Phil Meyer started his kayaking career in Colorado in the days when kayaks were made in the backyard out of fiberglass and river trips meant stopping in eddies to duct tape your kayak back together. He enjoys instructing kayaking and SWR almost as much as just playing on the rivers. While he was the manager for the Costa Rican Outward Bound School, he and friends captured several first descents. He was also featured in
We want to talk about advanced forward stroke now for kayaking. In the earlier lesson, in "Beginning Forward Stroke", we were talking about just using your arms, pulling and pushing the paddle with your arms. Now, if you're kayaking, you actually want to rotate your body instead of using your arms. My torso, the muscles are a lot larger and stronger than in my arms, so I want to use my torso muscles, the center core muscles in my body to propel my kayak down the river. So first thing, if I put the kayak blade on top of my head, and I just rotate like this, see how I'm actually using my stomach muscles to bring the blade back and forth? Kind of like the Energizer bunny, you're just rotating like this. So, let me show you on the ground what that will do. So I go ahead and sit down in my kayak like I'm sitting in a boat, again my knees are slightly bent. What I want to do, instead of just pulling and pushing with my arms, when I reach forward, see how my whole body rotates forward like this? I'm going to plant the kayak paddle in the water, and then I want to rotate my entire body back like this. I lift out, again I plant front blade in the water, and I?m going to rotate my entire body back. See how I'm using my stomach muscles to paddle rather than my arms? So, one of the ways you can do that, is, actually one of the tricks, the end of the paddle that's in the water is called the "business end" of the paddle. What you want to do, plant that end of the paddle in the water, I'm going to lock my neck and my head on my shoulders so when my neck moves to watch that paddle blade, my whole body's going to move. So see how I'm locked? I rotate like this. See how I'm looking back at that paddle the whole time and it forces my body to rotate? Same thing here. I'm going to plant the "business end" of the paddle in the water, I'm going to rotate backwards and watch that paddle blade. Again, that forces my body to rotate with the paddle. And that way I'm using the core muscles in my body to do the paddling. This way if I do twenty miles, and I get done, my stomach muscles should hurt, but my arm muscles will be fine. Okay, for the advanced forward stroke, what I want to do is rotate my body. So full rotation, as you can tell I'm watching the blade. See how my body is rotating and making the boat go forward? Looking forward, my whole body's rotating and my core muscles are doing the stroke and giving the boat power.
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