I've done a lot of writing recently about what the latest
National Team accelerometer/GPS technology can tell us about the SUP
stroke. I think I can safely draw the
conclusion that one of the most important factors to paddling fast on a SUP
board is one's ability to maintain speed between strokes.
Of course there has been some discussion about whether or not pulling with a negative blade angle past your feet slows you down. I think I demonstrated that it doesn't by looking at some acceleration and velocity curves generated by this technology. The theory is that pulling with a negative blade angle past your feet causes a drastic pitch change in your board (i.e. the back of the board drops), which results in a loss of speed. In fact it is true that change in pitch is one of the factors that can cause your board to slow down excessively. However, if you're paddling properly the potential for a loss of speed is far outweighed by added acceleration you can get at the end of the stroke.
You should note that it is as much of a mistake to intentionally pull past your feet as it is to exit artificially early such that it prevents you from loading your blade effectively. I honestly don’t believe determining an arbitrary point to exit is the way to go. Instead, the stroke you choose should be based on what feels good to you and what appears to work best for you in terms of a) generating speed (accelerating), b) maintaining speed (not decelerating) and c) what is sustainable for the distance you are racing. You've got a wide range of approaches to paddling you can experiment with in determining what works best for you.Whether you choose a lighter geared stroke and exit earlier or a heavier geared, longer stroke and exit later I believe your success at keeping the board running between strokes is going to depend on how you move your body at the exit.
There are two factors that determine the rate of deceleration between strokes, the drag in the water and the change in momentum in the whole “system” of you, your paddle and your board. Drag is affected by pitch, which we have discussed. Extreme changes in pitch can slow your board down. Small changes in pitch resulting from extra acceleration gained at the end of the stroke will most likely not. Change in momentum is affected by the centre of mass of the paddler in relation to the centre of mass of the board. Picture walking forward on your board with your paddle out of the water. As you walk forward your board is actually moving slightly backwards.
Now consider what happens when you exit the water. If you pull the paddle through too far past your feet and the blade reaches too negative an angle, it is likely that you’ll be really bent over at the waist when the paddle finally exits the water. Then, once the blade exits you’ll be standing up straight and getting ready to move forward to the next stroke. This motion of standing up with the blade out of the water is going to move your board backwards, just like walking along your board will as described above. You can try it for yourself. Stand bent over with your paddle out of the water on your stationary board in calm water. Now stand up straight by bringing your hips forward underneath you and your head and shoulders up. Quickly look behind you and note how your board is responding. You’ll see it has actually moved backwards slightly.
This backwards movement will occur when you’re paddling if you pull through way too far and stand up straight after your blade has exited the water. Your board won’t actually stop moving forward and begin to move backwards, but it will decelerate. It will move forward at a slower rate as a result of this movement, meaning you’ll end up carrying less speed between strokes.
So how do you prevent pitch changes and momentum changes from slowing you down? It all comes down to what you do at the exit.
We should all be familiar by now with the idea of pulling yourself to the paddle. The fact of the matter is, if we execute our exit properly with can actually “push” ourselves by the paddle as well. The most important thing about the exit isn’t where it occurs relative to our feet or any other reference point you can think of, but rather HOW it occurs.
When you are pulling your loaded paddle through the water your hips are helping with the pull and are moving backward with the paddle. The most important thing about the exit is that the hips stop moving backward and begin to move forward before the blade has exited the water. In fact this change of hip motion from backward to forward is what should initiate your exit. It’s a subtle movement, and when done really well the hips are moving only slightly ahead of the paddle. However that small, subtle movement is the difference between pushing off your still loaded blade at the exit to enhance your board’s forward run, and causing it to decelerate due to the momentum changes discussed above.
Before I describe how to visualize performing the exit it is worth taking a look at some very good examples of a well-executed exit. In each case you can actually see the board (or boat) accelerate off the back of the stroke. This acceleration results from the paddler pushing himself past the supported paddle at the exit before popping it out of the water and allows the paddler to maintain speed much better between strokes.
