Backpaddling

This morning I did seven laps of the strength circuit and 80 minutes in the boat.  Today I did something I've done once a week this whole month: backpaddle for five minutes of each quarter of the paddling session.

Backpaddling is a big part of slalom stroke drills.  The idea is that it helps racers prevent muscle imbalances while also providing another way of exploring blade control and boat kinesthetics and stuff like that.  Backpaddling is actually sort of a lost art in modern-day whitewater racing: up until the early 1980s, slalom courses had gates through which racers were required to pass stern-first.  I enjoy watching video footage of 70s-era races (you can find some on You Tube) and seeing the technique the racers used to negotiate the reverse gates cleanly.  The boats back then were high-profile and difficult or impossible to sneak under the poles--especially the C-boats, which had to be higher at the ends than at the cockpit--so some real precision was necessary to avoid taking a touch.  Paddlers used rudder and J-strokes at the bow for steering as they moved in reverse.

Anyway, getting back to the point: after doing those stroke drills in my slalom boat in December, I thought I would carry some of that over into my kayak by continuing to do some backpaddling once a week.

Backpaddling is hard.  By the end of one of those five-minute pieces, my biceps and triceps are screaming.  And it's technically as well as physically hard. I do my best to make my backpaddling the exact reverse of my forward paddling, with the body rotation and knee movement and all.  But that takes a lot of concentration because the touring boat--like most kayaks, I guess--is not designed to go backward, and my wing paddle isn't so good for the bow rudders and J-strokes that I can do in the slalom boat.  The boat's rudder sort of works for steering, but not very well.  So I usually end up going around in large circles.  I try to get out in the middle of the harbor or river, away from anything I might slam into, and just ignore the turning and try to paddle with good form and give my muscles a good workout.  If it's a windy day, I've found that the boat tracks better if I backpaddle into the wind.  I think maybe the boat's high-profile works like a skeg in the wind.

It's all made for a mildly fun diversion, and I reckon I'll keep doing a backpaddling workout each week until I get out the surf ski.

Yesterday I told a bunch of people on Face Book that this blog exists, so I guess I'm committed to doing it now.  A few people gave me some nice words of encouragement and I appreciate that.