if my blade has passed my feet.  And lets be clear, I am definitely applying something to the blade in these late stages of the stroke. Though most of the load has been removed from the paddle during the unloading phase, there is still enough on the paddle to keep the board accelerating.  It truthfully doesn’t’ take that much effort.  Had I stopped pulling, and was just letting the blade drift past my feet, I would not be producing acceleration and would likely be slowing the board down more because of paddle drag.   This is all interesting because the “it’s not good to pull past your feet” theory suggests that pulling at this stage of the stroke will slow your board down.

Though I was a little more successful than Jimmy at maintaining speed between strokes I can’t conclude from this exercise that exiting with the blade past your feet is better for maintaining speed between strokes that exiting before your feet.  I would need to include in this sample some paddlers who use that technique and collect data on them before being able to draw any conclusions one way or the other.   I would love to put the GPS/accelerometer on someone who exits really early and see what the data says.  There is as much possibility that they would maintain speed better as there is they would be worse.  I’m certain that they wouldn’t be able to load the paddle as much as if they pulled through more, and intuitively I believe that means they wouldn’t be able to accelerate as much.  Therefore I think it would take them a number of extra strokes to accelerate the board to top speed.  But if they didn’t slow down as much between strokes would they need to have as much acceleration in a given stroke to maintain a fast or perhaps even faster speed?  We won’t know until I can collect data from someone who paddles that way.  What we do know from data collected here is that there are different techniques that can make a board move fast.  I don’t’ think I can currently advocate that people should pull past their feet, just like I don’t think it is wise to advocate that people shouldn’t.  I think the best we can currently say is that people need to play around and see what works best for them.  My hope is that by helping people get a better understanding of how the board responds to different approaches to paddling they can make a more informed decision about which one to use.

Pitch – how the board rides

The pitch information from the graphs is interesting.  Pitch taken from this device is actually called “gyro pitch” and is measured in degrees per second.  Positive values mean the nose of the board is rising and negative values mean the nose is dropping.  I think the curves for both Jimmy and me are what we should expect to see.

In general, pitch increases as velocity increases, and you’ll notice on the graphs that pitch, in general, is increasing as the board accelerates.  Most paddlers will be familiar with the nose of their board rising as the speed of their board increases.  If you look at the front of your board as you accelerate on flat water you can usually notice the wave off the nose changing shape and moving further back on your board.  You may also notice it changing to white water and making a little “waterfall” noise.  This isn’t just because your board is pushing through the water more quickly.  It’s also because the pitch of the board is changing slightly.  You’ve probably also noticed when you draft behind another board that the lead board has a “rooster tail” like wave off the back of the board that increases in size during the stroke.  This change in size is largely due to the back of the board dropping slightly through the stroke which is also a case of the board changing pitch.

You’ll notice in the graphs that as the board starts to decelerate the pitch goes negative.  In other words as the board slows down the nose settles back into the water.  Again this is something that we’ve all experienced before.  Then once the board has finished settling it is neither falling nor rising so, as you would expect, the pitch curve is at zero on the Y-axis.  At this point the paddler is in the late stages of the recovery.  Pitch then goes negative again when the nose drops as you reach forward to set up your catch.  Whether you are in a racing canoe or a stand up board, as you reach forward to load your blade at the catch there is enough body weight transfer to cause the bow of the boat or nose of the board to settle again.  You shouldn’t stress about this.  It won’t slow you down unless you suddenly and violently dig your nose deep into the water (in canoe we call this bouncing the boat).  The pitch actually stays negative during the early stages of acceleration as you set and load the blade.  Then pitch increases again as our loaded blade works against the water and we accelerate our board past the paddle in the next stroke.

Graphically the pitch changes look quite extreme but I have tweaked the scale to make these changes more visible.  In reality pitch changes on a moving board should be easily discernable to the naked eye as fluid movement that seems to belong as part of the overall movement of body and board.  They should not be extreme.  The nose of the board should not come out of the water and the tail should not drop excessively.

