Standup Zone Forum
Stand Up Paddle => Technique => Topic started by: 10generation on May 08, 2018, 12:58:32 PM
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I'm currently seem to be paddling around a 30 spm and about 10/10.5 feet per stroke on my red 13'2" inflatable according to my garmin. Research I'm doing on the web seems to imply that is a very slow rate. It doesn't feel particularly slow or fast to me.
I have no idea if my distance per stroke is good, bad or average, be great to get some thoughts?
I have zero interest in racing, I'm interested in building the strength and conditioning to paddle long distances. Do I need to work at getting my SPM up or my distance per stroke? I'm assuming I should do some higher SPM work for shorter duration as part of training?
Thanks for any insights.
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That’s a slow pace for sure. It’s a reasonable distance per stroke but you are probably partly getting that because your stroke rate is so slow: if I pulled one hard stroke and then just glided as far as I could go before coming to a complete halt my distance per stroke would look spectacular. But I’d be very slow.
But if you aren’t racing then why worry? Better to concentrate on developing an efficient stroke that is easy on the body. The current trend in paddle technique is driven by hyper-fit racers. The stroke technique that is appropriate for them is probably completely wrong for a non-racing endurance paddler.
Probably the most *efficient* stroke (although no doubt not the fastest) was the so-called Tahitian stroke taught by Dave Kalama as few years back. It emphasised minimising movements to be efficient, which is quite different from the current “slut drop” type technique used by Connor etc for elite racing. If you want to go moderately fast over long distances without wearing yourself out it’s still a good technique IMO. Try that and a spm of around 45 and you should be good to go.
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I paddle for fitness and fun and love to track my sessions using GPS and heart rate monitor and an app on my phone called Endomondo. I generally aim for a 3 mile stent, then take a breather for maybe 5 minutes, then another 3 mile stent. So 6 miles is always my goal, but sometimes I go further and sometimes less. Weather, wind and tide are the biggest factors for me. I have a number of different boards to choose from to match conditions. If it is looking like it is going to stay pretty calm and flat I will take my Red Paddle 14 Elite. It can get a little tricky when it starts to get rough, or when there are lots of boat wakes. For rougher days I take my Connector 14 which is 29" wide and is more stable. If my wife is not going I sometimes take her Bark 14 Dominator...it's fast and pretty stable.
At any rate, I try to keep a pretty steady pace somewhere around 40-50 spm...but I am guessing on the rate as I do not have a way to track it like the Garmin watches connected to Garmin Connect app. My wife uses it, so maybe I should borrow her watch sometime to record my rate.
I paddled 6 miles today using her Bark and my average speed was 4.14mph and my average heart rate 122bpm...max was 138bpm. It was sunny and 63 degrees and the wind was 4 mph. These numbers are pretty average for me. If it is rough out my max heart rate will get up to 160bpm as the legs really have to work hard to balance.
I am 66 years old and either paddle or walk everyday to stay in shape. I am 5'8" and weigh 156 lbs.
Paddleboarding is my passion and thank goodness my wife will go with me when it is not windy or rough.
We both always track our sessions as well as our food and calories on MyFitnessPal. We lost 30 lbs each in the last 2 years of paddling and cut our cholesterol numbers in half....making our doctor very happy. No statins for me or my wife !
I recently bought a Samsung Gear Sport thinking it would do everything I wanted, but I returned it because it was so hard to read while out on the water and the heart rate didn't seem accurate compared to my Scosche arm band linked to my phone and garmin 78sc on the deck. My wife uses a new Garmin 735XT and it seems to be doing ok......and I like that the Garmin Connect app tracks paddleboarding as an activity and shows stroke rate and distance per stroke. I may have to step up to that one of these days. But in the meantime I just ordered another new board so I busted my budget.......I have a new 14 Imagine Rocket coming next week. Can't wait to get out on it!
Good luck with your paddling......what are you using to track your sessions?
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http://www.davidkalama.com/tempo/
I just found this and it is an interesting read on the subject of "tempo".........
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An easy way to increase stroke rate and keep up board speed is to decrease recovery time. After the paddle is out of the water, don't rely on the board to glide. Get the paddle back in the water.
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It’s probably not worth worrying about. Just make sure you have good technique on your stroke. Spm is an effort level, good technique improves it to a point, after that it’s about cardio fitness. You can cover the same distance whether you paddle 30spm or 45, it just changes the time it takes to do it in. Distance per stroke has never really been all that helpful to me, too many factors can impact it.
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I also wouldn't worry about distance per stroke too much. Not that it's not important, but if you focus on it, it gets tempting to start distorting your stroke to improve your distance per stroke. These things will all increase your DPS: Gliding too long (as people have mentioned), using a paddle that's too long, reaching too far forward, pulling too far back, slowing down your recovery...all bad for speed and efficiency. Of course if you can add an inch or two distance per stroke WITHOUT cutting tempo or increasing effort too much, then that's good.
Distance per stroke became a big thing with swimmers a few years ago, especially triathletes who went to workshops that focused on that. People distorted their whole strokes trying to go further--which they did, but at the expense of speed and efficiency.
If you measure both rate and distance, try a series of runs, going from a very slow rate to a ridiculously fast one. You'll find you're fastest somewhere in between the extremes. You'll also find your effort gets ridiculously high at the extremes. It's similar to using gears on a bike. Also as Area 10 said, the strokes and tempos top paddlers use are what works for their extremely fit bodies, not typical paddlers.
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Personally, I advocated use of the ‘Stroke Index’ (SI). To calculate your SI, you merely multiply your average speed in metres per second by its average distance per stroke in metres. This goes a little way to normalising the changes you might make when paddling by producing a score that really is a near surrogate for your paddling efficiency (using the metrics we can realistically access at the moment).
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SUP
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Better to concentrate on developing an efficient stroke that is easy on the body.
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Absolutly.
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Better to concentrate on developing an efficient stroke that is easy on the body. The current trend in paddle technique is driven by hyper-fit racers. The stroke technique that is appropriate for them is probably completely wrong for a non-racing endurance paddler.
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Disagree.
I believe the current trend in elite paddlers is precisely that efficient stroke which is more balanced for the body.
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If you are going to bring up your stroke rate, might I suggest looking at your blade size.
Sometimes slow SPM indicates too large of a blade. If that is the case speeding your SPM
considerably without adjusting blade size might cause injuries.
You might be able to achieve same distance per stroke with just a better technique and a smaller
blade size and eliminate the extra stress on the body which is important for long distance.
Realistically, the distance per stroke data is the last thing I'm looking at in the continues cycle of
improving technique and equipment. I only circle back to it after introducing new moves to my
stroke or when changing board or paddle, just as a reference point to gauge progress.
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Personally, I advocated use of the ‘Stroke Index’ (SI). To calculate your SI, you merely multiply your average speed in metres per second by its average distance per stroke in metres. This goes a little way to normalising the changes you might make when paddling by producing a score that really is a near surrogate for your paddling efficiency (using the metrics we can realistically access at the moment).
Hello Bryce,
I probably need to get more detail from you on the topic.
It seems to me that the SI works only when:
1) The level of effort is constant (which I believe you included in your assumptions in your various articles)
2) Short distances where the condition do not affect the results
I have tried to look at SI for my paddling data which is in open conditions and distances of 12-15km.
I have attached a sample for one board and a couple of paddles for comparison.
It looks like the SI is contradicting the overall speed in the sense that the highest SI are showing for the slowest runs.
Over the last months I have steadily increased my SPM from 36 to 40 which resulted in shorter DPS. I have also reduced the surface of my paddle blades.
Looking at the SI now is bringing more confusion in my mind as it seems to revoke the idea of smaller blade, higher rate and fastest speed that I have been experiencing.
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Reading again some of Bryce articles (board testing, paddle testing) and a scientific paper he had referenced it looks like the use of I/O ratio (speed/stroke rate) and Stroke Index is limited to time trial using the same maintained speed on the same distance. A measure of the level of effort or efficiency for the same output. It would not then apply to data collected on many different conditions, speed and distance.
Unless I misunderstood the whole thing and then I am still scratching my head.
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Reading again some of Bryce articles (board testing, paddle testing) and a scientific paper he had referenced it looks like the use of I/O ratio (speed/stroke rate) and Stroke Index is limited to time trial using the same maintained speed on the same distance. A measure of the level of effort or efficiency for the same output. It would not then apply to data collected on many different conditions, speed and distance.
Unless I misunderstood the whole thing and then I am still scratching my head.
Stop scratching your head Luc, you have nice hair and I hate to see you loosing it over this ;D
But seriously, I don't see how SI can work for open water, too many variables to be reliable or useful.
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Yeah I wouldn’t worry too much about Bryce’s formulae: He would probably like SUP races to be held in an indoor tank where everything can be measured and every session is the same like this:
https://distressedmullet.com/2012/05/24/quickblade-train-hard-jamie-candice-and-anthony-v02-testing-in-the-flume-by-soul-surf-media/
:) :)
Also some good indications in that video of the different stroke rates of the different athletes, and you can see the differences in their stroke techniques. Each has found a method that works for their body.
I’m sure that Bryce will be able to tell us if Jamie Mitchell’s VO2 performance in the video is any good :)
Incidentally, Wow - can’t believe that vid was from 6 years ago now.
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Thanks very much!
Think I'm going to take Burchas recommendation and go down in size a bit to a mana 82, see what happens.
Thought the list of things that increase distance per stroke but were suboptimal were interesting - gliding too long, etc. I currently use werner adjustable paddles and am really struggling to land on one paddle length - move it around depending on how I'm feeling.
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Personally, I advocated use of the ‘Stroke Index’ (SI). To calculate your SI, you merely multiply your average speed in metres per second by its average distance per stroke in metres. This goes a little way to normalising the changes you might make when paddling by producing a score that really is a near surrogate for your paddling efficiency (using the metrics we can realistically access at the moment).
Hello Bryce,
I probably need to get more detail from you on the topic.
It seems to me that the SI works only when:
1) The level of effort is constant (which I believe you included in your assumptions in your various articles)
2) Short distances where the condition do not affect the results
3) Over the last months I have steadily increased my SPM from 36 to 40 which resulted in shorter DPS. I have also reduced the surface of my paddle blades.
Looking at the SI now is bringing more confusion in my mind as it seems to revoke the idea of smaller blade, higher rate and fastest speed that I have been experiencing.
1) Yes. If the effort isn't constant, you'll get too much noise in the data and it probably won't be too much good. In other words, it's a good system for flatwater distance races but if messy and choppy stuff is your thing, your perceived and emotional experiences may well be as relevant. If you tested in messy conditions, the data is likely too poor in quality to tell you what you need. (how many runs of each paddle did you do ?)
2) Any distance is fine (I used one that had been validated in the journals that would allow as many good repeated runs as possible) but yes, you need still calm conditions to get the accuracy and precision in the results. However, this just means on a windy or more chaotic day, the benefits (or penalties) are being hidden in the noise of the tests (rather than meaning the test results don't apply at all).
