Kayaking, either for an adventure or multi-sport race, could be daunting for most of you. Chances are you haven’t been in a kayak for a long time or this experience could be completely unknown territory for you. However, you shouldn’t let this feeling get in the way, as most people often find themselves really enjoying their time in the water.
To provide you with a little steer in the right direction, we will be discussing how to go straight when kayaking. In this post, we have also made a compilation of helpful tips to make your time in your kayak a lot smoother. We guarantee that after you have read this post, you will be gliding in a straight line sooner than you think. Keep reading if you want to know more.
Kayaking: How to Go Straight
Learning the proper way to paddle a kayak forward is quite easy. However, focusing on the correct technique would ensure that you will be able to paddle faster and more efficiently. Doing it in the proper way also eliminates strain on your body. It is also noteworthy that the ideal paddling technique is also dependent on your physical condition, as well as your paddling style.
Sit-on-top kayaks are generally used in most races. As the name suggests, these kayaks are open and a bit bulky, which makes capsizing unlikely to happen. That’s already one thing you can cross off from your worries. Some sit-on-top kayaks are also built for two, which would mean that you need not worry about being alone in the water. For reference, here are the steps on how to go straight when kayaking:
1. Get into position
While some races only entail you to travel about 1 to 2 kilometers, the experience is likely to feel a lot longer if you are in an uncomfortable position, to begin with. Your bum would be all the way back in the kayak seat while your legs are bent slightly. You will also notice a series of pegs cut into your kayak, especially at your feet.
To prevent the feeling of uneasiness while you’re paddling, you might want to straighten your legs and bring them back a couple of pegs. Then, rest your feet in them. As discussed, there should be a slight bend on your legs. It should also be noted that if you have straightened out your legs complete, you will feel an unnecessary strain, especially on your lower back.
2. Good posture
It is very important that you are sitting up straight when you’re in your kayak. As opposed to popular belief, it will not be your arms that will provide power for every stroke that you do. It is actually your core. With this, it is perfectly normal that your arms exert a lot of effort when kayaking.
Swimming delivers enormous fitness benefits. Swimming for about 2.5 hours per week decreases your risk for acquiring chronic diseases, studies say. It also has the capability to improve mood and decrease anxiety. To add, swimming would also make be a great choice for those who have arthritis, among other pain conditions.
In this post, we will be discussing five of the essential swim skills that you need to be aware of. The sport would take a bit of coordination, from your arms and legs to your swimming strokes and breathing. Even if you do not join swimming competitions anytime soon, you should be able to perform these basic swimming skills. Keep reading if you want to know more.
Breathing
Breathing comes naturally to all of us, even when we are not swimming. In fact, it is one activity that will continue to function without any kind of conscious thought or interruption. Breathing is easy when swimming. You just need to remember the two very important aspects of breathing, in which you should be comfortable with: a rhythm to your breathing and your face in the water.
The first step is keeping your face in the water. The reason is that if you swim with your face out of the water or your head up, there is a risk that your hips and legs will drop invariably. In addition, it might create more drag if you are in a low-hip or high-head position, making it a lot more challenging to swim due to resistance.
There could be several techniques for keeping your face in the water. First, make sure that you are wearing comfortable goggles. Second, you need to focus on looking at the pool’s bottom. It could also help if you keep staring at the black line found at the center of the pool lane. Third, take rest breaks in case you are experiencing anxiety. Lastly, private lessons accompanied by practice has also been proven to be very helpful.
When you have mastered keeping your head or face in the water, you need to know how to breathe. The most important action is to start exhaling through your mouth or nose, as soon as you have finished breathing in. However, a problem among beginners is that they try to hold their breath when their face is in the water. Then, they try to exhale and inhale when they turn to breathe. It should be noted that this only results in a shallow and poor breath, as well as the quick buildup of carbon dioxide in your lungs.
Sink Downs
Being able to exhale constantly is necessary, especially for an efficient freestyle stroke. However, many athletes, including beginners, just hold their breath under the water. To be able to master your exhalation, a sink-down exercise is highly recommended. If you find it difficult to exhale just to sink down, then this would mean that you are not exhaling enough in your stroke.
If you are struggling to sink, you might be holding your breath subconsciously. On the other hand, if you sink down but immediately pop back up, then you certainly need to exhale a lot more quickly. Once you have mastered this exercise, try doing at least three sink downs consecutively before, so you can release some tension while reminding yourself to breathe properly.
Tumble Turn
Tumble turns are also important skills for swimmers to master, especially when they start to perform repetitive sets or increase the distances. It is also vital that trainers teach this skill, as it will allow swimmers to be able to keep moving without causing interruption by touching the wall just to go again.
Doing tumble turns is a skill that will help you achieve the practice time that you need. It also can improve your speed, especially if you are working on timed sets. Once you have mastered this skill, you may need to practice it again, but this time as a relay in two or three lanes, that is if you have space. Swimmers can also race for fun while allowing them to fully understand the approach. While this may be very difficult for some, it will certainly require practice, patience, and repetition.
