CASKA: Chicago Area Sea Kayakers Association

February: Falling Back in Love with Sea Kayaking

By Mary Fairchild

 

In water, any rescue takes a lot more time and energy than an elegant roll.

Both Russ and I capsized and rolled our kayaks on that day and neither one of us are strangers to chaotic surf of the Great Lakes… With the power of breaking waves on full display in front of us and the howling wind we had to get very close to each other just to be able to talk. I was looking at Russ eye-to-eye with no more than 10' separating the boats. Mid-sentence, Russ's kayak was suddenly hoisted straight up out of the water and the next instance I was looking at the white bottom of his Nordkapp, head cocked way up. Another split second and there was no more Russ or his kayak… Haris Subacius—Isle Royale

A reliable roll is one that can be done when not expected. Rough water, or skookumchuck, can psychologically make things difficult. Find ways to practice in all conditions. A roll will help you get more proficient at your bracing skills. Don’t plan to just set up to roll when faced with a possible capsize. Sweep your brace stroke just like you would at the end of your roll.

Warren Williamson rolling at Skookumchuck Narrows; 8/09:

It is common, during the initial learning stages to perform several excellent rolls one week, and then lose the ability entirely the following week.

If you have incorporated and reinforced mistakes, a good instructor will be able to catch your mistakes and help you.  If you start missing your roll, even after you have mastered the roll, look for the following mistakes:

1. Poor setup: your roll is doomed from the start if your body is not tucked properly and your paddle positioned correctly.
2. Relax: take the time to set up properly, and then perform the roll in a precise and relaxed manner.
3. Paddle blade: Set up with a flat front blade. The working paddle blade needs to be oriented in a horizontal position so it can slice near or just below the surface. Tuck your chest out over outside so your paddle raises above the surface. If you tuck forward this may pull your blade in the wrong direction. Feel your forearms against the boat--gets your hands out of the water. Once paddle is in the air place the front blade on the water. Hold the paddle very lightly because a tight grip translates tension to the rest of your body making you more likely to pull the blade down. Twist your torso while watching the blade. With your hands lose on the shaft think of letting the paddle blade float across the surface of the water. The flat blade of your paddle is just gliding over the surface. Resistance on the blade causes you to lift your head which disengages the rolling knee. Too tight a grip can lead to the blade diving if the wrist and torso steer the blade toward the bottom. Use your torso to sweep the blade away in a wide arc. Avoid pulling the paddle toward the bottom by using just your arms. Practice a few “false sweeps.”
4. Use one knee at a time: Your connection at the knees is what allows you to roll your boat upright. An efficient roll uses one knee at a time. If both knees are pressuring the thigh braces it may be impossible to roll the kayak. Extending the torso out starts the pressure on the rolling knee. Twisting the torso moves the blade and maintains the pressure on the rolling knee. The only reason the paddle moves is because your shoulders are turning. If you raise your head it results in engaging the wrong knee and that pulls the boat over on top of you. Going for air (lifting your head), means that your knees are not working to roll the boat. Keeping your head position correct assists the rolling knee in righting the boat. You need to leave your head down so that you can pull the rolling knee up.
5. Finish position: Your torso is twisted around and you are looking down the shaft. The back hand is at the shoulder with the elbow jutted forward. Knuckles curled back to your shoulder. You can see the stern of your boat. Come up with a mantra to help you remember something that helps you. My mantra has been “relax,“ and, more recently, “remember your knee.” 

The San Juans are the site of many kayaking accidents due to insufficient training and practice in a place that has many treacherous currents as well as boat traffic. Deception Pass, 11/16/10.

Warren Williamson rarely instructs though he is a mentor to many paddlers. Interesting interview clips with Warren Williamson from above video:

Have you optimized your boat? “No. I haven’t optimized it for anything it’s just a very ‘Plain Jane West Greenland.’”

Any plans to go touring? “You know, I haven’t even camped out one night in a kayak yet.”

This run is about 6 nm. And so 45 mn—is a screaming time for this. “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of anything like that… You know, I’m not a racer. I don’t keep track of all that.”

But you do go out to Skookumchuck and go backwards! “I can do that.”

Warren Another View; 5/4/11:  Note Warren’s detailed preflight approach to taking a new kayak out into conditions.  During the first five minutes, Warren familiarizes himself with the craft to eliminate surprise and allow him to proceed with confidence.  

Mfairlady

Paddle/Hike/Play

References/Related

1. John Lull, Sea Kayaking, Safety & Rescue: From Mild to Wild, the Essential Guide; 2001.
2. Derek C. Hutchinson, Expedition Kayaking; A Falcon Guide, 5th Ed.; 2007.
3. Derek C. Hutchinson, The Complete Book of Sea Kayaking, 5th Ed.; 2003.
4. “The Kayak Roll” with Kent Ford; Performance Video; 2003.

Your Roll: The Cliffs Notes

By popular demand, please find below the outline of ideas discussed in this rolling series:

I. The Wisdom of the Bobo Doll:

• You can't learn to roll a kayak simply by watching well-executed rolls. Visual information is not enough, conceptual understanding is required
  • What makes a roll work is hidden from view under the spray decks in the lower body
  • What you readily see when you watch rolling—the motion of the paddle blade and the swinging of the upper body—is misleading. It draws attention away from the core and upper legs where the action is really happening
• The Bobo Doll uses weights on the bottom of its body to rise back up after it's been knocked down. Kayak rollers use their torsos and legs to right the kayaks. Understanding of the principle is needed for the development of a successful and bombproof roll.
• 'Bo' and 'Bo' in the Bobo Doll is short for 'Boat' and 'Body.' Note how 'Blade' of the ubiquitous 'Body, Boat and Blade' is omitted. The wise doll does not mean to say that the blade is irrelevant—only to underscore that using your body to flip the boat are higher priorities.

