TORSO ROTATION BY Jim Tibensky

A former age group national champion in both sprint and slalom racing. Jim is teachung at the Geneva Kayak Center in Geneva, Illinois USA. http://www.genevakayak.com/ Most of us know that torso rotation is crucial to a good, efficient, powerful forward stroke. But not enough of us truly attain it. Using the whole body in the forward stroke provides more power, allows you to paddle longer with less effort and looks really, really good. Even though the forward stroke has always been the foundation of kayak paddling, there have not always been good ways of teaching torso rotation. At least, not until now. Give me fifteen minutes and we can probably have your torso working hard on every stroke! While watching students struggling to learn torso rotation the old-fashioned way, by paddling with their elbows locked in the straight arm position, I noticed that what they were doing looked a lot like sweep strokes tilted sideways. After thinking about it and fooling around with my own sweeps and forward strokes, I realized that the muscles we use in a torso-involved forward stroke are also those used more in the forward sweep stroke than in an “all arms” forward stroke. That is, the abdominal, latisimus, and obliques, all the important muscle groups in the middle and lower torso, get used a lot more in a forward sweep than in a typical forward stroke. The Sweep Lesson A good forward sweep has at least the following five characteristics: 1) both hands are kept as low as possible 2) the top arm scrapes across the front of the waist from one side of the boat to the other 3) the lower arm stays straight 4) the head and shoulders follow the blade in the water, which causes the torso to rotate 5) the legs are pushed hard in the opposite direction to the blade in the water Sit quietly in your boat. Relax. Clear your mind. Prepare to become one with the boat, to feel every subtle muscle movement that you will make. Prepare to feel which muscles are working the most and which are not. Now do four or five forward sweep strokes on each side. Pay attention to what muscles and muscle groups are being used. They should later be used in the forward stroke. Putting it Together Sit quietly in your boat and think about using those torso muscles. As you go through the following steps, keep those muscles working. 1) Start the boat moving through the water by doing perfect forward sweeps alternating on each side: left - right - left - right, etc. Be sure the head and torso are following the blade that is in the water. This really helps the rotation. The boat will S-turn its way along. 2) After five or six such sweeps, start bringing the lower hand (the one whose blade is in the water) closer to the hull on each successive stroke. Do this gradually, moving in a couple of inches at a time. Do not change anything else about the muscles you are using. 3) At the same time have the upper arm start to punch gradually higher above the hull instead of just crossing from gunnel to gunnel along the deck. Raise the top arm a few inches more on each stroke until the punch is at shoulder or eye level. 4) Have the head and shoulders continue to follow the blade in the water to encourage the rotation even more. 5) Once you are pulling the blade in the water close to the boat and the top arm is at normal forward stroke height, shorten the stroke in the water by taking the blade out at the hip. After this sequence is complete, there should be a very torso-involved forward stroke. There will be almost no change in arm and body motion from the sweep to the forward stroke. It’s mostly a matter of shaft angles and blade distance from the hull. Helpful Hints Your legs must be involved. Without anchoring the body in the boat, a lot of energy is used to move the body around in the cockpit rather than the energy being transferred through the body to the boat. The knees should “bicycle” a bit on each stroke, with the right foot pushing on the foot brace during the right stroke and the left foot pushing on the left stroke. The backband or seat back should allow some movement of your butt in the seat. A good, forceful leg push will cause the butt to lift off the back of the seat just a bit. The shaft of your paddle should not ever cross the cockpit rim at any point if the torso is working. (This is the “paddler’s box.”) The shaft describes a semicircle around the front and sides of the rim. If your arms are a bit short, or if your cockpit is a bit large, then at least attempt to maintain the paddler’s box by keeping the paddle shaft as far toward being outside the cockpit rim as is possible for you. The top (“pushing”) arm will probably cross well over the center line of the boat. This is good! It will cross in front of the cockpit rim, so there should be no conflict between keeping the paddle shaft outside the rim while crossing over with the pushing arm. Your head should still move slightly side to side. Our neck is most comfortable when the head is kept perpendicular to the plane of the shoulders. Since the plane of the shoulders is moving, the head should too. Your navel should be moving at least three or four inches from the centerline of the boat on each stroke. If you look down and nothing is happening at the level of the navel, there is no rotation. The shoulders are not the place to look for spotting torso rotation. It is easy to thrust a shoulder forward on the stroke without any middle and lower torso involvement. In fact, this is what many paddlers do, thinking that they are using their whole torso. But their waist looks as though it is set in concrete. If you are wearing a centerline zipper pfd, the zipper will tell the tale - it should be moving side to side. Remind yourself to drop back into this sweep-blended-into-forward-stroke practice technique any time you want to work on torso rotation.