Sixth on the Fifth
May Race is over and with it, the official start of the mixed dragon boat team season in the Bay Area. In a series of heats true to form, the SFL Dragon Boat Team once again demonstrated itself to be a team not to be ignored. With a single crew comprised of 75% SFL paddlers and 25% Lightwave paddlers, the team managed some of the most competitive race starts in the field. Credit goes to the Lightwave paddlers for quickly adapting to the SFL starting count with just a single practice start prior to the Seeding heat. Our token Cardinal paddler, Brendan, also did a great job at meshing in with the crew for our later races and showed us how much more in shape we could be if we could only reverse the sands of time.
Special thanks goes out to Katherine, Jeannie, Rebecca, Ashes, and Hon for helping to carry the SFL crew into A-Division 6th place.
A big thank you also must go out to those SFL paddlers who made the commitment to keep the team racing this year at May Race: Huy, Erica, Cory, Megan, Christine, Marissa, Will Huang, Will Lam, Jerome, Henley, Jacky, Allen, Jon, Marissa, Solongo, Shelley, and Derek. Thank you to short-haired Bonita for offering to paddle when we were in need.
The team of “Smooth Wind Dragons” breathes again!
Paddle Length and You
A quick search online will reveal several published resources making general recommendations for choosing a paddle length. These resources often quote paddler height, level of experience, or bench placement in guiding buyers towards choosing a paddle size. While these rationales are reasonable, there are several factors in choosing a paddle size that, when thoroughly understood, can help determine how to find a paddle that works best for you.
Background
The International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF) has established a general schematic for all dragon boat paddles approved for use in IDBF competitions world wide. This helps minimize any disparities between teams racing in an IDBF event due to equipment considerations. The current standard is known as Specification 202a, which specifies that paddle length (from blade tip to top of handle) is between 105cm and 130cm. Dealer websites may measure this in terms of inches, but the standards are the same.
The Business End
What part of the paddle matters the most? The blade. It’s the part of the paddle that serves as the interface between you and the water. When choosing a paddle length, the ultimate goal is to get the blade into the water where it works best. Generally, this means AT LEAST submerged below the surface of the water.
Shaft, can you dig it?
Since Spec 202a paddles all have specific dimensions for the blade, the one effective variable in paddle itself is the shaft length (spanning between the top of the blade and the handle). This makes choosing a paddle length about facilitating the best leverage for a paddler to apply force to a fully buried blade.
Lower Triangle
Triangles are an efficient shape for transferring force. By this rationale, our bodies will theoretically transfer force efficiently to the paddle and water when our back and outside arm are straight. Different paddling styles aside, after burying the blade, the goal becomes pulling the blade back (or yourself up to an “anchored” blade) while it is at a set depth. This means that as we pull back, our outside hand remains at a somewhat consistent distance to the water’s surface. This creates a triangle between our body and the plane of the water. This triangle is our foundation, the basic requirement to getting the blade buried during our reach. Paddle length has little to nothing to do with this triangle as it depends primarily on the physical size of the paddler.
Fig 1Upper Triangle
Adding the top arm and paddle shaft into the picture, we see an upper triangle formed. The efficiency of this triangle is highly dependent upon paddle length and paddler technique. In Figure 2, increasing trunk rotation on the reach has the functional effect of lengthening our outer arm and shortening our top arm. This affects angle of paddle at entry, influencing the vectors (direction) of force applied by the paddle to the water. It also serves to increase the horizontal displacement of our paddle during the pull, which is a good thing!
In Figure 3 B) and C), we see how increasing paddle length affects our body position and efficiency. Leaving the bottom hand the same in B), a longer shaft forces our top arm higher which can cause more strain to our top shoulder’s joint and potentially lead to increased risk of rotator cuff or labral injuries. Choking up at the bottom hand in C) to preserve top arm angle forces the paddler to bury the blade deeper in the water. Because the blade is farther from the bottom hand, the force of the water against the blade (or vice versa depending on the relative physics) is applied farther away from the bottom hand. This increases the torque that a paddler fights during the pull, making each stroke feel more difficult despite the same amount of power being put into the water. In other words, choking up due to a paddle being too long puts the paddler at a mechanical disadvantage, wasting energy.
Having an excessively long paddle also forces you to compensate during recovery just to clear the blade from the water. Having an excessively short paddle will decrease the horizontal displacement of your blade during the pull, which decreases paddling efficiency. A short paddle may also force you to flex more at the trunk during the reach to get the blade buried, which compromises 1 side of the Lower Triangle and may increase your risk for spine injuries (not pictured).
