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Dragon Boat Techniques

Videos and tips to improve your paddling.

40 Reason Why "Exercise is Medicine"

9 Dragon Boat-iquettes Every Paddler Should Observe

by eugephemisms

In dragon boating, as in life, it is essential for us paddlers to observe and be aware of the proper etiquettes of the sport. How well one behaves and carries himself during a team practice, and especially in races, speaks of the paddler’s or even the team’s character.

As we train hard to make up for a strong team, let’s also keep training ourselves towards achieving a certain decorum—the basic foundation for a harmonious, respectful and happy dragon boat community.

We have carefully chosen some of the best letterings/typographies on Instagram and other websites to go with the ‘dragon boat-iquettes’ that every dragon boater should know, observe, and, yes, live.

1. Be cheerful. Always wear a cheerful demeanour during races. That eye-blinding smile of yours may be used against your competitor, no? One cheerful mood can be infectious at the race site–spread it. It’s always a good feeling to race ‘happy’.

2. Be friendly. Always greet your competitors. Say, ‘Good luck!’, ‘All the best!’, ‘Have a safe race!’, ‘Go (insert team name)!’ Pump up the motivational atmosphere by giving compliments to your teammates and competitors as well. ‘Amazing performance!’, ‘Well done!’, ‘Great timing!’, ‘Good race!’

3. Be generous. Share all your knowledge of the sport to the ‘newbies’. In situations where there are more paddlers, as opposed to the crew needed for a certain race/category, let the new(er) paddlers play. It’s their time to shine, so your trust and support is important to them. This has been a perennial issue for most teams, but a real respectable paddler shouldn’t grumble about such things, they should be embracing it. That’s what true athletes are.

4. Be considerate. Offer to help hold the boat (your own or others’) if there’s a need or when the waves are crazy at the boat loading zone. Offer to lend a hand for other dragon boaters (teammates or otherwise) who have difficulty standing or getting out of the boat right after a heat. While it’s every paddler’s duty to take care of the team’s equipment, always help in lifting and returning the boat, as well as your team paddles and life vests to where you store them. No divas and lazy a*ses please. In all races, know where the First Aid/Medics tent and ambulance are located.

5. Be respectful. Just be. Mutual respect is essential amongst teammates and team officers. As a team officer, you need to be impartial in fulfilling your duties and do not overstep your bounds. In carrying out team activities, don’t do everything by yourself–administer inclusivity. For teams who are sharing a complex, always ask permission when you need to borrow other team’s boats, rudders (sweep oar), trolleys, or drums. It’s also good manners to ask permission from your current team when you want to paddle with other teams.

6. Be fair. Follow the Chief Starter’s instructions carefully and honestly. If he calls on your team to do one stroke forward, just do one. For straight line races, strictly stay in the middle of your lane and don’t ride on the bow wave of your competitor. That’s ‘wash riding’ and it’s not allowed under IDBF regulations. The Umpires are watching you. Never ever cheat. After all, nothing feels like winning a clean, fair game!

7. Be present. Show up during ‘team’ trainings. Don’t show face two weeks before your race. That’s not very cool. So long as your schedule permits, Go! And please try to be on time. When you’re racing, stay with your team and try not to roam around the race venue ALL the time.

8. Be polite. When there’s a need to protest or complain about a race or another team, go to your team manager first, then to the race officials. Always talk calmly and keep your composure . It is always great to be admired for our sportsmanship, isn’t it?

9. Be mindful. Volunteer for any river, lake, or sea clean up activities in your area. As dragon boaters, we should be the boosters in saving the waters because it’s our ‘playground.’ And hey, let’s please clean up our space after each race. It’s not that hard, really!

Warm Up Exercises for Dragonboating

Dragonboat Training & Techniques

These are very common stretches and simple exercises that anyone can do and I highly recommend them before and after any training session and race. But firstly why warm-up and why don’t we get straight into a training session or race?

Why warm up?

• warms your muscles by increasing the movement of blood through your tissues, making the muscles more supple;

• increases delivery of oxygen and nutrients to your muscles by increasing the blood flow to them;

• prepares your muscles for stretching.

• prepares your heart for an increase in activity.

• prepares you mentally for the upcoming exercise; and

• primes your nerve-to-muscle pathways to be ready for exercise.

• Why don’t we get straight into a training session or race?

• Warming up before a training session or race is simply to help prevent injury. While scientific studies are ongoing to define the best warm-up techniques to gain this injury-prevention advantage, the warm-up is an important aspect before any dragon boat session that a paddler undertakes.

Ensuring an effective warm up

To make your warm up effective, you need to do movements that increase your heart rate and breathing, and slightly increase the temperature of your muscle tissue. A good indication is warming up to the point where you have raised a light sweat. We would generally allow 5 to 10 minutes for your pre-exercise warm-up (or slightly longer in cold weather).

