Stability

So I fell off today, not once but twice.

I was in the alley doing what I call chase downs.
This is where I wait out at the entrance for a set to go through, then tack in directly behind the last wave and try and paddle over it and then chase down and punch through the rest of the set before it gets into the river proper.
Probably only 200m or so.

This is a lot of fun for me and is an all out effort and then turn around and recover going back out to do it again.

The waves are only two to three feet high at their max when they hit the shallows, but quite sharp and it is kind of cool as you drop over the lip each time.
I turn where they settle down at the end and again there is a calmer patch after it comes over the bar and enters the alley.

So after some thirty of these, I'm pretty frazzled and cannot get over all the waves in the set so I just go really slow back out to get some recovery, start to turn slowly to start another run and bam, I'm in the water as the boat is side on to the wave.

Of course a paddling buddy turns up just as I fall in the water, he soon joins in and at the bottom turn he says something and I turn to reply, bam, I'm in again.

Now what I immediately noticed was how slow my reactions had become now that I was loading up with lactate.

Even after an extended recovery paddle down the creek , when I got out of the boat my legs were still heavy.

So here is my question, does your stability suffer when you go too hard?
I never go this hard when I am out in the ocean as it only slows me down in the long run.

Are people regularly falling in and blaming their basic stability, or the boats stability when it is really just going too hard, blowing themselves up and destroying their co-ordination?

What are your thoughts?
If you are a regular swimmer, when or what is it that will put you in the drink?

That was/is part of why I paddle a slightly more stable ski, sure I can paddle elite level ski's no problems..BUT, in adventure racing you may have just run 15km flat out, swam 2km flat out and so you are loaded with lactate before you hit the ski leg.

My training buddy who never came out in training fell out in an adventure race event last month and he cant explain why, seems to me this would explain it.

The other reason is if you usually train over say 10-12km and do longer downwind events (this summer I will be doing a few 17km - 20+ km events) I reckon you will be faster in a boat you are still comfortable in after 15km.

Glad to see you back RAB, you've been a little quiet lately. Was worried that you had become sensitive !

Fatigue certainly affects the likelihood of falling in (and increasing difficulty in remounting). People often overate the effect of lactate accumulation (but the concept aids the marketing and sale of ineffective dietary supplements). Whether its lactate accumulation or other biochemical processes, the Effect is real.
The more you fall in, the more you tire, the more you tire the more you fall in..

Reflexes and balance occur at the neurological level (brain and nerves) and the muscle level (proprioception). When a person tires both these systems begin to fail. Other factors we all know affect balance are cold and anxiety.

Thats why I never laugh when other people fall in

I find my stability is affected hugely by being physically or mentally tired.

When I'm mentally tired I react slower and make more mistakes which makes things worse. Capsizing means I get physically tired quicker.

I struggled in this years Avon Descent (team of 2) as I was mentally tired and also hadn't paddled 'big' white water since 2007. A couple of times I came over a bump and just looked at the large standing wave - had a mental blank - and was washed of my ski!

I also had a 'bad' experience in this years (Perth) Classic Paddle where for my experience level and ski, the conditions were testing. I ended up paddling 24km and was mentally and physically exhausted (I try and paddle 10km twice a week) and any boat wake caused concern!

I agree with all of the above, I have struggled with my Synergy as I rate myself as a beginner.

For the last couple of months i have been paddling a Fenn XT double which is ridiculously stable and my partner and I have no trouble doing a couple of hours on the ski however when I got back on the the Synergy a month ago a could barely stay upright so just racked it again and paddled my K1 (Assegai).

Then last weekend I decide I need to beat it so went down to our local paddle spot, got on and did 45min with no problems.
As much as I am interested in the stresholds of where you loose stability, I would like to know where I suddenly found the stability???

I share Moll's experience. After spending som time in the Uno my Evo felt as stable as a barge. My experience is that it helps your stability to paddle more unstable boats periodically if your goal is to maintain/improve your stability. It is harder to improve your stability on a stable boat, because you don’t properly challenge the core muscles and you don’t get immediate feed back if paddling with “unstable” technique

Richardh, you have to elaborate on how you managed to paddle 24km in a 12 km race. It was lumpy, but not that lumpy.

I find no problems after 20 or 30km even if I am dead tired, just when I was heavy with lactate.

Usually any session where I paddle this hard is shorter overall or has more rest built in, so I don't get to the stage where it becomes a whole body thing, just my upper body which dissipates quite quickly.