Fig 2
Fig 3
Choosing the “Right” Length
After all that theory and physics, it requires trial/error and close assessment with your coach to determine the paddle size that gives you the best fit. Depending on how skilled you are with paddling, your fitness level, where you sit, and how your coach would like you to paddle, you should choose a paddle length that allows you to get the blade fully buried while allowing you to pull with an Upper and Lower Triangle that is most efficient for you.
Recommendations
1. Continuously refine your paddling technique.
2. Get regular 1 on 1 feedback from your coach about your paddling technique.
3. Try a variety of paddle sizes from teammates to see how it meshes with your paddling technique.
4. Consider changing your paddle length if your technique is strongly compromised, it forces you to work beyond your level of fitness, or you have noticed it contribute to painful symptoms.
What To Do If the Boat Starts to Sink
I remember taking a mandatory safety class through the CDBA as a requirement to sit for the steering certification test and there was a topic that came up on what to do should your dragon boat start to take on water (eg sink) while you are away from dry land. The official recommendation (and subsequently the correct answer on the exam, ahem) was to have several paddlers bail water, have other paddlers paddling back to shore ASAP, and have another group of paddlers jump overboard and hang on to reduce the amount of weight in the boat. It was clarified that, to be fair, those people who jumped in could rotate in/out of the water with other paddlers if the journey to shore would be too long for comfort.
Yea, that clip pretty much sums up my feelings, so here we go!
Top 3 Reasons Why That Plan Sucks:
1. The boat is sinking but not sunk yet, you have some time before it ceases to become water-worthy and your crew is effectively stranded off shore. Thus, it behooves everyone to get to shore as fast is flippin’ possible. Faster travel requires more paddlers. Why on Earth would you drag people through the water? Ever pulled a tire behind the boat, it’s hard right? Pulling a tire doesn’t allow much speed even with a crew of buff paddlers, right? Losing able bodied paddlers while dragging them through the water will slow your return to shore. I will say having folks stop paddling occasionally to bail could be helpful if water is rushing in quickly.
2. The additional weight of having 2 paddlers in the boat will not affect the rate of sinking very much compared to the time lost from the effects in #1.
3. The water’s probably going to be colder than the human body. Hypothermia is a life threatening condition that you’re actually considering having people volunteer for when they don’t need to? Having paddlers rotate being in/out of the water is even more dumb. Hypothermia can still occur after you get out of the water. Plus, you now have 2 freezing people back in the boat and 2 people about to freeze in the water. Nice going. Did I mention that freezing people don’t paddle very fast?
Just don’t make that question the one that causes you to fail the test, ok? Also, after passing the test, please don’t kill people unnecessarily by actually following the recommended answer you used to pass the test. Thanks.
Rock the Boat
A boat in good working condition, in flat water, floats totally still. A boat filled with people who aren’t paddling and not moving around also should sit still. Once people start paddling, sometimes the boat can start to rock side to side. Why does this happen? How do you limit this to create a smoother running boat?
As discussed earlier, paddlers exert a same-sided, downward force on the boat when they paddle. If you have a keen eye, or better yet some video equipment to do slow motion, take a look at when the rocking occurs as the crew paddles. Boat rocking can indicate that, on average, one side of the crew is stroking just ahead of the other side, reflecting a timing issue. Try having more communication between your strokes to synch things up between them and use any tools you find helpful to encourage the rest of the crew to synch up with their other side as you move back.
If timing looks perfect but the boat continues to rock, it may reflect a difference in power between left and right side paddlers. Stronger paddlers exert more force to the paddle which translates to more force transferred to the boat. More relative force transferred to the boat than the other side can cause the boat to rock towards the stronger side during the pull phase. It’s difficult to tell athletes in a race situation to try less hard, so it may be helpful to train paddlers on the weaker side to be stronger, or perhaps teach people to be more ambidextrous so in a practice situation the coach may tinker with what seating line up gives the best timing and power distribution throughout the boat between left and right.
Why You Can’t Lift the Boat
It’s a common notion that paddlers can, through good paddling technique, actually “lift” the boat so that it sits higher on the water. This feeds into the notion that the boat becomes “lighter” to the water than when it sits at a standstill, decreasing water drag, and increasing the potential for speed.
It’s complicated and there aren’t any studies that I’m aware of looking at this phenomenon with dragon boats specifically, but based on existing science of water craft physics, it doesn’t appear that paddlers can actually lift the boat when paddling as generally thought. I’ve got some reasons for thinking this, but perhaps the Mythbusters can put this to the test.
