Race Piece Breakdown Part 2: Maintenance

Jack transitions into his a longer, more sustainable pace with his team coming back into the picture. He sees everyone as motivated to get to the finish line but it is still at least two thirds away. As he takes a quick glance to the side, he notices a team slowly inching ahead. Determined to make sure they don't pull away he lets out a loud cry.

"Come On GUYS!! Let's go!"

This moment in the race is typically known as the maintenance phase for most paddlers. In some countries I believe it is called the race body. Regardless of what you call it, it may be the most demanding piece of the race that requires the paddler to give a Herculean effort. The following factors may predetermine the speeds at which teams run at and also determine maintaining leads ahead of the competition especially in top level competitions or amongst teams who have similarly strong start pieces.

1) Aerobic Fitness
In the dragon boat, a paddler would have to paddle over 6000 kilograms worth of force throughout the entire 200m race. This is easily calculated by the number of strokes he typically takes in a typical 200m race (hypothetically speaking if he maintains a rate of 100 strokes a min and he ends the race in 1 min flat at a weight of 60kilos). You can imagine the immense amount of aerobic capacity he or she would need to ensure that his lungs will be able to last throughout the entire set. Novice teams would usually not be able to hold speeds beyond 30-40 seconds into the race for the fact that they most often than not, lack the time to build such fitness levels even if they were to build this fitness out of the water. Most top level teams however, have either the time to train their aerobic capacity leading ultimately to better overall average speeds.

2) Strength Endurance
Also related to aerobic fitness, strength endurance of a paddler refers to the amount of strength that a paddler is able to sustain throughout an aerobic piece typically found in the maintenance phase. That's why top teams who also have the ability to get access to proper gym facilities and a specific program targeted for strength endurance, will be able to hold speeds near the optimal. Repetitions may range from 20-40 repetitions with sustained effort throughout the set.

3) Coordination and timing
There are teams although they may lack that intensity at the starts, do pretty well at the maintenance phase due to their ability to feel the rhythm and glide of the boat. Together with better coordination and timing, they tend to get ahead of their rivals who may have punched out a few seats ahead to match them seat for seat.

Although I never put up anything extensive here, I still do believe the maintenance phase becomes more critical as the race piece extends from 200m to 1000m, something which I may have the chance of speaking about in future. With that I hope you enjoyed this post and share it with you fellow friends and paddlers alike!

Body Lean: Do you really need it?

In this post, I put up a very interesting article by Geoff  Fong from http://sfldbt.wordpress.comon Body lean. Although quintessential, is it necessary? Read the article to find out. 

Body Lean

How far does a paddler need to lean forward with their trunk to get a long pull?  How much lean is needed for a strong pull?  Probably not as much as you’d think.

What propels the boat?  The paddlers.

How do paddlers propel the boat?  They use their paddles.

Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the paddle blade is the business end.  Skillful paddlers can impart both great work and control to their paddle blade as it moves through the water.  Remember that work is defined as force over a distance.  Pulling the paddle faster through the water requires greater force.  The limits of human arthrokinematics and equipment leverage along with a paddlers physical strength determine some max value for work.  It probably looks like a bell-curve.  A paddler is only as strong as they are at that moment, but paddling technique has everything to do with paddling efficiency to reach the peak of that bell curve.

If you’re thinking of paddling from the perspective of how a paddle interacts with the water, the goal becomes how to move your body in a way that applies max leverage to the paddle through some optimum amount of paddle travel/displacement.  Several things happen when a paddler leans all the way down to the gunnel:

-  They lose reach at the paddle blade resulting in a shorter pull.  While it’s true that full lean to the gunnel may put the outside/bottom hand at its farthest forward distance from the bench, it doesn’t mean the same for the paddle blade (the business end).  Full lean takes away from our spinal mobility.  When your joints are taken to a maximum range in one direction, it becomes more and more difficult to move in other directions.  In this case, full trunk flexion takes away from rotation.  Try sitting in a chair, leaning forward and rotating your trunk to either side (don’t hurt yourself).  Now sit up straight and rotate in place.  You can probably rotate farther sitting up than curled over.  Decreased trunk rotation during the reach puts both hands at a similar distance from the bench, making a more vertical paddle angle on the entry, cutting actual reach at the paddle blade.