One thing to note is that in this trial we were testing a Bark prototype board with very little volume in the tail.  Little volume in the tail means the board doesn’t support body movements as well and in particular doesn’t support a paddle being pulled past the feet as well.  The tail drops very easily and the nose rises very readily.  For this test I kept moving forward on the board until I felt my nose was staying down in the water more and responding in a similar fashion to my own Bark board.   I’m not sure that Jimmy made the same adjustments, as I can recall seeing the nose coming out of the water a lot more than normal as he was paddling.   It appears from the graphs that his pitch changes are larger than mine, which I don’t think they normally are.  It is possible that this affected his acceleration and velocity output as well, as when pitch changes are too great and a significant part of the board is out of the water at the nose, it should have a negative impact of the board’s performance.  After all, consider a case in which the first18 inches of a 14-foot board are out of the water.  It essentially becomes a 12’6” board that isn’t trimmed properly.

Hopefully this post has added some greater clarity to the “when should I exit” question.  Of course there is no simple answer.  You’ve got to experiment and figure out what works best for you.  Hopefully it has also provided some insight into velocity so that it isn’t confused with acceleration.  Finally, I’ve tried to add something extra by looking at pitch and trying to explain why your board moves the way it does.  I’d like to think that this discussion may help you better understand what your board and paddle are doing and help you better develop your own effective technique.

One of the sport scientists I am working with likes to say that the more questions we answer, the more questions we have.  There are more questions that spring to mind from looking at the data I’ve shared here.  How does pitch really affect speed?  How much pitch change is acceptable and when does it become detrimental?  How much does it slow your board now if you drag your paddle?  How much force is required to produce the acceleration we see here?  What is the load (in pounds or kilograms) in a typical SUP stroke?  What key fitness indicators might be useful in helping a paddler determine which approach to take in their technique?

One thing to consider is that this testing was done in the back bay of Newport Harbour.  I feel really confident in describing how a paddled craft moves in flat water.  What happens on open water like the Great Lakes or the ocean is different.  Is one approach to paddling better suited for flat water and one for the ocean, or is it still a case of what feels best for the individual?

 I’m really enjoying using this technology so far.  It’s certainly caused me to step back and question what I know about paddling.  It’s allowing me to help canoe and kayak paddlers by identifying the smallest details in their stroke and trying to optimize them.  When races are decided by 1/100s of a second these small details can make the difference between a spot on the podium or missing the final.  For stand up paddling it has been fun to use it to learn more about the stroke and really put the theories on how to paddle SUP to the test.  While I find the SUP stroke really does mirror the C1 stroke very closely, there is much more to learn, as there are many more variables, particularly when you consider the conditions we paddle in.   I would love to be able to use this technology to take a look at the strokes of some of the top paddlers, both so I can learn more about what makes a SUP board go and also to perhaps help them optimize techniques that already work extremely well for them.  Hopefully I can stick the unit on some of their boards during the Carolina Cup weekend.

More Thoughts on SUP Technique

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts on technique or been to one of my clinics you’ll know that I have some fairly strong ideas on technique.  I’ve always felt that there are certain, fundamental technique principles that apply to all types of paddling that you need to take into account if you are going to paddle well.  Beyond that I’ve always believed that there are many ways to interpret these principles and incorporate them into your own technique.  We don’t all have to look identical when we paddle.  The trick for each of us is to find out how to incorporate the basic principles of paddling into our technique in the way that works best for each of us.

Since I started working with the Canadian Canoe/Kayak Team last June I’ve had access to some pretty cool technology that allows coaches and sport scientists to better understand a paddler’s technique and provide paddlers with feedback far beyond that which you can provide by simply videoing them.  Some of this technology is pretty developed and ready to use daily. Some of the technology is still developmental, but we hope to have it ready to use daily with the team this coming season.  As you can imagine I’ve been eager to use this technology to look at the SUP stroke as well.  What it has shown me so far has been both interesting and useful.

