Both Tuesday and today I paddled for 60 minutes downtown. It would have made sense for me to start up a new strength routine for March yesterday, but I didn't. Right now I'm taking advantage of a lull in woodworking projects to do some long-overdue landscape work on my property, and that has involved a lot of digging in tough soil full of roots and gravel. Two or three hours of that kind of work leaves me with little energy for any kind of weight work. Besides, the digging itself, especially the post-hole digging, works some interesting muscle groups. I'm trying to use good technique and not do anything that might throw out my back or something like that.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to follow up last month's power-oriented strength routine with some in-the-boat power drills.
Here are some interesting thoughts from Ron Lugbill on the issue of power. Ron is a slalom coach writing primarily for slalom racers, and power is a more important component in slalom, in which the paddler must constantly re-accelerate the boat from one move to the next, than it is in the type of racing I'm doing these days. But power definitely has its place in what I do.
I was reminded of that several years ago when I traveled to a race in October. That year my highest-priority races were in the spring and summer, and by October I was sort of going through the motions, spending the hot late-summer days doing mostly low-intensity paddling. Going to this race was sort of an "Oh, why not?" decision for me.
There were several athletes in the race I considered "in my league"--people I felt I should be competitive with and maybe even beat. But when the gun went off I found I had only one gear: slow. I had absolutely no "pop" off the starting line. Two hundred meters in I was all but out of contention.
Since that day I have tried not to let that happen again. Exploding off the starting line may be the most obvious example of how power is useful in open water/marathon/surf ski racing, but it comes in handy at other moments, too. It enables you to throw in a burst of speed mid-race to break away from a pack. And in downwind conditions, power can make the difference between catching a ride on a wave and sliding off the back of it.
I like how Ron distinguishes power from plain strength in his post: "Power is the ability to move against resistance quickly. This is different from strength, which is just the ability to make the movement against resistance."
A typical power drill involves doing an explosive movement a small number of reps at a time. If you do too many reps, you get tired and can no longer explode, and then you're just developing regular strength. In last month's routine I was doing those exercises in sets of maybe five reps at a time.
I know several in-the-boat drills for working on power. The one I did both and Tuesday and today had me taking a few backstrokes to get the boat moving in reverse, and then paddling forward as hard as I could for a few strokes, overcoming the inertia. I did this drill early in each session while I was still fresh, and each day I did it just three times with two minutes recovery. I just paddled normally for the rest of each session.
Another way to work on power is to paddle forward into an immovable object, like a dock or the riverbank. I've found that this isn't very easy to do in my surf ski. You can also add resistance to your boat by tying a rope around the hull or by towing some kind of weight or other resistor. A couple of years ago I tied one end of a polypropylene rope to a five-gallon bucket, looped the other end of the rope around my waist, and paddled hard against that resistance for a few strokes at a time. In between, I took the rope off my waist and paddled easy to recover before doing the drill again. Polypropylene rope floats, so I would circle back around to where I left it and put it back on. That method of resistance worked well but it was kind of a time-consuming hassle, and that's why I haven't done it again since then.
Anyway, we'll see how things go this time around. I'll be racing soon! The season opener is just two weeks from this Saturday.
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