Level 5 Coach Day 5

Guinea Pigs on the River Dee – Put in below the horseshoe weir

2 Students Elaine and Gerwen

Elaine old Level 2, WW 4* and sea kayaker, lost some confidence through no particular incident (perhaps shoulder). Has paddled upper Dart a few times and led the loop.

Gerwen Level 2, wants to do 4*, paddled 3 and 4’s and Aberglaslyn in low water. Wants general improvement.

Dan coaching first

Observing during warm up

Spike spotted (and we didn’t) Gerwen had an uneven grip, used tape inside one hand with twists in the tape so he moves his grip out when he touches the tape.

Spikes debrief suggestion was that the overly structured task of ferry gliding form point a to point b made it hard to tell as much as just saying cross the river as well as you can.

We dropped down to the rapid by the Chain Bridge and Dan developed a theme of driving the boat across the current, and for Elaine of putting a blade in the eddy on breaking out.

This theme was carried on down through the Serpents tail and lunch.

My observations of the paddling included.

Elaine bouncing when putting on power, Gerwen not very connected to the boat (A stretch, apparently a horrid boat to paddle). Both reliant on strokes rather than positioning or power. Gerwen sunk the boat on the bottom drop due to poor trim.

My plan was to work on trim on eddy line transitions then transfer that on to a re run of the tail.

I got them doing s turns below the tail then trying different trim on the transitions. Driving over the eddyline interfered with the trim, so we scrapped trim for a while and got them doing transitions without power over the line. This cut stroke numbers after a while. Then I got them to try trim variations on the eddy line, still not clicking. A quick word from spike, then I set the circuit with fixed angles and targets so the only variable was trim and we started moving forward. Before or after this I did a demo of trim on eddylines, back then forward and they started to get it.

Once they felt they were getting some where we went to run the bottom drop on the tail (6 on the JJ guage).  Elaine didn’t want to confuse things by thinking about trim in a nervous situation, so she elected to just run it, then she did try the trim and leant back a bit early, still successful. Both Gerwens runs were on wide lines, but both were better and dryer as he used good trim.

Key question from Elaine, now I can cross eddylines without paddling across the transition is it wrong to reach in to the eddy. No now you have two techniques.

Quick questioning conclusion, then running down to railway bridge playing eddies with trim changes on transitions to integrate the trim bunny hops on eddies.

Forward paddling on the flat. Good individualisation

Fell down on not knowing some technicalities, keeping top hand level with the eyes, finish with top hand over the knee, flick up the blade at the end of the stroke.