3) That's pretty normal. Speeding up will shorten the stroke. However, if the SI has improved, I personally wouldn't worry about it (although i would allow the knowledge of that to shape some of the training I'd do).
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But seriously, I don't see how SI can work for open water, too many variables to be reliable or useful.
This is absolutely true. Don't test SI in messy conditions. You can check this by including the standard deviation as error bars on your graph of all the runs you did or calculate the coefficient of variation (CV= SD/Mean X 100). If your Cv of your tests runs (at least 4-5 I'd suggest) is more than ~6%, the data is junk.
A lot of the gains you find in the controlled conditions will translate across to any water in principle - it's just that if you try and actually test in crappy conditions, there is a good chance the data won't be any good.
The point here is:
1) Test in controlled conditions.
2) Establish the margin of error of your testing process by using several test runs.
3) Do your comparative tests of different equipment.
4) Take the gains to more chaotic conditions (but accept that not all gains will translate across - fins being one).
My test was developed to assess equipment for flatwater races.
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Yeah I wouldn’t worry too much about Bryce’s formulae: He would probably like SUP races to be held in an indoor tank where everything can be measured and every session is the same like this:
The SI actually isn't not mine. Its actually adapted from peer reviewed journal papers in swimming and kayaking (Larry Cain also uses it due to adaptation from his time coaching with the C1 national squad). If you test in controlled conditions, you'll get good data. The question is how much of the gain found in still conditions translates across to more chaotic ones. In some forms of equipment, its all of it. However, my articles (and journal paper on the subject) openly concede that the skills and parameters for good performance in open water racing are going likely going to be in different (or in different proportions) to those found in flatwater.
To be honest though, I've seen this level of skepticism in sport before. I saw it in cycling when wind tunnels were first used and in flume tanks with watercraft or swimmers. People didn't feel the results were transferable to the 'real world'. In all occasions, (and provided you knew the limitations of the tests and the results), they were wrong and those that didn't take measured performance seriously, fell behind those that did. If Onegiantleap had released their SUP power meter, this would all be considerably easier !
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The SI actually isn't not mine.
(Sorry - poor early morning grammar. :-[ The SI is not my concept ! ;D)
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I’m sorry but I’m really not following the base premise and thinking on your use of SI. It is just not clicking as a base on which to do your data analysis. Maybe you could point me to some background material on SI and how it is used. On how Larry is using it for instance. I understand his thinking.
I do not believe that to go faster a paddler just spins a higher cadence like a fixie cyclist. Have you ever seen Titou accelerate? He digs deeper not faster, like a good swimmer.
From what I know about paddling:
- for a given speed: a better swimmer and paddler does more distance per stroke than a spinning thrasher.
- cadence and speed are not correlated. (same refection as above really)
Are you checking all this stuff against yourself only? If that’s the case, seriously, rethink that. Especially since we don’t know how you paddle. Double check it on an elite paddler.
I don’t see how your data works to prove a better paddle or fin. I don’t get it.
and I disagree on this:
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Speeding up will shorten the stroke.
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But seriously, I don't see how SI can work for open water, too many variables to be reliable or useful.
This is absolutely true. Don't test SI in messy conditions. You can check this by including the standard deviation as error bars on your graph of all the runs you did or calculate the coefficient of variation (CV= SD/Mean X 100). If your Cv of your tests runs (at least 4-5 I'd suggest) is more than ~6%, the data is junk.
A lot of the gains you find in the controlled conditions will translate across to any water in principle - it's just that if you try and actually test in crappy conditions, there is a good chance the data won't be any good.
The point here is:
1) Test in controlled conditions.
2) Establish the margin of error of your testing process by using several test runs.
3) Do your comparative tests of different equipment.
4) Take the gains to more chaotic conditions (but accept that not all gains will translate across - fins being one).
My test was developed to assess equipment for flatwater races.
Not at all a skeptic. I totally see and agree with the point you're making.
If I was a serious racer (or racer at all) it would be my M.O. as well no doubt.
I would even push for the water tank conditions if I could ;) Love sport science.
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Thanks very much!
Think I'm going to take Burchas recommendation and go down in size a bit to a mana 82, see what happens.
Thought the list of things that increase distance per stroke but were suboptimal were interesting - gliding too long, etc. I currently use werner adjustable paddles and am really struggling to land on one paddle length - move it around depending on how I'm feeling.
I can't land on one paddle length either. Paddling in mixed conditions often presents this problem. Flat water I like my paddles 74inches. Open water 73. downwind/upwind 72.
I feel that my larger blades (85-90sqi) exacerbate the issue even further. With my ZRE 75sqi and the Mana 82 I can wing it with one size no issues.
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“Paddling efficiency” in the real world has to take account of the physiological impact of the stroke/cadence upon the paddler. The SI will not do that.
Then, given that the most effective stroke (and equipment) for ultra long distance will be different from that for a short sprint, it’s easy to see that while there may be some principles discovered from eg. SI when they are applied to understanding one particular format of race, once you depart from that the applicability of the what you have learned is likely to become rather sketchy.
This is not to say that the application of scientific principles to understanding the dynamics of stroke techniques is fruitless, it’s just to say that you have to be cautious about claiming how much you understand. Sports scientists are just as prone to “over-selling” as any other profession. But this certainly does not mean that it is all nonsense - and it is better than just giving up and doing whatever any fruitcake with a marketable idea wants to tell you.
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I can safely say I don't get it.
As a data scientist I prefer to measure grin factor.
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1) Maybe you could point me to some background material on SI and how it is used. On how Larry is using it for instance. I understand his thinking.
2) I do not believe that to go faster a paddler just spins a higher cadence like a fixie cyclist. Have you ever seen Titou accelerate? He digs deeper not faster, like a good swimmer.
3) From what I know about paddling:
- for a given speed: a better swimmer and paddler does more distance per stroke than a spinning thrasher.
- cadence and speed are not correlated. (same refection as above really)
4) Are you checking all this stuff against yourself only? If that’s the case, seriously, rethink that. Especially since we don’t know how you paddle. Double check it on an elite paddler.
5) I don’t see how your data works to prove a better paddle or fin. I don’t get it.
6) and I disagree on this:
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Speeding up will shorten the stroke.
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Ok, bear with me and I'll work through your various points.
1) Here's one you should be able to access: https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/cpa/article/viewFile/620/545. Larry uses it exactly the same way I do as its the same formula. If you look on his blog for some of the allstar testing he did, he uses it the same way. The only difference is I learnt it via academic sources and he got it via the C1 coaching system.
2) I never said they did. SI is calculated by multiplying your average speed in metres per second for a test run by its average distance per stroke in metres. Cadence doesn't form part of the equation. However, I would add that 'in well trained' paddling athletes, in rowing and K1 in particular, cadence has been shown to correlate with speed (although companies like Vaaka overhype this). I would say we're limited as the real metrics we need, can't be measured commercially yet. Note though, if you're not a paddler with decent technique, focusing too much on cadence is an extremely bad idea.
3) You might well be right. As I said above, SI is not calculated using cadence however, its is pretty well cited that stroke length has a tendency to shorten as paddling speed is increased.
4) Yes. My article was to prove the test procedure itself was stable..... which it was..... to near lab levels of variation. However, if you are trying to see if an innovation generally is faster overall, you'll need a test pool of willing subjects.
5) Have you read my two web articles on this ? I would post the links on here but last time I did admin deleted it. I will post the link to the journal paper when it comes out (its in press at the moment but approved for print).
6) See 3). Its hard for a paddler to isolate stroke rate from stroke length. This is easy to measure. Put tape markers on your board to act as targets and then do a series of runs at cadences from 30spm upto 70spm in 10spm increments and let us know what a speedcoach (or similar) says about your stroke length. It'll tell you your stroke generally shortens as your cadence rises (provided the goal is you increasing your overall speed).
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1) “Paddling efficiency” in the real world has to take account of the physiological impact of the stroke/cadence upon the paddler. The SI will not do that.
2) Then, given that the most effective stroke (and equipment) for ultra long distance will be different from that for a short sprint, it’s easy to see that while there may be some principles discovered from eg. SI when they are applied to understanding one particular format of race, once you depart from that the applicability of the what you have learned is likely to become rather sketchy.
3) This is not to say that the application of scientific principles to understanding the dynamics of stroke techniques is fruitless, it’s just to say that you have to be cautious about claiming how much you understand. Sports scientists are just as prone to “over-selling” as any other profession. But this certainly does not mean that it is all nonsense - and it is better than just giving up and doing whatever any fruitcake with a marketable idea wants to tell you.
1) Agreed, no it won't (or at least, only partially). But until we get to the point when such metrics can be measured, we have to use surrogates that will only go partway there. Even traditional faves like V02 max are now being reined in that there it is accepted that there is a lot more to elite level performance and selection than its use (particularly as more than a few elite endurance athletes don't always have spectacular levels of Vo2 max). We both know that as long as you concede/state the limitations, it has a purpose if used correctly and within its intended context. I would also add that tailoring and designing paddlers training to such things also helps adaptation.
2) Agreed and I concede as much in my articles. I would say that SI is fine for determining the benefits of equipment in long or short events but you then must make sure you tailor the test intervals accordingly. The paddling speed is key for such tests. That's why I tailor my tests to the speed i'm going to be racing at (9.5kph). This does make the assumption that I'm substituting flatwater event distance for speed generally (as the drag and technique alter with paddling effort or board speed).
3) I know that you know that we both know that. :D
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
I tried various mounting schemes, including increasing the distance of the flex measurement by fixing one end of the strain gauge to the shaft and the other to a six-inch strap of carbon fixed further down the shaft. Measuring strain over a longer distance didn't help, the output still looks like noise. I don't have a theory for why, and I gave up quickly because I had a lot of tests to run.
While it would certainly be nice to precisely measure the input force, the resultant power is pretty easy to get at, especially if all you want is a relative value. Board acceleration is directly related to force. Of course the higher the speed is, the less efficiently the force applied is converted to acceleration since drag becomes greater, rising exponentially when wave drag becomes dominant, so you need an accurate speed measurement, some calibration runs and a bit of math, but it's feasible, and not even particularly expensive to build. There's no useful market since it can't be universally calibrated--rider and board weight, stroke effects, current, wind, etc. will screw up any direct reading. I used a dragged free-spinning prop to measure board speed. I doubt that would be popular since it was a huge pain in the ass, but actually, a Doppler-based speed reading would be accurate enough if the sample rate was high enough.
A precise speed reading with a high sample rate is all we need for measuring acceleration, and that by itself is a revelation. Any notion you might have of the glide of a SUP goes away quickly. So does any notion of adding power by pulling near your feet. Glide is only significant when the board has slowed enough for the drag curve to be flat. In other words, much slower than anyone wants to go. You don't need equipment to verify this. Get up to speed and stop paddling. The board glides along, but pay close attention to the speed. You'll have to do this visually, I haven't seen any GPS-based speed device that updates often enough to be useful. Initial slowing is extremely rapid (remember that exponential drag), the overwhelming majority of the glide is at roughly 1/4 top speed.