Reason 1: Paddlers can’t directly exert an upward force on the boat by paddling. When the paddle “anchors” in the water and the paddler pulls, they transfer this force to the hull through their butt and foot to propel the boat forwards. In transferring this force, paddlers actually push the boat downwards into the water on the side they sit. At practice, try having several rows paddle on one side of the boat. The boat will dip to that side during the pull phase and rock to the opposite side during recovery.
Reason 2: Boat lift is generally attributed to either hydrostatic (buoyant) lift or hydrodynamic lift. Hydrostatic lift is the phenomenon that allows boats to float because the hull displaces an equal mass in water volume as the craft and all its cargo weigh, which is why dragon boats and those like it are said to have displacement hulls. At a standstill, boats float by hydrostatic lift. Once the boat starts to move, some lift is gained by hydrodynamic lift where the water is pushing the boat upwards vs being pushed out of the way by the hull. At a certain speed, the boat’s hydrodynamic lift will exceed the hydrostatic lift and the vessel begins to plane across the water. This requires a very high amount of power to achieve. Think of trying to walk on water. Unless you’re especially holy, you’ll likely sink the moment you step foot on the surface. Now, if you get tossed out of a speed boat going 200 mph, you’ll painfully skip and bounce off the surface of the water because hydrodynamic lift is keeping you from sinking. It would take a very strong motor to get a dragon boat even close to planing speed. IMO, paddlers can’t put out enough power to make hydrodynamic lift that effective.
Reason 3: Like I wrote above, paddlers will have a very hard time reaching planing speed because of the physics of displacement hull speed. Displacement hulls are subject to something called wave making resistance which occurs when waves made from pushing water off the front combine with waves made in the wake. This combination of the waves at either end cause a rapid climb in water drag. This point is called hull speed. It is a calculation based on the length of the water line of the hull as it sits in the water. A fully loaded dragon boat has a a certain measurable length of water that contacts the hull which is measured as the water line length. A larger waterline actually makes for a higher hull speed value! Lifting the boat out of the water becomes less desirable in this regard. Certain boats are designed to allow the athlete(s)/motors to exceed calculated hull speed without planing, which THEN causes a strong decrease in drag. Essentially, water drag increases as hull speed is met, a boat with a larger water line length has a higher hull speed, lifting the boat decreases the water line length and decreases hull speed causing earlier rise in water drag as speed increases.
Ways to Improve Efficiency: Being Rigid
Part of any racing sport involves efficiency. Efficiency means you spend as little energy as possible in accomplishing the same goal. Take a Prius vs a dragster, for example. If both cars rolled 1/4 mile at 35 mph, the Prius would probably expend less gasoline getting there than the dragster. The Prius is obviously the more efficient car, right? Now, have both cars complete the 1/4 mile in as little time as possible. The dragster takes 5+ seconds while the Prius finishes in 15+ seconds. Which car was most fuel efficient? The Prius was of course. Who cares? Nobody cares, because the Prius lost the race. Which car was more efficient at winning? The dragster was.
In a competitive sprint sport such as dragon boat, it shouldn’t matter if your team can handle a 2:30 split time for 10,000 meters. 2:30 in a 500 meter race will put you at a recreational team level. In this case, the judicious use of extra energy is warranted to boost performance. That’s not to say that losing all focus and coordination in exchange for high stroke effort is worth it, it just means that racing should never be paced easily to be competitive. The big question is, how do you apply energy to the water efficiently to give you the highest performance possible?
There are many ways to be a more efficient paddler, but today this post is about selectively making your body rigid during the pull phase.
Why be rigid?
Rigid structures transmit force efficiently, ideally to where that force can be applied for the greatest power and work. Flexible structures do not efficiently transmit force because of their tendency to deform in response those forces. Think about the dragon boat paddle itself. Why not make a paddle out of yarn? It’d be pretty light, but it’s so damn flexible you can wrap it around your neck as a scarf! You can try to paddle with it till your workaholic significant other comes home and it still won’t get you far. Now, wood and carbon fiber paddles are very stiff and deform very little when you apply force to it. This allows the paddle to transmit force to the water, which by action/reaction, provides a force back on the paddle. Thus, current IDBF spec 202a paddles are much more efficient than a yarn paddle. Who would have thought?
To bring this back on track, let’s apply that concept of rigidity to your body movements during paddling. Collapsing top arms, bending bottom elbows, and slouching spines all contribute to lost paddling efficiency. Theoretically, because rigid structures transmit force better than less rigid structures, the less rigid structures in a system are more likely to deform in response, which can coincidentally increase the risk of injury to those body parts. Back to the yarn paddle example (last time I swear), your body is hopefully more rigid than the yarn and so the force you put into the yarn paddle is poorly transmitted to the water. The opposite can be the case for a wood/carbon paddle. The paddle may be much more efficient than you are at transmitting force.
