www.rei.com Brad, an REI Outdoor School instructor, demonstrates basic kayak paddle strokes in this video: the forward stroke, turning strokes, and boat-control strokes. For the forward stroke, think about placing your blade in the water and moving past it, rather than pulling the blade through the water. This increases your efficiency. The forward stroke is made up of 3 elements: the windup, the catch, and the unwind. Rotate your torso (the windup), place the blade in the water by your foot (the catch), rotate your torso (the unwind) to move your boat forward, and then take the blade out of the water when your hand reaches your hip. Now your already wound up for the next catch. It’s a push with the upper hand and a pull with the lower hand while rotating the torso. In kayaking, technique is much more important than upper body strength. Now for turning strokes. The sweep stroke is a forward stroke that allows you to keep your momentum. It begins far forward in the front of the boat, sweeps way wide, and continues all the way back till the paddle touches the stern. Draw strokes help you move your kayak sideways, like to pull up next to a dock. The first draw stroke is a simple reach out and pull toward you. The other draw stroke is the sculling draw stroke: It’s a sustained back and forth motion, kind of like spreading peanut butter. The final stroke we’ll learn is how to stop a moving kayakâit’s back paddling, the reverse of the forward stroke.
Jul 112010
Thanks! I’m buying my first kayak (dagger) today so this is useful.
This is the best kayak training video I can find on youtube. Brad paddles with Zen style which I think very suitable for long distance paddling. I just got an inflatable kayak and hope to adapt what Brad shows here to my much wider kayak paddling. (Inflatable kayaks are much wider) Thanks for sharing.
I’m a new paddler and have watched pretty much every video. The REI videos are defintely the best out there!
im gonna be getting a kayak these vids are great
Great lesson! Very well explained and delivered. I’m looking forward to putting some of these tips to good use. Thanks!
Very useful thanks
sweet I’ve been having HUGE problems with turning thanks so much!
If you have any notion of simple physics, you could figure all this out on your own, of course, it’s good to watch this and understand why it works instead of spending time and risk flipping yourself over by doing it on your own.
download this at tubemusicdownload com – thank me later!
I’m enjoying all of your kayaking video. I used to go with a friend with a sit-on-top kayak but today at my local sporting goods store Pelican 8′ kayaks were on a huge sale, so I bought a sit-inside kayak and took it to the Maumee river (Ohio) already. I’ll be kayaking every day from now on
It would be great if you could post some video advice on what it takes to be able to handle class II and III or higher waters as that’s where I’m headed as soon as I’m ready. Thanks!!