-  They have less strength.  Leaning forward fully during the reach puts most muscles used in paddling on full or very stretched position.  Glut max, hamstrings, lumbar extensors, lat dorsi, teres major, deltoids, rhomboids/mid and lower trapezei are out of their optimum zone for force production.  Your muscles are happiest and strongest in their mid-range.  For a simple example, think of curling a heavy weight.  It’s tough to start the lift from elbow fully extended and, when you’re fatigued, most folks struggle to get the weight all the way up to finish the rep (elbow fully flexed).  This is because 90 deg of elbow bend is about the middle of the elbow flexor muscle length (and coincidentally the joint angle of about the most mechanically efficient line of pull).

•  They are slower paddlers.  Sitting up from a fully reached position on a pull requires bringing up your whole trunk.  This takes a lot of time and energy because your trunk is a long lever arm.  Think of a long pendulum and how it swings slower than a short one (or takes much more force to swing faster than a short pendulum).  Slower movement sets paddling rate limitations.  When you’re racing fast, the water moves fast and you need to be able to move your paddle faster than the water to exert force on it.  Using a slow body movement like trunk flexion and extension will cap your ability to hold a faster rate to meet fast hull speeds.

How much lean is optimal?

The short answer is it depends.  The long answer is that there is no one answer and it depends.  (ha)

I am an advocate for a paddle stroke that has minimal trunk flexion/extension during the stroke and relatively more degrees of rotation.  My reason is that rotation allows for the paddle blade to get more positive on the catch and set the blade more forward than a negative/neutral angle, which increases the length of pull (possibly allowing more work to be performed).  Rotation is also mechanically more efficient for generating force to the paddle because the distance of your shoulders to your spine is less than the distance of your shoulders to your hips (shorter torque arm for rotation means less of a mechanical disadvantage compared to hip hinging alone).  One thing I am not a proponent of is sitting straight up and paddling.  It sets your shoulders way above the water line and, with it, your paddle resulting in less water contact and a shorter pull.  It also makes you work harder to resist the forces against the paddle (trunk as a long lever arm resisting paddle force at 90 degrees is the most mechanical disadvantage you can face).

I’ve never really paddled OC, but the stroke generally seems much more constrained than the typical dragon boat technique being used by local rec teams.  Part of the reason for less body excursion and more paddle movement is for energy conservation, which makes sense to me with OC’s racing for many miles.  I can see how allowing *some* increased trunk excursion may be desired in DB because the power gains may outweigh the need for energy conservation when you’re racing for sub 2 minutes or a 100-500 meter race.

On a side note, I think this is one of the reasons why senior/masters level teams can do as well/better than some youth teams is because masters paddlers may have 1) better water “feel” 2) physically less ability to flex their hips/spines so default to more rotation 3) better strength from a longer history of resistance training.

Credit to http://sfldbt.wordpress.com

Goals: How to Stay Focused When You Get Bored of your Sport

Having been a student athlete for the past decade plus of my life, I have had constant goals and dreams which i have always wanted to achieve in the course of my athletic pursuits. However, as many of you would have encountered, it can be difficult to stick to these goals. Every step of the way, I would hear of an athlete who comes in with lots of enthusiasm in the sport, seems to possess all the talents necessary of the sport; fit, athletic, extremely well built and runs like a bull on the track. Traits many might imagine may be perfect like a sport like dragon boat.
But as the drudgery of school, relationships and family commitments move along in their tertiary life, they fall out of the sport in pursuit of things that matter more. 

Photo by Getty Images