Paddle Talk

Crew Management with Trevor

9 min · Boating Skills Course

Back to More Lessons

What you’ll need

People to Paddle With
A Raft

We'll be working on

Explaining Basic Paddle Commands
How to hold a paddle
Tips for sitting properly in a boat

In this lesson, Trevor is discussing how to set yourself up for success with a good quality paddle talk. This will prepare your crew for the paddle commands they need to know for rafting and how to sit in the raft. We will be covering how to explain how to hold a paddle, how to explain how to sit, and how to show your crew the most effective ways to paddle.

Holding the Paddle

When explaining how to paddle to the crew make sure you highly emphasize that holding the T-grip is one of the most important elements of safety in the raft. Most rafting injuries occur because the crew falls into each other. Holding the T-Grip is one major way that you can reduce the hazard of hitting other paddlers. You will want to instruct your crew to also slid their hand as far down as possible on the shaft towards the blade. This may be limited by the paddler’s arm length, but typically you will want the paddlers hand to be nearly touching the top of the blade where it connects to the shaft.

Using your core

Paddlers should be leaning forwards and backwards as they make their strokes. You want your folks to be using the larger muscles in their bodies to help prevent injuries to the smaller muscles in the shoulders. A fun exercise is to get them to sit in the boat and lean forwards and backwards in their seats. this will get them accustomed to the gross motor movements required to get down the river.

Sitting position

When your paddlers are seated in the boat make sure they are sitting on the outside tube. From there you will want to have them place their outside foot under the thwart in front of them and their inside foot against the thwart behind them with their foot placed vertically their inside knee dropped towards the floor, and their hips facing forward. At this point you will want them to slide forward until their shin connects with the thwart in front of them. you may need to adjust the thwarts for optimal position based on the paddler’s size. Shorter legged paddlers will need less space between the thwarts and longer legged paddlers will need a larger thwart bay to achieve maximum purchase. The ideal position is the lower knee approximately 2 to 3 fingers away from the heel of the front foot.

Paddling Commands

You want to introduce your paddlers to the 3 basic commands of Forward Paddle, Back Paddle, and Stop. get them to make the gross motor movements first then focus on paddling together. It is easiest to do this on dry land first then take the boat to the water that way your team can practice on a stable static surface first before they have to adjust to being in the water and following your commands.

Welcome