II. The Role of the Hip Snap:

• The goal of the kayak roll is to restore the body directly on top of the kayak
• Boat and body need to move towards each other first
• Lifting the body on top of the kayak is:
  • Secondary to bringing of the boat and body together
  • Comes later in the rolling sequence
  • Should be done with lifting of the upper body
• The primary purpose of the hip flick is to upright the kayak enough so that when body and boat are as close as roller's flexibility allows, the momentum will take the body on top rather than under the boat

III. RaHeaDiPad:

• Two ubiquitous companions of a failed kayak roll are:
  • Raised Head
  • Diving Paddle
• Rising head and diving paddle are not two independent events. They are two symptoms of the same action—lifting the upper body and pushing off of the paddle to support the lift
• Rising head and diving paddle do not cause rolls to fail—they are harmless manifestations of attempts to roll by lifting the body as if it were on solid ground
• Mental representation of the roll is to blame for the failed rolls, not RaHeaDiPad
• When the roller pulls the boat under the body and draws the upper body towards the boat, raising the head and stabbing with the paddle are almost not possible

IV. Illustrations:

• Photo
• Video

V. Top Hand Punch:

• Extending top hand is also frequently blamed for failed rolls
• Punching hand is said to undermine the parallel blade-to-surface angle. It interferes with the lifting of the upper body
• Additionally, top hand extension is said to be dangerous for the shoulder
• Neither efficacy- nor safety-based issues with the punching top hand apply when pulling rather than lifting strategy is used for rolling
• Bonus: punching with the top hand is efficient:
  • Increases leverage for power transfer from the torso to forward thrust
  • Encourages the use of powerful torso muscles to create power for rolling the boat
  • Adds top-hand pushing to pulling on the shaft with the bottom hand
  • Moves the shaft away from the chest and the paddle blade away from the kayak to create room to maneuver the blade at the end of the roll

Good luck and please share your thoughts and experiences.

Also, if you are looking for more writing on the concepts of rolling, pictures and videos, you may want to check out Low Impact Rolling series.  Derek offers a rather different perspective on how you get from upside down to on top of things.

Related articles

Should You Roll with the Punches?

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

Your Roll Illustrated

Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

Should You Roll with the Punches?

by Haris

Raising your head or stabbing the water with the paddle each betrays lifting at the core of the mental representation of the roll in one's head. Pull boat and body towards each other instead, then slide the body on top with as little elevation as possible, and these maladies will vanish without a trace.

There is a third common suspect when it comes to failed rolls— Top Hand Punch. Top Hand Punch is charged with at least two cardinal violations:

1. It is unsafe and leads to shoulder injury.
2. It causes the dreaded diving paddle.

With the approach to rolling advocated in this series, neither safety- nor efficacy-based accusations against punching hold much water.

Safety first! The short of it is that extending your arm and applying pulling or lateral forces on it while in that position will strain the shoulder. The strain becomes more of an issue when the extended arm gets behind the plane of the roller's chest. In this vulnerable position, even weak sideways forces will test the tendons and ligaments that hold the humerus attached to the shallow socket of the shoulder blade. This threat is very real in rolling. If you try to lift the body straight up by pushing off of an extended outboard hand (one closest to active blade) your shoulder will hurt eventually. You may even dislocate it, or worse, tear something this way so don't do it. Chalk it up as yet another reason to migrate the mental model of the roll away from lifting!

Note, however, so far it's the outboard, not the punching hand, that's in danger. What threatens the shoulder on your pulling outboard hand will not affect the inboard hand (farther away from active blade) in the same way. As long as you keep the paddle in front of your chest about as high as the forehead the punching, the inboard hand is safe inside the 'Paddler's Box.' Moreover, punching compresses the humerus into joint socket and the strongest part of the rotator cuff at the back. Minimal lateral forces are present during punching and there is no pulling at all. Just don't try to end of your forward-finishing or layback rolls with the hands way above your head.

That was safety—preventing physical harm to your body. How about efficacy? Will punching make it harder to execute a successful roll? The objections to punching rely on the fact that it will make the blade-to-surface angle less parallel and more perpendicular. One might imagine that the paddle becomes ineffective in this position. And it surely does … if your goal is to lift! The blade angle optimal for pulling the boat and the upper body together is perpendicular to the surface of the water or as far away from parallel as possible. In the end, some upward thrust is needed to bring the body on top of the boat; therefore, the optimal angle for the pulling-style roll is somewhere between parallel and perpendicular. That IS the angle you get when you punch. If you use the paddle blade to pull the boat toward the upper body it is the parallel angle that is totally ineffective. When pulled, the parallel blade merely skips and slides across the surface providing no anchorage for the pulling effort.

So far, it appears that punching is both safe and effective for pull-style rolling. But wait, there's more; you get three for one! Punching also makes our roll more efficient.

When you punch, you engage torso rotation and more muscles to do the work. This happens in rolling much the same way it does with the good ole' forward stroke. If you want your torso to do the bulk of the forward stroke, the paddle shaft has to be kept well away from your chest. Just try to paddle with the shaft touching the sternum and you will immediately know what I mean. Arm extension away from the chest is essential for harnessing the power of the torso! Without it you'll be cruising in the first gear—way too much power and not nearly enough leverage to transfer it into forward movement.

During forward stroke power comes from pulling as well as pushing on the shaft. The ratio between the two is a matter of argument and taste but the fact remains—if you want an efficient stroke, you have to push with the top hand. Rolling is no different. With the paddle shaft close to your chest and with your top hand arrested at the shoulder you all but eliminate the torso twist from the game. That's a lot of power to sacrifice.

The other day I discussed these ideas about rolling with a couple of fellow instructors in the pool. Several of them convinced me to try keeping the inboard hand close to my chest. While doing it, I didn't engage my torso and didn't rotate my body. To my surprise, at the very end of the roll, I quite literally tripped over the active blade hitting the gunwale and went back into the water. When I punch, I get the paddle blade about a foot away from the kayak. That extra wiggle room gives me space to finalize any unfinished rolling business—a safety cushion if you will. With the paddle glued to my chest and pressing against the side of the boat, I felt trapped.