The reason why higher cadence results in higher speed isn't exactly what first comes to mind--a simple blade speed multiplied by rate idea. In part it's because the deceleration curve is very steep. With no practical glide all the deceleration needs to be made up with acceleration against high drag. With a slower cadence you're catching the curve at a lower speed and there's a lot more area under that curve (power required) than there is if you catch it sooner.
Quick recovery in the air and pulling the blade out of the water as soon as you can no longer effectively add force just means you don't have to add as much power to maintain the speed. Apparently the penalty of not doing that can be overcome with conditioning and other stroke efficiencies because there are some very fast paddlers that have relatively slow strokes, but it DOES need to be overcome.
I think some of the six-man outrigger canoe notions that get applied to SUP paddling don't really work. "Long in the water" is probably fine when your craft weighs 300 pounds and has 800 pounds of paddlers in it. A single paddler isn't going to accelerate that mass, so it's much more important to match blade speed to boat speed. But a 30 pound board and 165 pound rider is a substantially different business. Deceleration and acceleration is rapid, significant with every stroke, and directly related to what you do with the paddle.
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3) From what I know about paddling:
- for a given speed: a better swimmer and paddler does more distance per stroke than a spinning thrasher.
- cadence and speed are not correlated. (same refection as above really)
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Ok, bear with me and I'll work through your various points.
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3) You might well be right. As I said above, SI is not calculated using cadence however, its is pretty well cited that stroke length has a tendency to shorten as paddling speed is increased.
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^ for context
3) You might well be right. As I said above, SI is not calculated using cadence however, its is pretty well cited that stroke length has a tendency to shorten as paddling speed is increased.
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:o
“Stroke Length” being "distance covered per stroke" I presume. [referring to the article you posted]
Let me just check I’m getting this right. You are pretending that as speed of the SUP’er increases the "stroke length" is decreasing?
:o
I beg to differ. We seem to not be on the same page. I do not understand how that is remotely possible. Something is amiss.
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The reason why higher cadence results in higher speed .... in part it's because the deceleration curve is very steep. With no practical glide all the deceleration needs to be made up with acceleration against high drag. With a slower cadence you're catching the curve at a lower speed and there's a lot more area under that curve (power required) than there is if you catch it sooner.
I can relate to that. While a slower cadence feels more rewarding as you feel the board accelerating again, GPS seems to say that a shorter stroke, faster rate keeps the board at speed more consistently even if you do not have the same feeling of achievement. At least within reason.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
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I bet that a good measure of paddler efficiency would be speed divided by the force exerted on the shaft.
There is hope for your "power meter" . It is just better applied at teaching efficient paddle stroke rather than testing paddle blades. You should market it!
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
It’s all about how efficiently you can get the board to scoot across the water. Any sailor or swimmer knows this.
I stopped by a motocross enduro event last weekend. Just like a swim or SUP event the first motocross racer was so much faster and so much smoother. I bet he, the winner, spent a lot less fuel than those behind him [given their motorcycles had about fuel efficiency bikes]. He flew over the course with the greatest of ease. He never sounded like he was throttling it like other racers were and yet he flew so much faster out of corners and over obstacles.
Which is pretty much the point I object to in all the above mentioned [so called] “scientific data analysis”. It is missing the basic point.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
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The reason why higher cadence results in higher speed .... in part it's because the deceleration curve is very steep. With no practical glide all the deceleration needs to be made up with acceleration against high drag. With a slower cadence you're catching the curve at a lower speed and there's a lot more area under that curve (power required) than there is if you catch it sooner.
I can relate to that. While a slower cadence feels more rewarding as you feel the board accelerating again, GPS seems to say that a shorter stroke, faster rate keeps the board at speed more consistently even if you do not have the same feeling of achievement. At least within reason.
Disagree.
You can pull deep and long for speed and do a super fast recovery. Talking just cadence is misguided.
Watch Titou. Or talk to Johhny P. I remember him mentioning a revision of his thinking based on realising this.
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Johnny is primarily coaching OC6. I've taken a lot of great information from his stroke coaching, in fact I completely changed my stroke based on his and Dave Kalama's revised coaching, but cadence and "long in the water" are not among them for SUP. If you match paddle speed and cadence to boat speed for a SUP you'll be a hazard to navigation.
You might also note that I said: "Quick recovery in the air and pulling the blade out of the water as soon as you can no longer effectively add force just means you don't have to add as much power to maintain the speed. Apparently, the penalty of not doing that can be overcome with conditioning and other stroke efficiencies because there are some very fast paddlers that have relatively slow strokes, but it DOES need to be overcome."
The rapid deceleration is clearly part of the challenge. Whatever you do to stop the deceleration at higher speed and start accelerating back to max speed sooner is going to help a lot more than the simple idea that cadence X blade speed = velocity. If it's just faster recovery with the same stroke length then yes, you'll gain some efficiency. If you keep pulling your blade when it isn't accelerating the board, then you're wasting time and slowing recovery. If you can find that excellent Larry Cain post that showed the result of instrumenting his stroke and board you'll see what the acceleration/deceleration curve looks like. There is no glide--your board is either accelerating or decelerating. You want to spend as much time doing the former as you can, regardless of how you accomplish that.
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Disagree.
.... do a super fast recovery. Talking just cadence is misguided.
That is already a given for a proper technique.
We are talking once you are there then increase the cadence and of course when you are doing a faster recovery for the same time in the water, your cadence will increase.
I am also talking about small steps i.e. going from 36 spm to 40 spm.
It also seems to be a corollary of what Pukea was saying as the speed of the vessel increase.
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I know I would throw any data out of wack. I over take people all the time while racing, and my stroke rate is much slower than theirs. My paddle is also 91" long. Longer, deeper, slower, more powerful. I'm also pulling 245 lbs. (240 at last race). I've paddled a number of times with Thomas Maximus S. Our stroke rates are very similar. I have noticed that my stroke rate increases, and my force applied to each stroke decreases the shorter the board I paddle.
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Disagree.
.... do a super fast recovery. Talking just cadence is misguided.
That is already a given for a proper technique.
We are talking once you are there then increase the cadence and of course when you are doing a faster recovery for the same time in the water, your cadence will increase.
I am also talking about small steps i.e. going from 36 spm to 40 spm.
It also seems to be a corollary of what Pukea was saying as the speed of the vessel increase.
agree
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That why we love unlimited boards. You drop back to the less-exponential part of the drag curve much sooner, so you have more "glide" though it's really just slower deceleration. You and Thomas are also both freaks. Toss Rojas into the mix and it's still nothing anyone else can use.
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That why we love unlimited boards. You drop back to the less-exponential part of the drag curve much sooner, so you have more "glide" though it's really just slower deceleration.
Did I mention that even a weakling like me, love my Ace-GT :-) Even for flat water.
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It is a shame the power meter was never released. I was going to be a test pilot for it and was going to validate it formally for them. The kayak version launched ok but despite photos and a launch date, the sup version was never seen. As Ponobill mentions, I guess it had technical quirks they couldn’t fix.
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Johnny is primarily coaching OC6. I've taken a lot of great information from his stroke coaching, in fact I completely changed my stroke based on his and Dave Kalama's revised coaching, but cadence and "long in the water" are not among them for SUP. If you match paddle speed and cadence to boat speed for a SUP you'll be a hazard to navigation.
You might also note that I said: "Quick recovery in the air and pulling the blade out of the water as soon as you can no longer effectively add force just means you don't have to add as much power to maintain the speed. Apparently, the penalty of not doing that can be overcome with conditioning and other stroke efficiencies because there are some very fast paddlers that have relatively slow strokes, but it DOES need to be overcome."
The rapid deceleration is clearly part of the challenge. Whatever you do to stop the deceleration at higher speed and start accelerating back to max speed sooner is going to help a lot more than the simple idea that cadence X blade speed = velocity. If it's just faster recovery with the same stroke length then yes, you'll gain some efficiency. If you keep pulling your blade when it isn't accelerating the board, then you're wasting time and slowing recovery. If you can find that excellent Larry Cain post that showed the result of instrumenting his stroke and board you'll see what the acceleration/deceleration curve looks like. There is no glide--your board is either accelerating or decelerating. You want to spend as much time doing the former as you can, regardless of how you accomplish that.
One of my recent experiments has been using the ‘rowing in motion’ app on the iPhone. That deals in the currency of real time acceleration curves as a means to gauge performance. I’ve found it’s use really informative so far. It’s not as sensitive as the system Larry was using though but the iPhone sensors still provides great info.
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The reason why higher cadence results in higher speed .... in part it's because the deceleration curve is very steep. With no practical glide all the deceleration needs to be made up with acceleration against high drag. With a slower cadence you're catching the curve at a lower speed and there's a lot more area under that curve (power required) than there is if you catch it sooner.
I can relate to that. While a slower cadence feels more rewarding as you feel the board accelerating again, GPS seems to say that a shorter stroke, faster rate keeps the board at speed more consistently even if you do not have the same feeling of achievement. At least within reason.
Disagree.
You can pull deep and long for speed and do a super fast recovery. Talking just cadence is misguided.
Watch Titou. Or talk to Johhny P. I remember him mentioning a revision of his thinking based on realising this.
Disagreements aside, one thing I have also mentioned is to use a cadence that suits your physiology. Paddlers with a decent vo2 max can afford to opt for a higher cadence. Those that don’t may be better served by applying more force at a lower rate and not straining their aerobic system so much.
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I know I would throw any data out of wack. I over take people all the time while racing, and my stroke rate is much slower than theirs. My paddle is also 91" long. Longer, deeper, slower, more powerful. I'm also pulling 245 lbs. (240 at last race). I've paddled a number of times with Thomas Maximus S. Our stroke rates are very similar. I have noticed that my stroke rate increases, and my force applied to each stroke decreases the shorter the board I paddle.
Good thing you added that "S" so we knew which Thomas Maximus you were talking about. ;D
Your stroke rate increasing and force decreasing on shorter boards makes sense. Imagine paddling a board that stopped dead in the water as soon as stopped applying force with your paddle (which is how short boards feel to me). You'd tend to paddle frantically quickly compared to a board that kept going after your stroke. Same with anything with wheels that roll well or not, swimmers who have hydrodynamic body positions or not, an inflatable board that's inflated well or not...You might as well start the next stroke as soon as possible if you're not going forward much in between them.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
I would argue it's not physical strength really. The actual force being applied is very low. Anyone on here could apply the same force..... just not as long in duration. It's an aerobic activity at the end of the day. If you look at Connor and Kai, they are hardly packing the muscle on. It s a technique thing but also power to weight and aerobically driven.
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Power to weight for certain. Given a high degree of aerobic fitness, Travis is probably at the edge of the spectrum for successful flat water racing paddlers--he's built like a fireplug. Similar to Dave Kalama, but a bit smaller and lighter I'd guess.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
I would argue it's not physical strength really. The actual force being applied is very low. Anyone on here could apply the same force..... just not as long in duration. It's an aerobic activity at the end of the day. If you look at Connor and Kai, they are hardly packing the muscle on. It s a technique thing but also power to weight and aerobically driven.
