Florida 2018 A Guide to Paddling C Patterson

Florida 2018Palm Coast, March 9 – April 10

What a great experience! This Florida is definitely what showed me what I’m going to need to do to get where I want to. I got to train with so many amazing athletes, meet so many amazing people and experience what it really means to be a high-performance paddler. I would say high-performance athlete but there is for sure a difference between an athlete and a paddler. Paddlers are so much more. We have to work harder to get stronger and fitter than an athlete from any other sport. Our mental capacity has to be at its best, and our technique has to be fine tuned to our body type and flexibility. It’s truly a sport that takes both individual and team efforts. Individual in the sense that you are making yourself into “your own” paddler, but you only get faster by paddling with a team. This team aspect is actually so important, and I’ve thought about it before, but this camp was really my first time to experience that in a training setting. By having my team to race during the workouts and to pace off of I was able to push myself to a new level of crazy. This camp I’ve had both good and bad days, but I learnt that after a bad piece, or bad practice, or bad day, you have to rise above whatever it is and feel good, or else it’s going to be biting at you until you overcome that moment. Whenever I had a bad practice it sucked. It can be so so frustrating to come off the water after an hour thinking “What did that do for me? That was a waste. I felt bad. I could have gone harder. My technique was floppy.” feeling like you got nothing out of that workout. The key to overcoming these moments is feeling good. Whatever you do to feel good, just get out in your boat and do it, because when you come off the water feeling good, your next practice you will have the right mindset to be able to go hard, and work, without feeling like it’s all going to waste. I think that feeling good is so important that even skipping a piece to refocus after a bad one is definitely the best thing possible at times. Roommates are an experience, but its going to suck if you can’t get along, so make sure to work out any problems at the start of camp. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about that, my roommates were amazing and we all cooperated with each other and got along, I feel like I made very good friends with those guys this camp. Take care of your equipment and others, that makes the camp run much smoother, if the coaches don’t have to run out for supplies, they can spend more time coaching the athletes. Take video as much as possible. Ask for video after practices and before practices. I found it amazing being able to see the changes I made in technique every day. And being able to watch myself paddle and know what I’m doing great and what could use work was an amazing feeling.Don’t act like you’re the best. Everyone there trains as much as you and works as hard as you, so there’s no reason showing off that you do exactly what they do.Take advantage of any opportunity to leave the resort. Just leaving the resort gives you so much of a mental break. When you’re at the resort you tend to always think about the next practice,

Stats:Total time tracked: 52:22.0 hoursTotal distance tracked: 360.5 km

Average feeling: good

Distance ran: 50.1km//5:04 hoursDistance paddled: 308.8km//46:19 hours

Florida 2018 A Guide to Paddling C Patterson

what you’re gonna do, how hard its gonna be. We need to stop thinking like that, it tires us out. Basically, my thought is “getting away from the training ground is as much mental break as two days rest.” Don’t overwork your head, that’s the hardest part. Your body will recover, your brain won’t stop hurting. These adventures with your team are also very important team builders- I found that all that time competing with my team made me hate them until we got a day off to hang out because you’re constantly jealous of them beating you and you just want to beat them so bad that you detest them, then you do beat them and they share the feelings of detest for you. So yes, spend time off-resort with your team! You all need a break!Don’t do extra practices at the start of camp, it starts easy because it gets hard super quick, so enjoy the easy practices from the start of camp, focus on technique to get ready for all the harder stuff that good technique will make easier. Don’t worry if you lose weight, trust me, you’re jacked.Sleep! Sleep so much! Once you stop sleeping, you stop eating, and then you lose gains. Sleeping is super important at camp because your body needs to recover, so when deciding whether to nap or do homework or watch Netflix- choose the nap, it is very beneficial.Eat! Eat so much! Whenever you’re hungry- eat! Not hungry? Eat! Too full? Eat! Don’t skip any practices! That’s just showing your coach and your team that you couldn’t do it and that you will never be able to do anything that takes the tiniest bit of willpower. You need to force yourself to go to every practice. If you even consider skipping a practice, ask yourself why you’re at camp, because skipping practices won’t get you to that goal. Make a goal for the camp and go for it, talk to your coaches about it, make sure its something you can accomplish by the end of camp. Make it something the whole team can help you with.Talk to all the coaches! Get different advice! The great thing about training camps is that you have so many amazing people to go to for different pieces of advice and hearing the same thing 5 different ways really puts some depth into it.

