Paddling Clinic

On Sunday, Marie-Eve, Nina, Kandice and Tony took the 7:00 AM ferry to Vancouver to take a clinic with Kamini Jain at the False Creek Racing Canoe Club. We avoided going east of Oak Street, found Granville Island, found the Club, took the clinic and made it back home before dark.

Kamini Jain is a mature competitve athlete. She went to the Olympics for Canada as a racing kayaker and has paddled and coached the successful dragon boat teams that have raced out of FCRCC. She has been hired by several Vancouver and Fraser Valley teams as a coach, and has held many popular and well attended clinics.

She's intelligent, funny, and engaged. She combines positive criticism with positive feedback - she motivates and she holds attention.

For the False Creek clinics, she starts with a discussion of technique and moves to the water. She fills a boat with paddlers. She has a couple of her False Creek men's team members as lead strokes, caller, stern and in boat coaches. She calls some drills and she takes some video and then goes through the video. She has another team member - basically a physio - talk about warm-up, cool-down, stretches, hydration and nutrition.

This built well on what Stephen and Judy taught the novice Loco's last year. It was neat to see how some motivated and reasonably fit paddlers were able to take the lead, follow direction and get that boat moving. It was also frankly scary to see how well the elite men from False Creek could reach and catch and how well they could move a boat. It was also interesting to see how experienced paddlers from other teams assimilated her approach and compared it to what other coaches had taught them.

Kamini takes the idea of opening your body to the inside or turning to your partner on the set up and develops it into a body memory - pivot the inboard hip as if you are stepping back, catch, and then step forward with the inboard hip. Pivot or rotate from the hips, not the torso. Lots of weight on the outboard hip. Lot of motion in hips. Plant both feet on the seat or foot rail.

She emphasizes a strong lean forward, hinged on the hips, a good reach (but with a strong grip with the lower hand) a positive paddle angle going into the catch, a firm catch, a snap after the catch, straightening up, bringing the inboard hip forward, bracing the feet (to push the boat) keeping the paddle dug in. She wants to move the shoulders and rotate the body. The arms hold the body and the lower arm can bend a little, but don't let the paddle come back to the point the arm bends. When the paddle reachs midthigh and the body is square, lift the paddle with the upper hand and pivot into the next stroke by dropping the inboard hip back while driving the paddle forward, and bending into the next catch.

It all makes sense and I saw what it meant in the video. The video caught paddlers doing good and bad things. Kandice and Nina showed good form and I showed how to get in trouble by letting the blade come back too far. The video showed that experienced and semi-experienced paddlers have bad habits or lapses, and that we don't do what we thing we are doing when we paddle. Even a short period of observation can pinpoint things that can be improved.

She introduced some new drills - the push-pull, the pause, the three and three.

There were a lot of good ideas. I hope we can remember and explain them, and that the Club coaches will be interested and will use these in practice.