Paddling From The Beginning – The Zen of Sculling
Published August 22, 2005 | 
Think about this for a moment. Sculling can pull your boat sideways silently. Sculling can keep your boat upright. It can also allow you to lay your boat over on the side and look cool. Sculling can roll your boat. Really? But then, what is a sweep but an upside down scull? Hmmm, one skill, draw, brace, roll. . Man we want to work on this one!
One of the first things I do with a new student who wants to learn to scull is walk them out into the lake. Only in water just above the knees. We hold our paddle in the proper “paddlers box” position and then turn the blade vertically just like we would do when we perform a draw. Then we sink the blade into the water and using our torsos (NO ARM MOVEMENT) we bring the blade from one hip to the other in a nice wide arching “C”. We’ll keep this up for a while until our blade is moving back and forth nice and smooth without any flutter. We want the blade to move silently through the water. We are kayak Ninjia, Silent in the water.
Next we will add pressure with our lower arm and continue this sculling motion. Back and forth, back and forth. Hip to Hip. Then we increase the speed. About now if all is going well, we notice all sorts of pressure on the blade. Good. That’s our first look at the power of a sculling blade. You will learn to trust this power. Hopefully we’ve also started to understand the concept of using the dreaded “TORSO ROTATION” to move the blade and not our week puny (insert Gov. Schwarzenegger’s quote here) arms.
Next we can get in our boats and start working on a sculling draw. Again we turn our bodies to “face” our work. We sink the blade into the water, then we perform the same wide arching “C” that we were using just minutes before along the beach. There are some important points here. First, slow down. Too many people are trying to use speed to overcome technique issues. If you keep a constant pressure on your blade AND perform a wide arching “C” from back to front you will have a bunch of power pulling you sideways.
Another common mistake is keeping the blade out of the water. This comes up often when we are first learning our strokes. Remember to sink the blade into the water. I often tell students to think about pushing water UNDER the boat when they practice draws. You have to get that blade down. Personally I have my upper fist in front of my nose and not resting on my forehead. That again just helps me to keep my blade down. It’s worth noting that this is a personal thing. Placing your hand against your forehead is just peachy. Just get the blade under the water in any case.
Next we will bring our upper hand down so the blade is horizontal across our deck. Now we can work on our sculling brace. Warning Will Robinson!! Warning!! Don’t let your inner arm sneak up on you. You need the blade as flat on the water as possible. Don’t rest the paddle on the boat, but keep it low and horizontal. Keep your elbows in along your sides.
Many times people describe the sculling motion at spreading peanut butter on toast. I hate peanut butter!! Yuk! Actually that “figure eight” metaphor confused me to no end. As you know, we all learn in different ways. I just think about being a kid sailing my hand out the car window like the wing of an airplane. Lifting the leading edge of the blade as I sweep it across the water. Not too much mind you. Just enough to allow the blade to slide across the surface and not dive under the water. I concentrate on creating long wide arcs with the blade. Using my torso to move the blade. I think about keeping the motion slow, relaxed and consistent. I remember to keep my paddle horizontal across my deck. I let my subconscious mind concentrate on the pressure holding the blade. What happens when I speed up? When I slow down? With subtle twists of the blade I can make it dive to the bottom and just as easily rise to the surface. I think about blade control and how my movements affect the blade. All this time, I’m just sitting upright. I’m not “bracing” at all. Just becoming one with the blade. It’s a Zen thing!
Again this is another skill you can work on while standing in the lake. No boat needed. Just go out until the water is up past your hips. Turn your upper body to the left or right which ever works for you. Lay your outer paddle blade flat on the surface of the water and rotate your upper body to bring the blade from side to side. I put my lower hand over the top of the paddle shaft and keep it open as I apply pressure, using the other hand to lift the leading edge of the blade. Again like before I work on diving and lifting the blade just with subtle twists of the leading edge of the blade. I close my eyes and feel the movement. Feel my upper body rotate, feel the resistance of the blade on and in the water. I’ll scull the blade on the surface, and work on continuing to scull the blade about 6 inches under the surface. Careful not to dive the blade or to let it rise out of the water. I speed up and slow down and feel what the blade is doing. In choppy water I’ll scull the blade just below the chop. Seek out the calm water just under the waves.
Back in the boat as I become relaxed and I can feel the flow of the blade in the water I will ever-so-slowly begin to lean my boat over. Just a bit. Then I adjust the speed of the blade to compensate. You need to do this purely by feel. Resist your fear. It will cause you to speed up too much and shorten your arch in the water. Remember the power is in the long arching motion. Each time your blade stops to change directions you lose a little lift. A short stroke will mean lots of “stops”, and therefore less lift on the blade. Close your eyes. You have to really work at trusting your blade. It will easily hold you up if you let it. Calm down, slow down, use wide arcs. Lean a bit more. . .
So what’s the deal with that cool move where you lie completely over? Well, you have to make a leap of faith. YIKES!! Yeah, there is a spot as you slowly lean over where you basically drop into the side sculling position. There’s a little timing thing. What I do is lay back on my deck and scull. Then when I’m ready to go all the way, I bring my paddle to the front of the boat and as I begin to scull back I slide my upper body into the water mid-scull. Then I just keep right on sculling. You see, If I slide into the water right as my blade begins to change direction I’ll have no pressure on the water and my blade will dive and take me with it. In mid-arch I have the most pressure on the blade and that will give me the stabilizing lift I need the moment I need to slip down into the water. You will notice too that your arm position changes slightly to bring your blade over your shoulder since you are now lying in the water. Don’t let that throw you. Everything else remains the same. Slow wide archs. Let your mind reach out to the blade and adjust the angle and speed.
Remember before when I talked about trying to scull with your blade about 6 inches under the surface? Now is where all that Zen stuff kicks in. Let your eyes follow the blade as you lie in the water and continue your scull. Are you feeling the consistent pressure? Are you relaxed? Ok, let’s slow it down and let your body sink. Don’t quit sculling and go upside down. Just slow the scull down slightly and let your head go under the surface. Then speed up your scull just a bit and bring yourself back up. Take a breath. Slow it down and sink a bit, speed up and rise. If you keep working on this you can go almost completely upside down and just scull up. Now you’ve got half a roll!!!
So what is a sweep roll anyway? well, now that your sculling is kicking “a” you are probably already guessing that rolling must fit in here somewhere. Well, it does. But that’s another blog entry.
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4 Responses to Paddling From The Beginning – The Zen of Sculling
I can’t believe you hate peanut butter. It’s so good!
As for deep sculling = rolling, that may be true but deep bracing = rolling as well. There is a distinct difference between a sweep/screw/slash roll and a sculling roll. The difference is blade angle. While the line is blurred with a Greenland paddle because it is much more forgiving in regards to blade angle, a Euro paddle quickly makes this evident. A sculling roll requires an alternating climbing blade angle, a sweep roll requires a neutral blade angle, and the slash roll (my personal favorite) requires a diving blade angle.
Right. You can write the follow up post on blade angles and rolling if you like.
Tried it out last night after work. Works good. I have struggled in the past with a sculling brace. Became much more confident last night, noticed that my skirt lets water seep in if I scull long enough =8-) facing my work, sculling with my torso(not my arms) and a long arching stoke proved to be the ticket. Seems to feel more natural on my left side. Thanks for the tips.
Richard (CD Gulfstream, green over orange)
That’s great to hear Richard! I wanted to get back and congratulate you on that, sorry for the delay. I’m glad to hear you got something from the post.