My goal from the first night of camp was to be the guy that can’t feel pain- and I’ve definitely stepped up my mental game this camp. From things like battling out Robin or Tyler or even Camden, to the 10km road race where I sprinted the last 3 km because I chose to barbecue a couple of guys. It’s really all about choosing to change in some way and then taking initiative, but, when you commit, commit. If you don’t commit and give up halfway through committing, you’ve made a big mistake. If you are going to win a piece- win it- or else, you’ll feel like crap. From the start of camp, as in the first 3-4 days, I was already feeling super tired. Looking back on my journal I was grumpy and sore even in those first days. Getting into the middle of camp and being more accustomed to my arrangements and the training schedule, I was able to get more into it and was more rested and relaxed. My mood always had its ups and downs, usually you get more tired at the end of the week but then get time off, so everything always works out. By the end of the three weeks I really wasn’t ready to go, I hadn’t yet accomplished all that I needed to. Staying an extra week exhausted me mentally and physically but that week was where I felt the most change. My favorite workout from this camp would be 2*30/60/90/60/30 (equal rest) with ten minutes between sets. That workout just burns you completely and makes you tougher. Its also a great workout to race others on because it’s a tight workout. The hardest workout from the whole camp was one that chris thought would be a fun experiment to see if we could handle it. He called it boxing. It was 12*3/1. Basically like 12 rounds of boxing. After

Florida 2018 A Guide to Paddling C Patterson

the first three rounds you’re in pain, then 3 more and paddling technically is out, 3 more and the pain stops because you’re mentally exhausted and can’t go hard anymore, and the last 3 is just a push to see what else you can physically squeeze out. I loved it, the day after we did it. One thing I really discovered technically is that the canoe stroke is all about the hips and the catch. Having a huge catch is the key to being able to use your hips to distribute your weight throughout the stroke. You can have fancy hips and go super far, but without the big catch you won’t build up speed, likewise, you can have a big catch, but without hips it wont last, your muscles just aren’t strong enough. I have been reading some articles Mike sent me to read about some old Olympians and their Olympic winning races (Larry Cain, Sue Holloway and Alwyn Morris). So far, the three main things I’ve pulled out that are key on race day is focus, simplicity and comfort. Make your racing venue feel like your home turf and you will own the race course. I’m a big believer in simplicity and hard work. You don’t need crazy workouts with intervals, you just must go out and work your hardest at every practice. I think that hard work is the most important thing, and I really wish that I was brought up in paddling as a hard worker, because from the start I wasn’t told to work hard. I think that is very important in bringing up younger athletes. It’s so much easier to work hard when you’re older if you start when you’re young.

Technique over campFrom those 4 weeks at camp my technique developed tremendously. I look completely different from how I was paddling yesterday. The first day mike saw me out on the water he noticed the change I made in my hips with my little “DIP (Drive in the pull)” theory. It was noticeable that my boat was moving smoothly from the connection of those two parts of the stroke. As I go to open my boat speeds up, and as my boat speeds up from the pull I launch into the drive, which increases speed, preparing my boat for the Airwork. What my struggle was from the start of the camp was weight placement and catch. My stroke was very quick but not powerful because I had all my weight in all the wrong places in my boat and my setup was behind my front knee, allowing me very little time to accomplish what I had to with my hips: sure I found an easy shortcut to that, but to double my speed and endurance, I need that catch. Through the middle of camp mike was really bugging me about the catch, so those two weeks were like a mental preparation and just getting ready to figure it out, feeling it out, finding what worked for me. After playing around with it for 2 weeks and mike being constantly on me about it I knew I wold get it the next week so I decided to stay for extra time. In this extra time I sure enough got it. It looked like I was flying forward, just waiting at the front to put my weight on the blade, waiting for the drop to happen. It made me so happy to see that I finally got it. It also made a huge difference. There was a workout that just completely showed me the importance of that catch, and that workout I was at the front of the group, racing robin kendall and matt Chisolm. There is a video that shows robin’s stroke rate being double mine, but im paddling beside him. Here’s one catch from each week.

Florida 2018 A Guide to Paddling C Patterson

Florida 2018 A Guide to Paddling C Patterson

As you can tell, by that last week, I am shoulder and knee separated, in a strong position weight-wise, and in dedicated to the drop, when in the first week my hips are square, my shoulder is far back, and my weight is on the wrong side. Having the weight in position for the drop is crucial in creating a perfect stroke.