Race Strategy Training

Many would agree in the racing world how important race strategy training is for the athletes' as a way to focus themselves toward specifically training for a race. As far as my limited experience as a coach has been, I have seen for myself how well race specific strategies improve my paddlers on many different aspects of the sport. In this article, I would very much like to share the 5 learning points that I have picked up from using race strategy training.

1) Focus and direction
It seems that on my previous occasions on races before I used this technique, my paddlers would find having an ambigious plan that resulted in me changing the game play at the very last moment very unnerving and disorientating. I learnt alternatively to focus on a very specific game plan that they would be very confident of executing based on their strengths and would give them a very specific direction in how my training would be performed prior to the weeks leading up to the race.

2) Confidence

I have seen how my paddlers became more confident in executing their strokes when they can actually count the number of strokes that they would have to execute at every part of the race. Giving them the exact layout of a race gives them the confidence they need to achieve the targets and it spreads really quick when their execution is exactly (or close to) what they practiced.

3) Increased performance

With increased confidence in their race plan, it is easily observable that their performance increases by more than what they expected. Expectations increase after every race, as the team take advantage of the increased performance from each race.

4) Better synchronicity

As opposed to being very haphazard in their previous races when they were given an ambigious race plan which changes from race to race, it gave the paddlers much attention to making sure that they were all in sync when they have practiced this by counting verbally what they would have practiced and executed this in the race.

5) Reduced complexity in communicating post race debriefs

In contrast to the vagueness of previous debriefs where debriefs are general in nature, specificity gives them much better control in communicating improvements between team members, relating constructive feedback to team members and providing very specific details on race portions (i.e. starts, body or finishes) that they can improve on. It creates a very solid platform for communicating simple tweaks to improve the different parts of the race without confusing the team on too much technicality.

Cadence Training for Dragon Boat

I recently used an metronome app and used it for cadence training for the teams I have been training with
and the results I must say have been particularly impressive.

Metronome training has traditionally been used for musicians such as guitarists, drummers to keep a consistent rythm for the beats of songs that they are playing especially for live events. I have seen many physical versions that require the metronome to be attached to a earphone and the drummer uses it to catch the beat per minute of the set.

Screen capture of the mobile metronome

Using a bluetooth speaker to amplify the volume of the metronome app on my trusty Xperia Z, my paddlers have been able to generate increased performance of over 10% within 2 sessions of using it. They find it a clearer assessment of the ability to gauge a constant pace and they are better able to judge pulling faster through the water to engage the next stroke. I have seen more consistent efforts at low ratings to generate more efficiency and synchronisation for every stroke applied to the water.

I never really expected to use this until I came across an article on cadence training in cycling which made alot of sense in cycling to increase performances at low cycling rates while improving on the effectiveness of the cycling technique.

Many of these sports apply similar principles in cadence training to improve performances over the long run.

I hope to see more benefits of using the metronome in time to come.

For those who are interested in getting the app, it is free on the Play Store for Android Phones - Mobile Metronome.

Singapore River Regatta 2013: Post Race Reflections

With the Singapore River Regatta 2013 behind me, I have seen all my teams earn credible results in their outings in their respective categories..

Team MSF finished their race beating their previous timings in trainings.. They fought incredibly hard against their much more experienced opponents and I could see it in their eyes that wanted to do better out on their next outing. I admire their courage for taking up the sport and I can see much more potential in them with more to come:)

Team NUS managed to go into the tertiary finals only missing out on a podium spot by mere seconds. Their juniors went in fighting for a spot in the semi-finals of the mens open also missing out by mere split seconds. I only can say that it is only really the beginning of more exciting things come March when they battle it out again with their rivals in their Tertiary Category. It will take time and effort to reach the possible goals that they are going to achieve. It is going to be an excellent season ahead!

And finally, I ended the weekend with a truly deserved second place finishing with Team OneStroke in the PA GRO finals.

The runners up, all smiles!

More of the winning team!

That race was truly a nail biting finish as they were behind for most of the race until the final 25 meters where they edged out the other 2 competitors to finish a close second merely 0.2 seconds behind their rivals.

The race was purely exhilarating even from shore; when we only managed to inch past almost everyone only in the final few meters of the race.

What made that second place finish more delightful was that for many of these paddlers, they have been awaiting a Regatta medal for many years; for a few as long as 5 years and for one, an excruciatingly long 7 years.. I was not only happy for the results but the true happiness it brings to the entire team for them to experience a new level of greatness that they have ever rarely felt before.

It all started from believing in the will to win, regardless of their circumstances and ability because it is all this team truly needed at the start.

The management team with me, Edwin, our team manager and Jojo our captain. 

