I have been doing my rehab exercises pretty religiously, and I do think they're helping. The pain is not gone--it lingers along my spine up near the base of my neck--but that knot that's persisted since March seems to have gone down, and I hope several more sessions of deep massage will work it out. The therapist is on vacation this week, so my next massage is scheduled for next week.
Yesterday afternoon I did some more drills in my whitewater boat down at the harbor. I'm keeping these sessions short--30 minutes--and doing the drills as precisely as I can. For the first 20 minutes I do stroke drills, mostly ones like compound reverse strokes and sweeping draw strokes that require me to open up my shoulders.
Then for 10 minutes I practice rolls. I think many experienced paddlers tend to take their rolls for granted and forget that they need practice like any other skill. Over the last few years, during which I've paddled whitewater only very occasionally, my roll has been adequate but certainly not crisp. In these sessions I've been trying to make nice, clean hipsnaps and not put any pressure on my paddle brace until the boat is upright. I've been rolling on both sides even though my dominant side is my left and that's what I use in any serious whitewater. I've also tried to do offside rolls on a cross-brace, but have succeeded at a low rate there. Twenty years ago I was quite good at such rolls, but I'm noticeably less flexible these days.
This morning I started up a new strength routine. Besides my rehab exercises, I'm trying to do a lot of core work this fall, and this month I'm doing some exercise ball drills. There's a good video of some exercise ball drills here, featuring Chinese whitewater slalom Olympian Jing-Jing Li.
No comments:
Post a Comment