This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine--yes, I know it's June now, but since I'll be doing only a couple more strength sessions between now and the OICKR, there's no reason to start up anything new. Then I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes. It felt good to be back on my home water.
In the boat I worked on the stroke modifications that Shaun Caven recommended yesterday. He mentioned several things he thought I should do: keep my elbows closer to my body, insert the blade farther forward, lift my wrist before my elbow in the recovery phase. Today I decided to focus mainly on keeping my elbows close to my body. As Carl Swensson emphasized in the cooperage class I took last summer, when learning a skill it's best to break it up into as many components as possible and take them one at a time.
Paddling this way felt a little strange, but not as awkward as it sometimes feels when I make a change to my stroke. And when I reverted back to the way I had been paddling, I realized that there was indeed some wasted motion like Shaun said. Having somebody to point out things like that can be very handy, because once you get used to doing something a certain way it's difficult to detect that anything is wrong.
Now, a few hours later, I'm feeling very sore in my upper arms and deltoids. It's probably partly the result of the strength work, but I expect it also was caused by the unfamiliar motions in the boat.
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