C-Forum

I was wondering if anybody has developed a set of exercises that would help with rolling, specifically helping to isolate the proper muscle groups so you can find them and use them while upside down in a river. I know I am supposed to lift my onside knee to initiate the roll, but honestly a lot of the time I'm sitting there in the ready to roll position wondering where the hades my onside knee is. And when I do get a good roll, I can't figure our how I did it. As you may have guessed by now, I'm not terribly well coordinated. I am persistent, so I'm hopeful I'll get it eventually. If I had a reliable roll, it would change my life and I'd be the envy of all my friends. What kinds of mat exercises might help me with this?

BTW, I've had no luck with pool rolling because I seem to be allergic to the chlorine in a number of ways, which is why I'm looking for mat exercises to do until it warms up around here.

Its hard to replace the real thing. Basically you need to train muscle memory into your body so the motion becomes automatic and you don't need to think about which is your offside knee. This takes repetition of the movement. This is the reason team sports tend to run drills in practice that focus on a specific skill set as opposed to just playing.

One "dry" exercise I have used for a demo while teaching on land is to get in my outfitting and lay my boat on its side and complete the roll from there. Put the boat on a pad or a soft piece of ground to protect the boat.
1. Get into your roll position; i.e. looking down, paddle perpendicular to the boat, forehead on shaft.
2. Initiate the hip snap to roll the boat upright. Do not rely on the paddle for anything more than balance to allow you to bring your body into the boat. If you do you may break your paddle and hurt your shoulder.

This demo works best in a boat that has soft chines. In a hard chines boat you will hang up when the chine meets the floor and you will find the roll difficult and may stall out at this point or worse develop bad habits to force the boat up.

Like I said, I have used this as a demo only. I would show this to students so I coule explain what I am doing at each step, then go to the water and demo a "real" roll. However you may be able to use this as a drill to create enough muscle memory to automatically push down with the offside knee and lift the onside knee.

I don't know what the nature of your chlorine sensitivity is but you try using goggles, nose and ear plugs. It makes things much more comfortable.


It's unlikely that you ll learn your roll in on try land.

Maybe you could find a bromine or a salt water pool?

My recommendation is find a saltwater pool. What made rolling click for me was doing drills at the edge of the pool with no paddle. Hold onto the coping (edge of pool) on your on-side and flop the boat over on top of you. Practice using your knees / hips / abs to roll the boat up, using as little pressure as possible on your hands until the very end of the roll. When you start this drill, you'll probably be using a lot of arm / upper body strength, but as you practice you figure out what lower body muscles you need to use. From here I went to having someone "spot" the end of my paddle when trying a roll, or you can use the edge of the pool to spot your paddle.

Aside from on-the-water practice, I do a set of incline sit-ups and then do a set of legs lifts where I hang from a bar and lift my legs over a bench.
It's a great core work-out and gets my abs primed for the numerous rolls I'm inclined to do when paddling
Keez

Riverken,

here is some stuff that works for me

most people do not take care of their shoulders. This plan really works. i've been doing it for a couple years. I work with 3 lbs weights now but I've worked with as much as 5lbs too.
http://www.daveyhearn.com/Coaching/Tech ... outine.htm

get a mat or towel....lay down on it by the leg of a couch and hold under the couch somewhere. at the gym I just grab the leg of an out of the way machine. Its a leg lift with a trunk rotation to the sides of the straight body.

I suspect this works well for Rolling
so in the straight body position down while holding the couch leg/ledge with shoulder blades remaining on the floor you rotate onto your right hip with feet straight out slightly elevated. Leg lift up over your head lifting the butt up and then drop the legs down rotating to the other side and other hip slowly. This should be very dynamic for your core. If you really examine this movement it is very similar to what you do in a sweeping canoe roll....torso rotation engaging many muscle sets. Add leg weights as needed for your desired fitness level. you probably should add other basic core exercises but I like this one.

In the gym I do a reverse situp back extention with a 25 lbs free weight held to my chin. that targets the swing out to the setup phase of the roll for the back. I don't sweep out from the bow unless I expect trouble cracking the boat open. I just get to the setup spot with core/back and this I think helps that effort.

best of luck and listen to your body pains/strains especially in the shoulder routines

Great stuff, Creeker. Very helpful. Now I can feel less unproductive over the next several weekends of NFL playoffs...

Yoga, Pilates and the Davey Hearn shoulder routine.

Some excellent ideas here.

Thank you all.

thanks for the Davey Hearn shoulder routine.