Training in Paradise

16/06/2026

“”Lose your balance, lose your strength.”” 🚣‍♂️⚖️
👉 In sprint kayaking, balance is the hidden quality that separates the good from the great. It is not just a foundation for beginners; it is a critical skill that deserves attention from every athlete, regardless of their level. Balance is a complex, trainable ability that involves core stabilization, muscle stiffness, and your body’s awareness on the water.

**Why does it matter?** 🤔

👉 If you lack balance, your body will prioritize stability over speed, forcing you into “”safe”” but slow movement patterns. All the raw power you build in the gym is only as effective as your ability to transfer it into the boat—and without balance, that transfer is lost.

**How do you train it?** 💪

Balance is a dynamic quality that even the best paddlers must refine. Try these methods to sharpen your boat feel:

👉 Use low-rate sessions to focus entirely on your posture and boat glide.

👉 Use different equipment like higher seats, shorter paddles, or smaller blades to challenge your stability.

👉 Incorporate balance games or specific technical drills into your warm-ups or cool-downs.

👉 Do not shy away from difficult conditions like wind and waves, as they are perfect teachers and often mirror the conditions you will face in racing.

🧘‍♀️ Balance is directly connected to how efficiently you move, and it is a key piece of the puzzle for mastering your technique. Stop rushing through your sessions to chase intensity—build a stable foundation first, and you will see the results in your boat glide and stroke efficiency.

Do you include specific balance work in your routine, or do you worry mostly about intensity? Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇

10/06/2026

Senior Europen Championships starting tomorrow in Montemor-o-Velho 🇵🇹

600 athletes and 39 participating nations, the Portuguese hosts and vibes, plus the additional challenge of Oly Qualificatiin points should make up for some fierce racing⚡

👉You can follow the results here:
https://share.google/FxlAOuQdV2Z9dfOvP

👉And live stream here:
https://youtube.com/?si=BcCl9mA39jJxuM2z

08/06/2026

Is your breathing helping you perform, or working against you? 🚣‍♂️💨

​⚙️ Most of us dedicate hours to perfecting our stroke and gym numbers, yet overlook our most fundamental performance tool: the breath. Training toward nasal, diaphragmatic, and controlled breathing teaches your body to default to efficient patterns, even when intensity spikes.

​✨ The Chemical Advantage: Nasal breathing maintains CO_2 balance. Gasping “blows off” too much CO_2, causing blood vessels to constrict and limiting oxygen delivery. Rhythmic, full-exhale breathing preserves chemistry and delays the panic response.

​💪 The Kinetic Advantage: It prevents “neuromuscular bracing,” where shoulders and hips go rigid. Keeping the breath controlled maintains a fluid kinetic chain for better power transfer.

​🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️The Motor Control Advantage: A controlled breath provides the neural stability needed for precision when fatigue hits and form deteriorates.

​❓ Why bring this into training?
​👉 Optimizing Recovery: Nasal breathing during rests accelerates the transition to a recovered state.
​👉 Managing Arousal: Modulate sympathetic nervous system “noise” to stay clear-headed under pressure.
​👉 Elevating Performance: Raise your ceiling by improving breathing efficiency.

​😮‍💨 Breathing is a foundational skill. If you aren’t training it, you’re leaving potential on the table. Start paying attention to your breath at rest to see how that stability translates to your time on the water.

03/06/2026

🌊 When you are out on the water, does your paddling ever feel forced? Like you are fighting the kayak instead of gliding with it?

✨ The difference between a struggling stroke and a champion’s glide isn’t just power. It is rhythm.

👉 In sports, rhythm is the regulated succession of strong and weak elements. It is the contrast between relaxation and contraction, inhaling and exhaling, and the precise timing of your kinetic chain. In paddling, this is about keeping the ratio between your water phase and air phase right.

Do not confuse this with tempo. Tempo is simply your pace—the strokes per minute (SPM) you use to build speed. Rhythm is deeper. It is highly personal; your internal rhythm is your unique athletic signature. ✍️

👌 When you get your rhythm right, you will feel relaxed even under maximum effort. Your movement becomes fluid, sharp, and light. Technical errors fade, symmetry returns, and you unlock a new level of elite speed and efficiency.

✨ The best part? This is highly trainable. ✨

👉 If you want to improve your technique, try taking a metronome into the boat with you. Following a steady beat for just a few minutes can instantly clean up your stroke, restoring balance and fluidity.

⛓️ The real challenge begins when the effort increases. The harder you pull, the tougher it gets to keep that rhythm locked in. During your next session, challenge yourself to:
• Set the right rhythm from your very first stroke.
• Maintain that steady water-to-air ratio even through intense fatigue.
• Shift your tempo (SPM) up or down while keeping your underlying rhythm completely unchanged.

In paddling, just as in dancing, once you find the rhythm, simplicity appears. 🎵

Are you ready to find yours? 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

01/06/2026

💫 When you start your new week of training, remember it is not just about the goal at the end. It is about who you become while striving to reach it—the awe of realizing how much you are truly capable of, and the bond you form with the people who walk that path with you. 💪

👉 Here are Strahinja Dragosavljević 🇷🇸, Anže Pikon 🇸🇮, and Flavio Spurio 🇮🇹 rewinding their own K1 U23 European Champs final race while waiting for the medal ceremony (Pitești, 2025). In this moment, it was far more about how they pushed each other to a truly amazing race than about the medals they won.

