Larry’s Tips: “Kayak Rolling”

Kayak Rolling: Forget about your head for a minute

a Carolina Paddler Article

by Larry Ausley

This should stir up some controversy. Here are some of my opinions on kayak rolling and more specifically, how you might learn to watch for some specific things to help others with their rolls. Your opinions may differ. In many cases, differing (educated) opinions and insights can add to someone’s process of learning to roll. That’s OK. I’ve seen it a lot. I’ve also seen endless examples of bad advice and the effects of bad advice leading in the development of bad habits in rolling. Those bad habits are hard to break when they become engrained, causing your subconscious to believe that your next roll attempt is going to fail.

I’m not trying to teach you rolling here. I’d like to discount some myths. I’d like to point out some notable differences between Sweep and C-to-C rolls. I’d like to give you some things to consider and tools to watch for/recommend if you’re giving others observations about their roll.

My experience comes from watching people learn rolling, watching people teach rolling, teaching people to roll, certifying both whitewater and coastal kayaking instructors to teach people to roll, mentoring instructor trainers for teaching instructors to teach people to roll. Through it all I’ve studied thousands of videos of failed and successful rolls, often frame-by-frame, to gain a better understanding of the reasons the physics work or fail . Though rolling, like many other aspects of paddling, is the application of immutable laws of physics to affect a desired end, learning or teaching someone to roll can be as much a mental game and process.

To start, I’ll offer some very generic advice. Learn rolling from someone who knows how to teach rolling. Understand that teaching rolling is a very different beast than knowing how to roll. Learn to roll working with someone who is standing beside you in the water. Do not try to learn to roll wholly by watching videos on the internet–even the best ones (which I’ll suggest in a minute). There is a lot of godawful rolling advice on the internet. If you’re young and athletic, the chances are decent that you can cobble something together that will allow you to temporarily defeat gravity and Newton’s and Bernoulli’s principles of physics by sheer force, under ideal conditions. When you’re in the steeze though, mother nature will punish you for your “good enough” insolence.

The C-to-C and Sweep rolls are the most taught kayak rolls. They’re amenable to many learners and boat types. Both have a long-standing teaching history with consistent progressions, making the learning mostly portable between instructors. You can learn in one place yet move to another and pick right up where you left off.

If you’re learning/using other types of rolls, good for you. Back-deck rolls, hand rolls and the entire universe of Greenland roll techniques are there for you. For any roll, I’d encourage you to study its physics and pick out the aspects (as similarly described here) that make it safe and effective. Practice to perfect each of those aspects. You should always practice toward the ideal; not just what ends up barely working on a calm lake/pool. Even when you get a consistent, reliable roll in those conditions, you want to maintain a technique that also works in/through the worst of conditions as well; a roll that gives you a large margin for success.

Unless you’re learning the roll for the sake of fun, competition or exercise, also evaluate the efficacy of the technique in the conditions where you will need it in “combat”. I’m not a fan of lay-back rolls because that is an awful position to be in in conditions (e.g. churning whitewater or breaking surf) that knocked you down in the first place. If you are laid back you have little ability to maneuver your hips and almost inherently engage both knees into the boat, killing the ability to selectively drive one knee to roll/brace again. A roll’s finish position should be forward, aggressive and leave you in a position to actively take the next stroke or maneuver.

Here are a few opinions I’ll hurl into the discussion. Feel free to argue my wrongness, but bring game:

• Far too many people try to learn to roll before they learn how not to capsize in the first place. The best roll is the one that’s not necessary. Consider solid (and safe) low and high braces, essential paddling skills and rolling prerequisites. Those are the skills that are straight-line precursors of the body/boat connection that will lead to an effective roll (and even better, prevent the need to call upon that roll). I never taught a rolling session that didn’t begin with bracing instruction and practice. Some individual sessions never went beyond bracing. It is that important to the process that it not be side-stepped or shortcut. Keep your elbows down and safe!
• If all someone can tell you about your roll is “Keep your head down”–Walk Away. They don’t understand how to teach you to roll and they are directing your attention and effort to a symptom and not the cause of your struggles. A C-to-C roll is a body maneuver that loads and discharges energy into the rolling motion of the kayak. Failing to execute that load/discharge leaves you attempting to hurl your body out of the water with the boat following along, trying to push yourself up with the brute force of the paddle. The paddle’s purpose should be that of a counterforce against which the rest of your body’s actions are making the boat roll underneath you. Throwing your head up is a result of you engaging the core muscles along the high-side of the kayak, effectively pulling the boat over on top of yourself, rather than the opposite, desired technique of contracting the muscles along the low-side of the kayak to draw the boat underneath your weight. The boat moving underneath you should lift your body from the water.The former is a perfectly normal example of how you’d solve the problem on dry land, but when you remove the friction that land provides and move into the water, the exact opposite force is required. You must train your body (and mind) to believe the latter will work and commit to it. If you focus on what your head is doing, you’re not fixing the problem.I’m not a fan of having rolling students practicing these motions on dry land. The land physics are sending the wrong kinesthetic signals. It may be OK for an instructor to demonstrate on land, but I’d never ask a student to learn from doing it.

