Everyone Needs Coaching!
Whether you’re new to the sport or you’ve been doing it for years, you can ALWAYS benefit from working on improving your paddle stroke. However good you think you are.
Whatever your ambitions, improving your paddling will raise your game. Don’t worry about learning pivot turns, stuff like that – sure, it’s fun, but it won’t improve your paddling
Better paddling technique means:
- Paddling with less risk of injuring yourself.
- Straighter paddling (less changing sides)
- Faster paddling, if that’s a goal
- Paddling with less effort, so you can go further.
What we’re talking about is getting the best out of your paddling stroke,
And this is why you really need coaching, because:
Coaching is normal in most sports. If you play golf or tennis, for example, there is likely to be a resident pro at your local club, and everyone benefits from lessons. But for some reason hardly anyone thinks about getting SUP coaching, despite it being one of the hardest of all sports to work out for yourself.
Coaching is normal in most sports. If you play golf or tennis, for example, there is likely to be a resident pro at your local club, and everyone benefits from lessons. But for some reason hardly anyone thinks about getting SUP coaching, despite it being one of the hardest of all sports to work out for yourself.
There is no one right way to paddle!
The most efficient, most useful way of paddling for ME, with my particular set of parameters, is almost certainly not the most efficient, most useful way of paddling for YOU.
By parameters, I am talking about body shape, muscle distribution. medical history. fitness (strength, stamina, suppleness, aerobic and anaerobic), age and equipment. And of course, attitude – do you like to push hard, or cruise? There are no right or wrong answers to any of these. You are you!
The reality is that there are myriad different ways to paddle! You can use pretty much any muscle group in the body to apply power to the paddle to make the board go forward. And it works just slightly differently for everybody.
Click to hear some further explanation of this point, as featured on the Supboardguide.com ‘how to improve your stand-up paddle technique‘ video on youtube.
Only by working with a coach who understands all this and has the experience from coaching a multitude of other people, will you get the right assistance in finding your own ideal stroke.
Of the thousands of people I have coached, no two paddle exactly the same way. The differences are often small, but they’re still there. Finding each individual the right stroke to suit their needs has been the main area of my work for the last 10 years, and I still continue to learn more about it every day.
Surely if I just go paddling loads, my technique will just get better anyway?
No – your technique will not get better of its own accord. Why should it? In what sport or activity do you get better without practice? Show me an accomplished athlete, musician, dancer or any other practitioner of an activity involving physical movement, that doesn’t practice the basics. It’s fundamental. There is no mechanism whereby your body will automatically get better at doing something, simply by doing it over again. Yes, your body might adapt to it, but that’s entirely different.
Just going out and paddling is not going to improve your paddling. Indeed quite the opposite, it is probably just embedding bad habits.
Click to hear some further explanation of this point, as featured on the Supboardguide.com ‘how to improve your stand-up paddle technique‘ video on youtube.
OK, so can’t I just improve it on my own?
You might, but you almost certainly won’t. For the following reasons.
The SUP stroke is impossible to process
The whole stroke cycle takes just over a second. There is no possible way you can think about and consider each part of the stroke. There are dozens, possibly hundreds of different muscles contracting and relaxing to make the stroke happen. And you can’t see what you’re doing, because you’re doing it.
The SUP stroke is not intuitive!
The SUP Stroke is almost certainly the most complex cyclic movement in all of sport, and it is hugely non-intuitive. It’s fundamentally weird in many ways and on many levels. And because there is no one right way to paddle, it’s even harder to know if you’re paddling in the most efficient way for your particular build.
Without a full understanding of your own paddle stroke, along with a really comprehensive knowledge of the mechanics of all the various possible stroke options available, it’s incredibly hard to know how and what you need to do in order to improve your technique. This is why you really need a coach!