In the first video we see David Cal of Spain winning the C1 1000m final in Athens in 2004. I include this in this discussion of SUP paddling because he does such a great job of his exit that it clearly illustrates what I have been describing here. You’ll see his paddling side hip rotate back to initiate his pull and then both hips move back during the pull. You’ll very clearly see as the paddle passes vertical his hips start to move forward and that this motion initiates the exit of his blade from the water. You’ll also see how much his boat appears to accelerate off the back of his stroke, allowing him to maintain more speed between strokes. Cal’s time of 3:46 in this race was a world best for ten years and was only surpassed at last year’s World Championships in Moscow.
Of course there has been some discussion about whether or not pulling with a negative blade angle past your feet slows you down. I think I demonstrated that it doesn't by looking at some acceleration and velocity curves generated by this technology. The theory is that pulling with a negative blade angle past your feet causes a drastic pitch change in your board (i.e. the back of the board drops), which results in a loss of speed. In fact it is true that change in pitch is one of the factors that can cause your board to slow down excessively. However, if you're paddling properly the potential for a loss of speed is far outweighed by added acceleration you can get at the end of the stroke.
You should note that it is as much of a mistake to intentionally pull past your feet as it is to exit artificially early such that it prevents you from loading your blade effectively. I honestly don’t believe determining an arbitrary point to exit is the way to go. Instead, the stroke you choose should be based on what feels good to you and what appears to work best for you in terms of a) generating speed (accelerating), b) maintaining speed (not decelerating) and c) what is sustainable for the distance you are racing. You've got a wide range of approaches to paddling you can experiment with in determining what works best for you.Whether you choose a lighter geared stroke and exit earlier or a heavier geared, longer stroke and exit later I believe your success at keeping the board running between strokes is going to depend on how you move your body at the exit.
There are two factors that determine the rate of deceleration between strokes, the drag in the water and the change in momentum in the whole “system” of you, your paddle and your board. Drag is affected by pitch, which we have discussed. Extreme changes in pitch can slow your board down. Small changes in pitch resulting from extra acceleration gained at the end of the stroke will most likely not. Change in momentum is affected by the centre of mass of the paddler in relation to the centre of mass of the board. Picture walking forward on your board with your paddle out of the water. As you walk forward your board is actually moving slightly backwards.
Now consider what happens when you exit the water. If you pull the paddle through too far past your feet and the blade reaches too negative an angle, it is likely that you’ll be really bent over at the waist when the paddle finally exits the water. Then, once the blade exits you’ll be standing up straight and getting ready to move forward to the next stroke. This motion of standing up with the blade out of the water is going to move your board backwards, just like walking along your board will as described above. You can try it for yourself. Stand bent over with your paddle out of the water on your stationary board in calm water. Now stand up straight by bringing your hips forward underneath you and your head and shoulders up. Quickly look behind you and note how your board is responding. You’ll see it has actually moved backwards slightly.
This backwards movement will occur when you’re paddling if you pull through way too far and stand up straight after your blade has exited the water. Your board won’t actually stop moving forward and begin to move backwards, but it will decelerate. It will move forward at a slower rate as a result of this movement, meaning you’ll end up carrying less speed between strokes.
So how do you prevent pitch changes and momentum changes from slowing you down? It all comes down to what you do at the exit.
We should all be familiar by now with the idea of pulling yourself to the paddle. The fact of the matter is, if we execute our exit properly with can actually “push” ourselves by the paddle as well. The most important thing about the exit isn’t where it occurs relative to our feet or any other reference point you can think of, but rather HOW it occurs.
When you are pulling your loaded paddle through the water your hips are helping with the pull and are moving backward with the paddle. The most important thing about the exit is that the hips stop moving backward and begin to move forward before the blade has exited the water. In fact this change of hip motion from backward to forward is what should initiate your exit. It’s a subtle movement, and when done really well the hips are moving only slightly ahead of the paddle. However that small, subtle movement is the difference between pushing off your still loaded blade at the exit to enhance your board’s forward run, and causing it to decelerate due to the momentum changes discussed above.
Before I describe how to visualize performing the exit it is worth taking a look at some very good examples of a well-executed exit. In each case you can actually see the board (or boat) accelerate off the back of the stroke. This acceleration results from the paddler pushing himself past the supported paddle at the exit before popping it out of the water and allows the paddler to maintain speed much better between strokes.
