The PaddlerUK magazine March 2015 issue 1 | Page 31

I grew up paddling and competing
in holes
across the UK and therefore became
very proficient in hole boating., going on to winning
my two Freestyle World titles competing in holes.
Now, for the first time in over eight years I will be
competing in a wave worlds. In 2007, where I finished
11th, I could count the number of days I had spent
surfing waves on one hand – I was new to competing
and new to surfing waves. I enjoyed the event and did
really well but still didn't have much grasp on how to
paddle waves, let alone how to paddle them well. In
2009 I skipped the Freestyle Worlds, a wave event, to
concentrate on squirt boating where I won my first
gold. Now in 2015 I have the challenge of competing
against some extremely talented and experienced
wave boaters on a extremely technical, fast wave.

Over the last seven years I have been aware that my
wave boating level and experience has been
significantly lower than my hole boating skills.
However, in the last few years with the help of my
coach Dennis Newton (Sweetwater Coaching), I have
been doing specific wave training trips to Uganda and
Canada to concentrate on developing these skills.

At the start of 2013 the standard difference really
began to show again as I started nailing some crazy
combos in the hole but still didn’t have much grasp of
the basic wave skills. So we set about creating a plan
for change. We looked at the year and set about
creating a wave training and development strategy
pla