In general a stronger person can apply that force more efficiently. If you can lift 500 pounds and I can lift 400 and we're working with a load of 300 you'll do reps with a lower effort. I perhaps need to drop to 200 pounds and lift at a higher rate to match your total work output. A part of a plan like paddle monster is gym work to add strength.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
Exactly.
Part of that is smooth efficient stroke and part, I believe, is effeciency of delivery of that power into forward motion of the board. I say Travis and Titou becauce both are really smooth and also both are masters at of deliverin that stroke power to the board.
I reckon forward velocity with respect to stress on the shaft would be an interesting metric to compare efficiency.
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
I would argue it's not physical strength really. The actual force being applied is very low. Anyone on here could apply the same force..... just not as long in duration. It's an aerobic activity at the end of the day. If you look at Connor and Kai, they are hardly packing the muscle on. It s a technique thing but also power to weight and aerobically driven.
In general a stronger person can apply that force more efficiently. If you can lift 500 pounds and I can lift 400 and we're working with a load of 300 you'll do reps with a lower effort. I perhaps need to drop to 200 pounds and lift at a higher rate to match your total work output. A part of a plan like paddle monster is gym work to add strength.
There is still is still plenty of debate in endurance sports whether strength training is beneficial or really transferable due to the loads being so load and the specificity of the muscle firing patterns/speed. That said, I do strength and conditioning work. Mainly due to my age now.
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Warmuth, That doesn't really apply to a water sport, or even anything like bicycling. Weight increases drag exponentially. Human power increases linearly at best, but actually, muscle power lags behind weight substantially. Muscles make up about 30 to 40 percent of human weight. Increase weight by twenty pounds and you might gain eight pounds of muscle, and some of it is in places that you can't use to paddle faster. For males, a lot of the difference in weight is upper body mass, and so there is a gain in useful muscle up to a point. If there weren't, then 90 pound guys would be winning everything. The sweet spot is actually between 165 and 195. The ergonomics and math is a bit complex, and I've never been able to find a wonderful resource I located some time ago that explained it all. Maybe UK knows where that is. But the math worked elegantly and explained to my complete satisfaction why no one is ever going to beat a Tahitian canoe crew. Ever.
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The elite paddlers, especially those with relatively slow cadences like Danny and Michael (although their cadences are still fast compared to most of us) are clearly generating a lot of “power at the blade”, otherwise they wouldn’t be going so fast. The question is how, and how they are managing to do efficiently translate this into forward speed. It’s clearly not just one thing or we’d all be fast. And being fast is more than just power-to-weight because some big guys can be very fast (despite, OK, never being likely to be top 10 in the world in a flatwater race).
So, it’s presumably a large number of factors that each contribute a small amount, and which may interact with each other such that the result appears more than the sum of its parts. That’s where the magic occurs. That’s probably the missing ingredient we can’t all quite put our fingers on - including the people who do it themselves, in all probability.
I was once told that it was Goethe who said that you wouldn’t be able to understand how a fly flies by pulling it apart into its constituent components. It was probably someone else who actually said it, but it’s a nice point: if true understanding of an effect comes from understanding a series of formal interactions (in the statistical sense of the word) then no wonder it is hard for us to be able to explain here why e.g. Michael Booth can do what he does: interactions are notoriously hard to understand. Two-Way interactions are tricky enough, but I was once told by an eminent statistician that no human is really clever enough to truly understand anything more than a 3-way interaction. So let’s hope that the magic of the top paddlers doesn’t consist of a series of 4-way interactions because it could be a very long time before we’ll ever understand it :)
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The elite paddlers, especially those with relatively slow cadences like Danny and Michael (although their cadences are still fast compared to most of us) are clearly generating a lot of “power at the blade”, otherwise they wouldn’t be going so fast. The question is how, and how they are managing to do efficiently translate this into forward speed. It’s clearly not just one thing or we’d all be fast. And being fast is more than just power-to-weight because some big guys can be very fast (despite, OK, never being likely to be top 10 in the world in a flatwater race).
So, it’s presumably a large number of factors that each contribute a small amount, and which may interact with each other such that the result appears more than the sum of its parts. That’s where the magic occurs. That’s probably the missing ingredient we can’t all quite put our fingers on - including the people who do it themselves, in all probability.
I was once told that it was Goethe who said that you wouldn’t be able to understand how a fly flies by pulling it apart into its constituent components. It was probably someone else who actually said it, but it’s a nice point: if true understanding of an effect comes from understanding a series of formal interactions (in the statistical sense of the word) then no wonder it is hard for us to be able to explain here why e.g. Michael Booth can do what he does: interactions are notoriously hard to understand. Two-Way interactions are tricky enough, but I was once told by an eminent statistician that no human is really clever enough to truly understand anything more than a 3-way interaction. So let’s hope that the magic of the top paddlers doesn’t consist of a series of 4-way interactions because it could be a very long time before we’ll ever understand it :)
Nice summary :D
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I think I know why the SUP paddle power meter was never released (beyond limited market) and how to fix the issue. The easy way to add a power meter to a paddle would be a strain gauge on the shaft. I did that with my paddle pod and never got values that seemed usable. Over long-ish distances attempting to measure the force while paddling with consistent effort applied to the shaft the strain gauge values fluctuated wildly. The relatively consistent accelerometer values and vibration curves didn't show any useful correlation to strain. I only measured the acceleration of the paddle blade, not the board, since what I was trying to measure was relative performance of the blades.
...
Said in another way: I bet Travis or Tituan cover a lot more ground than other paddlers for a given amount of force applied to the paddle shaft.
[disclaimer: I’m an engineer]
If I had to take a guess I’d say they’re applying more power. Just judging by looks Travis has got to be physically stronger than most of the other guys. It’s probably less that they’re covering more ground for a given amount of force and more that they just have higher force in general. Whichever explanation is correct when I saw Travis paddling in person I was amazed at how little effort he appears to be using.
Exactly.
Part of that is smooth efficient stroke and part, I believe, is effeciency of delivery of that power into forward motion of the board. I say Travis and Titou becauce both are really smooth and also both are masters at of deliverin that stroke power to the board.
I reckon forward velocity with respect to stress on the shaft would be an interesting metric to compare efficiency.
It's a good idea. From that, I'd instead opt for a metric that I would track that would be a ratio between forward velocity as a vector and the paddlers power output (calculated by taking into account stroke rate and force at the blade). It doesn't address all of the dynamics probably involved but it would be made up of elements you could target through training, would infer the paddlers efficiency and would be actionable intelligence.
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Yes, nice to have a direct measurement instead of deriving the values. The biggest issue in deriving force accurately is that the precise curve of total drag for a given board and rider isn't known. If you did know that then you can derive the force from the resultant acceleration just as accurately as you could directly measure it.
I think the big issue with a SUP paddle is that the shaft is so long and the hand position on the shaft is highly variable. I thought about sticking a load cell at the top inside of the shaft and running a Kevlar cord under tension to the blade end. I think that's what it would actually take to make direct measure, and that's nothing with any commercial potential. I have some bulk Kevlar non-woven cord, so if I get some free time I might try something, but that's a dim hope. Working with the cord is freaky and a little nervewracking. It's dangerous stuff. I cut the shit out of my hand just straightening a length of it.
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The elite paddlers, especially those with relatively slow cadences like Danny and Michael (although their cadences are still fast compared to most of us) are clearly generating a lot of “power at the blade”, otherwise they wouldn’t be going so fast. The question is how, and how they are managing to do efficiently translate this into forward speed. It’s clearly not just one thing or we’d all be fast. And being fast is more than just power-to-weight because some big guys can be very fast (despite, OK, never being likely to be top 10 in the world in a flatwater race).
So, it’s presumably a large number of factors that each contribute a small amount, and which may interact with each other such that the result appears more than the sum of its parts. That’s where the magic occurs. That’s probably the missing ingredient we can’t all quite put our fingers on - including the people who do it themselves, in all probability.
That's certainly true with swimming, and I think (could be wrong) that swimming has been analyzed a lot more than paddling. I've swum with fast swimmers, and watching them in the next lane, above water or below, they don't look like they're doing anything much differently than anyone else, but they go remarkably farther with a stroke, and remarkably faster. Many of them (and coaches) say exactly what you said--they're doing all kinds of actions, each a bit better than other people, and putting them together better. Even very good swimmers who can match each component action don't get the results of top swimmers, because they don't put them together as well. I think it's clear to anyone paddling that even if your stroke looked identical on video to a top paddler, that doesn't mean you get the same results. They just seem to explode forward and you don't.
Back to swimming, even a simple component, like pushing off from the wall and gliding, is made up of all kinds of actions and body positions. Roque Santos, a former Olympian, swam on my team and once went the length of a 25-yard pool with only a pushoff--no pull or kick. That's double what a very good swimmer can do, and it seems like there's almost nothing to it. He looks human, and he looks normal pushing off, he just goes double or triple the distance.
It's also something how incredibly wrong people have been over the years with their explanations of what swimmers are doing with their strokes and why it's working. It seems like every few years things swing to the opposite of what was previously the final, scientific word. Then they swing back, but with new explanations.
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I think it's clear to anyone paddling that even if your stroke looked identical on video to a top paddler, that doesn't mean you get the same results. They just seem to explode forward and you don't.
So very true! I think it's most likely the things you can't see on the video. Travis Grant talks a lot about core engagement, that's very hard to see on video and nearly impossible
to replicate and apply by your self. It is as natural movement as biting your toe nails (don't ask me how I know) but when successfully applied, the benefits are immense.
Tried it few times to the best of my understanding of how and when in the sequence of the stroke. The GPS don't lie, I could immediately see the jump in pace and the relief on other muscles.
I can only imagine the results if I was to apply it really well and improve the sequencing. The problem is it takes so much focus and drive, much more than I have to give. Every now and again
I lose sleep over it and then give it one more shot the next day, it lasts about 15 minutes...
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Yes. I remember some years ago someone doing an EMG study of the muscles used in paddling. If an updated version of that were used with the kinds of sophisticated temporal modelling available today (combined with other physiological and performance monitoring) then we might be able to understand how and why elite paddlers are so fast. But it would take a team of expert scientists, and no-one is going to spend the amount of money it would cost to do it. So we will probably remain in the dark in perpetuity, allowing enough explanatory wiggle-room for lots of people to sell us dubious training ideas for many years to come.