The cool thing is that this technology, while reaffirming the basic principles of paddling, has also shown that some things related to technique that people might consider really important are in fact not really that important at all.  Other things related to technique, while actually correct, can easily be misinterpreted in their application and hurt your technique.  Finally, using this technology has confirmed what I have contended all along – that there are many interpretations of basic paddling principles that can be used to move a SUP board effectively.  It isn’t really a matter of one technique being better than another.  It is instead of question of each individual finding not only the right technique for them, but also finding the right “gear” to paddle in (see my blog post “Stroke Rate in SUP Paddling”).

Without any further introduction let’s get down to looking at things in detail:


Pulling the paddle through too far (past your feet)

There are a couple of SUP forums on the Internet and if you ever check them out you’ll inevitably find a thread discussing whether or not it is okay to pull your paddle past your feet.  And there is usually a “senior member” of the forum, with thousands of posts, who will tell you in no uncertain terms that pulling the blade past your feet is bad.  He’ll insist that pulling with a negative blade angle causes the back of the board to be pulled down, ruining the boards trim and depriving it of forward speed, thus slowing you down.  In theory, he is absolutely correct.  The problem is, in practice he is very likely wrong.  Depending on what you are doing with the rest of your body you may still be accelerating your board, you may be maintaining it’s speed, or you may be causing it to slow down less than it would be if your blade was already out of the water.  I’ve confirmed this with acceleration data from the GPS/accelerometer I have been using.

The basic theory is that you move your board forward most effectively when your blade is at a positive angle, and in particular when your blade is vertical.  As soon as you pass through vertical, theory has it that there is little contribution to forward movement and, because at a negative blade angle a component of the force exerted by the blade is directed up, that you are actually pulling the back of your board down into the water.  This is turn is thought to slow the board down because it does not ride efficiently in the water and is essentially going uphill.  When you pull your paddle blade past your feet it is at a considerable negative angle.  Therefore the theory maintains that pulling your blade past your feet is bad.

While I totally understand this notion and agree with it in theory, I’ve always felt that reality and theory don’t necessarily align in all aspects of a paddling stroke.  In practice I’ve found that whether you are in a sprint C1 canoe or on a SUP board it is extremely difficult to paddle without ever having a negative blade angle.  More to the point, it is nearly impossible to prevent your blade from passing your hips in canoe or your feet on a SUP board.  The way we are positioned on the boat/board, the way our joints articulate and the length of the paddle all make it totally unrealistic.  The only way to attempt to prevent your blade from passing your hips/feet is to make huge sacrifices in body weight and force loaded onto the paddle in the catch and pulling phases of the stroke.  In canoe such a sacrifice is never considered and you won’t ever see anyone good paddling that way.  It’s simply so much slower and less effective that it just isn’t done.  On a SUP board you see some people trying it with varying degrees of success, but to say it represents better technique than pulling past your feet to some degree is entirely wrong.

I’ve always felt that paddling is a game of trade-offs.  You often find that by emphasizing one thing it is at the expense of another.  What we’re talking about here is a perfect example.  The more weight you load on your blade and the more force you generate in the pulling phase of your stroke, the more likely you are to pull past your feet and have to deal with whatever negatives that brings.  Similarly the more you try to not pull past your feet, the less you can load your paddle during the pull.  You’ll have to deal with the consequences of a far weaker pull.  The reality is that each of us has to find the right balance between these two extremes that works best for us.  What I choose as optimal for me may be totally different than what you choose.  To say that one approach is better than another is both foolish and wrong.  It is right if it works for you with the fitness strengths and weaknesses you bring to the board.  However as we’re always trying to find ways to improve and go faster we should always be experimenting with that balance, trying either slightly more or less load and exiting slightly sooner or later to see if we can find a new, better, optimal balance based on our ever changing strength and fitness capabilities.

Let’s take a look at some of the data generated by the GPS/accelerometer I’ve been working with.  The graphs included here are what we are calling “Stroke Profiles” and basically represent the acceleration of the boat/board through the entire stroke.  The Y-axis represents acceleration in g’s.  I’m not sure why the guys who designed the software chose g’s instead of m/s², but you can always multiply the g value by 9.81 to get the value in m/s².   Anything positive on the Y-axis represents forward acceleration.  Everything negative on the Y-axis represents deceleration.  If the value is zero then the boat/board is neither speeding up or slowing down, it is simply maintaining speed.  The X-axis represents time and the curve itself represents one stroke cycle so you can easily see the relative time in acceleration compared to deceleration.   Finally each colored curve represents a single stroke.  The black curve represents the average of all the strokes.