In the case of the sweep roll, there really isn’t even a head up/head down consideration. The desired motion is head left/head right (or vice versa, depending on which side you’re rolling from). If “keep-your-head-down” arises about a sweep roll, change the suggestion completely to “rotate your shoulders” or “watch the blade all the way to the stern”.

• A major problem many have with C-to-C rolls is transferring the fulcrum of the lever from where it should be (the rear or stationary hand) into the center of the paddle shaft by either raising and/or pushing across their body with the rear hand, (in)effectively trying to move water with the paddle by “spearing at the water”, a motion that logically has no effect in rolling the boat. If you see someone having this difficulty, have a discussion above-water about this motion and try to lock that rear hand to the boat during the roll as much as possible. A trick many instructors will use is placing an object under the paddler’s set-up side armpit and challenging them to keep that object in place during the roll.
• If you are trying to execute a sweep roll, do not set up with your hands/paddle out of the water. A key component of a sweep roll is achieving boat rotation the instant you begin your rolling motion. Starting that motion with the paddle blade out of the water loses a critical instant of counterforce against the water (you’re essentially playing air guitar). While I agree that in a C-to-C roll it’s important to have the blade at the water’s surface in order to have as much “throw” of the snap as possible, even there I’d argue that having the blade out of the water is inefficient. If you shoot for that as a personal goal/telltale, also learn to return the blade to the water before initiating the sweep. Early boat roll is a key to watch for with sweep rolls.
• If you are trying to execute a sweep roll, forget about a “hip snap”. (I’ll get arguments about this statement). While the C-to-C roll tends to be a rapid release and application of motion 90-degrees off the centerline of the boat with boat roll generated using hip action, the sweep roll does not. The sweep generates a more helical force on the boat’s rotation (it’s often called a “screw roll”) that is generated by rotating the blade/body from one side of the bow around to the opposite side’s sternIf you need to point to body-parts that are transferring this motion to the boat roll, think of it more as rolling/driving knee. You are trying to drive the rolling knee to the surface. In an example of a left-side setup, visualize trying to touch your left elbow (trailing arm in the roll) to your right knee as you rotateUnlike the more rapid release of force of the C-to-C roll, the sweep roll uses an extended, and even slower application of counterforce against the water, almost like an airplane wing generating lift over a longer period against which the boat is rolled underneath you, lifting your body from the water. I see many people try to thrash their way through an “explosive” sweep roll. It doesn’t help. It hinders. Slow it down and take advantage of the longer moment of counterforce the sweep roll can provide. (Tidbit: It’s very possible to execute a great sweep roll with both elbows touching your sides at all times. You should not need to reach out with either arm. It’s torso rotation and not arm sweep that should drive the paddle).
• If you are attempting to learn a sweep roll, the chances are good that you do not want to set up with a rolling blade angled flat to the water’s surface. The single biggest problem I see with failed sweep rolls is a paddle face too “open” to oncoming water and creating too much resistance against the sweep. This inherently causes the paddler to pull down on the paddle (versus completing the sweep’s arc along the surface).More times than not, the paddler is setting up with a rolling blade flat to the surface because someone has erroneously advised them to use this C-to-C technique for a sweep roll (You do want the blade flat all the way through the roll for C-to-C). As a default, beginning suggestion, I advise sweep-rolling students to set up with a 45º blade angle (top of blade away from boat). Critically, look at the blade angle once the paddler is upside-side down and just before they start their sweep. People do all kinds of weird wrist movements in the time between setup and sweep, so it’s that last-second, pre-sweep wrist position that really matters. Adjust the setup accordingly to achieve a neutral (or just barely climbing) angle of the power face to the direction of oncoming water. More times than not, my resolving advice for people having this pushing-water problem is for them to roll their wrists slightly farther back on setup which decreases the paddle’s “bite” in the sweep and allows the sweep to continue with little resistance. [All that said, see what is actually happening with the individual and adjust accordingly. The entire spectrum of positions exists]. The blade angle rotation should continue all the way from setup to the end of rotation at the stern, with the bottom edge of the blade facing the sky at the end.
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When I was teaching and certifying kayaking instructors to teach rolling, I required these instructor candidates to develop and demonstrate a “model quality” roll to be able to accurately demonstrate the techniques they would be prescribing for students. In order to do this, I needed a set of objective measures of each of these rolls in order to judge  and/or prescribe the instructor candidate’s performance. The lists below are those key points:

