Instructors Top Tips

Paddlesport Department

Sea Kayaking

Coaching

Edging. Practice and experiment with your edge. Mastering edge control will improve your paddling. With the boat flat this gets a score of zero. Try then increasing the edge in three stages 1,2,3 and get used to holding the boat still on edge at each of the levels. Next you can try going smoothly from edge to edge e.g. edge 1 on the left to edge 2 on the right. You can do this either statically or on the move. Finally try turning the kayak in a number of ways using inside or outside edge or even keeping the boat flat. Try spending about 10 -15 minutes on this exercise and revisit it each time you go on the water.

Equipment

Have you ever wondered what bent/crank shafted paddles can do for you?

The grip angle is altered from a straight shaft and reduces harmful sideways bending of the wrist and stress on the tendons. For example, hold your hand out as if to shake someone’s hand, if you relax your hand and cup your fingers what position do they like to adopt? The same as a bent shaft! You can see by moving your hand upwards at the wrist the position required for a straight shaft!

There are generally three types of bent shaft

Neutral – where the blade is in line (along the same axis) with the grip.
Normal Cranked - where the blade is behind the grip i.e. toward the back of the boat. This requires greater grip strength to control the blade but the idea is that power comes on early in the forward stroke. When might that be useful?
Modified crank - where the blade is in front of the grip. This latter case is considered the most beneficial as it requires a lighter grip.

Safety

Always carry a VHF radio
If somebody capsizes a long way behind you consider paddling backwards immediately to initiate the turn…this means that you are always travelling towards them and will get there sooner.

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