The Perfect Paddle Stroke – By Candice Appleby and Anthony Vela

As I mentioned on our Facebook site, I was lucky enough to attend a Performance Paddling clinic lead by Candice Appleby and Anthony Vela. Both elite, champion paddle boarders. Candice has won battle of the paddle 4 times and Anthony has a string of wins under his belt. They are among the best and fastest in the world, and they are now offering an elite paddlers clinic.

Now, a lot of what they do really has to be seen in person, but I will do my best to try and break it down in text. Here is what I took from it. If you can, get to one of their events, you can sign up here: performancepaddling.com

Overall, a proper paddle is broken down into 4 stages (Catch, Power, Exit, Recovery) All of them are equally important to one another. Here is my description on how you do each:

1. Catch – you need to reach as far as you can without having to release fingers from your paddle, and grab as much water in front of you as you can. A proper catch puts the full blade into the water.

2. Power – Once you properly catch the water in the paddle, it is time for the power stroke. Here, you are not pulling the paddle to you. Your arms are to remain stiff. The top arm is doing all of the work and “pushing you down onto your paddle” Your bottom arm is only a guide (this is where I was really messing up!). Basically, you are falling and laying all of your weight onto your paddle. You are not pulling the paddle to you at all.

3. Exit – you should be thinking about your exit when the paddle is at your toes, the paddle should be out of the water by the time it is on the back of your foot. They do a little twist of the paddle (utilizing your top arm of course) so that the blade is parallel with your board.

4. Recovery – recovery from exit to your next “Catch” should be really quick. Most importantly, you should not go way out and around your board. Try to keep it as close to your body as possible.

A couple of other great tips:
1. They don’t use a whole lot of twist. Your body will naturally twist a little bit, but you don’t need to try to twist any more than that.
2. If you see any splash on the catch or exit, you are doing something wrong.
3. Make sure you paddle is straight up and down during your stroke. if it is at an angle in the water, you lose power and you will turn a lot more, which is not good.

I will have more tips from my session coming soon!