what is the basis to increase its average speed?

Hi,

How can I increase my speed, I can not exceed 10 km / h average (on the flat for 20 km on average) my technique is correct (certainly not perfect but the basics are there) is just your increase the pace of paddle and try to keep it? where to look more glide? what are the essential keys?

where to start....

Assuming that technique/ski/paddle isn't the rate limiting step, and assuming that you are not pushing the limits of your VO2/physiology ... then I think most of us would attack the problem from the aspect of - increasing the distance we travel per stroke, and then increasing the stroke rate to one that is high but "maintain-able."

In other words, you'd have to work at increasing the power/resistance by building better raw power, power endurance, and endurance, and by losing weight on your body and ski - if you can.

Interval training - short, medium, long intervals - would likely be the best bang for your buck. High training volume or long paddles would help with the endurance side of the equation.

If you're in Tahiti, find a canoe coach and do what they do because the problem and approach is fairly generic.

I have a sworfish glass, of course it is a bit heavy 17.5 kg and 72 kg I did, I think with the aim same ski 11 kg I'll go faster, I can earn 0.2 or 0.3 km / h but not 1 or 1.5 km / h average and more! What do you think?

Give your scuppers a little treatment as per what I did, it will help a little, but not as much as you need. As per Nells advice and a training plan for greater gains.

www.facebook.com/kayaker.greg/media_set?...0002425151844&type=3

How long have you been paddling?
I have found that no matter how much coaching concentrating on technique, your body needs a long period of time to fully learn the motor patterns and build specific muscle for paddling and that time is much longer than we would like or expect, measured in years not weeks
most of the people I treat with injuries, want to do the same speed as the guys who have been racing for 20 yrs+
usually because in running and biking with a small amount of coaching and great fitness they can get remarkable speed increases in a small time, paddling is just not like that... patience!!
of course bearing in mind I cant average 10kph for 2 hrs either

Hi greg,

I saw your Swordfish Scupper drag, how earn your speed roughly? I read a comment from your friend who says winning 0.4 km h!'s a lot.
and where I can order online?

Im at the same point where I can maintain 10kph comfortably, but pushing beyond that becomes a sprint pace at excessive stroke rate which I can only maintain a short distance.

From what I can gather by playing around with stroke, I think I need to improve the power in the first 6 inches of the catch and that gives me what I need.
To be able to do that consistently I need to improve a few things. Better rotation strength, better placement for the catch, better leg drive.
When I get those things in order I'm pretty confident I will have an 11kph pace with ease, then will have a whole other list of things to improve to get to the next goal of 12kph.

Greg,

Can't get that link to work. I am not a member of Facebook so perhhaps it is not public? Would love to see what you did.

Cheers,

Ken

So here is my experience with getting faster over the last 8 months. All these times are in a Stellar SR.

I basically started paddling at the very end of last February. I went out like gangbusters and stalled out on my average speed fairly quickly. I would go out and paddle at 75-90% MHR for an hour or so and that was it. I stopped improving after about 4 months with my 10k time trial times hovered at 10kph.

Then I read this paper www.sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm and took it to heart. Since the beginning of June I started doing long slows of 20k and keeping my heart rate at 65-70% MHR. I do this 4-6 times a week. This is 95 % of what I have been doing with the occasional 10k time trial and the odd interval. It lets me really focus on relaxing and over all technique.

I started with a 20k average speed of about 9.2kph while maintaining a 65-70% MHR in June. As of last week I'm at about 10kph for 20k at that 65-70% MHR. It's not very fast but its as fast as my fastest 10k time trial in June. Plus my 10k time trial as of last week was 10.8kph.... A big step up from 10kph 4 months before, all with essentially no strength work. Just aerobic development and better technique ( there was some wing paddle coaching in that time as well).

All this in my not so speedy Stellar SR. While these times are not particularly fast, I'm very happy with my progress and attribute most of my gains to long slows. I think I'm about at the point I need to start to shift and do proportionally more intervals and speed work as I think my aerobic progress has slowed. My understanding is that now is time to do some strength training for a few months and when that seems to plateau a bit head back to aerobic long slow weighted training.

I am picking up a new V10 on Friday and I'm very interested in what it does to my 20k 65-70% MHR paddles. I'm expecting my 10k time trial times to jump quit a bit but I'm just not sure about the long slow average pace. I'm guessing it won't be as big a jump if much at all.

Anyways, read that paper. It's very interesting.