Warm-up options

Follow these options in the order listed.

1. General warm-up. To begin your warm-up, do 5 minutes of light (low intensity) physical activity such as walking, jogging on the spot. Pump your arms or make large but controlled circular movements with your arms to help warm the muscles of your upper body.

2. Stretching. Any stretching is best performed after your muscles are warm, so only stretch after your general warm-up. Stretching muscles when they are cold may lead to a tear. Static stretching (stretching a muscle and holding it in this position without discomfort for 10-30 seconds) is considered the safest method of stretching. I will list some stretches that we recommend for Dragonboat specifically below, so keep reading.

3. Dragonboat paddling warm-up. One of the best ways to warm up is to perform Dragon boating strokes whilst out of the water. This will allow you to simulate at low intensity the movements you are about to perform at higher intensity during your session. For example, you may stand or sit on flat ground and pretend to hold your paddle out in front of you and start practising your stroke in mid-air. Start with slow paddling as though you were in the boat to warm up your muscles and gradually increase it to a medium pace, until you feel that your muscles are loose and warmed up. Furthermore, I would suggest also taking note to rotate your hip and back muscles so you will warm them up as well during your mid-air warm up.

Dragonboat Stretches

These stretches below should be held at the point where you can feel the stretch but do not experience any discomfort. If you feel discomfort, ease back on the stretch. Remember not to bounce when holding the stretch. Don’t spend so long doing your stretches that your muscles cool down and your heart rate returns to normal.

From Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Teams

BILL'S PADDLING POINTS TO PONDER #10

**TIMING** Part 1 of 3

What is so darn difficult about timing and paddling in sync?

It's so simple. Each paddler puts their paddle in at the same time and exits at the same time. What's complicated is the stuff that happens between the catch and the exit (pull)and the exit and the catch (recovery).

Why is timing so important? Without being long winded (Me? Never!), many studies show that the same team, paddling in sync, move the boat faster than when paddling out if sync. If paddlers catch early, they are trying to pull the dead weight of the boat by themselves and if they are late, they are dead weight until they join in. Similarly on the exit, with a late exit the paddler is trying to pull the boat while everyone else is dead weight. To compound the issue, they are trying to pull the boat in water that has begun to move and is slipping, pointless! With an early exit, the paddler becomes dead weight while the rest of the team is still pulling.

To really understand the significance of exact timing, we have to get out of our heads the idea that we are moving the boat forward by forcefully propelling water backward thereby shooting the boat forward like a rocket. In fact, the exact opposite is the ideal. We do not want to move the water at all. Yes, from the paddlers point of view the water is rushing past the boat but unless you are paddling in a river or a strong tidal current, it is absolutely still until we start moving it with our paddles. The ideal scenario

is that each paddler reaches forward, buries the paddle fully in still water to "anchor" it, then pulls the boat forward until the hip meets the anchor. The anchor is then pulled out and cast forward to set it for the next pull. As soon as the water starts to move (slipping), it is the equivalent of a dragging anchor and your ability to pull the boat diminishes. Your exit point, which at speed is usually the hip, is actually dictated by the moment that the "anchor" is slipping too much. How do you know the anchor is slipping too much? By feel. When the water has starts to slip, so does your ability to maintain pressure on the face of the blade. Time to get it out of the water!

Back to timing. How do we make sure the paddles and exit simultaneously when we have such a diversity of physical types in the crew? At the front stroking, we have Jane Doe who is 5' 2" and weighs 125 lbs (sorry I still think imperial). In the engine room, her brother John Doe stands 6' 2", bench presses 300 lbs easily and weighs in at 225 lbs. Both are extremely fit, have perfect technique, and are experienced paddlers but there is no way Jane can reach as far as John or pull as hard. How do we synchronize these radically different physical types?

Now, we could fill the boat with John but the water would be coming over the gunwales and John in the front might be a little cramped. Plus a boat sitting so deeply in the water might create a little bit too much drag to get it going. A boat full of Janes probably is a slightly better option for the opposite reasons but we might miss Joe's power in the engine room. Anyway, we have a mixed crew full of Janes and John with a range of paddling skills and we still need to paddle in sync. How??? Should John shorten his stroke to match Jane? Should Jane start taking supplements and "beef up" to match John? I guess that will have to be answered in part 2 (don't want to be long winded). Stay tuned.

Bills Paddling Point to Ponder 12 - Centre of Gravity

FINDING YOUR CENTRE

One of the greatest aids to effective paddling is an awareness of your centre of gravity. When sitting, as you are in a dragon boat, your centre of gravity (CG)is just below your sternum and halfway towards your backbone (with slight adjustments for body types).