And then there is the issue that knowing how someone else does it does not mean that we can do it ourselves, or train someone else to. If we knew everything about what makes Roger Federer capable of doing what he does would that mean we could all play like him, or teach our children to? Nope. Knowing is one thing, but doing is another. Some things the elite performers do are probably only possible because they are who they are. Travis Grant may say to me “if you do the following things all simultaneously it allows your body to develop paddling muscles that you couldn’t otherwise develop: engage your core, while matching the speed of the blade at the catch perfectly to the speed of the board so there is no splash, while keeping the board on a perfectly even keel, and relax the muscles of your arm between blade exit and catch, while stretching the muscles of the abdomen and bracing your thigh muscles but stretching your knee, and breathing in through your nose not your mouth and looking forwards not down... etc etc does this mean I could do it and unleash the extra potential of those special paddling muscles. Again, nope. Maybe even, I’d be better off trying to find a technique that works for my own limitations rather than emulating too closely what the Usain Bolts of the paddling world do. Maybe even, trying to do what they do could even be dangerous for me (e.g. the extreme bending of the back that some elite paddlers seem to do), just as it would be for me to attempt the kind of perilous jumps that top mountain bikers do. You gotta work with what you’ve got.
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So very true! I think it's most likely the things you can't see on the video. Travis Grant talks a lot about core engagement, that's very hard to see on video and nearly impossible
to replicate and apply by your self. It is as natural movement as biting your toe nails (don't ask me how I know) but when successfully applied, the benefits are immense.
Tried it few times to the best of my understanding of how and when in the sequence of the stroke. The GPS don't lie, I could immediately see the jump in pace and the relief on other muscles.
I can only imagine the results if I was to apply it really well and improve the sequencing. The problem is it takes so much focus and drive, much more than I have to give. Every now and again
I lose sleep over it and then give it one more shot the next day, it lasts about 15 minutes...
Funny timing.
I have been trying to do the same, remembering right after the catch to contract abdominal while tilting the pelvis slightly (my form of SUP yoga :-) ) and I also noticed the GPS liking it. The problem is how long can you keep it up. Hopefully it starts to get more ingrained. I also noticed that my abs were hurting after the session regardless that I have a good core thanks to yoga.
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The problem is how long can you keep it up. Hopefully it starts to get more ingrained.
Yes, core engamsment and hip thrust for that matter seem the most tricky aspects of the stroke.
The sequencing of those 2 alone got me into trouble with the police as someone called-in reporting
a man in distress humping his paddle. That should answer your of question how long can you keep it up ;D
I remember someone on the zone posting a video of Georges Cronsteadt doing gym training just for those
moves, not for sequencing but for building muscle memory seemed like a real chore but you get the idea of how
much one have to put into it to get to the next level.
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I remember someone on the zone posting a video of Georges Cronsteadt doing gym training just for those
moves, not for sequencing but for building muscle memory seemed like a real chore but you get the idea of how
much one have to put into it to get to the next level.
Yes I remember seeing that one with a kind of sled on rails at the gym. Hip thrusting to move himself forward.
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I liken a stand up paddle stroke to that of a golf swing..... and as complex and subtle to master, with most of "us" never achieving, or having only fleeting moments, then followed by incidents of complete technique breakdown, and frustration.
From my experience as a golfer, and when I was playing at my best, I tried to concentrate one one to three "essential" swing thoughts (technique adjectives), and as the great Jack Nicklaus often opined "never forget to hit the ball".
I think the wisdom of the great golfers make for easy and effective transitions to SUP stroke mastery and enjoyment.
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"I’d be better off trying to find a technique that works for my own limitations rather than emulating too closely what the Usain Bolts of the paddling world do."
Glad someone said this as I have decided it is the best approach for my paddling goals. We can't all be "winners" but it is at least beneficial to appreciate all of the different aspects that go into a simple paddle session.
Paddleboarding, like golf, tennis and many other sports, is something that just about anyone can get into for a variety of benefits to mind, body and spirit. Like music......it does a body good.
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I know for certain that if I paddled like Connor does that I'd be in traction shortly thereafter. My back would explode. I've watched some elite paddlers radically change their stroke over the years, perhaps in response to the toll it was taking on their body, perhaps to accommodate a new Technique. Travis Grant adopted a lot of the Johnny Puakea stroke a few years ago--at least the catch part of the stroke. Annabel Anderson changed her stroke quite a bit a few years ago. She gave me a hard time about saying that in this forum (I guess Annabel reads the Zone sometimes) during a shuttle ride shortly thereafter, but I didn't get the impression that it was because I was wrong, she just didn't want anyone talking about it.
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I think it's clear to anyone paddling that even if your stroke looked identical on video to a top paddler, that doesn't mean you get the same results. They just seem to explode forward and you don't.
So very true! I think it's most likely the things you can't see on the video. Travis Grant talks a lot about core engagement, that's very hard to see on video and nearly impossible
to replicate and apply by your self. It is as natural movement as biting your toe nails (don't ask me how I know) but when successfully applied, the benefits are immense.
Tried it few times to the best of my understanding of how and when in the sequence of the stroke. The GPS don't lie, I could immediately see the jump in pace and the relief on other muscles.
I can only imagine the results if I was to apply it really well and improve the sequencing. The problem is it takes so much focus and drive, much more than I have to give. Every now and again
I lose sleep over it and then give it one more shot the next day, it lasts about 15 minutes...
My view as far as racing alone goes that in lieu of the holy grail of possessing perfect technique, frankly, many paddlers would benefit from training more frequently and with a closer eye on the quality and specificity of that training. Many racers I see just aren't either doing enough or when they do, its too little quality and too much junk. Mind you, until we get the kind of telemetry Ponobill details fantastically, the quantification of getting this right by using existing technology is going to be a little of a blunt force instrument for now. I'd tell most paddlers to throw their heart rate monitors away for a start...
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Funny that - when I was training for races I think I trained too often. It depends so much on your age and your previous history of fitness training. So it’s hard to give blanket advice. IMO if you are over about 45 it’s recovery ability that determines training frequency and volume rather than will, education or intent. You start crashing up against some uncomfortable biological realities that had never even occurred to you when you were under 40. Overtraining syndrome is a bitch.
Most of the racers you will be interacting with in the UK will be old farts. So their routines are already being biologically limited in a way that eg. Connor Baxter’s isn’t. Which may be partly why you are seeing so many people with light or apparently lackadaisical training schedules.
Another 10 years and you’ll know what I mean...
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1) Funny that - when I was training for races I think I trained too often.
2) It depends so much on your age and your previous history of fitness training. So it’s hard to give blanket advice.
3) IMO if you are over about 45 it’s recovery ability that determines training frequency and volume rather than will, education or intent.
4) You start crashing up against some uncomfortable biological realities that had never even occurred to you when you were under 40. Overtraining syndrome is a bitch.
5) Most of the racers you will be interacting with in the UK will be old farts. So their routines are already being biologically limited in a way that eg. Connor Baxter’s isn’t.
6) Which may be partly why you are seeing so many people with light or apparently lackadaisical training schedules.
1) I would argue that there is a difference between 'overtraining' and 'overeaching'. The first is chronic whilst the second is more common and relatively temporary and sometimes you really should do the latter (but not go as so far as the former). There is some modern software out there (such as training peaks or WKO) that allows people to get a better handle on what is going on. In the main though (and this is common across many endurance sports now) athletes are being encouraged to race less as racing doesn't generate a great training overload and can require more recovery than a well thought out training session.
2) Absolutely. I personally believe that many current racers at a domestic level haven't done a lot of competing and may well be late starters as SUP may have been a lifestyle choice first and a competitive sport second. That puts a real ceiling on what you can achieve. However, if you're careful, what you find with training is the more you do, the more you can handle (scaled for age and experience as you say). I've got 25 years of consistent training so its easier for me to tolerate a 12+ hour week than someone who started at 35. However, I can tell you that its taken me that 25 years to get here and its been a struggle as my numbers in the lab aren't that impressive.
3) It's always about recovery - irrespective of age. So many of us get this wrong. That's where you make the gains, not doing the training. It's just as you go 50+ you're going to need increasingly more of it. I test the water occasionally but I still have found that for me, as a rule, I need to alternate between one hard day and one easy day with one full day off a week. Any more and I'll be over-reaching within 2-3 weeks.
4) Time is ultimately against you. I always like the line from the film 'Moneyball': "We're all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children's game, we just don't... don't know when that's gonna be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us are told at forty...... but we're all told."
5) Not as much as people think. The way athletes are training now is reshaping the preconceptions of when the fat lady should be singing. I know of many athletes (granted, in low impact sports) that are now seeing little drop off from 40-50 and its not the cliff edge it used to be (I'll let you know when I get there - I'm 43). The key thing is knowing what to do, when to do it and why you're doing it.
6) I think this is solely due to SUP being a lifestyle choice first, a racing outlet second for pretty much all of us. It's not like swimming, biking or running really. Hell, I only paddle at all to act as the antithesis of my bike racing and I don't do any structured training for SUP at all.
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My view as far as racing alone goes that in lieu of the holy grail of possessing perfect technique, frankly, many paddlers would benefit from training more frequently and with a closer eye on the quality and specificity of that training...
Well, for every paddler following this advice, especially the "quality and specificity" part, perfect technique wouldn't lag far behind, but only in a perfect world.
In the real world most people don't have the "know how" to achieve that. Even folks that do know how, have hard time self train. Building and constantly
updating an articulated training plan takes a lot of effort, know how and even creativity that only a good coach that knows you can provide.
Technology can get you so far, but you really have to know what to do with all the readings you'll get from this fancy telemetry and put it together in a meaningful way.
It's just easier to go for a 3 hour paddle and, have the occasional brain fart of practicing technique for 5 minutes, perform 2 pivot turns and go on with your day.
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1) Well, for every paddler following this advice, especially the "quality and specificity" part, perfect technique wouldn't lag far behind, but only in a perfect world.
2) In the real world most people don't have the "know how" to achieve that. Even folks that do know how, have hard time self train. Building and constantly
updating an articulated training plan takes a lot of effort, know how and even creativity that only a good coach that knows you can provide.
3) Technology can get you so far, but you really have to know what to do with all the readings you'll get from this fancy telemetry and put it together in a meaningful way.
4) It's just easier to go for a 3 hour paddle and, have the occasional brain fart of practicing technique for 5 minutes, perform 2 pivot turns and go on with your day.
1) Well, to put it in a car context, 'if your car handles like crap, at least try and compensate by making sure its got some horsepower'.
2) I agree. Look at the rise of services like Paddlemonster. I personally neither like the model or see it as proper coaching but the market will take what it can offer if it reduces brain matter time.
3) Again, I completely agree with you. I know of hell of a lot of runners with heart rate monitors or cyclists with power meters that are little more than expensive speedo's.
4) I would say (ignoring the pleasure factor for a moment) of why go for a 3 hour paddle if you can get the same results in 2. There aren't any short cuts but its all too damn easy to waste time on junk mileage.
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I would say (ignoring the pleasure factor for a moment) of why go for a 3 hour paddle if you can get the same results in 2. There aren't any short cuts but its all too damn easy to waste time on junk mileage.
Unfortunately, wasting time on junk is the easiest thing to do in every aspect of our lives.
eating junk food, watching junk shows, reading junk news/information and so on. It's just there front and center and in abundance.