Bill

I was put onto two books by a mate who is one of the top paddlers on the Gold Coast. I have been following these principals for the last 2mths with amazing results.
The books are The big book of health and fitness and The big book of endurance training and racing both by Dr Philip Maffetone. For those that are fimiliar with triathlon he worked with Mark Allen (6 x Hawaii Ironman Champ) and Mike Pig.
Both credit the good Doc to their success.
The basis of the program is all training is to be done aerobically. The formula he uses is 180 - your age. If you take any blood pressure or heart meds minus another 10bpm. This will be your max aerobic function. You never go over that HR. I have been following this principal for the last 2mths with outstanding results so far.
It will seem easy at first. You feel like you going backwards as it seems to slow and you have to stop paddling to keep your HR from going over the limit but. Over a relatively short period of time you will notice a steady increase in speed for the same HR and because you stay aerobic you are also able to train for longer without the same fatigue.
I fell into the interval trap and whilst short term my speed did increase it soon pla. I am now paddling at the same speed I was when I was doing my interval training but now for a lower HR by 20bpm.
It is frustrating at first but if you stick with it you will leave everyone in your wash.
Good luck with your training

My experience is similar to yours Newbflat and Bigdog, only this weekend I averaged 10.4kph for the first time over 20km at a comfortable endurance pace. I also did my best 6km time trial time last week, this is after a winter of doing slower than usual LSD training (using Maffetones principals), I'm yet to start my true interval training so hope to realise more speed yet as I progress into the summer season.

Kennneee and Nelo, what I did was clean up the stock scupper covers on the Swordfish which were kind of agricultural, they had a 2-3mm lip along the front and down the side, I taped the hull and carefully took to the lip with a small dremmel bit, the carbon grinds away quite easily, then finished off with emery paper. Now instead of the lip which disrupts the water flow, the scuppers are faired down to the hull so that the water flows over them more cleanly. I also faired down the lip at the rear which was also about 3mm thick, again just to reduce turbulence. We have all felt the effect of a small amount of weed when we hook it up, this is just another small improvement that should help a little. The Swordfish scuppers in std form are very noisy, now they are almost quiet with less turbulence. I already had bullets fitted before doing this clean up.

I don't really want to claim any direct numbers that this will help with your speed and there are always many variables in our environment, however the before and after paddles show that over the same course with similar effort (I train with cadence and heart rate monitors) my average and top speeds improved by .4kph. Now training has an effect and I've since improved my times more, but this was over a period of a few days either side of doing this mod and this improvement showed itself over the same 20km course and over a couple of paddles before and after, not a one off.

So what is the answer? I'm another stuck at 10kmhr. Everyone says interval training so I have just joined dean gardiners squad. The long slow seems to go against the long standing interval approach.

Maybe both work?

Both do work but lets clear up some terminology. For me, and from my cycling back ground, true intervals are performed at 90% of max heart rate and beyond, they are very intensive and very hard on you. You need to be careful about when you do them in your build up and the aim is to take you beyond the point where lactic acid is trying to slow you down. 4 minutes is about the max amount of time that these can be done properly. Try to do these all year around and you will likely burn out. So fast training intervals is fast, not uptempo which is where most people paddle most of the time from my observations.

Sprints are full effort, for only 10-15 seconds, the fuel source is ATP. Done all year around they maintain power and the ability to up the rate or to close a gap or catch a wave.

I suspect that many people use the term intervals for a wide variety of intensities and duration. So there is a great scope for confusion about how hard and for how long and when in the season.

LSD can be done all year around but more is done in the off season and pre season, (actually it ends up not being so slow after sometime training at a lower intensity) this sets the base for the uptempo training and the more intensive intervals and enables you to perform intervals at a higher intensity, and to go faster in your in season. Intervals in my world are the final piece of the puzzle, the icing on the cake after all the other training has been done to bring you to a higher level.

Others will have another idea and perform intervals for months and months and do no LSD. Its up to you to find out what works best for you, there are arguments for both approaches. Do your research and make a decision. Helps if you get an understanding of the different energy systems that our bodies tap into for fuel.

One quote I saw somewhere was "Any coach can hurt you, only a good coach will make you a better faster paddler" or something along those lines.

In my experience most squad type training is very intensive, if you don't feel stuffed at the end your not getting your moneys worth right? Not saying its not beneficial as you will learn a lot and improve too, but just go in with your eyes open and use it as part of the jigsaw that is training.

Remember your heart is a muscle and a pump, LSD in the off season and pre season will expand your heart volume enabling it to increase the volume of blood per stroke, intervals will make your heart stronger pumping the blood more forcibly, they both have a place.

Thanks for taking the time to provide a great response Greg.

I've been paddling about 12 month and I think I have formed a pretty good base. The intervals we do are 2 minutes on 1 minute off for five sets then 1 on 1 off for 5 more sets. Then a nice long downwind as fast as possible.

Based on your info this is probably not too heavy going and is perfect for where I am at.

