Glorious February

Typical of February, the skies here in Renton have parted and the sun is shining brightly. February is consistently one of the best months to train on Lake Washington – a fair amount of sun, less rain, modest winds and very little motorboat traffic. This week the lake has been like glass on most mornings. Yesterday we held three workouts, one for the entire Cascade Team, one for the Cascade advanced group and one for Seattle University. I feel like we have built a strong foundation and are poised to really grow these programs. The SU workout was focused on developing stability and moving from TK-1s to Orions. Stephanie was the star of the day as, after falling in at the dock she hopped back into the kayak after a little more practice, was able to do a very long circle without falling in. Credit the brave team members with toughing it out learning stability in the cold 45 degree water of Lake Washington. The Cascade workouts were all aerobic endurance and we talked a fair amount about driving the boat forward harder and more aggressively to build endurance around racing at a higher level. The athletes found this extremely fatiguing (as they should), but also saw the potential increase in development rate with training at that level. Fun stuff!

Weather and training

The weather continues to prevent us from getting on the water, or even driving to the boathouse. I’ve encouraged team members to get in any kind of training they can during this time – run, lift, swim, ski. It looks like the temperatures are on the rise so I hope to be back to normal tomorrow.

Revised Training Plan

Cascade Team,

We’re in the third week of a 5 week anaerobic endurance cycle. With the snow, we’re missing many workouts so we need to take a look at revising the training plan for the next few weeks. For Wil, going to trials, Block 3 is a Competitive Block with 2 Aerobic Endurance (AE) Cycles, 1 Anaerobic Cycle (AN) and then Taper. For the rest of the team, instead of tapering, you will match Wil’s training until his taper and then start Block 4 with an AE Cycle. Wil will join you after trials in you in second AE Cycle. Below is the portion of the training plan that’s revised. The rest remains as previously posted.

All the best,

Dan Henderson

Revised due to snow
16-Jan	Competitive Block 3	Cycle 7 Revised AE 1&2	1	80%	90
23-Jan			2	80%	100
30-Jan			3	80%	110
6-Feb		Cycle 8 Revised AE 1&2	1	80%	100
13-Feb			2	80%	110
20-Feb			3	80%	120
27-Feb			4	80%	130

ICF endorsement

Just learned that the International Canoe Federation (the world and Olympic canoe/kayak governing body) has endorsed my sea kayak book!

Sea Kayak Book

For the past 2 years I've been working on a sea kayak book. The theme is to take what I have learned in exercise science grad school, my paddling experience and writing skills and combine them into a book that will help kayakers improve their skills.

The publisher is the Mountaineers Press under their Mountaineers Outdoor Expert Series (MOES). Release is in March.

While the process was tedious beyond all expectations, I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Hope it is found to be helpful.

For the past two years, during the week-long school break between Christmas and New Years, Cascade has held a Superweek. Superweek acts as an aerobic shock to an athlete’s body, resulting in an accelerated aerobic adaption. The mechanism of adaptation is high aerobic endurance workouts – both in the canoe or kayak and running. Additional training load is added through hypertrophy/hyperplasia and core strength training. We just competed this year’s Winter Superweek with 11 water workouts totaling 200 km for the top athlete (Eric Roux), 3 run workouts, 6 core sessions and 3 weight training sessions. Joining the 11 Cascade paddlers were 4 great paddlers from Gig Harbor. Except for Eric, not everyone participated every day, but each performed a significant amount of training relative to their normal load.

In a quest for more ways of explaining the role of the top hand during the power phase of the kayak stroke, it has occurred to me that a way to help explain the mechanics is to describe the top hand movement and how it affects the blade in the water. It seems to me that no top hand movement should cause the blade to move backwards – all of that should come from the bottom hand. The top hand should provide only the load of body weight onto the paddle. We know that any push forward and/or dropping of the top hand during the power phase causes the paddle to go to a negative angle prematurely, resulting on the loss of the ability to maintain the load in the later part of the power phase. Also, when the top hand pushes forward, the paddle pivot point moves from the top hand down the shaft, resulting in the blade moving behind the top hand. So my point here is that perhaps a way to explain this to kayakers (one of the many coaches need in their arsenal of explanations to help athletes learn) is to have them focus on top hand movement that keeps the blade in front of or below the bottom hand. Any thoughts?