Larry’s Tips: Forward stroke this.

Forward stroke this. Forward stroke that. Yada Yada.

A Carolina Paddler Article 

By Larry Ausley

I’ve seen so many people spend much of their paddling training effort on their forward stroke. OK, we have to move forward. Sometimes we need to move forward powerfully and/or sometimes efficiently. I get it. It’s necessary knowledge and skill. I’m going to make an argument though, for moving-water paddling,  that there is a stroke that is drastically under-learned and under-practiced; particularly among newer paddlers. Many people struggle with their ability to obtain and maintain a solid ferry angle when peeling out of an eddy. The body’s innate but naive reaction is to try to correct by placing harder, faster and usually less efficient strokes in the forward, downstream quarter of the stroke arc, or even worse, to correct with an upstream, reverse sweep on the upstream side, killing all forward momentum. Let’s take a couple of minutes to learn about and correct some of those problems.

The Stern Draw

I’ll lead this primer with some important hydrodynamics. As the hull of your boat moves forward through the water (or, in current, as water moves rearward onto your bow), it creates a bow wave/pressure wave almost equally pressing against the left and right sides of the bow. As such, the bow is being partially held in place and resisting turn. In contrast, the stern of your boat is mostly outside of the influence of the bow wave and more free to move laterally. So, if we want to more powerfully/efficiently turn our boat while moving forward or having water flowing past our bow, we need to make our stroke effort at/near the stern of the boat where it is more pliable to our desires.

The second factor we need to consider is the thrust vector we are creating with our paddle blade. To turn the boat most efficiently we need the thrust being created directed sideways and toward the stern of the boat in order to draw the stern to turn. Note that this has both a horizontal and vertical component. Most people (who haven’t learned or paid attention to this) will tend to have two shortcomings:

First, they will release their stroke without rotating the blade all the way to the stern (note that the farther the stroke has rotated behind the paddler,, the thrust angle moves more and more directly toward the stern.

Second, most people will tend to allow the blade to rotate so the thrust vector moves toward the sky (which only lifts water upward/pulls the stern downward) rather than keeping the blade vertical and perpendicular to the water’s surface.

Thrust vector of the blade is important in ALL your strokes and maneuvers. In an ideal world, you’d like to optimize that vector to obtain and maintain that vector in-line with what you are trying to accomplish with the paddle. In my use-case here with the stern draw, I’m going to make the case that many, many people can get the greatest positive result by paying attention to that factor.

The final factor that I’ll throw in; one that has an important effect in all of our strokes and maneuvers, is the value of the paddle blade and our body as a mechanical lever against (or with) the boat and water. To maximize the effect of that lever, we generally want our body to be the center and fulcrum of the lever with force generated by moving the blade around that fulcrum. Think of the lever as the length of a wrench handle or the length of a crowbar to apply force.

 If we want to maximize turn of the boat (in any maneuver) we want to extend that force away from the fulcrum (longer lever) and, if turning, away from the center of spin of the boat with (optimally) a horizontal paddle shaft. The farther that lever moves away from the center of spin and the more we direct that force laterally, at the stern, the more turn we get from the boat.

 As with all strokes and paddle maneuvers, generate the power from your core by torso rotation and transferring the energy to the boat and water rather than just pulling/pushing with your arms. Your hands and arms are there to connect your body to the paddle and that entire system should be working as a unit rather than allowing the arms and hands to create/absorb the energy by shifting the lever’s fulcrum outbound and into a weaker base of force.. In the stern draw, get the blade to the stern by rotating your body around and driving your legs away from the paddle rather than just pulling the blade around with your arm. A correct stroke rotated from the core not only generates far more effective power, it also helps keep your shoulders safer and in “in the box”.

Think about, apply and work on these fine points and the timing and efficiency of your strokes for improving your stern draw and I promise your ability to ferry across currents will improve.

[PS: If you reverse all this discussion by back-paddling or back-surfing, all of the corrections shift to your bow and feet. In this case, do everything above as close to your toes as possible rather than at the stern)

–Text, photography and graphics by Larry Ausley with modeling by Nancy Guthrie