That's why you shouldn't ignore the pleasure factor. Look at it this way, I maybe wasting time on on junk milage but at least it is
time away from all the harmful junk mentioned above and at the end of the day it has and will make me a better paddles, even if not elite.
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And there, folks, is the manifesto of the “slacker paddler”.
The great thing about not racing is you can make pure enjoyment your aim. It’s like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders :)
Just please yourself and leave all the struggling, grunting, fighting, ego, and disappointment to the poor racers :)
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That works for me....... ;)
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This is all reminding me that of all the sports I've done, they've all been competitive, but the competition itself hasn't been what motivates me. The competition is a tool to become more skilled. What motivates me to improve paddling is a desire to be able to have a smooth, strong stroke so I can cover distance seemingly effortlessly, as the best paddlers do. Same with swimming--the idea of having a smooth, graceful, powerful stroke. Same with running--I remember seeing Frank Shorter looking like he was gliding effortlessly through the 1972 Munich marathon, and that became my goal to be able to run like that.
If you want to learn how to do a sport well, you learn from the people who have mastered the sport, and (at least in the sports I've done) you find those people in racing. But the racing itself doesn't have to be the real motivation, even for people who are racing and training for racing.
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This is all reminding me that of all the sports I've done, they've all been competitive, but the competition itself hasn't been what motivates me. The competition is a tool to become more skilled. What motivates me to improve paddling is a desire to be able to have a smooth, strong stroke so I can cover distance seemingly effortlessly, as the best paddlers do.
If you want to learn how to do a sport well, you learn from the people who have mastered the sport, and (at least in the sports I've done) you find those people in racing. But the racing itself doesn't have to be the real motivation, even for people who are racing and training for racing.
I am totally with you there. I do two or three "races" a year just to take my own temperature in the big scale of progress or lack of.
All have two things in common:
1) They are over 14km
2) They are in a very scenic place (even if I paddle the same places most week-ends of the year, they are still beautiful places)
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This is all reminding me that of all the sports I've done, they've all been competitive, but the competition itself hasn't been what motivates me. The competition is a tool to become more skilled. What motivates me to improve paddling is a desire to be able to have a smooth, strong stroke so I can cover distance seemingly effortlessly, as the best paddlers do. Same with swimming--the idea of having a smooth, graceful, powerful stroke. Same with running--I remember seeing Frank Shorter looking like he was gliding effortlessly through the 1972 Munich marathon, and that became my goal to be able to run like that.
If you want to learn how to do a sport well, you learn from the people who have mastered the sport, and (at least in the sports I've done) you find those people in racing. But the racing itself doesn't have to be the real motivation, even for people who are racing and training for racing.
Yap, that's pretty much summarize it, at least for me.
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You guys are lucky to have racers who will share their technique knowledge with you. In the UK the top racers don’t really do that - well, not without money changing hands, anyway. Maybe not even then. If they’ve found a way to beat the next guy they are going to keep that to themselves. The only real source of information (beyond the beginner level) is the interweb.
There are a couple of exceptions, but in general I don’t think our racers see it as their job to be ambassadors for the sport. They are just their to win, and to squeeze a bit of money out of the sponsors/public if they can. We don’t have any SUP racer who has really excelled on the interntional stage, like you could say of France, Spain, the Netherlands etc (and even tiny Denmark!). So it’s not clear to me that anyone here knows much more than anyone else. Mostly the guys (and girls) that are winning are doing so just because they are semi-pro athletes (and/or are younger than their competitors) with time on their hands for training, not because they have amazing technique I think. So it’s not clear to me who I’d turn to to learn this buttery smooth effortless technique of which you speak. I’m not even sure that many of the top racers here actually love the sport, rather than that they do it because they like to win. If they stopped winning, they’d switch sport, I suspect.
Maybe this is why I’m a bit jaded about what racing has to offer, in terms of pure enjoyment of paddling.
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Well I take coaching with one of our top paddler in Canada from time to time. So some money change hands but I am also regularly paddling with him for fun.
He is an extraordinary long distance paddler so that works better than otherwise.
I have also gone to some clinics with the like of Boothy and Applesteeze but these are usually really focused on racing so of less interest to me.
Next time Travis Grant is around here, if I can I will go to one of his clinic bypassing the corresponding race.... Sure would like to see his take on stroke in general.
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1) In the UK the top racers don’t really do that - well, not without money changing hands, anyway.
2) We don’t have any SUP racer who has really excelled on the interntional stage, like you could say of France, Spain, the Netherlands etc (and even tiny Denmark!).
3) If they stopped winning, they’d switch sport, I suspect.
1) Actually, I've never found that to be the case. In fact, I've found the opposite that people are unusually open about it in the UK. However, I do find you have to be 'in the scene' to gain the trust. I often get asked to put content out on the web or magazines which I don't mind as SUP is not my main sport. I do agree with you that some others do this for profit or sponsor obligation but, face to face, everyone I know is very open if you ask them.
2) I d'know. Marie Buchanan is a world class female paddler. She took 14th at the ISA worlds and was 2nd at the King of the Cut downwinder in Oz. That's not too shabby.
3) Again, I don't see this. Many of the top people in the UK are originally from lifestyle sports so don't seem to have the need to be competitive somewhere (like someone like myself would be). Mind you, I only got into SUP to replace going to the gym so even if I don't race (and I'm not doing much this year due to other projects), I still paddle 2-3 times a week for conditioning.
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The great thing about not racing is you can make pure enjoyment your aim. It’s like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders :)
I completely agree with you. However, I personally don't have that kind of connection with any sport. I've tried.... I really have... but in the end, I realised that I enjoyed the journey to performance.
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The great thing about not racing is you can make pure enjoyment your aim. It’s like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders :)
I completely agree with you. However, I personally don't have that kind of connection with any sport. I've tried.... I really have... but in the end, I realised that I enjoyed the journey to performance.
To me it looks like you're enjoying more the journey of understanding the ins and outs of what makes good performance :)
incidentally, I happen to love that aspect too, I just don't like to put the hard work involved, I found a nice cheat in you ;D
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ukgm said:
2) I d'know. Marie Buchanan is a world class female paddler. She took 14th at the ISA worlds and was 2nd at the King of the Cut downwinder in Oz. That's not too shabby.“
Marie is a 40-something year old woman who is doing a lot better than a 40+ yr old woman from a country where she has virtually no direct competition should be doing. So I take my hat off to her. But I don’t think she is even top 50 in the world right now - and the UK doesn’t have any women in the top 30. On the men’s side, apart from Aaron Rowe ranked 65 (and who paddles for the Channel Islands rather than under the UK flag) we have no-one inside the top 100. For an island nation of 67 million that has SUP races most weekends, that’s pitiful. By comparison, France has 13 men in the top 100. So there ya go - France has *thirteen times* as many top SUP racers as the UK. As a nation, we are crap at SUP racing, pure and simple. If that is to change the first thing we need to do is be realistic about what change would require. Excellence emerges from a culture of excellence. It doesn’t take that much for it to happen, but it does require a spark from someone who is obviously world-class themselves, and who is willing to invest in the next generation, not just themselves. We don’t have anyone like that.
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1) Marie is a 40-something year old woman who is doing a lot better than a 40+ yr old woman from a country where she has virtually no direct competition should be doing.
2) But I don’t think she is even top 50 in the world right now - and the UK doesn’t have any women in the top 30.
3) On the men’s side, apart from Aaron Rowe ranked 65 (and who paddles for the Channel Islands rather than under the UK flag) we have no-one inside the top 100. For an island nation of 67 million that has SUP races most weekends, that’s pitiful.
4) By comparison, France has 13 men in the top 100. So there ya go - France has *thirteen times* as many top SUP racers as the UK. As a nation, we are crap at SUP racing, pure and simple. If that is to change the first thing we need to do is be realistic about what change would require. Excellence emerges from a culture of excellence. It doesn’t take that much for it to happen, but it does require a spark from someone who is obviously world-class themselves, and who is willing to invest in the next generation, not just themselves. We don’t have anyone like that.
1) The reason she is so good has nothing to do with the number of other women competing or the weakness of the field. Her results of the internationals she has done shows that. Granted, our female strength and depth of racing is in a dire state here.
2) Well, you'd only know that if she chased points or was on the circuit - she doesn't and isn't. The ranking doesn't mean anything as a result. As I say, she qualifies for the finals at the ISA worlds comfortably so beyond that, it is hard to put an exact figure on her true ranking. I wouldn't get too hung up on her age - she can still beat most of the men here.
3) Under the 2018 ISA rules, we are not allowed to have separate nations for major events due to the ISA following the Olympic protocol. Aaron will paddle under team GB, not CI. Again, I know Aaron (and he doesn't chase international points) so his 65th ranking is meaningless. He's mainly interested in SUP surfing and when he has occasionally made forays overseas, he was international standard and made surf finals. Granted though, once you get past Aaron and Marie, things look decidedly thin here. Ryan James also pulls out a decent result against top paddlers when he wants to (but he doesn't compete overseas often either).
4) This only suggests that the French may be more motivated to engage in any ranking system or circuit whereas I know the brits frankly don't. However, I completely agree that the british strength and depth just isn't there (and I suspect that this shows no sign of changing). However, you're right, success does breed success (provided international or pro SUP participation is a desirable aim - I'm not sure it is..... that's how under-developed the sport is right now).
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Any decent athlete can have their day, if they pick their battles. It’s being motivated enough and physically capable of turning up to races and doing it over and over again consistently that distinguishes the great from the “I got a one-way ticket to Palookaville” would-be contenders. We can all be potential champs sitting in our bedrooms.
And you missed my point about Marie having no competition, I think.
And I’m not sure you got the rest either. What it would take for the UK to excel on the international stage would be a set-up like they have in a Hood River or Currumbin. You need a trainer/manager who has intimate knowledge of what it takes to be the best in the world and has a commitment to finding and developing that person. We don’t have an equivalent of the Carrumbin SUP Club or the Hood River junior racer development program. Where are our Hannah Hills equivalents, raising money so they can go racing?
https://www.gofundme.com/supracefund
She can look up to Fiona Wilde, and work with the same people who got her started. Is any world-class female (or Male for that matter) paddler in the UK spending hours of their own time helping to develop the next generation of racers (who are not related to them)? No. What you have is a few people of a certain age who occasionally come mid-pack on the international stage and then retreat home to carry on doing what they do with little impact on those around them. In short, we lack teachers, and we lack inspirational communicators and organisers with the political and interpersonal skills to draw people together and attract funding. Behind every exceptional athlete is a team who has created that person. Without that team you will get the occasional flash in the pan but that’s it.
And to argue that we (the UK) are doing OK really is exactly a sign of the problem of low expectations we have. No, we are not doing well at all. We as a nation are doing very badly. We will never be anything else but also-rans if we don’t even know what good looks like. Well, I’ll tell you what good looks like. It looks like Hawaii. It looks like Australia. Anything else is just pissing in the wind. THAT is the attitude it takes to be good.
