How to Separate Upper & Lower Body Movements while Kayaking

Video Transcript

"Another basic principle is separation of your upper and lower body. You want to make sure that you dislocate from your belly button down so your boat can rock back and forth. I don't know if you can see that. What I'm really doing is I'm pulling up on one knee and pushing down on the opposite butt cheek. So I can let my boat rock and roll over the water while I keep my upper body nice and quiet. You want to be able to do this on the river because the river is moving up and down as well. So you want to be able to stay calm and relaxed and be able to separate the body, your upper and lower body. If you were stiffed you probably act like a bell bowie out there in the water and you can see if I'm tilting like this I don't look very relaxed and I'm not in balance. The separation helps you to stay in balance. We also want you to be able to separate your upper and lower body so that you can stay on edge and we'll talk about that a little bit later in the session. What I want to do is I'm just going to basically hold an edge. So I'm going to push down on this butt cheek, pull up on this knee and you can see my head and shoulders stay balanced up over the water. If I can stay in this position I can curve an edge right through a turn. I can actually hold this edge in many different levels. So I can do it 1st degree, 2nd degree and way up here as long as I stay in balance and keep my abdomen nice and relaxed. So stay in balanced and separate your upper and lower body. That will really help you as you're kayaking down the river."