The first stroke profile is for one of the National Team canoe paddlers.  From syncing the GPS data to video we know that the point on the far left of the graph represents the catch where acceleration begins.  Not surprisingly, acceleration increases rapidly to a peak with is pretty much the point in the stroke where the blade is vertical.   Everything past the peak on the curve is done with the paddle at an increasingly negative angle.  You can see that the boat is still accelerating forward, though at a decreasing rate than it was when it the blade was vertical.  What is interesting is that when the paddler is steering (canoe paddlers use their paddle to steer every stroke in a very modified J-stroke), the boat is maintaining speed and still not decelerating.  At this point the blade is well past the paddler's hips.  This is represented by the flat line along the X-axis.  Clearly, if you paddle well you can still generate enough pressure on the blade while steering to prevent the boat from slowing down, and you're doing it with a negative blade angle well past your hips.   Finally, where the curve falls below the X-axis the boat is decelerating.  This is the recovery phase of the stroke where the blade is out of the water.

The theory about pulling your blade past your hips/feet applies to canoe just as much as SUP.  In fact racing canoes have considerably less volume at the stern than there is at the tail of a SUP board so, in theory, it should be even more important to exit early as a racing canoe should be much more sensitive to the effects of a negative blade angle.  If you watch video of a canoe race you can clearly see the boat’s pitch change during the stroke.  The tail drops and the nose rises.  In theory this slows the boat down.   A good paddler attempts to minimize this motion but knows that the vast advantage gained by a fully loaded stroke (which means the blade passing his hips) makes this loss of speed associated with change in boat pitch negligible in comparison. 

In canoe, trial and error over the years has shown that a good rule of thumb is to exit the water before your bottom hand passes your hip.  Passing this point is going to cause too much pitch change, is going to create paddle drag (causing deceleration) and most importantly is going to delay getting to the next catch and the most effective part of the next stroke.  You’ll see some paddlers exiting with their hands right at their hips and some exiting very early with their hands by their front knee.   Wherever you exit, the blade will be further back than your bottom hand, and very likely past your hips.  Most paddlers will exit somewhere in the middle between these two  extremes.  Again, this is an example of the trade-off between loading and exit, and each paddler is trying to find their own optimal balance between the two.

I’ve contended since I first stepped on a SUP board that it is like C1 standing up.  In fact, of all the paddle disciplines I’ve tried, SUP is the most like C1.  The difference between high kneeling and standing is small enough to make the paddling position and application of forces very similar.  As such, the stroke profile for a SUP paddler should look similar to that of a C1, although we can expect the acceleration to be much lower due to the shape of the board.

Below is a stroke profile I got from putting the GPS/accelerometer unit on my own board.  The first thing you notice is how much less acceleration you get on a board compared to a C1.  The difference is dramatic.  I’ve even changed the scale on the Y-axis in the graph and it is still a shallower curve.  The canoe acceleration peaks around 0.8 g’s and the board acceleration just over 0.3 g’s.  The other thing you notice is that the board accelerates for a longer period of time.  This is understandable as my stroke rate on the board was slower than the canoe paddler's and the blade was in the water for a longer period of time.

The really important thing that the stroke profile for SUP shows us is that the board continues to accelerate while the blade is in the water.  When synced to video you see that the initial acceleration begins at the catch with the blade contacting the water.  The acceleration increases as force is exerted against the water by the blade through to peak acceleration when the blade is basically vertical.  Then acceleration decreases as the blade angle becomes increasingly negative towards the exit.  The transition from acceleration to deceleration occurs when the blade exits the water.

