Big Chest Big Back

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum upon which to place it and I shall move the world"....Archimedes

Paddling canoes is about leverage. The longer the lever the easier to do work. The shorter the lever the harder. It is a bit more difficult to conceptualize in the canoe stroke because the fulcrum is constantly moving; at least if you think of the fulcrum as the top hand. You can also think of the seat (or your seat) as your fulcrum.

Try a few experiments yourself. You can do this on the dock with a small seat to raise you high enough to mimic being in the canoe.

1. Put your hands about a foot apart on the paddle, top hand on the t-handle and bottom hand just 12 inches down the shaft. Now take a stroke from catch to hip. Pretty hard isn't it? Lots of resistance but...a really really long stroke.

2. Now put your bottom hand on the wrist or neck of the paddle, right where the shaft merges with the blade. A much easier and much shorter stroke.

3. Now place your bottom hand as you should about 4-5 inches from the top of the blade. Take a stroke. It should be easier than the first and harder than the second.

4. Now try the first one again. But this time face the shaft with your chest through the whole stroke. Imagine that there is a box between your shaft, your arms and your chest and you cannot move it. Rotate from your belly button or the base of your spine. You should find this easier than the first time you tried it.

5. Now the third with proper hand placement but with the box in between your arms chest and paddle shaft. It should feel easier than the third and the fourth.

6. Alright last one. Proper hand placement but DO NOT ROTATE AT ALL. I suspect you will find this hard and hard to do.

The canoe stroke is about balancing the leverage with the movement. A canoe does not weigh as much as the world, at least not in the early part of a race or training session.

If we focus on the top hand we have to think of it as a moving fulcrum. It moves to keep the angle on the blade and to increase the ability to do work. Think about when you place a lever on a fulcrum to lift something heavy. As you begin to lift the heavy object, it moves a lot and is heavy. It gets lighter feeling as you lift but moves less. Finally the lever stops lifting the object at all.

If you take this same image and turn it on its side, you have the canoe stroke. In order to keep pulling (lifting in the above lever scenario) you have to move the fulcrum and in a canoe that means you have to move the top hand.

More on this later. Give it some thought.

Brent