Keep Yer Head Up!

When tiredness sets in, paddlers often start to look down, shoulders hunch, the stroke moves back in the water and the ‘catch’ portion of the stroke disappears, the breathing becomes slightly more restricted and timing goes out. It’s the beginning of the body trying to transfer or shut down the painful / difficult part of paddling or even the mental fatigue from the discipline required. Even before fatigue, we sometimes only have to lose our focus and it happens.

I wondered why this occurs, asked others and this is what I came up with...

The body starts to transfer the work stress from the muscles we use for paddling to other muscles that are not yet fatigued. This starts the shoulders inward and the head down.

Looking down while paddling focuses and retracts our energy inward and we end up focusing on the pain of paddling, how it feels rather than where we are going. Eastern religions focus on breath to expand consciousness. When the eyes are on the horizon our consciousness is on where we are going. We are more expansive, opened up and can breathe properly.

Our emotional center is often expressed as coming from the mid center of our abdomen. When we hurt emotionally it feels like it comes from our gut or as the Japanese express it, the ‘Hara’ or vital center of man. To express or get emotion out of our body, moving the diaphragm by laughing, running, coughing, sobbing or yelling reduces the emotional tension. When we put our head down and curl up our body, we contain emotional pain. Similarly, when exercising, contracting into a ball focuses on the physical pain we endure when working our muscles to the extreme.

From a more practical perspective, when our eyes are on the horizon, our head is up, our backs are flat and shoulders are back. Our belly is opened and our diaphragm can pump lots of air into our lungs. We can watch the paddler in front of us and maintain timing. The flat back with shoulders back provides more mechanical leverage through rotation and our stroke is longer.

When someone is prone to becoming seasick, the best method to relieve that is to get their eyes to look up onto the horizon.

Likewise, keeping the eyes on the horizon will result in increased situational awareness which leads to more appropriate body control in a pitching or rolling boat. The boat is more stable.

Keeping the head up has a lot of advantages in many sports, notably running, hockey, golf, tennis, boxing and yes…paddling. In crew situations, when the entire crew has their head up, the entire crew has the same focus.

Eyes down denotes passivity, eyes forward denotes assertiveness. Which is the more appropriate for competitive racing?

It can be said that wherever the head is going and the eyes are looking, the rest of our being will follow.