Paddle Collective

01/11/2026

WA Ocean racing State titles get handed out this Saturday. Entries are still open.

The WA Ocean Racing State Championships are on this Saturday 7th Nov, and we are proud to have our name on it. Bought to you by IOP and proudly sponsored by Paddle Collective and Chalupski.

Chasing the title or just wanting to see what you have got on the iconic WA downwind course, it does not matter. The start line is the fastest way to find out what your paddling is actually worth, and everyone standing on it was nervous their first time. Great prizes also up for grabs!

Head over to the IOP website to register now.

Not racing? Come down and watch, it is the best fleet you will see in WA all summer 🌊

29/10/2026

The two biggest muscles in your body are in that boat, and most of you are paddling with your arms. 🌊

Episode 2: the middle of the stroke.

Episode 1 was the catch, getting hold of the water before you move. This one is about what actually moves you past it once you have got hold.

Your body first.

Your legs and your trunk are the biggest and most durable engine you own. Your arms and shoulders are small by comparison and they fatigue fast. So the job is not to make your arms stronger, it is to stop asking them to do work they were never built for.

Here is the chain. You drive through the footplate on the stroke side. That drives the hip back. Your abs carry that force up through the trunk, and the whole upper body turns around your spine. That rotation is the torque, and it is where every bit of useful power in your stroke comes from. Your arms hold a shape and transmit it to the blade. That is their entire job.

Most people have it backwards. They hold the body still and pull with the arms, which means the strongest muscles in their body sit there doing nothing while the weakest ones do all the work. Then they wonder why their shoulders are cooked after forty minutes.

Then your paddle.

Because that force is rotational, your torso is turning as you apply it. So the blade does not travel straight back down the side of the boat. It travels on a diagonal, out and away from the hull. People see that and think they are losing something. The opposite is true.

A blade moving diagonally through the water behaves like a wing. The water flows across it and it keeps generating grip the whole way through, and you lever the boat past a blade that is holding firm. A blade dragged straight back alongside the hull stalls out. Once it stalls there is nothing holding it, and the only thing left that can move it is your arms and shoulders. That is the straight section of a J stroke, and it is the single most common reason paddlers end up with sore shoulders and no boat speed.

So the two faults to look for are the same fault wearing different clothes: too much arm, and a paddle running too close to the boat.

Two drills in the video.

Top hand in a fist on your shoulder. Now you physically cannot pull with that arm, so the only way to move the blade is to rotate past it. It feels strange and it teaches the pattern faster than anything else I know.

Knee up to the opposite elbow. This one connects the leg drive to the trunk rotation so you stop treating them as two separate things. They are one movement.

And the honest part, same as last episode.

You will not fix this on Saturday. Nobody does. A stroke is not a thing you learn once, it is a thing you keep correcting. But if you understand why the fault is happening, you can work on it every single paddle for the next twelve months without anyone watching you, and you will come out the other side a different paddler. People who only ever get told what to do plateau. People who understand why keep improving on their own.

Comment STROKE below and I'll send you the stroke fault checklist and the drills that go with it. 🛶

25/10/2026

Glide to Survive, Episode 3, with Jackie Eley.

Jackie is the first to say she sits middle to back of the pack. She is also the paddler who looks at a forecast everyone else is nervously texting about and starts loading the Bluefin on the roof.

That detail matters more than it sounds. Plenty of paddlers own a fast ski and a long list of reasons not to use it. Jackie just picks the boat that gets her out the door, and then she goes. Flat, lumpy, howling, she races it, she finishes it, and she is grinning afterwards.

There is no hero story attached, which is exactly what makes it worth listening to. Most paddlers who drift out of this sport do not quit because they are slow. They quit because one day the conditions scared them and they never went back out. Jackie never let that happen.

She also gives a shout out to Tash Leaversuch, one of the genuine A graders of the sport here, and she is right. Tash, consider this your invitation, you are next in the chair.

If you have been telling yourself you will join a session once you are fit enough, fast enough or stable enough, listen to this one. Our squad sessions and Sunday downwind shuttles take every level, and the back of the pack is a perfectly good place to start. Camps for the warmer months are open now too.

Book a session or a camp at paddlecollective .com .au website

24/10/2026

Indian Ocean Paddlers Summer Series 3 race from Port Beach to Sorrento delivered the downwind we've all been waiting for. Huge smiles all round! Thanks to the IOP crew and Epic for sponsoring the race. Stay tuned for IOP race 4 on 7th November sponsored by Paddle Collective 🎉🌊

17/10/2026

"The circus is coming to town." 🌊

GLIDE TO SURVIVE. Episode 02: Shaun Rice.

Episode 1 was Pat Eley, one of the young guns. Episode 2 is the other end of the ledger, and arguably the more important one.

Ricey is the big dog of the Downwind Dogs, the crew out of IOP. He leads it, he runs the sessions, and he is there every single time. That matters more than most people realise. Squads do not survive on talent, they survive on somebody turning up in the dark when it is blowing and nobody else can be bothered. That is him. Half the paddlers reading this got better because Ricey kept the session going.

He was racing in South Africa through the 80s and the 90s, back when downwind was still being figured out rather than taught, and he has been part of the WA furniture ever since. He has watched this sport go from a handful of blokes chasing runs to an international circuit that lands on our doorstep every summer.

Three questions, the same three we ask everyone.

North Cott Skins is on 25 November. Knockout format, boards first and then skis, and it is built to be watched as much as paddled. There is a ski up for grabs as the door prize. There is a free clinic running up in the North Cottesloe clubhouse the whole time, so you can duck in at any point and get something out of the day no matter how the racing goes for you. And if you are not racing, come down anyway. That balcony is the best seat on the coast and the bar is open.

Enter at Paddle Collective website

Thanks to Shellabears, Chalupski Australia and Wilson Brewing Company

09/10/2026

Here is the picture to hold onto. A pole vaulter plants the pole and lets it take the load before they go anywhere. A swimmer reaches out and grips the water, then pulls themselves past it. Neither of them starts moving before they have got hold of something. Your catch is exactly that. Grip first, move second.

Your body first. The most common fault is unwinding to get the blade in. You reach, then you start rotating back as the paddle drops, and by the time the blade is buried your body has already spent itself. Stay wound up. Fully rotated, reaching out, and hold it. The arms spear the blade in over a short distance, the top hand presses down to bury it, and then you pause for a split second while it loads. Only then do the legs and the body go through.

Then the paddle. The blade wants to be perpendicular to the boat as it goes in. Open the face even slightly and the blade cuts in toward the hull, runs down the side of the boat, and now you are doing a J stroke and wondering why your shoulders are cooked. A blade that goes in square naturally travels out and away from the boat, which is where the real grip lives

Two drills in the video. Spear, pause, power, so you learn to separate burying the blade from applying force. And touch the far side of the boat with your blade before each stroke, so you find out what fully rotated actually feels like, because it is further than you think.

Now the honest part. You will not fix your catch this weekend. Nobody does. But a stroke is not a thing you learn once, it is a thing you keep correcting, and if you understand why the fault is happening you can chip away at it every single paddle for the next year and come out the other side a different paddler. People who only ever get told what to do plateau. People who understand the why keep improving on their own, for years, without anyone watching them.

That is what this series is for.

09/10/2026

Race day over in Spain. Good luck to all the Aussies! We’ll be watching.

🇦🇺 Defending men’s World Champion Cory Hill and two-time winner Jemma Smith are chasing history at the upcoming ICF Canoe Ocean Racing World Championships.

Read more here: https://brnw.ch/21x6doA