You can see their race here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_mNy5dxwCQ

28/05/2026

19/05/2026

Just back from two World Cup races. Having them count as Olympic qualifier points added a new layer of intensity and focus to how the athletes—and we as coaches—approached them. The teams I advise performed incredibly well, and I am very proud of their efforts:

🥈🥇Aimee Fisher from New Zealand finished 2nd in Szeged and stepped it up to win in Brandenburg. On top of that, she helped the NZL WK4 reach the final in Brandenburg as well. 💪

🇩🇰 Team Denmark performed strongly across the two events, though certain boats will still need attention. Both the men’s and women’s K4s reached a final. The K1s were exceptionally strong, with consistent top-6 finishes in the MK1 1000m and MK1 500m, two boats in the top 4 in both MK1 5km races, and highly consistent performances in the WK1 200m, finishing 4th and 2nd. The K2s were solid, but that is where we will focus our work the most to improve before the summer. ⚙

🇸🇮 The Slovenian K2 boys had a slow start in Szeged but were ready to show their class in Brandenburg, finishing just 1.44 seconds behind the semifinal winners (which was enough to secure a spot in the B final). At the same time, they were on fire in the K1 200m, setting personal bests in Szeged and claiming a super-speedy silver in Brandenburg. 🥈💪

👉 Two out of ten ranking points races are now done for these crews aiming to qualify for LA28. 🇺🇸 It tends to get a bit stressful and heavy at times, but we all try to view it as an endless game. It is ultimately about the attention and intention of training and racing in the moment.

💫 That is where the joy and success lie. 💫

06/05/2026

🌀 The Calm Before the Storm 🌀 With the Szeged World Cup starting this weekend, many of our athletes are preparing to take the start line. Whether it is a global event or a local race that matters to you, the days leading up to the competition are about more than just physical readiness.

🌊 Before you race, remember to take the time to ground yourself. A big performance requires calm, positive energy. Rushing your preparation or carrying outside stress into the boat only drains your battery. To be fully present when the shutters drop, you need a clear head, clear tactics, and equipment you trust.

As you prepare, keep these three areas in mind:

👌 Sharpen your superpowers.
If you are going to compete, lean into what makes you fast. You need to nurture that specific “”magic”” that can put you ahead of the field. Even if it doesn’t lead to a win every time, it is the foundation of your confidence.

📍 Address your weaknesses.
It is human to have gaps in your performance, and it is never comfortable to face them. While it’s tempting to work around your vulnerabilities, the highest levels of racing eventually require you to confront them. Do the work so they don’t hold you back.

⛓️ Reconnect with the “”why.””
Protect your energy. Before the intensity of the race begins, spend time with family, enjoy a hobby, or visit your favorite paddling spot. Disconnecting for a moment allows you to return to the water with a fresh perspective.

⌛️ Take the time you need. The race itself will happen quickly, so ensure you are ready to be present for every stroke.

💆‍♀️💆‍♂️Be the calm before the storm.

18/04/2026

Skin in the game
I’ve always enjoyed the fact that, just like the athletes, we coaches have to hone our craft too. It is about so much more than years of experience or theory alone.

🧐 The more sessions I run and the more athletes I work with, the more I realize how much there is still to learn. There are no shortcuts to sharpening a "coach’s eye" for technique — it comes from the sheer volume of exposure. Every interaction is a new problem to solve, helping me refine best practices and understand the process just a little bit better.

👉 But the work on the water is only half the story. While I have been intentional about seeking out mentors, I’ve found that simply by being in these coaching circles and doing the craft, life brings you into contact with incredibly capable people. I’ve been lucky to meet so many professionals willing to share their experience, helping me build a larger arsenal of coaching tools and learn how to communicate those solutions more effectively.

💫 As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do; not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our power to do has increased."

🕑 The photos from my last 13 hours of coaching-related work give a bit of an idea of the volume I enjoy exposing myself to:

▶️ Thursday 23:45: Finishing a call with Aimee’s coaching team 🇳🇿
▶️ Friday 05:45: 1h consultation call with Chris Burns 🇦🇺
▶️ Friday 07:00: Weekly debrief with Alexa 🇿🇦
▶️ Friday 09:00: Morning debrief with the training camp team 🇪🇪 🇸🇮 🇨🇦
▶️ Friday 09:30: Water session 🇪🇪 🇸🇮 🇨🇦
▶️ Friday 11:00: K2 debrief and planning April sessions 🇸🇮
▶️ Friday 11:30: Gym session with the raining camp team 🇪🇪 🇸🇮 🇨🇦
▶️ Friday 13:15: Weekly debrief with Rodrigo 🇵🇷

15/04/2026

We as coaches, and even more so our athletes, spend endless hours in training for just a few short moments of racing. Long, grueling, and repetitive sessions where we don’t even know for sure if it will all work out. Yet, we have to bet on the fact that it will. It is an act of faith, but a calculated one. There is no other way than to do the hard work first and believe it will bring us to where we want to go. 💫

🦾 Then comes the race: intense, explosive, and aggressive. These moments are so tense that you might almost lose faith that your training has transformed you into the person you need to be to win. As. Saúl Craviotto's book title puts it: 4 years for 32 seconds.

⛓️ One of the secrets to making every day bring you closer to your goals is to never forget that those mundane, routine moments are exactly what prepare you for the thrill of the race. Repetition must not dull you; it must build you into the person who can handle the demands of the water when the pressure is highest.

📈 The other secret lies in always chasing growth. In the words of Abraham Maslow: "In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety."