Bullpen: Kayak technique is simple, right? Not so fast

I went kayaking with some friends last summer at Point Defiance’s Owen Beach. I didn’t have an instructor telling me how to use the kayak.

It is, after all, fairly self-explanatory. You sit in the kayak. You paddle. The boat moves forward.

So when I visited the folks at the Gig Harbor Canoe and Kayak Race Team summer camp last week, I harbored some healthy skepticism. What specifically are the instructors teaching the kids that they couldn’t just figure out on their own?

Granted, I’m not naïve. I understand high-level kayak racing, at the national and international levels, requires good technique and pacing. But “technique” can be a vague term. I wanted to know what specifically they were teaching these kids to make them better — and faster.

“If you just went out recreationally, you wouldn’t really need to know the technique,” said instructor Austin Warren, a 2015 Gig Harbor High School graduate, unknowingly making a subtle dig regarding my situation and ignorance. “The technique we teach is for efficiency and speed. We try to teach the kids the basic technique so that if they stick around, they have a good base to get going with the team. We teach them the stuff around Gig Harbor, the basic landmarks, and just basic work ethic.”

Instructor Ryan Mechini elaborated further.

“There’s the general stroke, but then there’s so much more that goes into it,” he said. “There’s where you place it, how you place it, where your top hand goes, elbows, everything that goes into it.”

And stroke technique lessons are apparently not reserved for beginners. While Mechini, a 13-year kayaking veteran, was out on the water training last week, Gig Harbor Kayak and Canoe Race Team coach Holm Schmidt had some criticism of his form.

“He told me that my top hand was too low,” he said. “He told me to keep it higher and that helps boost the boat speed.”

While the instructors try not to overload the kids with too much information in a beginner’s summer camp, they lay the groundwork for proper stroke technique.

“With these kids, even making sure they’re holding the paddle the right way makes a huge difference,” Warren said. “Paddles are shaped so that they move through the water in a very specific way. Mostly, it’s just arm work. Going from too much out — like a horizontal paddle — to vertical. That change helps with speed. You want to keep it tight. That motion keeps it going forward, as opposed to going sideways. That’s the biggest thing they have to learn.”

So, what goes into a stroke? More than I would have imagined. Those kids should just consider themselves lucky that I’m not their summer camp instructor.

This story was originally published June 30, 2016 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Bullpen: Kayak technique is simple, right? Not so fast."