Example of how less rigid structures are poor transmitters of force
Notice how that kid’s butt is moving more than the weight he is lifting? His crappy technique and weak back are not enough to lift the weight efficiently. The same thing can happen if you slouch or crunch your torso when paddling. Instead of pushing the boat forward through your feet (your firm connection point to the boat), the water is bending your back into a U, as if it were some kind of…yarn spine. Hardly efficient.
The Mt. Home Canoe Club has published some articles that refer to multiple ”Power Circles.” I prefer to summarize the concepts through the transmission of force from the water, through the paddle, through your body, to the boat. The ultimate goal is to turn 100% of that water force into a force to move the boat.
1. Assuming you have the skill to apply effective force to the paddle without “ripping the water”, we’ll assume the water pushes back on the paddle with equal force (untrue since the paddle itself is not 100% efficient).
2. The water’s force is transmitted through the paddle to your arms, shoulders and torso. Here’s where it’s important to maintain that A-frame in which the relative position of your shoulders and hands don’t change during the pull. A collapsed A-frame decreases efficiency.
3. By keeping your spine as rigid in neutral as possible (the position it would have as if you were standing up tall) the force can be transmitted from your upper body to your lower body. Slouching, crunching during the pull, or doing the “roll up” as you pull, decreases efficiency.
4. Firmly planting your hip, outer leg against the gunnel and wedging your heel against the seat stop ahead of you anchors you firmly to the boat. This allows for efficient transmission of the water’s force to the hull. Have you ever tried paddling with your legs held off the floor of the boat? Try it, see what happens. Did you move the boat at all or did the water end up moving just you instead? Making yourself as much of a solid, attached part of the boat as possible improves efficiency of force transmission.
5. Force applied to the hull is expressed in terms of the wonderful F=ma and the boat is accelerated in accordance to how little force was wasted along the way from the water to the hull.
This detailed schematic basically sums it up
There’s the magic effect of improved paddling efficiency! If you can increase your paddle power by 10% in a few minutes of changing how you transfer force, that’s a much better deal than trying to get 10% physically stronger, which can take 6-8 weeks of working out!
So as you paddle, try to think about how to hold yourself selectively rigid from the tips above to avoid losing paddling power.
There’s No “I” in Leadersheep
‘ole George didn’t cross the Delaware on his own
One of the greatest challenges as a coach is to lead the team. When I think of leadership, many things come to my mind. A leader is somebody who inspires their followers. A leader should lead by example. A leader sets up realistic goals for their followers to meet. A leader has a powerful, often singular/unique role, in a team setting.
Think about that last point. Your coach tells the team to reach 2 inches more per stroke. 20 paddlers reach that much more and there is a 4 second overall drop in 500m race time. Many analysts of other sports often credit the coach for team accomplishments like these.
One trap that many athletes fall into, especially in a team sport, is the feeling of safety in numbers. It’s very easy in a dragon boat to look like you’re trying hard but half-ass it. Maybe you are thinking about what to make for dinner later that day. Maybe you have a big upcoming test. Maybe your trying to remember if you locked your car before getting on the boat. Team sports are incredibly powerful because such great things can be accomplished under the group effort but only if the entire group is 100% dedicated towards a common goal.
I fell into a trap as a coach in thinking to myself, “All I need to do is: get the team to practice 3-4x/wk, cross train on days off the water, tell people how fun dragon boat is and they’ll join up, look for exciting new places I’d like to race and folks will join me in paying fees to go, etc etc” but I was/am crazy for thinking this.
As much power as the coach wields, this power only goes so far. ”You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” pretty much sums it up. The horse and the rider are two separate beings. Effective coaching is a delicate mix of inspiring athletes to accomplish more than they once believed possible, but also working within the “lines” of what is realistic. Some athletes are driven up to and beyond the aspirations of the coach, others need more encouragement but are willing followers, others take a very passive role and prefer to be spoon-fed victory with minimal effort on their behalf. It makes a good coach a great coach to realize how to work with each of these athletes to bring out the best in the team overall.
In the end, coaches should realize that their power to lead the team towards victory is just that. The coach must draw out a realistic road to success and it comes to the followers to take that road in stride to see it through. The coach, suddenly, becomes an integral part of the team instead of a free radical. If team success hinges on 100% dedication towards a common goal, perhaps as a coach you might look carefully at yourself to find that last 5% of team unity needed to succeed.