Again, as seen in the canoe stroke profile, the notion that the board decelerates once the blade has passed vertical is wrong.  While the amount of acceleration is decreasing, it is still accelerating in the forward direction until the blade exits the water.  If you're comfortable pulling through that far you are not slowing your board down.  You may feel it's worth trying to get a bit more from this part of the stroke rather than rushing to the next one

Just as the bottom hand at the hip has been accepted as the maximum distance to pull the paddle through in canoe, on a stand up board I would suggest that the maximum distance should be your bottom hand at your hip or feet.  I know I exit 12 to 18 inches in front of that and still have the blade go a considerable distance past my feet.  I tend to paddle with a slightly longer paddle than most and hold my bottom hand a little higher than most, which increases that distance.  Someone with a shorter paddle and lower bottom hand might be able to pull their hand closer to their feet than me without having their blade actually travel any further past their feet than mine, but all the same it will still pass their feet.  For now, the point I want to make is it is absolutely incorrect to say that you shouldn’t pull the blade past your feet.  What is the optimal place to exit?  We’ll look at that shortly.

Setting the blade in the water before pulling

I’ve been guilty of telling people in clinics to set the blade in the water before pulling.  The idea, of course, is to make sure that you gather water behind your blade before pulling to maximize connection and, if you are someone with a splashy catch, to clean that up by eliminating  “air catching”.  The problem is that if you take too long to set the blade you actually slow yourself down. 

A good catch is aggressive and attacks the water, both gathering water behind the blade and creating pressure against that water (which begins to accelerate the board forward) almost simultaneously.  It’s really difficult to do this effectively, and as a consequence most paddlers either splash a little at the catch (meaning they have maybe lost a little connection at the catch) or they set the blade so deliberately they have a slight pause before pulling (meaning they are actually slowing the board down).  Again, it is a trade-off between the two extremes and finding the optimal catch for you takes some time and experimentation. Let’s take a look at a stroke profile that shows this.  This is from the same canoe paddler as the stroke profile above.  The difference is that this represents paddling at 38 to 40 strokes/minute while the one above represents paddling at 65 to 70 strokes/minute. There is a big difference in how aggressively you catch the water between 40 and 65 strokes/minute, and as a result the acceleration curves look quite a bit different.
 

I’m not sure why the curve appears the way it does on the graph, but this curve was synced to video so there is no doubt about what we are seeing.  If you look at the far right of the graph you see a little blip of positive acceleration before negative acceleration.  The little positive blip is the result of body positioning movements and the tip of the blade contacting the water at the start of the catch.  The little negative blip is the boat slowing down again as the blade is setting in the water.  Then we move to the left side of the curve and see the expected acceleration as the paddler pulls against the set blade. 

Bear in mind that the paddler in this instance is very good and I’ve had to work very hard to be able to catch him slowing the boat down while setting his blade because he is only doing it a tiny bit.  Many paddlers, though they may pause only briefly to set the blade, are going to slow their boat/board down more.  Furthermore, I believe this effect will be more apparent on a board than a racing canoe because it is much more difficult to accelerate a board in the first place.  Gathering water behind the blade to establish connection is one of the most important things a paddler can do, however being too deliberate in setting the blade in the water before pulling is clearly something that is going to end up actually slowing you down.  It is really interesting to watch some of the world's fastest sprint canoe and kayak athletes.  Some of them have very splashy catches.  Clearly what they gain from an aggressive catch that accelerates their boat immediately makes up for whatever connection they may momentarily lose at the catch.




Determining the right technique for you

As I mentioned earlier, there are certain fundamental principles to consider in good paddling.  How each individual incorporates those principles into their own technique is really up to them.  There are some ways that I think are better than others, but at the end of the day, there are different approaches that can all yield success.  Often paddling becomes a question of trade-offs.  Do you have a heavier, more loaded stroke and maybe pull a little further past your feet, or do you have a less loaded stroke and exit earlier?  Do you attack the water really hard at the catch and perhaps splash a little or do you tend to be more deliberate at the catch and emphasize the pulling phase more?  The optimal approach is the one that works best for you and should always be developed taking your fitness capabilities into consideration.

