Learning how to paddle more efficiently when turning, harnessing spin-momentum, and learning paddle dexterity
SPIN MOMENTUM: THAT TURNING FORCE YOU HAVE WHEN YOU HAVE SPEED FORWARDS OR BACKWARDS- It comes from your boat climbing its own bow wave and wanting to fall off to one side or the other.
Remember that you always, always have spin momentum one way or another. Harnessing it is not difficult, but you need to be aware of it, and learn the strokes that work for putting it to work for you. The general concept is that when you paddle forward, your boat naturally wants to start turning one way or another. Instead of paddling randomly and hope that it wants to turn the way you want it to turn, you can paddle deliberately in a way that the boat is always turning the way you want it to. Once you begin doing that, you can predict where your boat is going to go much better and you can use the strokes we are going to learn here to control those turns and actually harness both your spin momentum force and the force of the river itself.
Your first spin momentum drill: Paddle your boat forwards to get up to a face pace, get it spinning to the right and immediately begin paddling only on the right side, no left strokes. If you do it right, you’ll find that you can go in a right hand circle indefinitely. The keys to continuing to turn right while paddling on the right side are:
- Paddle close to the boat- don’t sweep the boat to the left!! A vertical paddle with the blade as close to the boat as possible will provide as much forward momentum as possible without overpowering your spin momentum.
- Keep the speed up- remember that how much spin momentum you have is based on how fast you are going. If you are barely moving, you won’t have much spin momentum force and any forward strokes will overpower it and you’ll start spinning left.
Try this on the left side as well.
OK- so what you have learned is that you can paddle on the right side of the boat only and the boat can keep turning right, as long as your paddle strokes don’t overpower the spin momentum. This is the first step to harnessing spin-momentum. If you were to try a drill where you can paddle on both sides of the boat in a circle, or just on the inside of the turn, you would find that you can go around a turn faster on just the inside and with much less energy. The reason for this is that stroking on the inside of the turn keeps the boat from sliding as much and losing its forward momentum. This brings us to the next rule for turning your kayak:
Rule: Always paddle only on the inside of the turn.