Navel Gazing

Some of you may have heard me say the very best year I had in kayak and canoe was the year I took karate. The style was shotokan which involves a hip-centralized stance and delivery of blows. The idea is that you start from a deep and very stable stance with weight balanced over your hips for all your moves. The strength is developed from the legs. The speed and strength comes from the twisting of the hips. Sound familiar?

Other coaches may have taught you to paddle from your belly or your navel. I would say you want to paddle from behind your navel. The connection you feel to the canoe is through feet and butt. The power, the motivating force that propels the canoe, comes from your low belly. If you are feeling stress in your bicep or tricep, you are arm paddling. If you feel it in your lats, you are rotating too high, well above the hips. If it is your pecs you are probably working against yourself by trying to push down the shaft while not pulling equally down with your bottom arm. If you feel it in your low back you are probably bobbing and not rotating. You should feel some stress in the armpit of the pulling side as you pull down. But this is a small movement that allows a good paddle angle for grabbing the water. There are other small movements that allow you to enter the water, to exit, to recover, what might be thought of as the fine movements that permit the application of the big force to the blade. That big force is from the core.

I again encourage you to do these things: keep the shaft of the paddle more or less parallel with your chest through the pull. Think about the paddle angle and imagine the face of the blade and whether it is connected to the water. Watch the Don and Rick video over and over and over and over. Watch the Danny Ching video of his solo paddle at Molokai over and over and over and over. Sit on the Swiss ball everytime you are not paddling and have to sit anyway. Balance your shoulders over your hips. Concentrate on your navel.

Brent