In the first video we see David Cal of Spain winning the C1 1000m final in Athens in 2004. I include this in this discussion of SUP paddling because he does such a great job of his exit that it clearly illustrates what I have been describing here. You’ll see his paddling side hip rotate back to initiate his pull and then both hips move back during the pull. You’ll very clearly see as the paddle passes vertical his hips start to move forward and that this motion initiates the exit of his blade from the water. You’ll also see how much his boat appears to accelerate off the back of his stroke, allowing him to maintain more speed between strokes. Cal’s time of 3:46 in this race was a world best for ten years and was only surpassed at last year’s World Championships in Moscow.
The next video is of the 200m event at Lost Mills in 2013. If you watch the whole video you’ll see lots of examples of some pretty good exits and a few of poor exits. I invite you to try to identify well-executed ones and poorly executed ones. From 0:46 to 0:56 seconds there is some great footage of Travis Grant, who though he is sprinting isn’t moving so quickly that his hip motion is hard to discern. You can see the same motion in his paddling at the exit as you see in David Cal.
The last video is of Danny Ching in the 200m event at Lost Mills
in 2014. You’ve
probably seen it before. Danny covers
the 200m in an incredible 47 seconds.
His stroke rate out of the start is a mind blowing 103 strokes/minute
and he settles to a very high 89 by the first switch. Yet I am sure you can see the same hip motion
that you saw in Travis and, in a canoe, David Cal, especially when he is
passing directly in front of the camera.
Click here for link to Danny Ching video
Click here for link to Danny Ching video
You’ll note that both Travis and Danny
load their paddles very well. They aren’t
just scratching the surface of the water.
You’ll also note that both pull the paddle blade past their feet
before it exits. This fully loaded, high
stroke rate paddling they are doing is incredibly hard. Their power output is very high and you can
see the way they both react at the finish that their efforts would not be
sustainable much past the 200m they were racing. However in longer races they are doing the
same thing, just not as quickly and dynamically and probably not with quite as
much load.
So how do you perform an exit like that at a reasonable pace that you might use in your typical 5-mile SUP race? To me, the key to a successful exit is to visualize your hips initiating the exit rather than your bottom hand. When I pull through the water, my paddling side hip leads the stroke as I am loading my body weight on the blade. When my blade reaches vertical I’ve achieved my maximum load on the blade and begin to think of unloading the blade. This unloading includes standing up straighter on my board. Rather than think of the “standing up” coming from my low back muscles I like to instead think of trying to push myself into a stranding up position with top arm pressure directed down my paddle shaft. This ensures that my blade stays loaded through the latter stages of the stroke and ensures when I start my exit that there will be enough pressure on the blade to allow me to “push off the water” with it as I exit.
As I am unloading I begin to think of my hips “reloading forward” for the next stroke. Remember as we catch we want our paddling side hip rotated forward to allow both reach and an effective generation of force against the loaded blade once it’s secure in the water. Since your hips have to get forward for the next stroke, visualize them reloading forward as you are finishing the stroke you are on with the blade still in the water. As soon as they’ve started to move forward you need to get the blade out. You don’t want it staying in the water after your hips have begun to move forward as you’ll just be dragging the paddle. Get the push that the reloading forward against a buried blade provides and then get the blade out of the water.
Another way to visualize the exit is to imagine yourself paddling from one stroke into the next. There should be a cycle of continuous movement in the stroke and the end of the stroke is no different than anywhere else in the stroke in that regard. Get rid of any image of pulling a stroke and finishing it, then starting the next one like you see rowers do.
In a previous blog post I included a number of useful drills for
SUP paddling. I recommend taking a look
at the exit drill again to help you as you try to get the push off the back of
the stroke that the exit provides.
Performing a really effective exit is not easy. Lots of people get confused because they have
to change the direction of their hip movement from backwards to forward
while most of their body is still moving back.
It seems that asking part of your body to move one way while the rest of
the body Is moving another is the confusing part and I’ve
seen paddlers get all twisted up so they look like pretzels while they try this
or move their hips with such exaggerated motion they look like hula
dancers. I’d suggest looking at the videos I’ve
included and reading the descriptions I’ve provided a number of times so you
have a good mental image of what you are trying to accomplish as you work on
your exit. Then I’d
recommend doing the exit drill. Remember
not to over do it. Do it for five
minutes or so and then paddle normally for 15 to 20 minutes before trying the
exit drill again.
In time you’ll be able to do a well-executed exit
and you’ll begin to see the benefits it brings in terms of helping
you maintain speed between strokes.