RAB: are you really qualified to ask these questions? publish your club results please

Lactic buildup aside I feel that if I'm really tired my core packs up and turns to jelly and I cannot sit upright and have good rotation, never mind balance properly in the jobbly stuff. At the NY Mayors Cup in 2010 (47kms) I battled to stay upright the last 10 km. I was physically exhausted and mentally buggered. All the ferry's buzzing about causing havoc with a 3knot river current, coast guard cops yelling instructions on a pa, and a friggen over-active helicopter port on a pier gave me the willies. A mate came out in the last 10 km on a relatively flat spot (something highly unusual for him) and also could not explain it.

I've also learned long ago not to giggle too much at your mates when they go diving as that's a wheel that turns very often.

Cheers

S.S.

Richardh, you have to elaborate on how you managed to paddle 24km in a 12 km race. It was lumpy, but not that lumpy.

Well Dicko.
Some of my mates have had a serious dose of NSS (New Ski Syndrome) so I ended up paddling with them in a 7km warmup on the way to the start line. My family were at point walter, so I paddled back another 4km and my Garmin measured the race around 13km.

I guess lumpiness like stability is personal opinion!

I thought you'd got lost. I went into the race with my smallest rudder, hoping that the last half of the race I would come home fast. I passed about 40 boats on the run home. The trouble was the 160 that passed me in the first half. Stability wasn't too bad, I just had NO steering. You'd think at my age I'd know better.

Went from a V10 to a Stellar and noticed a big difference in stability. I rarely race so bulk of my paddling is for recreational training and I always felt that I was getting less of a core workout with the more stable Stellar. Yesterday, I added a 25mm padded seat to the existing 15mm pad and as expected, the boat became tippier. I think that I will continue training with the high seat and remove for open water, surfing and racing.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, that most of the instability that comes from a seatpad is the loss of contact with the bucket.

The real lift in height after compression will be less than a third of the initial seat pad thickness.

Having paddled Lats ski with a seat 4 cm higher than the feet, I don't think that the height makes that much difference, but whenever I sit in a boat with a pad of any thickness, it destroys my connection to the boat.

Rightarmbad wrote: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, that most of the instability that comes from a seatpad is the loss of contact with the bucket.

The real lift in height after compression will be less than a third of the initial seat pad thickness.

Having paddled Lats ski with a seat 4 cm higher than the feet, I don't think that the height makes that much difference, but whenever I sit in a boat with a pad of any thickness, it destroys my connection to the boat.

I agree to a point, it depends on the bucket shape, I have been using a seat pad for a month or two in the Vault to see if it would help my ITB issues and didn't notice any change in stability or "connectedness", but of course the bucket in that is narrow, so even if I was to move on the seat pad it would only be say 5mm before my hip/thich contacted the side to stop movement.

One thing the seatpad did do with me is get me a little further forward, now when I push on the footplate the pelvis either side of my L5/L6 is not contacting the back of the seat.

If I was in a V10 sport or one of those bigger bucket ski's then yes I would agree with your assertion.

if hieght doesn't make any diference to sability why are all the manufactures making the seat so low

My words were to the effect, that I don't believe it makes 'as much' difference as most people expect. Not, no difference.

Many of the spec skis around here have very high seats, like 8cm in some cases, with a boat width in the V10 sport range.
They are still way more stable than a elite class boat.

The stability is more in the hull shape and the connectiveness to the boat in my opinion.

The little Stellar is skinnier than any other ski I have sat in, but because you feel so connected to it due to the narrow bucket width, it gives an impression of amazing stability.

I also think that a long low leg position that feels super stable is merely the illusion created by the back of the leg touching down and not necessarily the lower leg height.


If you have a think about it, my own seated center of gravity is some 30cm higher than other smaller paddlers, if the center of gravity was such a key factor, the big boys would have no hope sitting in an elite ski.

But we do.......

Interesting observation regarding connectivity. Being at the taller end myself, I found no advantage to be gained from raising the seat height other than a slightly better core workout. I have not padded out the the sides of my Stellar cockpit yet but plan to do so as I miss the Connection that I had in the V10.

Re. spec ski stability, I've got an old Gibbons NB spec ski with a mid seat height and also a carbon Fenn elite and would say the Fenn elite is noticably more stable.
I know some of the spec skis are more stable than the NB (also some less stable) but would advise anyone thinking of buying a spec ski as their first ski to try it out and also compare to something like an XT which would be way more stable than any spec ski.

Do you think it is unstable because of the seat height, or is it just a floating cylinder?

re spec ski's marty kenny paddled a hayden ps2 to tenth in the molokai 2011 i think it was a low seat modell.i stand to be corrected if i have this wrong.
but if i have the facts wright why would some one of his caliber go for a lower seat if there wasn't much difference in stability.
and come to think of it if we are all that good including myself why are we not all paddling haydens only three broken ski's to date and i know there is no way i could paddle any ski on the market into that position.
so is it the ski or my incompentence i go with the latter and if i have this wrong see you in the top ten list for the 2012 molokai