In summary, it seems like it would take a feat of creative self-destruction to endanger the shoulder of the inboard arm during rolling—even when it is fully extended and even if it is pointing straight above your head. According to the British racers, extending the arm to about 120 degrees is the optimal angle to deliver the punching power. At that angle, operating the inboard hand seems quite safe to me.

Second, while arm extension makes for non-parallel blade-to-surface angle, as far as pull-rolling is concerned, such an angle creates a more—not less—effective paddle position. It helps to draw the boat and the body together rather than hinder it. Parallel blade is only good for lifting.

Third, by extending the paddle away from your chest, you encourage and harness the power of the torso rotation for your roll making it more efficient. Combination of punching and pulling is the way to leverage the most power out of this stroke.

Finally, when you punch you end the roll with the blade some distance away from the side of the kayak. This space creates a safety net for cleaning up any sloppiness that may still remain in your rolling technique. Punching is safe, effective, and efficient—what's not to like?

Your Roll Illustrated

by Haris

The goal of the kayak roll is to restore the body weight on top of the supporting platform—the boat. The previous posts argued that one should pull the boat under the body using leg and torso muscles.Y our rolling practice sessions should seek to minimize the reliance on the paddle. That being said, the instincts tell us to lift the body out of the water which, when there is no solid ground on which to support the push-off, makes for a shaky roll indeed. Two completely different mental images of the roll are at play here: one that lifts and another one that pulls in the opposite direction. Today, we'll put these two ideas into pictures side-by-side. Literally.

The first figure illustrates the beginning of the action as soon as the paddle is in place to support the flipping of the boat. I use C2C roll because it yields itself for illustrating the differences best. The general principles, however, apply equally to the sweep/screw, forward finishing, and Greenland rolls—only the timing is somewhat different.

Figure O on the left depicts the forces in play during the PULL-style roll. Picture X on the right does the same for LIFT. You will see two arrows in each picture. The arrows that originate from the boat or the body show the intended directions of boat or body movements respectively. In figure O the moss-colored arrow starts at the juncture of hip and boat. That's what you want to move when you pull the boat first. In figure X the orange arrow starts at the roller's chest. With the lift model in mind, the body has to move up and sideways away form the blade and towards the center of the kayak.

The arrows that originate from the blades show the direction of the paddle movement required to power the intended actions. To rotate the kayak upright, you'll want to pull the boat with your knee/thigh and torso pretty much parallel to the water's surface toward the blade. The momentum is directed downward at the initiation of the movement. The teal arrow on the left of figure O shows the forces at the blade that will support the boat rotation.  In the beginning, the blade just needs to keep your body from sinking.

Enter figure X, to lift the roller the paddle will need to go straight down at first and away from the boat subsequently when the body moves towards the boat. It is easy to spot the diving paddle in this image—the dreaded epic failure of the roll just as the body clears the surface. There is no way keep the paddle blade parallel to the surface of the water for long and there is no support for the sideways push of the body. An awkward draw stroke away from the boat with the back of a vertical blade may work.  More likely, however, you get a hopeless stabbing of the water with the tip of the blade.

The second figure shows body boat and blade after the hip snap. In this picture I have rotated the boat as much as the flexibility in my body and the fit of the boat permit. The body started to come out of the water.

Let's start with the instinctual LIFT strategy in the figure X₁ on the right. Normally, if you tried to lift, by this stage, you would see the classic desperately seeking head and the diving paddle stabbing the water in the opposite direction. After some practice, beginning rollers internalize the 'hip-snap first' idea, execute it but fall back on the body-lifting strategy to finish the work as soon as the hip snap is done and body clears the surface. The shaft angle to the water is past 45 degrees by the end of the hip snap and that just happens to be the exact path the body needs to move to end up on top of the boat … just in the opposite direction. You see where this strategy is going to land you, right?

Arrows in the left figure O₁ illustrate the forces at work when you pull the boat and the body together.  The recovery angle of the boat at the end of hip snap is limited by body flexibility in a given boat. Therefore, to continue with the strategy in a straightforward way you would need to employ the car-jack action. You start with a wide diamond shape, bring the sides together and this makes the top rise. If you keep on pulling the boat to the blade and the blade to the boat, provided some momentum was generated during the hip snap, the body will rise and the roll will succeed.

That's your classic C2C. The chest is facing the bow throughout the motion. Even though I just used C2C to illustrate the action, I don't think it is the best roll. I consider C2C to be a stepping stone, an educational tool, if you will. Why?

You are probably sitting on a chair right now. Try this: without lifting your bum cheeks off the chair do the C2C motion and note how low you body goes. Got it? Now lean forward and, if you chair has no back support, backwards. Leaning backwards and forward I can get my head below the top of the seat while flexing sideways I can go down maybe as far as the bottom of my rib cage. Add the PFD or torso insulation and the difference in ranges will shrink but for most cases it will remain significant. The lower you can bend your upper body on the chair, the less power it will require to lift it out of the water.  Pulling the boat under the body will be easier.  If you bought into the idea that pulling is preferable to lifting, both layback and front deck finishing rolls will be more efficient.

Both in principle and in practice I prefer layback and especially forward-finishing roll to classic C2C; however, this statement needs to be qualified. High forward kayak deck, bulky PFD or extra pounds around the waist will all inhibit forward-finishing rolling ability, sometimes, to the point of impossibility. Layback rolls can equally be inhibited by equipment such low-riding PFD, tow-belt, high aft decks. There's also a school of thought which claims that layback position takes too long to execute, is unstable and susceptible to re-capsize. People also say that it is unsafe in shallow water but see the piece from Eric Jackson where he summarizes the objections and offers his own insights.

From a learning perspective, while C2C is fundamentally a bottom-top/sideways two-dimensional roll, forward-finishing and layback rolls add movement on the forward-backwards axis and turn C2C into a 3D roll. At the end of the day, 3D is good as it engages more of your body to do the work of rolling. Learning-wise, however, 3D is harder to learn for most people than 2D.