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1) Any decent athlete can have their day, if they pick their battles. It’s being motivated enough and physically capable of turning up to races and doing it over and over again consistently that distinguishes the great from the “I got a one-way ticket to Palookaville” would-be contenders. We can all be potential champs sitting in our bedrooms.
2) And you missed my point about Marie having no competition, I think.
3) What it would take for the UK to excel on the international stage would be a set-up like they have in a Hood River or Currumbin.
4) She can look up to Fiona Wilde, and work with the same people who got her started. Is any world-class female (or Male for that matter) paddler in the UK spending hours of their own time helping to develop the next generation of racers (who are not related to them)? No. What you have is a few people of a certain age who occasionally come mid-pack on the international stage and then retreat home to carry on doing what they do with little impact on those around them. In short, we lack teachers, and we lack inspirational communicators and organisers with the political and interpersonal skills to draw people together and attract funding. Behind every exceptional athlete is a team who has created that person. Without that team you will get the occasional flash in the pan but that’s it.
5) It looks like Hawaii. It looks like Australia. Anything else is just pissing in the wind. THAT is the attitude it takes to be good.
1) Well, I'd argue that's event periodisation in some cases and a lack of the lifestyle (due to a semi-pro/amateur culture in the UK) in most others . As I mentioned earlier, paddlers over here aren't interested in the tours or the series. As a result, any good result is cherrypicked but insofar as endurance sport goes, there are no miracles. I don't judge an athlete based on competitive frequency personally.
2) Your point was about her ranking though. I don't give her domestic racing record much weight for the same reasons you would (the field strength is poor).
3) A massive sea change granted. I agree with you. It's made worse that there are currently only two male paddlers who are sub 23 years of age that have any commitment and they'd need major change in approach to make a run as an international athlete. The rest of us are too old or too slow. Our two young paddlers are more lifestyle orientated too. That's healthy but its not going to produce a world class athlete.
4) You're right but the main fault lies with our governing bodies too. There are currently initiatives I know of in place to change this but as things stand, the sport in the UK typically is catering for extremely fit amateur paddlers and weekend warriors. Let's not lose sight of the fact that SUP is a small niche sport anyway. Even in the US, Larry Cain wins events and he is pushing 60 soon. Its an unstable situation.
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Interesting discussion. I would add three things--one that can happen anywhere, and two that are limiting. First, you need a selfless and capable coach/organizer. Steve Gates' business (Big Winds) is dependent on the water sports activity level in Hood River, but that's more a resource and an excuse to spend the time, effort and money coaching kids than it is a reason. Results of the program speak for itself. There's a lot more strength on the bench than Fiona and Hannah. You need a Steve Gates, and there just aren't a lot of those around.
What isn't so obvious is the deep talent pool of Hood River--a town of 7500 people. An absurd proportion of that tiny number of permanent residents are world-class athletes and there's an even deeper pool of amateur multi-sport athletes. When people ask "what do you do?" in Hood River they don't mean "what's your job." That's the gene pool, and the expectations placed on young kids growing up here--both by their parents and their peers. Do something fun and hard. Kids like Hannah work multiple jobs to afford their equipment and support their program. And then they go train their asses off in every spare moment. It's the expected thing here.
And that leads to venue. People live in Hood River largely to access its incredible range of sport. It's not surprising that ski towns turn out great skiers. The Gorge is a giant outdoor gym, and watersports are at least half of the activity available. Unique. I've never been anywhere like it. It's why I moved here, but you can imagine what it's like for kids who grow up here.
My take on sports programs elsewhere is that they might have a much bigger overall pool to draw from, but they don't have the natural advantages that breed intensity and focus that odd places like Currumbin or Hood River already have. I'm not sure that can be created, I suspect it just happens where the situation is fertile.
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Interesting discussion. I would add three things--one that can happen anywhere, and two that are limiting. First, you need a selfless and capable coach/organizer. Steve Gates' business (Big Winds) is dependent on the water sports activity level in Hood River, but that's more a resource and an excuse to spend the time, effort and money coaching kids than it is a reason. Results of the program speak for itself. There's a lot more strength on the bench than Fiona and Hannah. You need a Steve Gates, and there just aren't a lot of those around.
What isn't so obvious is the deep talent pool of Hood River--a town of 7500 people. An absurd proportion of that tiny number of permanent residents are world-class athletes and there's an even deeper pool of amateur multi-sport athletes. When people ask "what do you do?" in Hood River they don't mean "what's your job." That's the gene pool, and the expectations placed on young kids growing up here--both by their parents and their peers. Do something fun and hard. Kids like Hannah work multiple jobs to afford their equipment and support their program. And then they go train their asses off in every spare moment. It's the expected thing here.
And that leads to venue. People live in Hood River largely to access its incredible range of sport. It's not surprising that ski towns turn out great skiers. The Gorge is a giant outdoor gym, and watersports are at least half of the activity available. Unique. I've never been anywhere like it. It's why I moved here, but you can imagine what it's like for kids who grow up here.
My take on sports programs elsewhere is that they might have a much bigger overall pool to draw from, but they don't have the natural advantages that breed intensity and focus that odd places like Currumbin or Hood River already have. I'm not sure that can be created, I suspect it just happens where the situation is fertile.
I was talking to a photographer I know who lives just outside Hood River, telling her about standup there. She said she's been wanting to try it but keeps putting it off, even though "my niece Fiona does it and keeps offering to take me out". It was THAT Fiona, and she knew she was good, but like you said, that's just how it is in Hood River--your niece or neighbor being world class in an outdoor sport isn't a big deal.
I think Eugene has been similar with running. I was visiting there once, and went out running looking for Pre's Trails. I asked a guy who was running, and he said he was going there himself, so I joined him. He said he'd run the 5000m an all-comers' meet a few days before, and when I asked him how he did, he told me a world-class time, as if it were nothing. It was Mike Boit, one of the world's fastest distance runners. Then we were running along and Rudy Chapa--another world-class runner--appeared and ran with us. Anywhere else the odds of that happening...
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Personally, I advocated use of the ‘Stroke Index’ (SI). To calculate your SI, you merely multiply your average speed in metres per second by its average distance per stroke in metres. This goes a little way to normalising the changes you might make when paddling by producing a score that really is a near surrogate for your paddling efficiency (using the metrics we can realistically access at the moment).
I'm struggling to understand what this stroke index actually measures. Multiplying speed by distance per stroke gives you a product in units of meters^2/stroke*sec. I can't figure out what a stroke*sec describes, much less how dividing an area by it tells me anything about the efficiency of my stroke! ???
Dividing speed by heart rate strikes me as a much simpler and more intuitive index of paddle efficiency that's also easily calculated from SpeedCoach or smartphone app data. The resulting quotient is in units of meters per heartbeat, roughly distance per unit of effort, which is what I want to maximize, whether racing or touring. All the other stuff like stroke rate, power etc might help explain how a particular change in technique increases or decreases efficiency, but all I really want to know is whether that change lets me travel farther with the same level of effort.
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Try as I might I do not see how Stroke Index is useful for your tests, ukgm.
The swimming article you linked me to did not explain it’s use at all (and did a very muddled and downright poor data analysis). I read it twice and it didn’t make any point, whether clear or not. Best I could gather is SI is used mostly to try compare swimming styles among each other. No surprise that freestyle has the bigger SI.
Ukgm, you said yourself [above] that different paddlers use different cadences. So let’s take a simple real life example.
Look at the finish of the SUP race in Japan (on SUP racer facebook page) with Connor and Noic paddling side by side. They go the same speed yet Noic clearly uses a much slower cadence. So therefore Noic’s “distance per stroke” is greater. We agree so far?
They are both going the same speed so by multiplying that same speed by their different “distance per stroke”'s and Noic therefore has a greater SI than Connor.
What the hell point that that show us? And how is this at all useful for the tests you use SI in?
Just measure speed, man. I wouldn’t even try to measure power input because you’ll miss something. Keep it simple. And use a lot more paddlers. Preferably world class ones. Elite paddlers will be able to better control a constant output than amateurs. Your tests using one person are useful only for that one person. You.
I continue to very much not see how SI makes sense for the application you use it for. Didn’t make sense day one. Makes less the more I think about it.
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Try as I might I do not see how Stroke Index is useful for your tests, ukgm.
The swimming article you linked me to did not explain it’s use at all (and did a very muddled and downright poor data analysis). I read it twice and it didn’t make any point, whether clear or not. Best I could gather is SI is used mostly to try compare swimming styles among each other. No surprise that freestyle has the bigger SI.
Ukgm, you said yourself [above] that different paddlers use different cadences. So let’s take a simple real life example.
Look at the finish of the SUP race in Japan (on SUP racer facebook page) with Connor and Noic paddling side by side. They go the same speed yet Noic clearly uses a much slower cadence. So therefore Noic’s “distance per stroke” is greater. We agree so far?
They are both going the same speed so by multiplying that same speed by their different “distance per stroke”'s and Noic therefore has a greater SI than Connor.
What the hell point that that show us? And how is this at all useful for the tests you use SI in?
Just measure speed, man. I wouldn’t even try to measure power input because you’ll miss something. Keep it simple. And use a lot more paddlers. Preferably world class ones. Elite paddlers will be able to better control a constant output than amateurs. Your tests using one person are useful only for that one person. You.
I continue to very much not see how SI makes sense for the application you use it for. Didn’t make sense day one. Makes less the more I think about it.
In your example of two paddlers, it would infer that one paddler may well be more inefficient than another. However, this was never my point. My articles clearly stated that I had appropriated it's use slightly differently for the purpose of allowing a single paddler to have the means to compare changes in their own equipment to determine their best choices. It's for relative checks, not absolute comparisons of a large sample group. The changes in SI act as a surrogate to their efficiency. You criticise the use of a single paddler but that was exactly its actual stated purpose in my articles. If you test a sample of paddlers making the same change, you'll get an answer if an equipment change is generally beneficial - but that isn't what an individual athlete needs. They need to know if it's good for them personally (and then if the results have both precision and accuracy to be considered viable). Your suggestion of assessing world class paddlers is wrong as the results would not be transferable. You seem like a smart guy so I can only assume you haven't read my articles yet fully so as to then miss these details or see my stated limitations or intent of its use.
SI is a peer reviewed concept from multiple authors. Take a look at Larry Cains use for testing two Allstars on his blog page too. We also both used secondary metrics to support the test data. My take on SI is slightly different but comes out in a peer reviewed journal shortly. It may not be to your liking and that's your prerogative.
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Personally, I advocated use of the ‘Stroke Index’ (SI). To calculate your SI, you merely multiply your average speed in metres per second by its average distance per stroke in metres. This goes a little way to normalising the changes you might make when paddling by producing a score that really is a near surrogate for your paddling efficiency (using the metrics we can realistically access at the moment).
I'm struggling to understand what this stroke index actually measures. Multiplying speed by distance per stroke gives you a product in units of meters^2/stroke*sec. I can't figure out what a stroke*sec describes, much less how dividing an area by it tells me anything about the efficiency of my stroke! ???
