Feedback - Practice 08JAN2010
Happy New Year Dragonfly!!!
I hope that you guys all had a great holidays… I know that I did! Now, yesterday was the first practice of the year and Melissa didn’t give us any break! LOL We basically worked on our techniques while in different pace rate… also, she enphasized that at every stroke, we have to put pressure on the blade when going in… al the way in before pulling it back…. pull it back quickly for quick recovery time… and also, give an extra “kick/push” in the back before pulling your blade out and doing the pause in the front… that way, you maintain the power of the boat moving and never letting it sick.
We also worked on our starts which are 5-15-5. We worked on the first 5 which are 5 real DEEP stroke with slightly less of a reach then at race pace… to “lift” the boat. The following 15 strokes, we basically increase the pace to get the boat moving… at this point, you should be using a lot of your back & shoulder muscles for this… a lot of twisting! The last 5 strokes is our transition to race pace… a pace that we can maintain during a 500m race, for example. The first few starts, we were all over the place… but, we slowly got together at the end. Just remember that you have to keep your heads-up… look at the person in front of you, the mirrors to look at the team & the pacer to be in synch with the whole team. This is very important! Because for every paddler that is off synch… it slows down the boat by a little… and if we don’t all put on paddles in the water at the same… or we don’t pause at the same… our speed slows down by every paddler that’s not in synch… and we all know how it feels to lose a race by just a milliseconde… it TOTALLY SUCKS!
Anyways, just food for thought! Till next practice!
Nancy