Can I persuade you to try one more thing while you're still in that chair? Recall how far you were able to bend down forward, backwards, and flexing to the sides. We're going to do one more bend to the side except this time add as much torso rotation as you can muster. When doing C2C, you were facing the screen with your chest throughout the motion. This time, rotate to the side and face the floor with your chest as you bend down. For me, this torso rotation improves the ability to curl over the chair considerably. I can get my upper body lower this way as compared to sideways flex.  Given your body-boat configuration the mileage may vary.

So, in summary, when executing the final stage of the pulling roll, you have at least four options—one 2D (classic and simple side-to-side C2C), one 2.5D (C2C with added torso rotation), and two 3D (C2C with low forward or backward swing).

The bottom line from the pages above was to suggest that you should PULL not LIFT when you roll. DRAW boat and body together and on top of each other with your body floating in the water for as long as possible. Try to suppress what comes naturally because it works on hard land. Do not LIFT the body on top of the boat by pushing off of the paddle blade. It may work if you're agile enough but it's not sustainable.

There is a least one more important topic I feel compelled to address—the punching hand. Stay tuned.

 

PS: here's a link to a companion video to this post

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The Kayak Roll and the BoBo Doll

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

by Haris

In the preceding posts I proposed that the key to a successful roll is hidden from plain view below decks of a kayak and that it is located mainly around the torso area. The second post argued that the main goal of the hip snap is to get the boat out of the way so that the upper body could be re-united one on top of the other. Today, it's time for tales of monsters and their evil mothers. Today we meet the archenemy of the bombproof roll. Don't worry, the tale ends well, the dragon turns out to be nothing but a ghost and everybody rolls happily forever and ever.

Ours begins like any other good fairy tale. A long, long time ago, back before we knew how to walk we all learned to sit up. Back then there was only one way—walk the upper body up while pushing off the ground with the hands. The chest and the shoulders with the head on top were rising slowly up off the ground. The little hands were pushing unsteadily down on the solid ground until the weight of the upper body got centered over the bum and the spine defied gravity. One act with two forces at the opposite ends: upper body rising up, little hands pushing down to support the action.

Can you see it in your mind's eye? Can you feel the triumph in your gut!? What a joy that was, that first step toward autonomy, independence, being your own person, exploring the world beyond what you can see from where your mommy dropped you. Ready to get moving!

Dramatic tah-tah-tah … adventurer beware! Close your eyes, visualize the glorious sequence again and this time … can you see the shadow of the monster rising from under the very feat we just celebrated? A good friend on solid ground turns out to be the ultimate saboteur on terra aqua. The dual-action push-and-raise strategy gave birth to an ugly fire-breathing and life-sucking two-headed monster named RaHeaDiPad. If you tried to roll, you may have heard of it as two primary reasons blamed for a failed roll: the Raising of the Head and the Diving Paddle. You may have learned of the two as separate and independent actors you need to conquer before you will roll. In this tale they are one and the same. They are but two ends of the same stick, two faces on the same coin; they are the underlying principle of Newton's famous law; the action that breads equal re-action; they are the two inseparable heads of the Anti-Roll dragon.

Sounds ominous enough? You shouldn't be intimidated. There will come a bright morning after the darkest of the nights. The monster, two heads and all, is not real! The rising head and the diving paddle are but harmless symptoms. They can't possibly hurt your roll! Their sole significance is to reveal what's going on in your head. The monster is only a shadow that points to something in the way of the light. Like the shadow on the wall, you can see it but it does not really exist.

The RaHeaDiPad is decidedly NOT what causes your roll to fail. When you spot it, you are not watching something that is performed incorrectly. What you are seeing is the wrong thing being done in the first place. No corrections to the execution need be attempted. The monster needs to be eliminated, removed out of the way, plain and simple. What you need to worry about is the evil step-mother who created the monster. This gets a bit tricky because the mother is the mental image of the way to get up after you fall that resides deep in the core with your deepest instincts. It's that infant pushing off of the ground with the feeble hands. Except, your hands are strong and confident by now and you know what you are doing. What was a feat back in the day is nothing but a habit with a mind of its own now. When you will convince the mother to get out of the way, the monster will vanish in a puff of pixie dust. And the way you'll do this is by gently nurturing a new and different action schema for the roll. It will gradually displace the evil mother and, with practice, will become just as natural as sitting up.

 

The Monster

So what is this monster? Both the rising head and the diving paddle have at least two distinct meanings. Good grace, now we have four!

 

 

RaHea: You probably heard the advice 'Keep you head down!' or 'Make sure the head comes out of the water last.' The essence of this common suggestion is not about the head at all. It is aimed at keeping your whole upper body weightless in the water for as long as possible. If only the BoBo Doll could flex at the waist and wind the upper body around its 'hips.' 'Don't lift your upper body (with the head attached),' is closer to what we want.

'Keep the head glued to the bottom shoulder' goes another common phrase in a pool session. Also good advice; however, like its sister 'Keep the body down,' it's a trick and the way it works also has very little to do with the head. Pressing the head down on the shoulder works by engaging the side of the lower body that is responsible for rolling and pulling the boat under the body.  That's what you want--the right lower body action! Try doing a quick hip snap in your chair right now. Then do another one, but this time, perform a head dink in the opposite direction—harder than rubbing your belly with one hand and tapping the top of the head with the other, isn't it?

So it seems that both pieces of advice about keeping the head down and glued to your lower shoulder are really useful mnemonics. When we look under the hood, however, they have little to do with the head itself. Harmless shortcuts, you may conclude to yourself; unfortunately, they focus the attention of the roller just about as far away as possible from where the real action takes place—in your torso. If you internalize the principles of pulling the boat under your body and drawing the upper body and the boat towards each other without lifting the latter; when you have a mental image in your head that employs the bottom leg and the stomach (front deck) or back (layback) and lateral torso muscles to do the work, whether or not you keep your head down makes very little real difference. In fact, if you pull body and boat together rather than lift the body out of the water, it becomes very awkward and next to impossible to raise your head at the same time. If you don't believe me, do that hip snap in the chair and dink the head in the opposite direction again.

