[dropcap cap=Y]ou have heard the term "No Pain- No Gain".  The truth of the matter from my perspective is that this is mostly true. However the term might be better known as “No Strain – No Gain.”[/dropcap]

If you join a competitive team you should expect to endure moderate discomfort when practicing.  Feeling sore muscles afterward is also to be expected. We more often associate pain with injury.

The paddling stroke, while apparently simple is extremely difficult to master.  On the first day, the coach shows you the stroke and says, "Just do this!.” “See you just pick up the paddle and move it like this.”

It’s as simple as a golf swing.  It takes a lifetime to get it close to the point where we can perfect it.

Unless we start paddling at the age of 4 or are supremely connected from the brain to all the ‘other’ muscles, there are several deficiencies that make this simple maneuver difficult. Firstly, our muscle set is not strong in the correct places.  Secondly, the muscle stretch and contraction abilities are not correct for the required movements.  And, last but definitely not least, the 'muscle memory' is not yet learned.

And guess what, "Our bodies are lazy" and "Our brain is even lazier."

So the body does what it can and favours motions that it CAN easily manage. The coach says "Do this" and the muscles do THAT instead.  You may call it muscle compromise, but I call it "cockroaching".  For me, this is especially noticeable when I fatigue my muscles, or more correctly, when my brain THINKS I have fatigued my muscles. As the required muscles start to hurt, others, take over and I automatically compromise or 'cockroach' the stroke.

So, we need to grow new muscles, change elasticity and develop new muscle memories.  "Growing new muscles hurts, right?"

"RIGHT!"

"But I don't want to hurt."

If you are on a competitive team and you want to get to be a better paddler or better at any sports discipline, it’s going to hurt.  If you stop short of moderate discomfort, you stop short of gaining skill and strength. We all cockroach the stroke, but to stop short of discomfort is to cockroach our paddling experience, to cheat ourselves and to let down our team. There is always the athlete’s friend, good old Vitamin "I" (Ibuprofen) to help out with the after-effects of exertion.

It is at this point I should mention that too much enthusiasm and too much exertion too quickly can lead to joint pain, torn muscles, tendons or other soft tissue injuries. It is very important to know the difference between moderate discomfort and sports injury pain. You should experience moderate discomfort to adapt to a competitive sport.  You should not be having sharp pain from a specific area of your body.  If you are, stop paddling and seek some physio or massage therapy.

Much of the paddling pain that I have experienced has been the result of over development of muscles without developing the balancing muscle sets.  My Pecs have become stronger and tighter and my back has developed muscle pains as the back muscles try to compensate for the contraction of the front part of my upper torso.  The cure according to my massage therapist is to stretch those Pecs.  “When that is done, stretch some more”, she tells me.  And just in case, “Stretch it again”, she says. She is correct. It helps and it is a lot cheaper than $75 per hour for her to stretch it out for me.  A very wise man once told me, "Life is about stretching, not about stretch marks." 

As with all things in life, balance is important. If you are injured, stop paddling until you can heal.  It is a sport.  It is not crucial to our life. Well, not really crucial.

The paddling stroke, if done incorrectly, will overstress the little muscles and their connective tissue.  Listen to your coach.  Most often, the coach can see when you are working the wrong muscles.  My old coach says, “I know because of the money I have spent on physiotherapy and the chronic injuries that I have.” My new coach says, “If you keep your wrist cocked like that, it will end up hurting.”  I do… it does.  Coaches usually have the benefit of experience and objectivity.

Listen to what the coach is saying when he or she says, “Use your BIG muscles” when they see you cockroaching your stroke.

This is the part where gender comes in.  Men have all the big muscles and learn to paddle quicker, right? WRONG.  (Big time wrong.)  Men's upper body strength is usually an Achille's heel in learning to paddle.  Men often rely on these muscles and end up cockroaching by relying on the upper body strength.  Guess what? In long distance racing, these well developed muscles will usually fail quickly without good technique.  Women often learn the paddling stroke quicker than men because they do not have the upper body strength to begin with and are forced to learn to use effective technique.

There is a paddling T-shirt around that says. "You paddle like a girl" on the front.  On the back it says, "Good for YOU" There is a lot of wisdom in that saying. Paddle smart.

My experience in competitive dragon boating and other endeavours has taught me that my muscles will go for a long time after my brain says we have had enough.  My brain will say "Stop. WE are tired, We can’t go another step!" Next it says, "WE are going to HURT if you don't stop this!!"  Then it comes up with the coup de grace, "YOU ARE GOING TO KILL US!!!"  It is here, that my brain points out a particularly tired muscle and says “Hey stupid…feel this. See you are HURTING US”. My brain is fully capable of undermining what I do while doing its job to save me from discomfort. It is at this point I start to believe my brain is a liar, should not be trusted and is not much more than a lazy s.o.b.

It is at this point I have leaned to say, "Yeah, I heard you. I am just going to do thirty more strokes.  YOU count them." When my brain gets to thirty, if it hasn't forgotten that WE were going to die, I tell it I am going to do thirty more.  Before the end of the 2nd thirty strokes, it gives up, gets bored with counting, loses its place in the count, forgets about death and starts to focus on other things, like good technique.  I believe it is exactly when I go beyond where my brain would have me quit that almost all of my strength gains occur.

When I paddle at 90%, there is no air left for talking.  If I have the air to talk then I am not paddling at 90%.  This is another little trick my brain has in its bag of tricks.  It quietly comes up with the idea of 'hey, lets get him to talk'.  It says to me, “Hey stupid! You're not doing it right! Ask the coach if you are doing this right.” So I ask the coach, who is steering, “How is my stroke?”  The coach is a good coach so he stops paddling to help me, cause that's his job, right? Everyone in the boat gets a little distracted and it throws them off as well. The brain wins. It got me to STOP TRYING TO KILL US and I even get to look like a "good student" at the same time...except the coach didn't get to be the coach because he was an idiot!  He didn't just fall off a pineapple truck, he has seen this before. My brain doesn't care about this part 'cause it is resting and enjoying thinking about pineapples and how smart it is.

I believe that learning is done by the mind, which includes our brain and our entire nervous system. Our mind needs repetitive practice to learn to paddle correctly…to develop the required muscle memory.  It takes discipline , focus and consistent hard work.  It takes being aware.  We already talked about my lazy brain.  I don’t know how much your brain likes THOSE four topics: 1 discipline, 2 focus, 3 hard work and 4 being aware; but MY brain is lazy and does not like ANY of these things.

After exposure to all the hard practice and fellowship found on a competitive team, at some point we form a commitment to our team members and to ourselves to NOT give up. At some later point, we even become confident in our paddling. We learn to never be the weakest paddler in the boat and we hope to learn to be the smartest paddler in the boat.

I tell my brain “See, WE didn’t die.”  It says, “Y’ah but the next time WE might.”  Secretly, however, I know my brain is getting bored with this. It often forgets to do its job when ‘I’ am working hard and it is starting to enjoy the good feelings provided by the endorphins even more that convincing ‘US’ that ‘WE’ are going to die.

by Brian Mycroft

 

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