Watching swimmers who demonstrate a powerful kick can be such an inspiration, especially for beginners like you. They exhibit a very fluid, powerful, and effortless performance, the very reason why you should train and practice your freestyle kick. Whether you are a sprinter or a distance swimmer, a powerful freestyle kick is very important for fast swimming.
In this post, we will be discussing our tips on freestyle kick to help you swim faster. As this guide will help promote improvement in your body position and an adequate measure of propulsion, we do hope that it can also help you maintain your speed in between strokes. Keep reading if you want to know more.
Why Working on Your Freestyle Kick is Essential
Doing freestyle kicks when swimming goes beyond just giving your shoulders a rest. It is also very easy to comprehend why we sometimes forget the legs, as they work autonomously down below. It could also be because we only pay attention to what is happening in front of us, especially with our hands and arms. Having a solid freestyle kick will certainly help you become a better swimmer and here’s why:
It provides you added propulsion
The ultimate goal of mastering your freestyle kick is because you want to go a lot faster. The faster you are able to kick, the faster you are able to swim. It’s as basic as that.
It gives you the perfect body position in the water
For sprinters, kicking helps them to maintain a high body position. While the goal of being complete hydro-planing could still be a farfetched idea, you may think that this is the goal.
It helps you launch into an arm pull
A strong freestyle kick can help you launch into an arm pull. The reason is that a strong kick, paired with strong legs, effectively add power to hip rotation. This, in turn, will be able to help you drive your arms into a forward position, which is the gateway for a more dynamic and faster arm pull.
It helps you keep your strokes together
You would notice that keeping your legs strong come in handy, especially towards the end of your races – specifically when your muscles start to fail and your strokes disintegrating as each meter passes by. If you have the endurance in your lower extremities, it would be of great benefit because it keeps your body position powerful, and at the same time, efficient.
Tips on Freestyle Kick to Help You Swim Faster
To help you swim faster, we will be going over three small details that can certainly make a big difference – tempo, transition, and form, which will determine how fast you can move. To perform a very effective freestyle kick, you are required to have amazing ankle flexibility. The more flexible your ankles are, the less drag you are likely to create.
You may notice from more experienced swimmers that they don’t move their ankles a lot while keeping their knees a little bent when going down and their knees straight when going up. To be able to do this technique, you should be able to relax your hamstring and activate your quads well. When your leg is going up, you may need to activate your hamstrings and calves after you have learned the trick.
When freestyle kicking, you also need to perfect the tempo of your kick. This can vary depending on the distance you are swimming. However, the most common tempo is six kicks every two strokes. It could also be three kicks with one leg while your one arm does one stroke cycle. If you notice, the timing of the kick is of great importance, mainly because of the rotation and the movement of your muscles in your core.
It would also be better if your right leg goes down while your left arm enters the water. While it is gliding, you can do another kick and use that momentum to be able to start when your leg goes down again. When you swim freestyle, the most effective thing that you can do after turning is to do several butterfly or dolphin underwater kicks.
In case you don’t know, this effectively carries the speed of your push. However, it is also noteworthy that theproblem most swimmers have is that they lose the speed, especially in the transition from underwater kicks to freestyle kicks. The first few freestyle kicks are also very important. They need to be fast and they need to start right before the arms start moving.
What You Need to Improve to Perfect Your Freestyle Kick
Ankle Strength
While most swimmers don’t have the most stable ankles, they still spend a majority of their training time in the water, in which they build up their ankle strength by skipping into their mobility and warm up plan. To add, skipping rope has also been proven to be a low-key way to quickly develop ankle strength, as well as improve a swimmer’s overall athleticism.
Ankle Flexibility
Having a flexible ankle when freestyle kicking would mean that you will be able to catch more water using your foot, as well as achieve an early vertical ankle, which allows you to push a lot more water backward. However, it should be noted that for swimmers with limited ankle mobility, it would require them mobilization work such as ankle rockers and ankle rotations.
Kick Mindfully
When you are doing freestyle kick sets, you should certainly be mindful of your leg, hip, and ankles’ movements. Kicking mindlessly sure is fun, especially for aerobic endurance. However, if you want to be as efficient as possible, you are going to be very mindful of yourfreestyle kicking techniques.
Avoid kicking down and start to kick backward
When freestyle kicking, we definitely want to start kicking the water backward instead of kicking the water downwards. This trick would require ankle flexibility. Otherwise, you will only bend your knee to a 90-degree angle just to be able to push the water backward, using the top of your feet.
Conclusion
Improving your freestyle kick is no longer a mystery. It is also not only reserved to top athletes when it comes to swimming. With this guide, we hope that you will also be able to improve your kick. All you need is your consistent and focused effort to master these techniques. Hopefully, we are of great assistance in helping you improve not only your kick but also your speed.
As a beginner, you need to learn basic surf etiquette, including those that we will briefly mention in the rest of this post. These are actually unwritten rules that you have to know by heart. These things will be important for your safety and while making sure that you won’t annoy anyone who also happens to be in the water.