DiPad: The diving paddle is equally sneaky. It often hides behind a legitimate problem with blade orientation. It's rather common to see the paddle dive under the surface right after the set up stage. This is an undesirable but easily correctable technical mistake. It happens when the leading edge of the blade is below the trailing edge while it slices away from the bow. Let's be clear: this is decidedly not the second head of the RaHeaDiPad. The diving paddle that is the companion to the rising head is the fueling part of the lifting. Bring back the image of the infant trying to sit up. The infant head is the rising head of the myth and the supporting hands of the baby are the diving paddle. Can you see how they are one and the same yet?

There's a dead give-away of the monster diving paddle and it is the stabbing motion of the blade. Not slicing—stabbing. We already saw how during the sweep a simple technical mistake of lowering the leading edge of the slicing paddle can lead to gradual sinking of the blade. When the blade is nearly parallel to the surface at the end of the sweep, it can theoretically support the lifting of the body. It's the wrong thing to do but, if enough energy is available, you can produce a successful roll this way. Many strong paddlers do it all the time!

If you focus on flipping the boat, executing the hip snap, rotating the boat from upside-down to upright the blade will inevitably sink a little and the angle between the blade and surface will be around 45 degrees or more. It is here that the infant strategy of getting up is doomed to total failure. No amount of power and agility can save you now. It happens to be that the body requires propulsion at around the same 45-degree angle in which we left the blade, just in the opposite direction. The final lift of the body requires a stabbing motion of the paddle to sustain it and that's exactly the instinctual move we see when a roll fails at the last second in a dramatic fashion. That's DiPad!

For extra credit, watch the paddle at the very beginning of the hip snap. Quite often you will see a short but distinct stabbing motion one instant before the paddle goes down. What is that? Is it another giveaway of the DiPad wrapped around the sweep?

Consider yourself introduced—the RaHeaDiPad, the monster known in every kayak pool around the world, reduced to an overblown balloon. The smallest pinprick will expose the beast for what it is: nothing but hot air behind the ominous curtain. Then there's the mother and she's real. We got a good look at her when we watched an infant get up off the ground. I'll try some illustrations for the next installment.

 

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Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

The Kayak Roll and the BoBo Doll

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

by Haris

In the previous installation of this multi-post series on kayak rolling I have discussed how the invisible lower body hides the key to a successful kayak roll and how you can't learn it just by watching. In the upcoming posts I will analyze the critical components of the roll as well as commonly cited mistakes in rolling. This post is about the hip snap.

The ultimate purpose of the kayak roll maneuver is to restore the weight of the upper body on top of the kayak. When the weight of the body is on top of the center of buoyancy we have a stable boat. When it is not, a paddler either braces or capsizes. The latter is a precursor to a kayak roll and when it happens the body is, at best, on the same plane as center of buoyancy and usually under it. If you want to smile and breathe again only one arrangement will work: body on top, kayak underneath.

After you set up for the roll, the first element in the sequence is the hip snap. Good instructor will tell you to rotate the boat right side up applying as little pressure on the blade as possible. Well, at least that is what I used to tell the students. My mission for these posts is a clear mental picture of what you should be doing to get a bombproof roll. To that end, we need to understand how the hip snap helps you toward the ultimate goal of the kayak roll. Is the real purpose of the hip snap to rotate the boat right side up?

Do this now in your head or at your next pool session or the next time you paddle in the lake. Lay down on the surface of the water, let the boat capsize on top of you and hold on to the side of pool or to a partner's boat. As illustrated in panel A of the figure, this is a regular set-up for practicing the hip snap.

 

Now execute the hip snap—rotate the boat from upside down to right side up with your thighs and hips. If you keep the boat at a constant distance from your head throughout, you will end up in a position depicted in panel B. I think this captures the essence of the hip snap. Please comment if you have other ideas.

Does this hip snap bring you any closer to the ultimate goal of the kayak roll? Does flipping the boat from upside down to right side up restore the body on top of the boat? No, it does not. The buoyancy of the boat (green arrow) and the weight of the body (red arrow) have not converged. The re-alignment will come next. Getting the body weight over the kayak is not a part of the hip snap. Nor is the complete righting of the boat needed.

This mental exercise should illustrate the fact that the hip snap by itself, the rotation of the boat, does not do much for the restoration of the balance that was disrupted by the capsize. For that to happen, the red arrow needs to end up on top of the green arrow—body over boat. The flipping of the boat is a means to something else.

In your mind, move green and red arrows toward each other in panel A. Then repeat it in panel B. The difference the hip snap had made should be obvious immediately. Before the hip snap you would have been aligning the body UNDER the center of buoyancy! What the hip snap accomplished was to get the boat out of the way of repositioning your body on top of the boat.

A really powerful hip snap can do something else for you. It can initiate the rotational momentum which will wind the body onto the boat like string on a spool. Doing so can contribute quite substantially to the eventual restoration of balance. However, the powerful hip snap is not necessary for the successful roll. I would go further than that, power hip snap is not the optimal way to mobilize available energies toward your goal and it puts unnecessary stress on your body in the process.

This is the scoop on hip sanp: it is the first step in a successful roll and its goal is to remove the boat out of the way of body-over-boat alignment. I will discuss the three most common mistakes in executing a kayak roll—the diving blade, the rising head, and the punching hand—and how they fit in the mental picture of the bombproof roll in the future posts. In the meantime, please comment with your observations.

Related articles

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

The Kayak Roll and the BoBo Doll

Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

The Kayak Roll and the BoBo Doll

by Haris

The kayak pool season is almost upon us. Soon hordes of eager kayakers will descend upon the area pools to flourish in chlorine-filled crowded waters and pristine shower stalls. Top on the pool activity list is always the elusive Holy Grail—the bombproof kayak roll.

