Hi guys, Rob Case here.
Here are the top three ways to paddle like world champion Kelly Slater.
We all know Kelly is an amazing surfer.
So it’s probably no surprise that he is also a pretty good paddler.
And we all know that the better we can paddle,
the more waves we will eventually catch.
The first technique that is very obvious in his paddling is that he keeps his head still.
His head does not sway from side to side.
This may seem a bit simple but this makes a profound impact on his speed and efficiency in the water.
Let me explain why.
The biggest thing that slows us down in the water is resistive drag
both horizontally and laterally, so obviously,
we don’t want to add drag,
and that is what is happening when the head does not stay still.
When the head sways one way,
there is another part of your body that reacts to that motion.
The back half of your body – your feet.
This has been studied for decades in swimming, and the same principle applies to surfing paddling.
Action – reaction.
So how does this add to our drag?
Imagine a metal rod that extends from beyond your head down through the middle of your body past your feet.
We want to align our head, shoulders, and hips with this rod
and rotate around it slightly to remain balanced laterally.
When you sway your head and it moves out of this plane,
something on the other side of your body moves the opposite way – action, reaction.
Your head moves left,
your feet will move right.
This throws you out of lateral balance and increases your lateral profile,
making more form drag.
We don’t want this!
So the first super simple technique, is to keep your head still while you paddle.
Rotate your body around that imaginary metal rod.
This is a key technique in maintaining lateral balance, and thus reducing drag.
The second technique Kelly uses impacts both his ability to slide smoothly through the water with little drag,
AND it also impacts the amount of propulsion or power he is able to get out of each stroke.
What he does has to do with his hand’s entry into the water –
he keeps his elbow high when he is about to enter the water.
This is a huge benefit to his paddling.
And again, I know it seems really simple.
But here’s the deal of why this works so well.
When the elbow enters high, then it stays high when you reach the front propulsive phase of the underwater armstroke.
Huh? In other words, it helps keep his hand and forearm in a vertical position from the start of his stroke.
When your hand and forearm are vertical,
then you are able to hold the water and propel yourself forward with a greater surface area for a greater length of time.
If the elbow goes in low, and I see this all the time -
I don’t even need to see underwater footage to know that their elbow is low when they initiate their stroke -
I know it’s going to be low because of the way they enter the water.
If the elbow is low, then you have less time to hold water with a vertical forearm,
if you ever get it to vertical throughout the stroke.
You might not even get it to vertical.
So let me ask you – do you think you get more propulsion from a larger surface area or a smaller one?
That’s a rhetorical question of course because I know you all know that the answer is to have a larger surface area.
So how might you go about improving your own paddling with this technique?
Here’s a drill you can do the next time you are out surfing –
it’s called the over the barrel drill and it’s really simple.
You just imagine that your arm has to go over a barrel when you enter the water.
You can’t keep your elbow low when you are reaching over the barrel.
Keep a slight bend in the elbow as well – if you think about it,
you can’t place your arm over a barrel without a slight bend anyways.
This is going to drastically improve your paddling and really simple to apply.
The last tip is that Kelly uses a slight roll from rail to rail around that imaginary metal rod
so that he can recover his arm forward.
What this does is that it one, helps the recovering arm to be led by his elbow instead of his hand,
which is super useful in setting up the previous technique,
two, it prevents any dragging of the hand in the water which we learned earlier is not good,
and three, there is a side benefit as well that will help increase the stroke’s power.
Let me explain the power benefit really quickly.
There are two descriptions of paddling that I use in reference to the rolling from rail to rail.
There is a hip driven stroke, and there is a shoulder driven stroke.
Both are useful in different situations and I distinguish the two because of where the roll is being initiated.
I’m sure just based on the names of each of these you can figure out what each one is.
The hip driven stroke is initiated at the hips and the shoulder driven is initiated from the shoulders.
In both scenarios, we use our core and in both the counter-rotation of the body sets us up for a
stronger and more powerful underwater armstroke.
It lines us up so that we are using our big powerful paddling muscles
in our pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi
as opposed to our stabilizing rotator cuff muscles,
which we want to avoid using for power,
and the rotating motion acts like a spring that is wound up and then released.
So when you go out paddling, put a slight roll in your stroke from rail to rail.
Obviously, you can’t roll as much as a swimmer does, because you’ll fall off the board,
but definitely incorporate this into your paddling.
And incorporate all three techniques – head still, elbow high (remember to enter over a barrel),
and put a slight roll from rail to rail in your paddling and you will be one step closer to paddling like Kelly.
Hope you enjoyed this – got some value out of it. Thank you so much for watching. See you in the water.
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