November 18, 1999

Kayaking's Secret Pain

"This article first appeared on 'Wes Boyd's Kayak Place' website and is republished with permission. All articles in this category were authored by Wes Boyd unless otherwise noted. [Woody]"

Let's try an experiment: go sit down on your living room floor, back up against the coffee table, your legs straight out in front of you. Sit like that for, oh, four hours. Then try to get up.

No way you're going to do that, huh? Well, try this: go out and get in your kayak, and paddle for four hours. Not hard; just take it easy and check out the scenery. Then try to get up.

The majority of kayaks aren't built with comfort in mind, especially when it comes to legs. Designers like to have you "locked in" to the boat pretty good, in case rolling time comes along. But, it's not very comfortable. We all know that, and don't talk about it much. It's like it was a dirty little secret that we don't want to let our failings on to others.

Here a while back, a group of us were getting set to take a river trip on a rather low creek. Many of us were touring kayakers, and didn't want to tear up our nice boats on all the rocks and snags and stuff, so we took alternative routes. Me, I took a 50-year old aluminum canoe; others, whitewater boats they'd picked up over the years, and other such stuff.

We were standing around talking, waiting while everybody got their acts together at the put-in, and I got to talking to a woman who was griping about the seat in her whitewater boat: it hurt her legs, she said. She didn't use it very much, because she could only stay in it a short time. I shook my head, and said, "I know what you need." I reached into the back of my van, and pulled out a red bag, about six inches thick, eight inches wide, and eighteen inches long. "Stuff this under your knees," I told her.

She was dubious, but willing to try anything. A few minutes later, she got her boat into the water and slid into it. "That's really comfortable," she said. "It's never felt this good!"

I busied myself with getting the canoe going. There was quite a group of us on the little stream, and we separated, so I didn't see her again until the takeout. "That was really great!" she said, handing me the bag back. "My hamstrings don't hurt at all, and they always do, even in my other boat! Where can I buy something like this?"

"Buy?" I said. "You don't buy something like this, you need to make it yourself, so it fits you. The bag is a stuff sack from an old tent I threw away years ago. Inside it is some foam rubber from a school bus seat I scrounged from a dumpster. There's some duct tape wrapping the foam rubber to keep it firm."

I don't claim that stuffing a pad up underneath your knees is the universal panecea for all kayaking's leg problems. I know it works for me.

Right after I got my current boat, about the third or fourth trip I made, I wound up being out on the water for about four hours. I don't know how I ever managed to stand up when I finally did get to shore, my leg pain was so bad. It was then that I knew I had to do something, and I experimented with a foam rubber pad, folded to various shapes and thicknesses to decide what the final version would be. I tried one of those square life preserver/cushions you see on canoes, but it was too firm and too wide.

The current version of my leg bag took a while to evolve; at the core, there's some high-density foam rubber to give it a little more stiffness, and it's wrapped with softer foam. It seems to do the job. A friend of mine uses a roll of soft foam rubber, but wrapped tight with duct tape. Whatever works for you is the ticket. Do it right, and it really does lock your thighs into the boat better, without the constant pressure on the foot pegs that makes for sore hamstrings and leg cramps.

Best of all, for a touring boat person, it can do double duty as a pillow, saving neck cramps while you're sleeping. Not bad for a few cents investment in duct tape.