For C-to-C Roll:

—Set up into an effective/protective setup position, more to the side of the kayak than forward and paddle centered on the paddler’s torso,

—“Back” hand on/near hull of the kayak, remaining relatively stationary and serving as the pivot-point (fulcrum) of the roll/paddle lever,

—A sweep of the paddle to 90º away from the boat accompanied by the paddler sitting more upright, an arching of the body upward toward the surface and a push of the rolling blade/hand to the surface, maintaining a blade angle parallel to the water’s surface,

—A rapid “snap” of the body, paddle and boat in-line perpendicular to the long axis of the boat into the second “C” position with the head now on the opposite (roll-side) shoulder and eyes looking forward, effectively rolling the boat under the paddler,

—Recovery of the paddler’s body, paddle and head to the centerline of the boat.

For Sweep Roll:

—Set up into an effective/protective setup position, more to the side of the kayak than forward and paddle centered on the paddler’s torso,

—A single, continuous sweeping rotation of the body with paddle near the water’s surface in which the paddler smoothy sits straight up while also rotating the torso, shoulders, head and paddle (as a unit) from setup, to near the stern on the opposite side of the kayak AND while the paddle blade carves a smooth arc from the setup to finish position, with the paddle blade maintaining an attack angle on its top edge and offering little resistance to the sweep, with the blade ending near the stern on the opposite side and fully rotated so the bottom of the blade faces directly up with the power face facing out, allowing the paddle blade to slice cleanly out of the water as the release. The kayak should begin rotation very early in the roll as a counter-movement of the body’s rotation and be driven by the rolling knee. The paddler should be sitting upright in the finish position with little backward lean.

Out in the “real world” it is very common for one or both of these rolls to evolve (or degrade) into hybrids as we either get better at them or get lazy with them. Make sure that your evolution recognizes and retains the most effective parts and avoids techniques that diminish effectiveness.

I initially learned a C-to-C roll and got good at it. As I got better, my body learned that I could start the boat rolling as I set up into the first “C” and snap once the paddle was out 90º. A talented Instructor Trainer (Joe Greiner, to drop a name) saw this and asked if I wanted to learn to transition it to a sweep roll. I did. Once I developed a model sweep roll and got good at it, my roll was bringing me upright half-way through my paddle arc and my body found that I could finish by snapping down (or even reverse the sweep forward), effectively performing what would be termed a Sweep-to-C roll that uses good parts of both (contrast that to a C-to-Sweep roll that moves away from ideals and is not advisable). Looking back, both of those evolutions moved in the same direction. To this day, I still use Sweep-to-C in daily paddling and have to make a conscious decision to modify it back to pure form of either C-to-C or Sweep. If you recognize and practice several idealized forms you add tools to your toolbox that allow your body to adapt to conditions on the fly. Know that these hybrid rolls tend to add complexity to the learning process and probably aren’t advisable until you have a simpler roll working and learn to nuance movements to adapt from there.

Hopefully, some of these thoughts will give you something to consider about your own roll and give you some tools that might assist you to help others. Kayakers are really passionate about trying to help new paddlers learn to roll. We can all get better at it. I can’t overemphasize the value of slow-motion (or better, frame-by-frame) video as a roll learning tool. It allows you to clearly see all of the factors discussed above and see where the physics are working or failing. Two resources I frequently recommend to new instructors provide some of the canonical published information available on teaching and learning rolling (given my above admonition to work with someone hands-on):

The Kayak Roll. DeRiemer, DeRiemer and Ford. (Best Sweep Roll info)

https://performancevideo.com/stream-instantly-whitewater

Grace under Pressure–Learning the Kayak Roll. Joe Holt Productions. (Best C-to-C Roll info)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK711O4ZQOE

Be safe. Have Fun. Dare to Learn.