1. Choose the Right Surf Spot
One of the most important things that you should do is to choose a spot that will work best for your abilities. Be realistic in terms of what you can do and what you still have to learn. As a sign of respect for other surfers, do not go into an area that you know is not for you. Other than compromising your safety, you might just upset other surfers as well. Do your research beforehand and see spots that are categorized as beginner-friendly. The waves should not be too big and the bottom of the water should not be rocky, which will minimize the likelihood of suffering from an injury.
2. Don’t Drop In
This is one of the most important etiquettes that every beginner should learn. The concept of dropping in operates under the premise that one surfer is equal to one wave. Meaning, there should be no two surfers who are propelling towards the same direction. It is important to know who has the right of way, and you must respect this. If you go against the right of way, you are burning the wave of another surfer, and this is exactly one thing that you do not want to happen to you as well. Not only that it is disrespectful, but it will also result in serious injury or surfboard damages. With this, you should learn how to take it slow and wait until it is finally your turn to ride the wave.
3. Don’t Snake
Aside from dropping in, snaking is another disrespectful behavior that novice surfers must avoid. Simply put, snaking is the act of intentionally paddling around the surfer to be able to get the right of way. Literally, this makes you a snake trying to crawl at a space that is not supposed to be yours. If there is already a surfer who is waiting for the wave, do not go there. Or, at least, wait for that person to be able to catch the wave before you paddle towards that direction.
4. Paddle Wide
This is one of the best ways for you to avoid other surfers. By being able to paddle wide, you won’t be able to impede on the way of another surfer. Again, this is related to the things that have been mentioned above with regards to the right of way. Also, paddling wide means that you should not paddle through the peak. If you are already caught inside, it is best to stay in the water rather than being in a rush to go out and ahead of other surfers. If you are too aggressive, you will most probably end up upsetting other surfers.
5. Take Turns
This is another etiquette that is related to those that have been mentioned above. Do not get too excited by the wave in front of you. You should know how to consider other surfers, especially if you are in a crowded spot. After all, you surely haven’t paid to have the spot all for yourself. You need to learn how to be patient. You have to learn how to determine if it is your turn to ride the wave. It requires the need for you to wait in line. There are some who call this break sharing. By taking turns, the one who will be waiting for the longest time will be at the end and nearest the peak.
6. Communicate
Even when you are out in the sea and enjoying a good surf, communication is important. This necessitates the need to talk to other surfers in the same spot as you. This will make it easier to know whether someone is going left or right. You need to know the intentions of other people to avoid injury and to be not seen as someone who has no manner. Sometimes, you do not even need to talk. Simple hand signals can already be enough to let someone know what you are about to do.
7. Respect the Locals
Whenever you are surfing, make sure that you always respect the locals. Do not think that they act as if the place is exclusive to them. As they say, if you want to gain respect, you should give respect. It is mutual. It is possible that locals have their own rules, so be sure to respect it when you are in their community. Before you surf, it will be good to have the opportunity to talk to a local. You should also watch them surf and learn from your observations. Take note of their variations as well. Plus, if they tell you to not surf in a specific spot because it is unsafe, listen. After all, they know better!
8. Hold on to your Board
A lot of beginners are surely guilty of letting go of their board after they fall on the water. After all, this is a common instinct for those who were shocked by what just happened. Some might not just know the best way to react. However, take note that letting the board go is one of the rudest things that other surfers would not want to see. Holding on to the board will prevent the possibility of causing injury to other surfers. Do not just dive under the water and forget about the board as it can hit other people. Especially for beginners, the boards are usually large and heavy, and hence, they can cause serious injury when it hits someone.
9. Say Sorry
If you ever mess up, own up to it. Learn how to say sorry to the other surfer. This is one of the easiest ways to gain a new friend while on the water. In some instances, the other surfer might even inform you that you did something wrong. Do not take offense. Rather, take this as constructive criticism, an opportunity to learn something new. Some surfers might start shouting and cursing when you do something that you aren’t supposed to do. Most, meanwhile, will be more understanding, especially if they could tell that you are a beginner. Regardless, the important thing is for you to apologize, own up to your mistakes, and avoid committing the same thing in the future.
Are you planning to glide into a huge underwater cavern? In that crystal clear water around where you hang down on majestic stalactites from the ceiling like icicles. Wait are you dreaming all these things. Do not imagine that you can explore the inner sanctum under the water because such diving is possible for experts who are having advanced training in cave diving.
Without proper cave diving equipment and training, you cannot explore cavern while there can be some places where the divers can experience cavern diving without even specialised training. But not without diving equipment it is impossible.
Caves
There is much difference between cave diving and lake or ocean diving. Caves like shipwrecks are said to be overhead environments because physical barriers exist between a diver and the surface. Such a barrier will prevent the diver from getting direct ascent with the surface, and that is the reason why they must have the right equipment for diving.
Types of Caves
Sea Caves: Usually, sea caves are made from wave actions which are not extensive. They are like chamber generally in shape, mostly found along coastal areas.
Coral Caves: Coral Caves are where the corals grow together and form arches creating tunnels and passageways.
Lava Tubes: They are made from volcanic action like how the lava flows from the volcano in the sea. Its surface under the sea cools and makes a hard surface. The molten inner core will keep flowing creating a tube-like structure.
