Other boats and Hindu squats

Six laps through the strength circuit again, followed by another 80 minutes in the boat.  It was a beautiful morning out on the river--sunny and calm, with the temperature climbing toward its forecast high in the mid fifties.

I haven't paddled my surf ski since last October 3.  As I said in my last post, I took a couple of months off, during which I became happily immersed in the other areas of my life.  When the time rolled around to start training for the new year, I was fighting some serious lethargy, so I looked for alternatives to the usual hour or more in the surf ski.  I started by pulling my slalom C-1 out of storage and doing some of the stroke drills I used to do while I was racing slalom.

Early in the training year I'm looking for things to do that emphasize strength, and I believe stroke drills fit the bill.  I always feel like I've been in the weight room after a set of stroke drills.  A stroke drill involves exaggerating one particular aspect of a stroke, isolating the specific set of muscles that transfers the energy from the blade in the water through your body to your hips, legs, knees, and feet, which in turn propel the boat in the desired way.

After doing those drills several times a week in the second half of December, I was ready to start doing some kayaking again, but didn't want to get out the surf ski yet because, frankly, after more than a decade of winters freezing my rear end off sitting on that thing, I just don't feel like doing it anymore.  So for the last month I've been paddling my plastic touring boat, a Current Designs model called the "Storm."  It's really a pretty good boat for what it is, but for anybody used to paddling race boats or other well-designed composite boats, it's a clunker.  I hope paddling a heavier, slower boat has a little bit of that strength training value I look for this time of year.  Hopefully, when I do move over to the surf ski it'll feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  And with my first race coming up on March 3, I'll probably break out the ski in another couple of weeks.  I hope the mild winter continues.

On another topic, I mentioned a couple of posts back that I'm doing Hindu squats as part of my strength routine this month.  Hindu squats are an exercise I learned from the wrestling coach at the last school where I taught.  This coach had been studying the training methods and philosophies of a guy named Matt Furey, whose "Combat Conditioning" program includes Hindu squats and numerous other body-weight exercises.  You can watch a video of a guy doing a set of Hindu squats here.

I've done over a hundred Hindu squats in one shot.  Seems like I really start feeling it after forty or fifty, depending on my fitness.  Right now, since I'm doing my strength work in a circuit format, I'm doing sets of thirty.