Draw Paddle Stroke Tips for Whitewater Rafting

Video Transcript

"The draw stroke is an effective turning stroke for the guide, it's very powerful. It has some limitations though; the draw stroke you place the paddle in the water and you pull the boat to the paddle, more than pulling a paddle to the boat. The limitation on the draw stroke is that you only have a certain distance in order to pull in and then the paddle stroke is finished, so you have to place in a second draw often to pull the boat to the paddle. Also with a draw stroke you are exposed when you're reaching out, it's not good for your shoulder's, you also are leaning out of the boat in order to make that draw stroke happen and that's when guides tend to fall out the most. We'll check out the draw stroke here with Mike. You can see how he leans out of the boat in order to make that happen. With all paddling strokes they don't necessarily need to be fast noisy strokes, the slower strong smoother stroke is more effective than noise that you get from paddling is the inefficiency in your paddle stroke."