 Mastery of the kayak roll makes you safer. A bombproof roll is, at the very least, a very fast way to recover from capsize. Some say that it is the ultimate recovery technique. No less important, albeit less conspicuous, is roll you can trust as the foundation for building your kayak skills house. If you seek a substantial solid structure, you have to mix the roll in the foundation that will be there to support it (see this discussion and follow-up from a couple of years ago). If you dread submersion, immersion, getting wet and cold, rescues, swimming to shore, and the whole bit; along comes the inevitable consequence—your edged turns and braces will never become all that they can be. Quite possibly you will never enjoy the thrill of bumpy water for fear of swimming.

And let's not forget, rolling is just plain cool. It need not be instrumental to any other end whatsoever. It's yet another way to spend quality time on the water in a kayak. So learn how to roll this winter, learn it well, and fear no more as you set out to stake your flag out there in the wet land.

The BoBo doll study was about social learning. To the authors it was also about aggression. The study was remarkably simple. Children watched as adults abused BoBo dolls. Subsequently, children were left alone with the dolls. What happened? Are you on the edge of your seat? Yes, as you see in the video for yourself, the children hit the dolls just like the adults did. The scientists drew a seemingly obvious conclusion: social learning of behavior occurred via observation. What you see is what you do. So is this true about rolling? Can one simply watch some rolls and learn how to roll?

As is the case in social science, the interpretations of the study results were questioned. "How do we know that children learned aggression?" – the purists asked. Truly scientific conclusions should be limited to behavior, not intentions nor meaning nor any such things that are not directly and objectively observable. Children saw the dolls being hit so they only learned to hit them. Aggression is an overlay of interpretation not what was observed.

While seeing is said to be believing, the objections to the results of the BoBo doll study suggest that you don't necessarily learn what you don't see. Watching hundreds of successful rolls will not directly translate into your own roll. What you see when you watch a successful kayak roll is just the tip of the iceberg and, as is the case with icebergs, most of the substance is hidden deep beneath the surface or below decks as is the case with kayaks.

The theory behind learning kayak skills tells us that the process is largely visual. The major teaching strategies include demonstration of the skill at their core. It's only with more advanced students that demonstration begins to yield ground to experimentation and introspection. To me, rolling is not among the physical skills that you can learn by pure observation. At the very least, you will need to pay attention to the feedback from your muscles and joints, do deduction and interpretation of what you see and distill the critical aspects of what makes the kayak roll work.

Fortunately, the Bobo doll has a helpful trick up its plastic sleeve to help a poor kayaker with the roll. It is striking how much the action of getting up that the doll employs is like a good kayak roll. You knock a doll down and it re-balances itself upright—upper body above the center of gravity. My fellow paddlers, instead of watching This is the Roll, should we tune to the BoBo Dolls being hammered on YouTube? To get up, the BoBo Doll does exactly the right thing as far as the kayak roll goes. And the right thing is to use the power in its lower rather than upper body. You can call it the hip snap. The doll does not rely on the strength of the upper body or push off of the paddle. Not at all!

Unfortunately, and you probably have already guessed this, what gets the doll up is invisible. The social scientists focused on the kids and postulated some invisible things taking place. We already discussed what we can learn from them. Paddlers will do better paying attention to the dolls. Just like the kids had no aggression to behold when watching the adults abuse the toys, paddlers have no visual access to the powers that right the dolls. Despite the fact that the doll is a great model, no learning will take place unless we understand what lies beneath the plastic shell. While the principle is a matter of basic physics, it is hidden completely and totally out of sight.

To learn from the BoBo doll you will have to understand how the doll accomplishes the deed. When it's knocked down, more of its weight is below the point of contact with the ground. Visually, more of its body is above the contact point. What you notice when watching the doll's resurrection is the rapid and powerful swinging up of its head up from the ground. What actually does all of the work to make the rising happen is the weight invisible on its bottom—a visual illusion of sorts. To get itself up the doll pushes the bottom down rather than lift the upper body.

A proper kayak roll utilizes the lower body to get the paddler upright. Just like the BoBo Doll, you will need to focus on pushing the hip that is on the same side of the kayak as your body away from yourself and over to the other side of the boat. You will also pull the boat down with the thigh on the opposite side. Forget about pushing 'up' off of the paddle blade. Just like the BoBo doll, once the kayak rotates back upright, your body will wrap around it and end up on top. Think BoBo doll when you roll.

First kayak session of the season for me is on Sunday at Naperville North High School. I hope the imagery of Bobo doll will serve you in the quest after the bombproof roll. I will shortly follow this post with additional thoughts on the raised head, diving paddle, and other common kayak roll pitfalls. I would like to leave you with a short video that offers some of the best demonstrations of braces available on the web. Can you spot the BoBo doll action in these?  And remember, the two Bo's in the Bobo Doll stand for 'Body' and 'Boat.'  Blade is conspiciously missing because it's far less important.

Find some thoughts on the Hip Snap in the next post of the series.

Related articles

Your Roll and What Happens after You Fall

The Kayak Roll and the BoBo Doll

Your Roll and The Role of Hip Snap

To Flip or Not To Flip III: Back in the Head

by Haris

The question for this mini-series was the universality of the local practice to upright the capsized kayak before a T-rescue. In the pool, we found things to like about the alternative—lifting an upturned boat—and not a lot to ground the arguments against it. At the end of the day the contest seemed a bit like a toss-up and the upside-down method, at the very least, appeared as a worthy contender.

How would the two techniques fair in a head-to-head comparison in rough water? For now, this is a theoretical study as the Great Lakes fend off encroaching armies of ice and potential testers avoid the drink—even for the sake of science?!