OPEN HOUSE 2012
The Suen Feng Loong (SFL) Dragon Boat Team has returned and it’s time to hit the water for an exciting 2012 paddling season. Start shedding those holiday pounds, get a good workout, and meet some crazy people.
New to the sport? Experience the fun and excitement of the sport first hand as our experienced paddlers and coaches show you how to paddle safely and efficiently.
Already a paddling god? Come realize your paddling potential and value as a team member on a individual-oriented team that emphasizes both performance and fun. Learn what makes our team different than all the rest.
FREE to try. Paddle and PFD (life jacket) provided.
See you on the water!
Inspiration
Your performance as an athlete stems from the very basic principle of practice. If you practice hard and wisely, your physical performance will follow. The question becomes, how do you stay motivated? In steps the mental component of performance. They say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” All athletes have been there, trying hard and hitting that damn “wall.” When I hit my wall, hesitations pop up in my mind like “why bother pushing this hard?” Sometimes that question wins me over and I (in retrospect) sadly give up. Other times I end up thinking briefly about what I actually want to accomplish and how much it means to me, rather, how much it means about me. I think of the things that inspire me and that gives me great strength to push forward.
We’ve all felt like this I’m sure.
I recently just happened to watch a few scenes from a documentary about Joe Namath. A little bit about me, I don’t know but perhaps 5 things about football as a game and certainly don’t know my history of the sport but this documentary painted this man in a way that I found inspirational. The way they portrayed him was a man of great personal confidence and resolve, honor as a sportsman, and humility as a person. Whether that is actually accurate is always up for debate, but those qualities are things that I strongly value in myself.
Thinking of those values really fires me up and when I’m on, I am ON. Have you ever had that feeling that you were invincible or couldn’t get tired now matter how painful or grueling the event was? Thinking about things that inspire me puts me in that state of mind.
So, if you are hitting that wall or about to start an event, take a moment to think about something that really drives you to succeed. I’m sure you’ll be amazed by just how little can phase you in your pursuits.
Statistics on Exercise and Hobbies
Found these statistics about how Americans spend their non-working time.
Hopefully all of you (American or not) will try hard to establish a healthy, active lifestyle not related to any short-lived New Year’s Resolutions.
Gripping Vid
Ok, no, not really but in response to 1 reader’s comment on the grip tape, I went ahead and made a long-winded video about the stuff just so folks could see how it’s applied.
Hope it helps give you more of an idea how it works. You can read the full post here:
Huy Train Hard
We live in a world where form and function are both purely relative terms. Everybody has a different perspective on how they look, how they perform, and how they’d LIKE to look and perform. The media machine does a great job of highlighting the extremes of both. From shows like The Biggest Loser, movies like 300, or magazines like Cosmopolitan, we are constantly bombarded with the concept of archetypal body types. Low body fat percentage, rippling muscles, slim waistlines, hour-glass silhouettes are the resulting cornerstones of the fitness and diet industry. Everybody asks, “how can I look as fit as that guy/girl?” Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that the way we look reflects what we do and in doing so, we almost never say, “how can I be more fit in general?”
Ultimately, our bodies don’t care how we look (never mind what our brain says). At the end of the day, our bodies are designed to keep us alive and to just get the job done. If you give your body the job of sitting at a desk all day, it slowly prepares itself to be sedentary by muscle atrophy, increasing fat storage, decreasing metabolism, and so forth as you sit there over months/years. If you give your body the job of finishing an Ironman Triathlon, it slowly starts building muscle, burning more fat, increasing metabolism, and so forth as you train. Given enough time, your body sees to it that your physical form matches your function.
I’ve known Huy a long time and he’s always been an inspirational athlete. Most guys who see him want arms like his. Most women don’t want arms like his, they want him. He doesn’t run in events, he walks to work. He doesn’t sit during the work day, he’s moving around at work all day long. He doesn’t go to a gym, he works out at home. He paddles 1-2x/wk and is the strongest paddler we have right now (one day Huy, I swear). You might say that you can’t realistically live your life like he does. You’d probably be right. What you can do is understand and share his values for being fit and using that fitness for everyday function. You may be able to enjoy walking up those flights of stairs at work without losing your breath or learn how to push your body through the hardest of exercises to meet goals you never knew you could.
I’m happy to introduce Huy Luong as the team’s newest Assistant Coach and Fitness Leader. In the near future, you can look forward to new posts in our Health & Fitness section.
And we’re back!
Just got back from a fun and educational day at Dominic Shew’s paddling clinic hosted by BAD. From essentially 9-4 we learned about his perspective on paddling and how he instructs his paddlers to be the roughest, toughest, and fastest bunch on the water. Not to say that our attending group is now ALL that, but it definitely opened my eyes to a whole new style of paddling dragon boat.
