August 16, 2003

Getting the Edge

Foot Peg Adjustment:

How are your foot pegs adjusted? If you are like many kayakers, you have your pegs positioned so you can comfortably touch your knees to the underside of the deck. And like those many folks, you probably paddle that way most of the time, yes?

Let me suggest to you that for most flat-water paddling you want your legs straight. This allows you to transfer your forward paddling from your paddle, to your body, directly into your kayak at the foot pegs.

There are other reasons you want to do this as well, but first let me finish telling you about the adjustment:

Sit in your kayak with your legs straight and your butt fully in the back of the seat. With the bottom of your feet at 90 degrees to the hull (and your legs), the balls of your feet should be in contact with the foot peg. With a slight forward tilt of your toes, you should easily be able to bring your knees up to touch the underside of your deck. If not, pad the underside of your deck so that you can both sit with your legs straight, yet contact the deck with just a slight bend in the foot.

Many people paddle with their knees in contact with the deck all the time. This actually hampers good edging control, and can make learning to roll more difficult as you will see in the discussion below on rolling.

Edging:

With your foot pegs now properly adjusted, try edging your kayak in the following manner: Raise your left knee to contact the deck by applying pressure to the foot-peg with your left foot. With your right knee, press the back of it toward the hull so that you are pulling up on the left knee, and pushing down with the right.

This will lock you in the kayak and give better balance and edge control than if you have both knees locked under the deck. You'll also find it is easier to hold this position for longer periods of time. Simply reverse the knee positions for edging in the other direction.

Rolling:

How many times have you told someone, or had someone tell you "Keep your head down!" ???

The problem with raising the head and telling someone not to do it is that it is only a symptom, not the cause of failed rolls. If we eliminate the ability to raise the head, the rolling student will find this task much easier to master.

In our example, we'll use going over on the right side and coming back up (1/2 roll) on the same side to illustrate. We'll begin with our setup - we will fall to our right, but before we do, drop the left knee and lift the right knee so it touches the deck. With the left knee pressing down, capsize to the right and hold your knees in that position (right knee pulling up against the deck, back of left knee pushing against the hull).

In this position, if you roll back up on the same side, you will find it almost impossible to raise your head. Without the left knee against the underside of the deck, you won't have anything to pull against to lift your head.

Remember, lifting the head is a symptom - pulling against the deck with the left knee is the cause - and doing exactly the opposite - pushing the the back of the left knee against the hull, will help rotate the kayak under you as you roll up.

Another way to remember this is if you engage that left knee to the deck and raise your head, you in effect will be pulling the left side of your kayak and your head toward each other. Most of the time this means you will simply pull the kayak back over on top of you and cause other people to yell "Keep your head down!"

High Brace:

Hey, I bet by now you are catching on. That is right - the back of one knee down against the hull and one knee up against the deck. As in the example above try a high brace on your right side and you will find it much easier to come back up with your knees touching opposite halves of the kayak.

Woody