Stroke Rate for Distance

[yugi]

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.

[PonoBill]

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.

[Luc Benac]

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.

[TallDude]

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.

[yugi]

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

[PonoBill]

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.

[Luc Benac]

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.

[ukgm]

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.

[ukgm]

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.

[ukgm]

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.

[pdxmike]

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.   


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.

[warmuth]

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.

[ukgm]

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.

[PonoBill]

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.

[warmuth]

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.