Love2ski .. Read the paper I posted above very carefully and read it again. I needed to read it like 10 times to understand it. The results and techniques described are reflected in Dr Phill Maffetone's methods as well. The point is not about just paddling for a year ( although that's great) it's about exactly what you were doing in that year. If it was spent in a zone that wasn't optimal for aerobic development then you might not me getting maximum benefit for the time put in. For me the 4 months spent working on nothing but my aerobic base was far! more productive than 4 months working hard in "no mans land". It's counter intuitive to what we have been led to believe all these years but the results don't lie. Here is a primer to Maffetone's work..

content.sitezoogle.com.s3.amazonaws.com/...D&Expires=1381424789

Another (obvious) result is a very deep aerobic base. I feel I'm Far more aerobically fit that I would have been not sticking to the long slow plan. I can do a time trial and feel like I could do another. Paddle an aggressive 20k downwinder with my heart rate WAY up there and feel strong at the end. Grind up wind for ages and feel like I could do it over and over. My point here How much stronger I feel in 4 months, more than I would have ever imagined.

You ask "what's the answer" and suggest long slows go against interval training ideas. If you read the technical paper I posted you will see that that's not true, they work off each other. But without a very deep aerobic base lots of interval training just gives you a bump up in performance early but stall out very quickly. You will see that top athletes spend the vast majority of there time training at very low HR's and very little time working hard. In fact many athletes have increased there performance significantly by doing much higher loads of low level training and even less but harder high intensity workouts that previous training. Very very little time is spent in the middle zones.

Remember, this is an aerobic sport. While strength is clearly a desirable thing, if you can't maintain it or more importantly recover very quickly from a power move (aerobic fitness).... then what good is it.

Do read that technical paper very carefully. It answers many of your questions about intervals vs. low level training.

At least that's my take on it.

Bill

The perspective of one of the greatest all around athletes ever.

www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=2

Bill

I love Bigdogs idea. How long do you paddle for? It makes sense if you are paddling on the flat, though my threshhold would be 128 bpm, which would suit me just fine, but I wonder how far away my mates would be at the end of the paddle.

What happens on downwinders? Do you still stick to the threshhold? Does the lower HR make you concentrate on technique over cadence?

What happens during races? Do you still go hell for leather or do you concentrate on keeping your HR low?

Newbflat wrote: The perspective of one of the greatest all around athletes ever.

www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=2

Bill

I do question the just use 180 mentality. It is not that hard to find your Max HR, and do this for each sport, then you can use his little rule to kick down into the Aerobic zone.

Have read the two articles and will keep the longer one for more thorough reading in the morning, I am about to get my first K1 for an endurance race in April and coming off an injury I will need to build some fitness whilst keeping the body operational.

This discussion of increasing speed assumes that your technique is not in need of improvement. I think we can all agree that that is not likely the case. We all need teqhnique work. Even the world champions work on improving their technique all the time. If your pace is 10 kph you can certainly improve your technique. Enough on that.

As far as training strategy, I would keep it simple. Interval training is the most effective way to get faster. It really does not matter a great deal exactly what interval work out you do. Any kind of interval work is so much better than doing no interval work. There are 1000s of recipes for intervals. I would not get bogged down in the details of training theory.

Pick a simple interval workout such as repetitions of 2 minutes hard alternating with 2 minutes easy. The hard should be very uncomfortable by the end of 2 minutes, maybe 11 to 11.5 kpm. The easy can be so easy that you are barely paddling. Do these once a week. Start with 4 repetitions and increase by one repetition every week for the first month. Thereafter stick to 8 repetitions per workout. The whole paddle session will take an hour at most, which includes a 15 minute warmup and cooldown. In 2-3 months you will be a faster fitter paddler.

my 2 cents

Hey Dicko I paddle min 4 times per week for 1hr15-3hrs. I have not long ago started to ride a road bike again 4days a week for between 2-3hrs after a long period off the bike. Both of which were not possible for me to do not so long ago due to constant inflammation issues. For me aerobic training is the key. It may not be for everyone but I am now able to train more and get faster injury free. It also makes training enjoyable as you are not flogging your body.
I found that when I paddle with my mates and they are still doing interval training I will catch up to them in the rest period so we are generally in and around each other. If paddling on the flat they will take the long way around a bend and I will take the shortest line which allows us to stay in close proximity.
I paddle with a great bunch of guys who look after each other so in a downwind we stop to regroup every 10-15min.
I try stick to the 180 formula for all my training but every now and then in a downwind I can't help it and go for it. It is interesting that the last few times I have gone flat out in a downwind or raced my HR which previously would have maxed out at 187bpm and remained above 171bpm was now a max of 162bpm and remained around the 150bpm mark.
You are correct in what you say, when I am doing a downwind and sticking to the formula it makes you focus on maximising the use of the water and also allows you to concentrate on technique.
I use races and the odd downwind as my interval training which for me is working really well. I will keep on with this style of training as for me personally I have seen a great improvement in only a few months.
Newbflat Thanks for posting the Mark Allen article. I haven't had a chance to read it yet but look forward to it. I am a convert to this style of training.
Cheers Guys