ThePADDLER 62
SIT WELL EVEN AT HOME This was proven in science by measuring the muscle core strength before and after slouching , and even after five minutes of slouching , control had decreased . If you spend all week with these habits , it will affect your performance .
Often we are unable to get our pelvis in neutral due to hamstring tightness or sciatica . If it ’ s the latter , do not try to stretch it out . You will make it worse ; please see a professional . Tightness becomes especially problematic in an outrigger , surf skis , marathon or sprint kayak where you are more long sitting . So if you ’ re tight , you will need a wider hip alignment or a slight wedge to the seat to assist your forward tilt and prevent the pelvis from staying in posterior tilt .
I have seen several paddlers in my career who developed stress fractures in training because they were too tight and forcing a more prolonged sitting posture just to be in a narrower craft . Their pelvic tilt could not come forward at the catch due to the tightness , so they hinged at the lumbo-sacral region instead . It is much better to sort out the seat and leg posture and get some treatment to prevent this , as developing a stress fracture takes a long time to recover from .
So far , we have talked about neutral , but we don ’ t want to stay rigid like this because we want a dynamic sitting posture . So we need to move out of our sitting base of support with control and strength . To do this , we also need good control of our slings .
We have anterior , posterior and lateral slings . In sitting , the anterior stops us overarching our back too far , which is essential on a drop or impact , lateral stops us side bending and flopping into a capsize , and the posterior keeps our lordosis so that we don ’ t slouch when we get tired . If we are weak in these , it is favourable to have excellent back support and a more stable craft . Perhaps get some pilates or core training but definitely opt to paddle on easier waters and pace your abilities .
So if we think of our kayak or canoe as an aeroplane , it moves in three dominant directions up / down called pitch , side to side called yaw , and we roll ; that one is obvious . We all have a great capsize story !
We need to think of the paddling box , our neutral to control pitch . When going over a drop , we need to bring that forward so that the resultant inertia stops you from leaning back . It ’ s more than just reaching