Whitewater SUP is accessible to all – it’s all about getting a few basic skills down, the most
important of which is balance
Chant to yourself – it’s all in the knees, it’s
all in the knees, as you drop into the rapid
bending at the waist, moving it about, left
and right, up and down, side to side, fast
enough, to absorb what the board is doing. ‘power up’. This essentially goes into detail of
how to use a forward stroke (or turning stroke)
as a brace, rather than an actual brace.
Secondly, even if you could move it fast
enough, now you’re throwing the heaviest
part of your body (torso and head) all over
the place. Put a weight onto the side of a
top, and try to spin it. You can’t. The same
applies for you. Bending at the waist throws
your entire centre of gravity out of whack
with the centreline of the board. To summarize the article, a low brace
almost always forces you to bend at the
waist, and we don’t want that. The support
of a low brace comes from the water
pushing back against the surface of your
paddle. But a forward stroke puts just as
much force into the paddle, and you can
use it just as effectively as a brace.
We’ve all done it, but usually (unless you’re
really lucky) this terminates in a swim. In addition to a forward stroke being a
positive stroke (while a brace is a negative
stroke, robbing you of speed and drive), a
forward stroke also acts as the third leg in a
tripod. Adding a third ‘offset’ leg to your
kung fu stance more than doubles stability,
and this ‘leg’ is mobile: you can move it to
wherever it’s needed.
Power up
No matter how good you are, everyone falls
If you read the Paddler summer edition of
2017, you will see my article on paddling
If you get bumped forward, instead of
stepping forward to keep your centre of
gravity on the centreline (or as is often done,
bending forward at the waist into a low brace),
you can simply do a bow draw or C stroke,
which puts force on the paddle and gives you
that same stability without ‘stepping out’.
In summary
Even if you do all of those things right,
you’re going to swim. Sometimes the board
is going to take a hit, or get bucked, harder
than your ability to absorb and
compensate. But, for the most part, if you
apply these basic ideas, and practice them a
thousand times, you’ll find that your
success rate will sky rocket.
And nothing breeds confidence like success.
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