To give you an example of different paddlers taking different approaches to paddling take a look at stroke profiles for both Jimmy Terrell and me.  Most people would think that our strokes would be very similar as we both come from a sprint canoe background and share pretty much the same philosophy when it comes to technique.  Yet when you look at our stroke profiles they are quite different.

We’ve already seen my stroke profile so let’s take a look at Jimmy’s.  He has greater magnitude acceleration than I do, but accelerates his board for a shorter period of time.  While he has a greater peak deceleration, I have larger deceleration for a longer period of time.  However my total time in deceleration in relation to time accelerating is much less than Jimmy’s.  I should point out that we used the same board for this test so the board is not a factor.   If you look at video of the two of us with the stroke profiles in hand, you can see where the difference is coming from.  Jimmy uses a shorter paddle relative to his height than me and has his hand further down the shaft closer to the blade.  This allows him to accelerate his board quickly.  However his stroke is a little shallower and less loaded throughout the pull and he exits the water earlier, losing some of the continued acceleration that the exit can provide.  If I got the sport scientists working with the National Team to run a more advanced report, that could tell us the area under the acceleration and deceleration curves and provide a relative percentage of each for each of our strokes.  That would allow us to compare our strokes more quantitatively.  

We do have some quantitative data to compare:

	Jimmy	Larry
Ave. stroke rate	45	42
Ave. stroke distance (m)	3.76	4.33
Ave. velocity (m/s)	2.81	3.06
Peak velocity (m/s)	3.0	3.2
Peak acceleration (g)	0.39	0.34

Jimmy                                                                                                   Larry

What we can conclude from this comparison is something that Jimmy and me already knew.  He paddles in a slightly lighter gear than l do, using a slightly faster and lighter stroke.  We can also conclude from his superior acceleration that his technique is better suited to sprinting than mine, while I am probably more suited for longer distance races of 1000m and over.  It is interesting that our approach to paddling has not changed since the days of our C1 racing.  These were our relative strengths when we used to race all the way back in the 1980s.

The important thing coming from this comparison is that it illustrates that there are different approaches to moving a board fast and that each paddler needs to find the optimal approach to moving their board for them.  While there are fundamental principles you need to address to paddle effectively, there is no right or wrong technique once you’ve incorporated them.  Over time both Jimmy and I have found what works optimally for us.  What works for him isn’t ideal for me and vice versa.  We could use the GPS/accelerometer to look at Dave Kalama, Jamie Mitchell, Danny Ching or anyone else you'd care to mention.  The stroke profile of each is going to be different.  Some might be similar but they won’t be the same.  A stroke profile is almost like a fingerprint for a paddle sport athlete.   Everyone has his or her own preferred technique and load on the paddle. 

Because we’ve found our optimal stroke does that mean that we don’t need to experiment with it?  Absolutely not.  I am constantly experimenting at the margins of my stroke.  Because I know I use a heavily loaded stroke, I always play with making it slightly lighter without losing the character of the stroke that seems to be optimal for me.  The important thing, if you’ve been paddling long enough to have a strong sense of what works for you, is to not attempt radical changes.  You are better off making slow, subtle changes to your technique.  Over time it will evolve and change in the way you want it to and you will be able to perhaps develop a new optimal stroke.

If you are relatively new or inexperienced and unsure of where your optimal stroke may lie I strongly suggest following the approach I’ve outlined in the “Stoke Rate in SUPPaddling” post.  It does a pretty good job of explaining the concept of gears in paddling and gives you an idea of how to determine the best gear for you.    It is really important to find a “gear” that allows you to load the paddle and pull a powerful stroke.  However it is even more important that you choose a load that is sustainable for the distance you are racing.  You absolutely do not want to develop a technique that is not sustainable for an entire race because each stroke takes too much effort. 

I look at paddling like a puzzle.  There are lots of different pieces to fit together in order to paddle well and no two people are trying to solve the exact same puzzle because, since we are all different, we are all working with unique pieces.   Figuring out what all the different pieces are and exactly how they fit together is the challenge but it can be really fun.  Hopefully some of the things I’ve talked about here will help you put your own puzzle together.