During Academy days I use a variety of techniques to help paddlers enhance paddling efficiency on the dry land first. For us in the winter it makes sense to stay warm however, the most successful paddling club in the UK (World marathon champions male and female spanning two decades and multiple Olympic squad athletes) does not let paddlers out on the water until they have mastered the fundamental of paddling technique.

In the summer when the water is warmer greater time will be spent out in the ocean however, the use of video analysis and ergo work is still a strong feature.

Depending upon the structure of the day either computerised stroke analysis can be carried out in real time, that is power profiles, stroke length, speed (mps) and much much more; or recorded for further analysis.

The other very effective analysis programme I use is Dartfish, a movement analysis programme. Below I have provided still images detailing some of the functionality of the programme which paddlers receive on DVD after the Academy day. Dartfish analysis goes far beyond these images unfortunately, I can not upload fully functional video to the site as yet, the clip below is a short example which would be a part of the screan shots below this clip.

An example of split screen analysis allowing comparison of before and after technique.


Here the  footage (Pre-Academy coaching) can be broken down into key stages, each stage has notes attached to paddlers to fully get to grips with important aspect of their technique


In this example it is very clear the paddler has made marked improvements in their technique, again notes are attached