05/04/2016
Speaking to a paddler last week, he described how changing his hand position on his paddle shaft had seen an increase in speed. Of course, I wondered how he assessed this. Was it a straight forward look at his GPS or had be drilled down deeper for other data?
Being the curious type, I gave him a loan of a Vaaka Kayak Cadence Sensor. I wanted to quantify how his change had actually worked. We set up a series of tests logging speed, stroke rate, heart rate and tide. Tests we conducted with both the old hand position and the new hand position.
The great thing about stroke rate is that it's a constant set of data to work with. In this case we combined it with heart rate to see if he was indeed paddling faster. The outcome? Well in this case we were actually able to establish that what he perceived to be a higher speed was actually achieved by having a higher stroke rate in the new hand position, and not an increase in power. Both stroke rate and heart rate were increased to achieve the higher speed. By maintaining a lower stroke rate at a prescribed heart rate, we were able to establish that he was actually paddling slower with the new hand position.
Change isn't a bad thing. It's good to be looking to improve your paddling, and that is often achieved through change. But you need to be able to quantify that change to see what is actually working, and not, to make positive steps forward. In this case the Vaaka Kayak Cadence Sensor, combined with a Garmin GPS proved invaluable.