Theoretically speaking, it seems to me that the greatest difference between the two techniques in the real-life conditions will be the ready availability of and easy access to the deck lines and toggles for both the rescuer and the paddler being rescued. The cardinal safety rule, a sea kayaking Commandment of sorts, is to hold on to one's boat and paddle after a wet exit. 'Exactly how critical is that?' you may ask. Consider this: two of Chicago's elite sea kayaking coaches got married so they could merge their last names—all just to emphasize the point for you the paddlers! The dynamic duo is known as 'BPs' and the acronym stands for "Hold on to Boat and Paddle Stupid!" Noticed the missing letter for 'Hold?' So did they...  Took a while but their firstborn promptly got a name that starts with 'H.' So now you have no excuse!

In case the acronym is not enough to drive the point home, remember that your boat and paddle are your tickets home after a capsize (not to mention the $). You want to get out of the water as fast as possible and you'll need a paddle to get out of trouble once you're back in the cockpit. In the pool we got away without doing these things. In the pool you don't really need to worry about holding on to things because there is no wind, no waves, and no current will wrestle with you for possession. Neither your kayak nor your paddle will go anywhere if you let them go in the pool. Out in the open, though, you don't need even 10 knots of wind to promptly separate you from your ride home. No matter how good of a swimmer you think you are, you have to face the reality: the wind is faster. And what about the paddle? It does not take long to permanently lose sight of it once you let go. The paddle will not drift but you will.

Just in case you're thinking like this: it should be OK to practice your rescues in calm water without special emphasis to contact with the boat and paddle. True, you don't need to worry about separation in calm conditions without current. However, the purpose of practice is not the success in a particular scenario. It is to build the rescue motions into your muscle memory and to solidify them as habits or reflexes in your cortex. If you capsize on a cold stormy day in conditions that are testing your limits as a paddler, you will not be thinking calmly to yourself: "Well, this is not a scenario, not the calm warm water in which I practiced my recoveries. Think I better hold on to the boat and paddle this time!" No, when in stress, you will reach for the instinctual and the habitual. And HBPS better be the top contender to direct your actions!

Some argue that an upside-down boat does not drift as fast with the wind as the uprighted one. Point taken! I would say, however, that the sense of security associated with this slower drift is both false and potentially dangerous. Conditions are not hard to come by which will take away the boat from you even if it is upside-down. The damage that counting on slower drift will do to your HBPS habit is just not worth the temporary peace of mind. I don't know if I want to test the strength of wind that will push my kayak away from me faster than I can swim and then guess at what it is from one situation to the other.  HBPS is far simpler and not that much work.

So the bottom line is this: when the boat is upside down, the deck lines and toggles are submerged, out of sight, harder to grab and hold on to. A paddler who has capsized needs to travel to the bow of the capsized kayak. It would be awkward and slower to do that while holding on to the deck lines under water. Maintaining contact with the boat on the slippery hull is asking for trouble.

Contact with the upturned boat was not really an issue in the pool. In living water, with boats being tossed around, banged together and pulled apart, joggled up and down, I would not count on being able to retain this contact with the smooth bottom of another kayak. Keel at the bow provides something to hold on to but the grip is not definite. Here, deck lines and toggles offer a distinct advantage—both realistically and as a matter of psychological security. The ability to hold on to the lines with the outboard hand will also all but eliminate the possibility of the rescuer capsizing backwards I discussed in the part II.

Finally, I think there's also a psychological benefit to having paddlers in the water upright their craft. Capsize is always accompanied by a certain amount of anxiety. Anxiety, in turn, is to a large extent a factor of the unknown and shaky confidence with regard to one's ability to deal with the situation. Having an engrained protocol of 'HBPS, upright the boat, HBPS, swim to the bow, HBPS' offers the person in the water a degree of familiarity and control over the situation. In the absence of these outlets—specific actions one can do when in trouble—and combined with heightened arousal the swimmer is more likely to either freak out or do something counter-productive. The ritual is a sort of lightning rod that will channel the energy produced by excess adrenaline in the blood stream.

So, in conclusion, which one of the two Ts will I advocate and teach from now on? I think both!

On flat water upside-down T-rescue is marginally more efficient. In rough conditions upright T-rescue is much safer. Why would I teach the upside-down variety, then, given all that I just said about forming good habits, etc. In real life, when conditions are calm, there just is no need to insist on uprighting the boat if the person in the water is either not familiar with the protocol or if they start arguing with you that the upside down method is the way to go. If the situation is at all emotional, there is no learning going on and, in that situation, you just want to get the person out of the water and back into their boat quick. You'll have all the time in the world to argue for the benefits of uprighting the boat at the pub after the trip.  For this reason, I think it is a good idea to have the upside-down T-rescue in your toolkit. It also gives you something to do in the pool!

If conditions are less than perfect, in a real-life rescue situation with wind or current I will insist that they flip their boat up and HBPS to the best of my ability!

Criterion		Upright	Upside-Down
Speed		Faster if rescuer has trouble breaking the cockpit seal, pulling the kayak onto the cockpit, or boat is heavy; people with short hands have trouble flipping the boat back to upside-down position	Faster with empty boat and good proficiency—between 5 and 10 seconds for testers competent with upright technique
Physical Strain		Boat is easier to lift out of the water and slide over the cockpit (assuming overhang at the bow and deck lines); no need to worry about breaking the cockpit seal	Easier to drain once boat is over the cockpit; the difference in the ease of lifting the boat out of the water was MUCH smaller than expected—negligible in the pool and with empty boats; can 'scoop up' the bow by submerging the cockpit rim and edging away, avoid strain on upper body; swimmer can assist by pushing bow up—more effectively
Maneuverability and Control		More definite contact with capsized kayak due to access to deck lines and end toggles	No difficulty moving from parallel to perpendicular and vice versa in calm conditions; maintaining contact with the boat would be compromised in rough conditions
Safety—rescuer		More definite hold of the boat due to exposed deck lines and end toggles; can catch oneself if capsizing away from the boat; less likely to lose contact in rough conditions	Surprisingly good control of the capsized boat on calm water—keel-line provides positive grasp; chances of capsizing on opposite of the boat being rescued no higher
Safety—rescued		More definite contact with the boat due to exposed and accessible deck lines and end-toggles; less likely to separate from the boat when moving to the bow while waiting for rescue	Marginally slower drift speed (may encourage a false sense of safety and lead to separation from the boat); less time in the water
Psychological		Encourages best practices of maintaining contact with the boat; gives the paddler in the water something to do while waiting for the rescuer to arrive	Satisfaction of saving some time and effort

