Surfski and kayak technique

Earn the flat water first

Paddlers want to skip ahead to the interesting parts. Downwind runs, grade 2 rapids, race starts. Both of those sit on the same foundation, and the foundation is an efficient forward stroke in a straight line on flat water.

That is not something you learn in a weekend course. Downwind is at the mercy of the weather, so you never really know what you will get: glassy, gusty and inconsistent, side wind, headwind. Your ability to power the boat up to speed and hold your technique through open ocean waves is what lets you catch runs. A great downwind paddler will out-surf a pure flat water paddler, but both of them built an effective flat water stroke first.

I argued the whole case, with the Coast to Coast grade 2 section as the second example, in Grade 1 paddling: mastering the fundamentals.

The stroke has four working sections

Legs, rotation, shoulders and upper torso, arms. That is the order force travels, and it is also the order in which most paddlers lose it.

The quads and glutes start the power into the catch and drive. The adductors, abductors and the internal and external rotators of the hip do the less glamorous job of controlling the hip through the whole stroke. One detail is worth sitting with: seated, with the torso leaning forward, the hip never reaches full anatomical extension. You will take thousands of strokes in a shortened position and not one of them at end range. That is why full range hip extension work belongs in your program, and why hip and lower back complaints turn up so often in paddlers who only paddle.

I went through every muscle by phase, drive side and recovery side, in anatomy of the kayak stroke.

Press, do not pull

A pull draws resistance toward your body, or draws your body toward an object. By that definition most of the kayak stroke is not a pull at all.

The leg drive is a press. The propulsive force pushes the boat past a blade that is locked into the water. The opposite leg does pull the hip forward, but that is coiling the lower body and core for the next stroke rather than producing boat speed.

The torso is a press too. Force goes into the paddle at the catch by pressing the top shoulder down onto the water, which breaks the surface tension and fills the blade. Once the blade is locked, the contralateral external obliques contract and press it outwards, which is exactly what a wing blade’s hydrofoil shape is asking for.

So two of the largest muscle groups in the stroke are pressing, and the language most of us were taught is pulling. That mismatch is worth fixing. I walked through all three areas with a drill for each in don’t pull, press your way to better technique.

The catch decides everything after it

The catch happens in a fraction of a second, which is why so few paddlers can describe their own. You cannot see the mechanics at full speed without slowing down video footage. What you can feel is the result. A weak catch slips, and the rest of the stroke is spent chasing a blade that never gripped. A good one makes every stroke feel lighter.

Three things have to line up. Engage the blade at the right moment, get enough blade surface in the water, and load it with an isometric contraction through the obliques and lats rather than the arms. Overreaching and pulling too early are the two errors I correct most often. Drills for it, plus the strength work that supports them, are in mastering the catch in paddling.

There is a related fault with an almost instant fix. If your blade makes a plopping sound going in, you are probably trying to pull it straight back and forcing it through the catch. A wing wants to travel outwards and generate lift through the stroke. Let it do that and the catch goes quiet on its own. I explain the movement in why your paddle makes a plop at the catch.

Rotation is the cable between your legs and the blade

Rotation connects leg drive to the paddle and biomechanically sets up the stroke that follows. Splitting it into the catch and the drive is the clearest way to understand what is doing the work.

At the catch the work is isometric. The rectus abdominis creates core tension and holds a slightly flexed torso. The external obliques on the loaded side brace to absorb force from the water, which shows up as a small drop of that shoulder and becomes more obvious at higher intensities. The internal obliques coil the hips with the knee driven up, pre-loading rotation through the trunk and pelvis and making space for the leg drive. The lats are pre-tensioned to stabilise the shoulder and trunk.

In the drive phase the contralateral external obliques contract and rotate the trunk forward and down. That is where the concentric force is produced and transferred. Both phases are laid out side by side in muscles of kayak rotation, the catch vs the drive.

Top arm cues, and why they usually fail

Keep your top arm back. Keep the paddle angle positive. Stop using your arms. All three are technically correct, and all three leave the athlete stuck, because at some point you obviously have to move that top arm forward to take the next stroke.

The gap is between understanding a cue and feeling a position. Once you have felt the right one, you can go looking for that same feeling on the water, and the cue finally has something to attach to. Two drills that produce the feeling are in top arm mechanics for the kayak stroke.

This is also the argument for doing technique work off the water. On the water you are balancing, listening, watching for other traffic and trying something new, all at once. Take the balance and the distractions away and the learning happens faster, which is the case I made in become a stronger paddler before you even hit the water.

Drills for the kayak erg

The erg is undervalued as a technique tool. Balance is gone, the water is gone, and you can put your whole attention on one thing at a time. Five drills I keep coming back to:

• Knees to elbows, to coordinate rotation with forward torso lean. It works as a balance drill on the water too, with or without the paddle.
• Banded kayak rotations, which pull you around into full rotation on one side. If rotation is your limiter, start here.
• The banded semi isometric stroke, which connects the arms to the rotational movement. The trick is to keep the arms still and rotate to put tension through the band.
• One sided strokes, driving force through the erg with legs, hips and shoulders while the arms stay as locked in place as you can hold them.
• The banded exit drill, which primes the exit arm into external rotation so the blade comes out cleanly and the downward force is ready for the next stroke.

Video for each one is in top 5 kayak and surfski technique drills for the kayak erg.

Repetition is the training

Changing technique is a nervous system job before it is a muscle job. Every time you perform the movement, your brain sends the same signal from the motor cortex to the muscles involved, and the more often you send it the faster and more efficient that connection becomes. Strength training circles call it greasing the groove, and it applies to a paddle stroke as directly as it applies to a press-up.

The practical version: paddle more often rather than longer, treat drill work as intentional practice rather than filler, and expect a technique block to take weeks of small doses instead of one heroic session. Grease the groove has the full reasoning and three ways to apply it.

Then take it somewhere rough

Once the flat water stroke holds together, the rest gets a lot more fun. I have written up both directions from my own racing.

For rivers, surf ski paddling down a grade 2 river is the Coast to Coast at 38 cumecs in a ski, and paddling rivers as a surf ski paddler covers what carries across between paddle codes, with video of the Waimakariri features.

For surfski downwind, Gorge Downwind Champs, my race is the write-up of travelling to the event solo from New Zealand, how I trained for it, and how the race actually went.

Where the coaching goes next

Technique coaching stalls for a boring reason more often than any other. The coach and the athlete are not using the same words for the same thing. A cue lands or it does not, and neither person can tell which. Building a shared language first is what the Strong Paddler technique course was built around.

If you would rather have the drills, the video library and a program that puts them in a sensible order, that is what membership gets you.