You can see the style of paddling that Dominic was instructing us in here in the FCRCC Grand Finale of 2010:
At 0:54 in the video, you can hear how their technique makes women swoon and how bodaciously kick ass their performance is.
Clarification: Dominic is a paddler on FCRCC’s DB team as coached by Kamini Jain. While he is not the coach of FCRCC itself, he does coaching/consulting with other teams
The training that Dominic puts towards his teams is methodical, challenging, and clearly effective. From his 15+ years of racing experience across multiple types of paddle-craft, he has a strong rationale for every aspect of what he teaches. His mindset is to emphasize all that is powerful and effective while reducing as many detrimental factors to performance as possible.
Now, my goal with writing this post isn’t to regurgitate what he teaches or how to race like a top Canadian team but rather reflect on my experience and how I believe it connects with coaching in general.
1. You can learn to paddle like a pro from a pro paddler, but you’re not a pro unless…well, you train at that level. I’d say choose a paddling style that works best for the type of paddlers you have. Set a reasonable performance goal and use that style with good consistency to accomplish that goal.
2. Radically changing technique can have several possible outcomes. Most notably: the team manages to shave seconds off a time, the boat goes slower due to funky paddling, or people get injured. These injuries can range from relatively minor to very severe and harmful. Minor injuries can be like blisters in new places or sore/tight muscles. More serious injuries can consist of torn ligaments/tendons or damaged inter-vertebral discs. The more drastic the change, the higher the risk of injury. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to minimize this risk to your athletes. Set up a plan that slowly modifies technique towards your end-goals. Work on prerequisite technique and fitness as appropriate.
3. In Dominic’s words: “improving paddling technique can take you very far in terms of performance.” I had always wondered why top, world-class teams all looked so different when paddling, yet pull times very close (for the most part) to each other. So far, my best guess is that technique helps, but is not everything about racing. The sum effect of fitness, experience, natural talent (physical build) easily outweigh technique alone IMO. At the world level, top teams are ALL very experienced and fit. All paddlers are driven and motivated and often have atypical physique. Given those things present, each individual team uses a uniform technique to great effect. The nuances of the stroke technique itself become less important so long as all paddlers are working together.
In the end, I thought Dominic’s paddling clinic was very interesting from a coaching perspective and as a paddler, I have to say it’s been a long time since my bottom has been that sore….don’t be gross now.
If you enjoyed reading, please consider making a donation. We SFL bloggers write and paddle for the love of the sport but, like many other things, blogging takes time away from work, family, and paddling (in increasing order of importance, j/k). Every contribution (no matter how small) helps raise money for the team to race and use better equipment. As a team, you have our thanks for anything you can spare in helping us out. You may use this link:
LoA – Expect Some Dust
Apologies for the lack of posts lately, but this blogger is busy getting married! Once things have settled in and settled down (haha) you can look forward to the Health & Fitness section finally getting up w/ content.
Until then!
Best,
Geoff
The Paddling Page
Some interesting articles and reflections on paddling!
Check it out: The Paddling Page
Why Geoff, why?
With my super-powers, I can hear a lot of you wondering behind your computer screens: “Why on Earth would you share so many thoughts on dragon boat if other teams might just use them against you in competition?”
Well, initially I did think that ideas should be proprietary for those very concerns. I later realized that with dragon boat being such a new and relatively small sport here on the West Coast, that new ideas for coaching and paddling were hard to come by. The need for new ideas was apparent to me in my noticing top Bay Area teams plateauing (or even declining) in performance with new teams/coaches appearing by the handful. I always felt that dragon boating in the Bay Area held so much potential for promoting the sport nationally and internationally that teams here deserved a better online resource.
When Brian started this blog for team purposes only, I asked if I could become a contributor to start writing about things that could help not only my teammates paddle better but also raise the level of competition in the Bay Area to new heights. Indeed, SFL’s team performance in the past several seasons has raised a few eyebrows but, still, I felt limited by the small physical presence of our team to set examples for all to follow/build from. Through the magic of the internet and the accessibility of blogs, I felt that writing my thoughts here would be a great place to post ideas about the sport I love so much as well as promote team membership.
As for concerns about proprietary thoughts and coaching ideas, that’s what coaching a competitive team is all about! If everybody just coached my material verbatim, I’d expect everybody to tie during the finals! The ideas in the blog are just places for coaches and paddlers to spring off from to make their own decisions on what works for their team and themselves. If you happen to improve your game by reading this stuff, that’s great! Feel free to show off if/when you race me and my team!
