Offseason thoughts

This weekend I put in a pair of 60-minute sessions on the downtown riverfront.  I drove down there yesterday but rode my bike today.  It's been a classic fall weekend, and yesterday in particular was picture-perfect: sunny, low 70s, no wind.

Here in my offseason I'm paddling just a couple of times a week.  But I'm not that worried about getting too far out of shape because I always seem to be doing something.  It helps that my line of work doesn't have me sitting at a desk all day long.  As a woodworker, I'm constantly moving logs and lumber around, and sawing, and planing, and carving, and chopping.

Different people do different things during the competitive offseason.  Some people feel no need to take a break from paddling at all, and just train throughout the year.  Others could use some sort of mental break from the boat, and seek out other physical activities: running, bike riding, skiing, basketball... there's really no wrong thing to do as long as you keep your body moving.

I'm trying to catch up on some whitewater paddling during this offseason--I took a trip several weeks ago and hope to take another in a couple of weeks.  But around this time every year, I pick up the pace with my woodworking.  Last weekend, for instance, I demonstrated bowl carving at a crafts fair here in town, using an axe, an adze, a saw, and numerous chisels and gouges, and at the end of each day I felt just as tired as if I'd spent the day lifting weights.

Speaking of weightlifting: in William T. Endicott's The Barton Mold, Greg Barton comments on the importance of using precise technique in the weight room: "I feel that if you start cheating, really jerking around a lot, there are two things that happen. One is you're starting to pull into play muscles other than the one you are targeting.  Secondly, what happens when you get into the boat? Are you going to start jerking around there, too?  Start pulling all over the place?  I think some of that carries over.  If you use strict technique in the weight room, you're thinking in that mode and it's a little easier to transfer that into the boat."

Just like paddling and weightlifting, woodworking is a technical endeavor.  There's a right way to hold and move each tool to get the most from the tool's design in concert with the power of your body.  Having taken courses taught by Carl Swensson, a staunch proponent of good technique, this summer and last summer, I've been thinking a lot about how I use my tools.  It's plenty of exercise, and I hope it will carry over into my paddling in the next year.