By Lyle Mead

Your posture in the boat is critical for a number of reasons….to enable maximum power & speed, to prevent injury, to enable corrects breathing.

Firstly you must determine the best position in the boat for your foot bar & seat which gives the boat its best trim, & allows you to be comfortable & at the same time exert powerful leg drive. I suggest you measure this distance & record it, if you change boats you will always have the same set up distance from foot bar to seat.

The upper body MUST be positioned so as your shoulders are slightly in front of your hips, this allows you to apply maximum power, try paddling leaning back, then in the correct position, you’ll feel the difference.

In this slightly forward position the back must be relatively straight, not slouched or crouched…sit tall, with the feeling that you have a rod placed through the top of your head and coming out you backside…… ouch!!

You now rotate your body around this rod, eliminating any rocking from side to side which slows the boat.

Now, sitting tall, shoulders in front of hips, not bent over or slouching, you must pull back your shoulders slightly, at the same time poking out your chest.

This opens up your diaphragm & lungs, allowing you to breathe properly, & take in more oxygen.

When posture is incorrect & slouching occurs, the liver & stomach get pushed upwards towards the diaphragm compressing the abdomen. This compression makes it harder for the diaphragm to contract, flatten, & move downwards in order to inflate the lungs. Consequently the inspiratory muscles, particularly the diaphragm, fatigue, when this occurs, they take blood away from the skeletal muscles, thus causing fatigue in those muscles, & a decline in performance.

Although this next part is more to do with the stroke, I’m going to mention it in this section on posture, as the correct posture must come before the stroke can be correct.

Your elbow must NEVER, repeat NEVER be higher than your shoulder.

This is crucial to prevent injuries to the group of muscles which surround the shoulder joint, commonly known as rotator cuffs.

The socket which accepts the head of the humerus is not a complete ball joint, but actually open on the end, this allows the shoulder joint to assume 1600 different positions.

Because of this the joint must be reinforced by this group of four very small muscles which arise from the scapular & attach to the head of the humorous, forming a musculotendinous cuff around the joint, securing it from dislocation.

Two of these muscles are lateral rotators, one is a medial rotator, & the other is an abductor (lifts the arm up sideways).

It is this abductor muscle which is the most likely to be damaged by incorrect posture/style.

By way of demonstration, try this. Bend your arm at the elbow, then lift it sideways like a wing, now raise your elbow above your shoulder, feel the strain from your shoulder down your arm. This is what we need to prevent while paddling.

As suggested in the first article, every time you go on the water, the first part of you training session should be developing & practising good posture & stroke correction.

This needs to be done at the beginning of the session before you’re physically & neurologically fatigued.

Even elite paddlers spend lots of time on stroke correction & posture.