Ideally, when you are paddling, any movement of the CG should not conflict with the direction of travel of the boat. Any up, down, or sideways motion would be counterproductive to moving the boat forward. A perfect example of this is thoroughbred horse racing. If you have never watched a thoroughbred horse race, find a video online and watch it. As the horses are thundering down the track watch the jockeys. They float above the horses, arms extending and contracting with the motion of the horses' heads, legs acting as shock absorbents, torsos absolutely motionless. If you ask a top jockey, what is their secret of success? They will answer do nothing to get in the way of the horse's ability to run. If they bounce up and down or lean from side to side, it would seriously impede the forward progress of their mount.

How does this apply to paddling?

When you are in a dragon boat, you are both the jockey and the horse. The jockey is your centre of gravity, and the horse is all of the actions the rest of your body performs to move your beast forward, your stroke. As you take your seat and assume the paddling position, shifting weight to your outside buttock, it effectively shifts your CG towards the gunnel and that’s where it stays for the duration, tracking slightly forward and backwards as you hinge and rotate around it like well-oiled ball bearing. Any up or down movement of the CG is balanced by the changes in arm position during the stroke. As you hinge forward the CG would drop but your arms have moved into a more elevated position keeping it on the level. During the pull phase of the stroke, the torso elevates but the arms have moved down to bury the paddle, shifting weight, again keeping everything on the level.

The one moment when the body is hinged fully forward and the arms have driven down is the catch so shouldn’t the CG drop? Here’s the beauty of a well-executed catch, that 60-degree entry, that momentary up vector as the paddle carves into the water, keeping the CG in place until the body hinges back during the pull.

So as you are paddling up a storm, focus on your centre. It is the calm in the eye of a hurricane, the jockey floating over a powerful racehorse, and the key to smooth paddling.

BILLS PADDLING POINTS TO PONDER 13 Legs

LEGS AND THE ART OF AUTOMOBILE MAINTENANCE

Let’s talk about legs.

I think that legs sometimes are very neglected when it comes to improving our paddling technique. We get in the boat, take a seat, and figure out how to find a comfortable place to brace our feet, curse the dragon boat designers for not taking into account our particular body types then prepare to focus on good paddling technique, and the legs get forgotten. Lots of stuff going up top, hinging, rotation, great reach, good catch, paddle buried, lots of power in the pull, but as the drummer looks down the boat and sees the legs.....just sitting there. They contain the most powerful muscles in the body and not even a twitch. Understanding the importance of legs is fundamental to transferring the force that is generated by the upper body to the forward motion of the boat. And this is where automobile mechanics comes in...

An internal combustion engine rear drive vehicle works by injecting fuel into a series of cylinders, igniting it, moving pistons that are attached to a crankshaft generating torque or rotational power. The transmission or gearbox takes this power and delivers it to a driveshaft via a universal joint, turning the wheels of the car and moving it forward. Rotational motion being converted back into linear acceleration. All of that is referred to as the cars powertrain. Here’s the important part of all that. It doesn’t matter if you are driving an eight-cylinder Pontiac GTO or a four-cylinder Ford Focus, if all parts of your powertrain are not working properly, the torque generated by the engine will not be transferred to the wheels and neither vehicle will win any races.

Now let’s get out of the car and into a dragon boat.

Your “engine” is your torso and arms generating the power that is used to accelerate the boat. Your transmission, u-joints, and drive shafts are your hips, knees and legs. If any part of the powertrain is not working to its full potential, then the supply of power generated by the paddlers will be diminished by the time it is converted into the forward motion of the boat. Try paddling with your feet not braced and feel the power drop.

When it comes to a paddlers “drive-train” (hips, legs, knees, feet), I believe the most effective set up is both legs in a forward position with the primary driveshaft being the outboard leg. The reason for this is simple physics. When you are pulling on the paddle the force vector is just outside the gunnel. If the power generated by the pull is to be transferred to the boat, then it makes sense that the leg delivering the power is aligned as closely as possible with the original line of force, much like pulling on a rope in a tug-o-war. As the body hinges and rotates forward reaching for the catch, the outboard leg will compress, knee will flex slightly, and pressure will increase on the outboard foot. On the pull, the outboard leg will extend, knee unflexing, engaging the drivetrain, transferring the full power generated by the pull to the boat.

Meanwhile, the inboard leg does the opposite. As the body hinges forward, the inboard leg acts like a clutch, extending and pushing back the freed up inside hip, pelvis and shoulders rotating simultaneously. On the pull, pelvis and shoulders rotate back to their initial position ready to repeat the cycle. Now, when looking down the boat the drummer should see those legs working, knees alternately flexing and unflexing as the drivetrain engages on the pull phase and disengages on the recovery. In a car, it would be the equivalent of pressing and releasing the gas pedal once every second or so causing the car to accelerate, decelerate its way down the road.

As you paddle with your team, remember that it is a twenty-engine vehicle. You might be a V8 a V6 or a V4, but the power needs to get to the “wheels” to move the boat forward so engage those legs an add some punch to your paddling.