I have still to learn alot more of this fine art of dragon boat, a classic sport that truly entails all manner of beauty, grace, aggression and skill all combined into one majestic performance on race day.

Time for me to reflect back on my learnings and learn more to share with the world this art and science of dragon boat paddling. Till my next post..

Yours Truly,
The Original Paddlegeek

SINGAPORE RIVER REGATTA 2013: 3 TEAMS, 3 HOPES, 1 MEMORABLE SEASON...

As the race season draws to a close this coming weekend, it is a time of reflection for the things that have happened in the past year. The Singapore River Regaatta 2013 will be the first time in my life, I have taken on as a coach for 3 teams that will be racing both for glory and for one team, the first time they will race in such an event for the first time. It has been such a fulfilling experience coaching these teams and it will most definitely bring me to tears seeing these men and women paddle in a race under my guidance. It seems like I have never expected to have seen myself grow so much more from coaching just as I was when I was a paddler amongst a crew of 22. 

TEAMONESTROKE
Team OneStroke (aka Kaki Bukit CSC) gave birth to my first attempt at coaching and I have defnitely learnt alot from learning how a corporate team would handle my expectations and goals. It was an unusual experience for me knowing how I have been only competing in the past to take up a team that has unusual challenges. Many of these challenges are not new. Attendances, motivation levels, poor training performances and new paddlers coming in halfway through the season. Yet, it seems I have gained an understanding of how to face these issues head on and not allow them to get to my emotions. Somehow, somewhere there was this bit of faith that I had to pursue this challenge of making them a great team regardless of how things turned out and I have seen them grow through my tutelage. Many of the paddlers have begun to see a sense of pride paddling for the team and the bond has grown with each passing training. They begun to understand many facets of paddling in a dragon boat that they may not have learnt before which helps in their performance and seen improvements at a much more efficient pace. Fitness levels have significantly improved and time trial timings have been surprisingly impressive. Going up against their rivals in their category, I only can hope for the best that they can see all this training come to fruition and see the results in their upcoming race. These men and women deserve my salute for taking time off on their weekends to see through training sessions despite family commitments, studies and even time away from their children. 

MINISTRY OF SOCIAL AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT (MSF)
The year progressed with a small surprise where I took on coaching a team from the Ministry of Social and Family Development (aka MSF). This team is made up of a small band of colleagues, young and old, men and women who would like to take on a new challenge of paddling in a dragon boat team. It started off as a monthly affair, a get together session to build their fitness and  learning the basics of paddling but it slowly turned into a weekly Saturday morning session where they saw themselves grow together as a team and training towards a race. What makes this team so special is that they treat each other like family and they keep in touch to make sure there will always be enough to paddle a 12 men crew. Attendances started from 7 to 14 in the final weeks towards the races, which makes me even happier to see them grow as a team and from learning how to paddle together to learning race sets that I would teach to a typical competitive team. Performances are never the key driver but the relationships that drive their success as a team. They started from almost strangers to friends who would be there for that Saturday to have breakfast together before they start training. It will be a fantastic feeling to see them race. A feeling to have been involved in building up a team of nobodys to a team that will see themselves pit against the best in their category. My heart will light up seeing this team finish the race. I hope I would be able to continue coaching them. All the best to MSF!

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE (NUS) The year was coming to an end when yet another surprise caught me off guard. My alma mater took the opportunity to engage me when they realised they were stuck without a coach and they needed someone they could trust. I was initially hesitant knowing how little experience I had with coaching yet I knew I wanted to take them on to test out everything that I tried out on the above mentioned teams. It was almost a dream come true finally knowing that I could see my growth as a coach be tested out on a highly competitive team that would be able to see through plans that I had set out a year ago when i started coaching. This team has its challenges; stuck between school and team, many of them make the choice of pursuing a sport that would require hours, days, weeks, months to achieve the biggest prize of them all next July; the prime minister's cup. I had to be extremely clear with my instructions to get them to perform to my expectations and there is an uphill task trying to hold this team together long enough to see through their goals. I have more to expect of myself and I know its a tough job. Its only been a month since I took up this team so it would be too early to expect too much of them. They know they have to do well for their own sake. I wish them all the best and I would take no credit for their success in this upcoming race. The captains and team manager have worked well together and it will be soon when they will soar to greater heights. 

I must honestly say I have been truly blessed to have been given the chance to pursue a passion, a passion that I have lived through almost 10 years of my life to finally reach the stage where I can teach, coach and pass down values I believe create success in teams. The satisfaction of seeing these 3 teams just race under my coaching will be something I treasure for a long time to come. Thank god for everything. Thank you for the fantastic year, OneStroke, MSF and NUS:)

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