Larry Cain's technique drills and videos

[breakbad]

If you unweighted the board, doesn't that mean that you must also weight the board?
Seems like staying smooth would make the board move faster.

So my n00b brain is still trying to compute. Is it more of a twisting / horizontal recovery instead of a vertical ellipse? Like in a golf swing when you turn your shoulders and hips, you get more power, but you want to stay level and twist around your spine.

In the Cain video, he also talks about starting to return the hip before the end of the stroke...the part where he stands briskly and the board moves backwards. Maybe its hard for a novice like me to notice, but watching some racers recently I've noticed the hip essentially follows to paddle. When I do it I feel like I'm standing (unweighting?) then dipping on the stroke (weighting?).

[SaMoSUP]

...The young bucks coming up will run over the top of today's masters sooner or later. the calculus has to be "If I make these changes, how long will it knock me off the top, and how much longer will it prolong my game." Tough call.

Danny touched on this topic in his clinic. He's very much aware that at 30 years old his time at the top is numbered but he's still evolving his stroke, looking for an edge. Next year's stroke may look slightly different than last year's. I was very impressed by him sharing some of the new mechanics he's working on that he hasn't perfected yet. So to look at a video from 2012 and say his stroke looks similar to Larry is only partially true. It goes with my earlier point that what Larry teaches is foundational and that each person can take from this baseline and modify it to fit their body type, injury history, fitness level, athleticism, conditions, etc. Different strokes for different folks.

[bat paddler]

Is "unweighting the board" a real thing?  I know some people mention it occasionally, but many top paddlers never mention it.  It seems like it would be mentioned more if it were real and significant.


And if it is, how do you do it?

Really?  I thought the concept of unweighting the board was common.  Maybe I'm using the wrong term.  We are probably all doing this to some degree, but let me describe the target and maybe someone can come up with a better term.

You plant your blade, get a good catch, transfer as much body weight to the paddle as feasible and take your stroke  as best as possible without depressing the board.   The action of weighting the paddle will "unweight the board"  I simulataniously add a forward pushing with my feet, doing a subtle but definite forward draw on the surface of board as I pull back on the paddle.  It feels a bit like I am bringing my paddle and my feet towards each other.  This pulling back and pushing forward gives a definitive sensation of "unweighting the board". 

It feels like what you do when you cross country ski, kicking the lead leg forward  during each stride.  Maybe calling it a "scooting" or "skimming" action would be more clear.

I only do distance paddling, so maybe its not applicable across the range of SUP.  I have been able to do this on every board I have used, though some are easier to feel the effect than others. 

[PonoBill]

It is a common technique, though perhaps not as much for flatwater as downwinders. At least I think of it that way. In flatwater, unweighting your board to initially accelerate (trying to get light on your feet by putting extra weight on the blade) doesn't do much since you give it all back one way or the other. It screws up your stroke, and bounces the board. The boards of the really fast paddlers (except in all-out sprints) are steady in the water.

In a downwinder, using that extra little kick to catch a swell makes perfect sense. Whatever gets you into the swell is a good thing--unless you fall or boof.

[Luc Benac]

You plant your blade, get a good catch, transfer as much body weight to the paddle as feasible and take your stroke  as best as possible without depressing the board.   The action of weighting the paddle will "unweight the board"  I simulataniously add a forward pushing with my feet, doing a subtle but definite forward draw on the surface of board as I pull back on the paddle.  It feels a bit like I am bringing my paddle and my feet towards each other.  This pulling back and pushing forward gives a definitive sensation of "unweighting the board". 

It is a common technique, though perhaps not as much for flatwater as downwinders. At least I think of it that way. In flatwater, unweighting your board to initially accelerate (trying to get light on your feet by putting extra weight on the blade) doesn't do much since you give it all back one way or the other. It screws up your stroke, and bounces the board.

Thanks for the clarification Bill & Bat. I was starting to learn/practice/use that technique but it looks like it is counterproductive in anything but downwind.

[pdxmike]

Yes, thanks Bill and Bat.  I've heard of weighting, but not much.  Certainly many people talk about leaning onto the paddle and loading your weight onto it.  My thought has always been that the point isn't really to take weight off the board, but to use your weight to do some of the work of stroking, vs. doing all the work with your arms. 


It does seem like if you really wanted to "unweight" the board, you'd stroke to achieve more of a downward force than a backwards one with your blade.  But then you'd be distorting your stroke and achieve correspondingly less force propelling you forward, probably to the point it negates any advantage of having the board gliding forward with less resistance.  At least that's how it seems to me, although I'd be the first to change if I thought it would make me faster.   I am going to try it and see if I can get the feeling of unweighting.


It reminds me of swimming technique, where until recently there was a lot of focus on achieving "lift", doing an "s-shaped pull", "diagonal sculling", etc. Recently most top swimmers seem to be going back to forgetting about all that and just pulling straight back, the idea being that the pull straight back is the most efficient way to go forward.  So, no up or down, just straight back pulling. 

[headmount]

The recent underwater footage of Katie Ladecky in Australia really showed that. 

[pdxmike]

Headmount--just looked her up, and she sure does pull straight back.


The underwater views also really show how she (and others) have a distinct pause at the front of their stroke, so they are grabbing water and dropping their forearm down, so they have a great catch with a lot of surface area (forearm as well as hand), THEN they start to pull back.  I just saw a video of me paddling and I'm pulling back before my paddle is even in the water.     The Gorge racers were really sinking their paddles in before pulling back.


Other thing the swimming shows is how common the straight-arm recovery and little rotation have become.  A few years ago coaches would have been yelling at them to keep a high elbow, and rotate, rotate, rotate.  The relevance to paddling is it shows just how much swimming technique is still changing after many more decades than SUP racing has been around.  Also, as people were talking in another thread, if you're ahead of the pack (with technique, with the current thinking about paddle or surfing board length or design, or whatever) you can end up looking old-school, like you missed the boat that everyone else got on.  In reality, you already were on that boat and got on to the newer one that most people haven't even seen arriving yet.