Sit centered for faster OC1 paddling
Sitting centered in the OC1 is an important way to keep your body healthy and increase your paddling speed, and it’s an underestimated skill!
Leaning left while paddling slows you down and makes it difficult to engage your muscles effectively because your hip joint and back will be out of alignment. Joints need to be loaded while in proper alignment to avoid injury.
Leaning left causes loss of speed while paddling on the right side because:
- You are leaning away from your catch, therefore missing the front of the stroke
- You can’t engage your hip and back in the most powerful way with poor alignment
- The power phase of your stroke is shifted towards the back of the canoe
Leaning left causes loss of speed on the left because:
- Pulling with collapsed posture on the left side makes it difficult to engage your butt, hip, and back muscles.
- The ama is being driven down into the water which slows you down due to increased friction
Why Sit Centered?
Look at your GPS while you are paddling in flat water and you will see that there is a difference in boat speed when you are paddling on the left side (slower) versus the right side (faster) due to the drag of the ama. You can reduce this difference by learning to sit centered in the OC1.
Pain in the hip and lower back are common when paddlers lean left and don’t learn to paddle with pelvic alignment and intentionally practice balance and stability while paddling.
Here’s a link to the video that shows how to sit centered
Remember that part of learning to sit centered is developing multiple skills to feel safe and confident, so make sure you also practice your brace stroke and learn to fly your ama. Just in case you didn’t already, watch this video teaching the brace stroke
Remember, you need to practice this skill repeatedly or it won’t come naturally, so get out there and practice often and have fun learning!