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Rocking
Roll Learning
to roll with a broom handle in a kitchen. DonÕt knock it, it worked! I learnt to
kayak roll in a kitchen with a broom handle. It wasnÕt quite the approach IÕd expected but, heyÉ it
worked! Liz and I
had been out several times with Gordon Brown of Skyak Adventures and been very impressed with his
abilities as a coach. He seemed
to find exactly the right way to get information into our brains and make it
stick there. So when I realised
I needed my BCU Four Star award, as a prerequisite for competing in the Hebridean Challenge, Gordon was the man to whom I
turned. Getting the
Four Star is, emphatically, not a formality. Liz and I regularly kayak in open water, and feel weÕd be
competent members of most groups provided we donÕt start playing in tidal
races and stuff like that. The
aim of the award is to ensure Ņthe candidate has sufficient knowledge and
skill to enable him or her to take a kayak safely to sea in moderate
conditions under a competent leader.
All we have to do is convince an assessor that weÕre up to it. Being able
to roll is not an essential requirement of this award. The syllabus says, ŅThe candidate
should be able to demonstrate a rollÓ, but continues, ŅProvided the rest of
the candidateÕs performance is sound, an inability to roll is not a fail
factor in itself.Ó However, it
is a logical progression for us, and that led us to the floor of GordonÕs
kitchen. Sitting on
our bums, clutching a broom shank like a paddle, we worked on our
ŅflickÓ. This is a great way to
demonstrate how difficult it is to just push yourself upright using arms
alone. I sat upright, as I would
in the boat, then rolled onto my left side until me shoulders were on the
floor. Then I used the broom to
lift my head and shoulders. This
is the key point in the process.
Trying to push myself upright from here, using arms alone, was an
almost impossible struggle.
However, when I just used the pole for support, and ŅrolledÓ my hips,
so my right buttock went down onto the floor, the rest of my body came up by
itself. It was a
revelation. IÕve since learnt
that itÕs quite common to teach in this way, but it felt odd at the
time. I took some photos, but
Liz wonÕt let me post them on the site as she reckons she looks daft!
Several
friends have tried several different ways of teaching me to roll, and I think
thatÕs the problem. None were professional
coaches, and the overlapping ideas only confused me. Gordon realised that Liz and I were
good at visualising, so he turned that to our advantage, and had us
practicing the roll in our minds, rehearsing the movement weÕd experienced on
his kitchen floor. So when we
climbed into boats in the small swimming pool at Kyle of Lochalsh, our heads
had already learnt how to roll.
Now we had to teach our bodies.
IÕd like to say it worked first time, but it wasnÕt quite that
easy. However, within an hour
IÕd rolled a pool boat on each side, and I even rolled my sea kayak. IÕm not daft enough to assume I now
know how to roll, but it was an uplifting start, and something we feel happy
to work on in our club pool
sessions. Somehow,
IÕll have to fit those around all the other training demands. IÕm running the two miles to and from
work almost every day, and managed a one and a half hour cross-country run at
the weekend. My trainer, Scott Masterton, puts me through muscle hell once
a week, and IÕm monitoring my diet closer than ever before. I have to eat 436g of carbohydrate
and equally specific amounts of protein and fat every day, recoding it all in
a food diary. And when I can, I
get out on the bike. Starting
with the April issue, the UKÕs leading hill walking magazine, ŌTGO The Great OutdoorsÕ wants to run monthly updates of
our progress. So weÕre officially
ŅTeam TGOÓ. Berghaus and Smartwool have kindly agreed to give us
some of the clothing weÕll need but weÕre still looking for road and mountain
bikes, and a van to carry us around for a week in July. Any
offers? E-mail me pleaseÉ Simon Willis
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