Don't take my word for it. Take Dawid Mocke's.

Here are a few tips from Dawid Mocke, one of the world's top surf ski paddlers for the last decade or so.

I like this article for its concise simplicity.  Improving your paddling should be a simple, fun thing to do rather than a complicated, tedious process.  True, many top-level paddlers have very sophisticated ideas about what they are doing, but such ideas are the cumulative result of many years of playing and having fun with the sport.

When I raced slalom back in the 1990s I attended many races that featured the nation's top racers, and one thing I noticed as I watched them paddle before and after competition is that they were always playing around on whatever river features were around.  No wave or hole was too small, and no maneuver was too silly.  I promptly adopted this habit and brought it back with me to Memphis, where whitewater features are small if they exist at all.  I think it helped me develop a modicum of skill in the dauntingly complex sport of whitewater slalom.

I've continued the habit in open-water/surf-ski racing, and it's helped me as much as anything in the areas of balance and technique that Mocke mentions in tips 1 and 2.  For example, it's not uncommon for a north or south wind to produce a steady procession of small waves in Wolf River Harbor, and I practice balance by paddling parallel to the waves' ridges and troughs--that is, I paddle east and west, back and forth across the long, narrow harbor.  This and other little drills are a staple of my training, and what you must understand is that I never expect to achieve any noticeable improvement in my balance in one session; it's a process that goes on over weeks and months and years.

Fortunately, I actually enjoy doing these little drills and stuff, and that's the whole point that I'm trying to make, and that I think Mocke is trying to make: you have to have fun with this.  When great paddlers get in their boats and work on balance and technique, it isn't something they have to do; it's something they want to do.