Dividing speed by heart rate strikes me as a much simpler and more intuitive index of paddle efficiency that's also easily calculated from SpeedCoach or smartphone app data. The resulting quotient is in units of meters per heartbeat, roughly distance per unit of effort, which is what I want to maximize, whether racing or touring. All the other stuff like stroke rate, power etc might help explain how a particular change in technique increases or decreases efficiency, but all I really want to know is whether that change lets me travel farther with the same level of effort.
For what it's worth, you'll see in my articles that I used multiple types of indices to do exactly that - not just SI. I used a IO index (input output index) too. I don't express either as an area. I also wouldn't use heart rate as a metric though - you'll need a long test interval for it to stabilise and then you won't be able to do enough test runs to know the precision of your testing session. Without that, the testing won't be any good.
If you'd like to see this, go to the SUPboarder mag website and search for fin, paddle or board tests by Bryce Dyer. The series of two or three articles should explain it better than I can do here. Alternatively, look on Larry Cains blog page for when he tests two different Starboard Allstars and uses it too. Likewise, he uses multiple indices and metrics too.
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Sometime soon I am going to do a thorough analysis of my latest board acquisition...a 14 Imagine Rocket.
I will be using my latest formula which I call SS.
(Smiles per stroke) for those that aren't familiar with the system. ):...........
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Sometime soon I am going to do a thorough analysis of my latest board acquisition...a 14 Imagine Rocket.
I will be using my latest formula which I call SS.
(Smiles per stroke) for those that aren't familiar with the system. ):...........
Does it take into considerations blisters...?
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No problem....I'm old enough and have been at it long enough for my blisters to have turned into calluses :)...
Paint blisters, well.....that's another matter. My new board arrived with some cosmetic damage and now I have to try and fix it before I get it wet. I'm not so happy about that.....but at least Paddleboard Specialists are taking good care of me and hopefully the shipper will take care of them. Damn risky shipping a delicate paddleboard across the US these days. Somebody needs to invent a custom "Spock Box" for shipping and travel for these expensive slices of carbon and foam and glass.
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Sometime soon I am going to do a thorough analysis of my latest board acquisition...a 14 Imagine Rocket.
I will be using my latest formula which I call SS.
(Smiles per stroke) for those that aren't familiar with the system. ):...........
This is what it should come down to. Now in my world, “Smiles per Stroke” takes in things like speed, stability, how the board handles in different conditions, how the board looks, etc., etc. And then there is just the intangible of “how does this board feel to me”?
But at the end of the day, I think you’ve nailed it Connector14. Smiles per Stroke. I love it :)
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By the way, I’m also currently piloting the use of an iPhone and its accelerometers as a means to test equipment. Early days on validating that one but I’m using it as part of my tests of the Allison fin system.
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The iPhone accelerometer is sensitive, but a bit noisy. How do you plan to use it?
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The iPhone accelerometer is sensitive, but a bit noisy. How do you plan to use it?
There some after market apps but the raw data output is enormous. I’ll use stroke rate as the dependant and then look at the acceleration data as a variable when comparing equipment changes over a fixed distance.
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The iPhone accelerometer is sensitive, but a bit noisy. How do you plan to use it?
There some after market apps but the raw data output is enormous. I’ll use stroke rate as the dependant and then look at the acceleration data as a variable when comparing equipment changes over a fixed distance.
Surely, Acceleration and stroke rate are only going to be useful when assessing fins if you were going in a perfect straight line somehow? If I put a tiny fin in, my acceleration might be high because they’d be no drag, and my stroke rate could be high or low depending on how I deal with the yaw. But I could be wavering all over the ship like a drunk grandma on a bouncy castle, and therefore be dead slow.
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If I put a tiny fin in, my acceleration might be high because they’d be no drag...
More likely you're going to drift your tail like a dog longing for attention. Not sure that's a helpful metric ;)
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If I put a tiny fin in, my acceleration might be high because they’d be no drag...
More likely you're going to drift your tail like a dog longing for attention. Not sure that's a helpful metric ;)
THAT was my point, Burchas. Acceleration only mean something if you are accelerating in the right direction!
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The iPhone accelerometer is sensitive, but a bit noisy. How do you plan to use it?
There some after market apps but the raw data output is enormous. I’ll use stroke rate as the dependant and then look at the acceleration data as a variable when comparing equipment changes over a fixed distance.
Surely, Acceleration and stroke rate are only going to be useful when assessing fins if you were going in a perfect straight line somehow? If I put a tiny fin in, my acceleration might be high because they’d be no drag, and my stroke rate could be high or low depending on how I deal with the yaw. But I could be wavering all over the ship like a drunk grandma on a bouncy castle, and therefore be dead slow.
It’s an important point you raise. It only reiterates why most testing needs to be for an individual paddler, not for a group. That way, tests like this are not specifically saying whether technology A is better than technology B but how efficiently a paddler uses technology A or technology B. A straight line when paddling is an indicator of paddling efficiency. With something as dynamic as SUP with so many factors involved, having tests which are relative is essential in my view.
To give you an example, I’ve done some tests whereby a fin works well with a given board but change a paddle and a different combination was actually better.
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Yeah, you’ll get the same for boards.
The board that *you* will be fastest on can quite easily not be the board *I’m* fastest on.
It’s funny, because if you say that to someone they will generally accept it. Especially if they have ever tried a board that was truly too tippy for them, or too low volume.
But then when it come to spending their money, they still think that if they buy the board that Connor Baxter is paddling, they will be as close to him in performance as they can get.
I guess that’s the power of marketing. It somehow allows us to hold happily two contradictory beliefs in mind at once.
It happens with fins too. You just have to try a bunch and note very carefully how they perform for you and your board, and get to know what works for you. You’ll drive yourself nuts trying to work out all the dynamics (don’t ask me how I know this) and then at the end you’ll realise that all you’ve learned is only true of *you* so is of next to no use for passing on as information to others.
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Yeah, you’ll get the same for boards.
The board that *you* will be fastest on can quite easily not be the board *I’m* fastest on.
It’s funny, because if you say that to someone they will generally accept it. Especially if they have ever tried a board that was truly too tippy for them, or too low volume.
But then when it come to spending their money, they still think that if they buy the board that Connor Baxter is paddling, they will be as close to him in performance as they can get.
I guess that’s the power of marketing. It somehow allows us to hold happily two contradictory beliefs in mind at once.
It happens with fins too. You just have to try a bunch and note very carefully how they perform for you and your board, and get to know what works for you. You’ll drive yourself nuts trying to work out all the dynamics (don’t ask me how I know this) and then at the end you’ll realise that all you’ve learned is only true of *you* so is of next to no use for passing on as information to others.
When I tested the Black project Tiger vs the Maliko my coast down tests showed the tiger was lower in drag as the deceleration was less. You'd expect this due to its smaller size so no surprises there. However, in actual time trials, it was within the noise of the test when compared to the Maliko. The reality was that with the board it was in (coupled with the nuances of my stroke), it produced a fractionally lower stroke index. When I rechecked the GPS coordinates, it became obvious that I was having to put less strokes on each side to maintain the right straight line course. As a result, this created extra time delays due to the paddle changing sides and this negatively affected the Stroke Index. As a result, on that board, I use the Maliko instead. However, my stroke is still improving year on year so this is something I'd recheck at some stage.
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Well, there ya go. But the question will be whether the data you gather will actually give you more accuracy in your decision-making than just ones general impressions when paddling. Because if it’s the case that you can just try two fins and pick the best one for you by feel alone on let’s say 80% of the time, and with all your fancy data you can only achieve a similar level of accuracy, then what’s the point of all the fancy stuff in practice? I guess it’s similar to comparing the utility of using heart rate vs, a subjective “effort index” when exercising: if the effort index can account for about 90% of either the expected training effect, or the HR values, then you might as well throw away the HR monitor, really. Not that I do, because I’m a data junky. But you get my point.
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Well, there ya go. But the question will be whether the data you gather will actually give you more accuracy in your decision-making than just ones general impressions when paddling. Because if it’s the case that you can just try two fins and pick the best one for you by feel alone on let’s say 80% of the time, and with all your fancy data you can only achieve a similar level of accuracy, then what’s the point of all the fancy stuff in practice? I guess it’s similar to comparing the utility of using heart rate vs, a subjective “effort index” when exercising: if the effort index can account for about 90% of either the expected training effect, or the HR values, then you might as well throw away the HR monitor, really. Not that I do, because I’m a data junky. But you get my point.
As far cycling goes, I threw my Heart rate monitor away around 10 years ago ;D
To pick up your point, the question is whether someone's intuition is as sensitive as proper data collection. Now I know I can get field testing with a data coefficient of variation of 3% across multiple flatwater runs. That's a big ask of someone's intuition and sensitivity. I personally think that's unlikely and not helped with the chaos of the conditions and any placebo's that may be in play. If you're a rough water racer, formalised testing probably won't help until an appropriate test is designed to suit its needs.
Either way, a lot of this is irrelevant unless people race because if you don't, you're better off just picking something you like the feel of. It's all about enjoyment. For those that do race, the next question is whether you believe a fin choice has an impact on your outcome. At smaller events (whereby draft trains are few in number), my own testing shows that fin choice is crucial. In a more packed and tactical affair, I'd defer to sensations and feelings as the needs are different. Put simply, it boils down to the main rules I lay out when I work with people. These are:
1) Know the events specific needs and characterisics.
2) Identify the athletes assistive/resistive factors.
2) Quantify the athletes assistive/resistive factors.
4) Implement the training and investment to maximise the needs and assistive factors whilst doing likewise to reduce the resistive factors.
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Interesting. What characteristics of fins do you think assist/resist drafting?
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Interesting. What characteristics of fins do you think assist/resist drafting?
It's no so much that but if you're going to be paddling alone in a race, the water will be calmer so you could go for a less stable and faster fin. In a bunch race it might be different and you might want a little more stability (coupled with the ability for the race to see more drafting so therefore be shielded more often therefore making your hydrodynamic optimisation less important).
I know there has been some discussion about the Allison fin concepts* resisting drafting. I've only got anecdotal feedback of some friends trying to draft me on my board in training when I use that set up but I personally think this effect has been exaggerated. Paddlers of a similar ability to me be seem to be able to cope with it but granted, it does create a quirky wake.
*(by the way, I'm still waiting to test that set up but the usual prevailing westerlies haven't been in evidence so far this year with our current warm weather)
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So. What characteristics of fins do you think assist/resist drafting?
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So. What characteristics of fins do you think assist/resist drafting?
:) :)
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I know there has been some discussion about the Allison fin concepts* resisting drafting. I've only got anecdotal feedback of some friends trying to draft me on my board in training when I use that set up but I personally think this effect has been exaggerated. Paddlers of a similar ability to me be seem to be able to cope with it but granted, it does create a quirky wake.
That really only applies to displacement type nose where the nose get shoved around by the weird wake. Could probably be configured better using a different choice of fin setup
to alter the wake. Also board dependent, boards that were designed around the concept will preform better.