SFL Recruiting 2011: Sprint Race and Beyond
SFL is always open to recruiting new, committed members. If you’re a paddler w/ some (or lots) of experience, this post is for you.
As Head Coach, I won’t lie by saying SFL is for everybody. There are, however, several strong reasons that folks should consider joining SFL for. Here are some common thoughts I believe many paddlers dwell upon when considering joining a new team and my playing devil’s advocate in response:
1. I just finished my high school or college term and many of my old friends and coaches are on DW/BAD/Ripple Effect, so I should stay in my comfort zone by joining them.
If you just left a DB team for some reason, sure, you could go reunite with old friends but wait! Maybe you already spent 4 years paddling with those same people! Branch out! You’re at a time in your life (not that there’s ever a bad time) when it pays off to have new connections and make new friends for once. Since SFL is comprised of a huge range of paddlers from various schools/backgrounds, joining up may be a great way to step outside your comfort zone while still enjoying dragon boat in your own way.
2. I’m a really competitive paddler. I like to win. I know DW and BAD win a lot of races because they are the best of the best and, as such, I want to join them.
First off, if you’ve been thinking the above, you also know deep down that DW and BAD with their 3-4 mixed crews and gender rosters tend to win with or without you on-board. Secondly, winning isn’t everything. If you are paddling with the best, what more is there to accomplish as a paddler? SFL may not always make it to a podium finish, but we do have the reputation for being able to do more with less…the more there are of us, the better we get. Depending on how many competitive paddlers we draw, we could finish anywhere between Division A and B. We have yet to become “Best in the Bay Area” for any event/venue. If you’re competitive, why not put that fighting spirit towards a team that will actually value it 100%? SFL is a team that truly does need you, not just “appreciates” you.
3. I want good coaching and didn’t even know SFL had a coach, much less if that coach was worth the effort of joining.
Don’t know me? No surprise there. My name’s Geoff and I don’t have a long coaching resume, so instead I’ll tell you what I’ve helped build SFL into in the short 2 seasons I’ve had. If you read The Legacy, SFL has a long history of being a B-Division team always as a single crew. During my time as coach, SFL has grown to having 2 crews at Sprint Race, Long Beach, and Treasure Island. The team has managed to close in on formerly untouchable “premiere” teams such as DW and BAD to within several seconds or at times, surpass them entirely on both 500m and 250m courses. Besides relying on the hard work of the paddlers, my coaching philosophy is that a team should always race smarter, not harder. I attempt to bring scientific reasoning, novel approaches, and intuitive thinking to dragon boat in a way that is, to be honest, lacking on many other dragon boat teams. Of course, I’m also perfectly comfortable tossing out gut-wrenching, ass-kicking workouts that can push your abilities as a paddler to new limits. Being new to coaching and relatively new to dragon boat, I feel I still have a lot to learn as well, but I see this as a strength rather than a weakness. The more I learn and see, the more feedback I get from paddlers, the better I become and the better the team races. You’ll see me work a lot on overall boat performance as well as critique individual technique as well in a constructive, positive manner. Not sure about me still? Give me a shot, send me an email, try out the team and see how you like it!
Amazing performance at May Race 2011
No medals or trophies but at this point, SFL is almost beyond the need for material rewards IMO (reference to the May Day Race from earlier post).
From a team that has not managed to practice with more than perhaps 14 people in the past 2 months, to scrounging adequate numbers to fill the roster, to placing 4th place in Division A, is an unbelievable accomplishment. SFL placed 4th behind BAD 1, Cal, and Lowell while eeking ahead of DW 1 and Ripple Effect essentially closing a 2 month gap in performance within a total of 1500m and 7.5 some-odd minutes of water time today. If that doesn’t say true athletic potential and perseverance, then I don’t know what does.
Special thanks to those teammates who went above and beyond to help the team today: Jeff Ma, Lia Yuen, Alex Ha. SFL could not have done as well today without you. Also I’d like to give special recognition to….everybody (credit where credit’s due, ha). The Timing Box for being everything a coach could want in a group of paddlers who can, within seconds, adjust stroke length and timing w/ the conditions and race goals; The Engine Room for demonstrating great control of effort while conserving your strength and power for when the team needed it most; The Afterburners/Rear/Backhalf (still need a good name for y’all) for staying focused on timing and making the best of turbulent waters to push us onward.
Despite the changing faces amongst our team, the story remains the same. You accomplish more with less. You race smarter, not harder. Your commitment to the team proves to be SFL’s greatest strength.
Thank you for making my day as Head Coach.
That Mental Switch
As good athletes, you are in touch with the effort required to race, the determination needed to stay strong, and the line where your body says “enough is enough.” During a race, you will struggle to keep those things in balance.
