Snappy Exit

Having Tony Hall as my coach from a young age gave me a unique perspective on his coaching style.  I have said many times that I think he is the best technique coach around.  He has proven it time and again with me, the women’s kayak team, countless national team members and most recently with the Dragon Beasts.  But what I often saw on the faces of my team mates after a workout was a look of confusion.   Especially when Tony started talking about the jacknife.

 Tony had developed the analogy of the jacknife with me over several years.  So I was tehre when he made it up and I knew exactly what he meant when he said that I needed to do more jacknifing.  But most canoe paddlers had no idea - as

 I am sure most of you have no idea.  What it means is this:

Look:

 (Sorry mark but I just happen to have a few nice images of you paddling.)

Imagine that Mark’s body is a jacknife with the blade as the torso and the handle as the kneeling leg.  Right now he is about half open.  In order for the jacknife to be useful, it must be fully open and locked into place.  So if you imagine the pivot point of the jacknife as Mark’s hip, in order to lock out the jacknife Mark needs to drive his hip forward.  Ideally we would see the hip come forward and the body maintain the forward angle.  Instead we are actually going to see:

So, Mark is being lazy on his exit - but this is not his 100% stroke and this is not what he always looks like.

Anyway, the idea is not to pick on poor Mark, but to explain the jacknife.  The whole purpose of the analogy is to get you to stop thinking about sitting up straight and start thinking about driving that hip forward on the exit to create the same effect.

 Clear as mud?

A few more gems from the best technique coach I have ever seen.

 Free Energy:

This is one that always made me smirk.  Everyone who has ever taken a basic physics course knows that there is no such thing as “free energy”.  But Tony was always on to me about using the free energy in my stroke.  All he meant was to allow the weight transfer to move the boat down the lake.  Get the weight on the paddle and it contributes way more power than any part of the pulling stoke.  Of course the energy isn’t free, you have to get your body into position and that requires energy, but it certainly is cheap.

 Annnnn-A:

If Tony has coached you before I know you have heard this one (usually while he is standing in the motorboat pretending to paddle) and wondered why he was making such funny noises.  Well, this one was actually stolen from a Hungarian coach that we met during a training camp in Budapest in 1988 (yes while I was still a junior).  The coach said that to get the feel for pushing the hips forward forcefully on the exit, and to help keep a good connection between the hips, and paddle, the athlete should say their girlfriend’s name as they paddled.  Now, this assumes that your girlfriend has a two syllable name.  The first syllable is drawn out to last the whole length of the pull and the second syllable is short and powerful as you thrust your hip forward and propel the boat through the exit.  Anna was the example used by the Hungarian coach and, well, it just stuck.

Tony Hall was my coach from the time I was 12 until I retired at the age of 32.    During those twenty years I learned a lot about canoe technique - and about how to describe it.  I intend to try and collect as many of his sayings as I can remember and save them for future gerations of canoe athletes. 

Use the Jam Jar EFfect:  This one is real simple - when you open a jar you have to push down and turn.  When you take a canoe stroke you have to press down and turn.

 Shooting a rocket out of your head:  This one is a one of the stranger pieces of advice you will ever get as a canoe athlete.  The idea is to imagine that you wear a rocket launcher on your back, and that at the moment the paddle exits the water the rocket fires.  You need to make sure that the rocket launches forward because if you are too straight it will just go straight up and come down and hit you on the head.  Therefore - you must be leaning forward before the exit.

 More to follow.