To Flip or Not To Flip II: In the Lab

by Haris

Thanks to all who commented on the first post and to everyone who put some thought into the question as well as those of you who will try it for yourselves on the liquid surface next time you paddle. I took the questions straight to the lab—Naperville North High School kayak pool session on Sunday. Thanks to Janee Matesson of Kayak Morris for help in comparing the techniques. The two boats we worked with were a kevlar Valley Avocet and a plastic P&H Capella 160—both on the short end of the sea kayak spectrum and not loaded.

The Findings

In the context of the pool—really really flat water, warm water and no wind—the very first thing that we noticed was that lifting the capsized boat out of the water was not really any harder from the upside-down position as I expected.

I need to qualify this statement a bit. The cockpit forms a vacuum seal with the water when the cockpit points downwards. To heave the bow of one boat onto the cockpit of the other we had to twist it sideways by about 30 degrees—minor technical adjustment.

We did try the 'scooping' technique where the rescuer submerges one side of the cockpit and hooks the bow of the capsized kayak with the cockpit rim and then pulls the boat out of the water by edging own boat away from it. It requires some gusto but technically it is not difficult at all. 'Scoop' eliminated virtually all effort out of lifting—all you need to do is support yourself against the hull of another boat much like you do against the deck of an uprighted kayak.

So there really is not much additional effort required to get the upside-down boat onto the rescuer's cockpit. This observation, combined with the need to flip the boat two extra times in the upright variety leads me to conclude that upside-down t-rescue is physically easier, not harder. I have absolutely no experience teaching the upside-down technique; however, when teaching the upright variety, one of the common sticking points is re-flipping the kayak upside-down once it is on the cockpit. Especially weaker people with shorter hands often struggle to reach around the bow to grab the keel for leverage. The weight of the kayak on your lap is not trivial.

When both methods are done right, the time savings of not uprighting and then re-flipping the kayak are small. First of all, uprighting does not cost any time as it should be done by the person in the water before rescue arrives. Secondly, with practice, re-flipping is a matter of seconds and is not worth considering when evaluating the pros and cons of the two techniques.

My next concern about working with upside-down kayak was the ability to use it for rescuer support as well as obtaining positive grip in order to manipulate it from parallel to perpendicular and back to parallel. I only tried rescuing the plastic Capella but both the support for leaning against it and the grip on the well-defined keel were unexpectedly solid. With outboard hand on the keel and inboard hand under the bow of the capsized kayak I felt very solid—no danger of capsizing onto the upturned kayak.

Rescuer flipping in the opposite direction, albeit less prevalent, is a real concern. It is unlikely you will be able to hold on to the hull of the boat you're rescuing if you capsize backwards. The hand under the bow is rather useless, it will probably instinctively let go in an attempt to seek support on the opposite side, or will simply be pried away by the rising gunwale of your own kayak. In other words, I would not count on it to save you.

So, overall, the verdict from the lab is slightly in favor of leaving the boat upside down. Surprisingly, it was not for the reasons of speed as expected. Gains in speed are negligible. We found a lot to like about the simplicity of the t-rescue and little to dislike about it. It is physically easier to do and non-meaningfully faster to top it off. It eliminates two flips from the process: one relatively easy (initial uprighting) and the second one which can challenge some paddlers in the beginning. The capsized boat was not the slippery elusive eel I expected it to be.

In the absence of volunteers to do t-rescues on the open icy water, at the moment, the comparison of the two techniques in rougher conditions will have to be postponed. I have some strong thoughts on how that will go but it'll the next post.

To Filp or Not To Flip: Optimize Your T-Rescue

by Haris

The winter has been very mild this year. Nevertheless, the kayak pool season is in full swing. To break up your roll-work an occasional sea kayaker's bread-and-butter—the T-Rescue or T-Recovery—is probably in order from time to time. So here's something to tinker with before you will have to take this tool out in the drink.

Most UK versions of this rescue I've seen, as well as the 'older' instructional documents, show the capsized kayak being picked up upside-down and drained immediately by the rescuer during the T stage (see Assisted Kayak Emptying section under Safety Basics).

Conversely, in most US sources, and in practice here in the Midwest, the standard seems to be to ask the capsized kayaker to upright their boat before the rescuers pull it onto their boat.

The upright version is so prevalent here in Chicago area that it did not even occur to me to question the practice. The alternative versions I've seen in book after book and on DVD after DVD just seemed old, odd, and … well … wrong.

So why DO we upright the boat before emptying it in a T-Rescue?  After I actually asked the question of myself, all of a sudden, this new practice seems somewhat paradoxical. I mean, why would you upright the boat only to flip it back upside-down in order to empty the water from the cockpit? Why not just lift the bow straight up from the water, drain the cockpit, and be done with it in one sweep? Without uprighting you eliminate two steps from the process. Makes sense, right!?

Questions, questions:

• Why do we waste precious time uprighting the boat when the cockpit is already pointing down, ready to be drained?
• What is gained by uprighting—an additional step in the process which needs to be undone once the kayak is on the rescuer's cockpit?
• What is lost, or what are the costs of uprighting?
• Are the gains of uprighting worth the cost?
• Are there circumstances when upright versus upside-down draining are more/less appropriate?
• Are there other ways to overcome the problems with upside-down draining without resorting uprighting that needs to be undone?

Next time you practice your T-Rescue (and practice you should) question the standard of 'here' and 'now.' And just in case you're itching to do it right away, here is a list of local pool sessions on CASKA calendar.

Don't forget to write back.

PS: Don't forget to renew your CASKA membership for 2012