There’s a saying that “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” When you hear that little voice inside your head telling you to give up, you press onward. As your body says it’s getting tired, you dig deep and find energy you didn’t feel before. It’s easy to lose that fighting spirit and let the race, the competition, and your bad habits take over. So now’s your chance. Don your imagination caps and put yourself in the race.
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You’re feeling fresh and jittery at the start line. The race marshall shouts a bunch of stuff through his megaphone but you only half-hear it. You are focused on the commands of your steersperson only. You are leaned forward and still as a statue, mentally waiting for those magic words “paddlers are you ready.” The moment you hear “paddlers” you jump to life and set up for that first stroke. There’s a split second of total silence and right as you hear that airhorn, you take that first solid stroke.
The rate steadily climbs as you accelerate, the water becomes so light that you almost don’t feel it against your paddle anymore. You run through the count and give the ready and reach your full stroke. Your focus is completely on the paddle in front of you; matching the exit and entry exactly. You have to tell yourself to relax and flow w/ the boat, completely in time. You take a couple deep breaths and then you pump yourself up for the first Power 10. You keep your head up, still locked onto the paddle in front of you and take your best strokes. You reach it out and maintain, ready to repeat as the call comes across the boat.
Your lungs burn, the water is in your face, you taste metal, and your paddle starts feeling heavy. You can see the finish buoys in your peripherals and you can’t help but notice other boats are louder than they should be as they are close by. You feel a panic take the boat, people start yelling about timing. You feel powerless to stop what’s happening. The team is falling apart.
That very moment when everything seems on the brink of collapse, you feel as though somebody pulled your blindfold off. You feel like you just woke up from a crazy dream. In a split second, you feel just as strong as you were at the starting line. You hear the finish call through the chaos and you can feel everybody join you in building the boat back to peak velocity. You barely hear the call to Let It Ride and know that something incredible happened.
You found something inside yourself that you didn’t know about before and it wasn’t luck. You found a mental switch, a special tank of reserve kick-ass that only you could tap when 100% focused and determined. It’s something that will always be there, race after race. It’s the reason you belong on this team of people with the same reserve.
You know you paddle with SFL.
Teamwork
Saw a concert yesterday night (none other than the talented Mr. Jake Shimabukuro) and he had some great words about the influence music had on his life.
He spoke of his time in school playing for the school band. He fondly recalled those days as like being on a team. Everybody had an essential part to play and everybody practiced hard, both as individuals and as a group. He also made a great point in saying his fellow band members all took pride in doing their part. After hundreds of hours practicing, the group had their big concert and, to him, it was like making it to the Superbowl.
I had never really thought of the teamwork analogy between a band and a sport, like dragon boat. In dragon boat, we all have the same instruments (paddles), the same music to practice (technique), and the same beat to follow. Therein lies the ultimate challenge. How well can we all work as a unit? How much work have you devoted to being a better member to the team? How will you help support your fellow teammates through the training process? What can we accomplish together come race day?
Hope this gets you thinking about how proud you should be for joining and sticking to a team.
Keith Code – Words of Wisdom
Keith Code is a former championship motorcycle racer who started and runs his own riding school. I saw this clip where he puts out some great words of wisdom. I thought it adequately sums up my philosophies on paddling as a coach, a paddler, and a science-minded person.
“In asking other riders, even really really good ones, didn’t yield anything but sortof this half-cocked advice, you know, and no, there’s got to be something more to it than this. We have some physics involved here, we have some geometry involved here. You know, if you’re applying that to something specifically, there must be a right way to do it.”
TI 2010 De-Brief
There’s a saying that you’re only as fast as the slowest person on the team. If that’s true, then we’re all pretty damn fast.
We set our sights on running a 2:15 and entering Comp Division B. We exceeded those goals by placing into Consolation A. Although there are no medals, trophies, or award ceremony stage time for our 4th place, we have proven ourselves once again to be a Top 10 team. That is Top 10 out of 70+ teams. Practically every team we raced in our heats had paddlers who were older, more experienced, had more expensive equipment, practiced more days per week, were physically larger/stronger/taller than we are. I hope that realization alone means more to you than any shiny piece of metal. As a team that practices 1-2 times/wk with an average of 14 people, we have proven ourselves to be some of the toughest paddlers on the field in my opinion.
So paddle onward SFL. Paddle strong and get ready for 2011…because somebody has to be the wildcard…
It’s time again
Time to wrap up this season with our greatest amount of determination and fighting spirit. The team is always changing, but it’s up to all of us to make that a change for the better. Hope you’re all ready!
