Brent Reitz Forward Stroke Clinic
Over this last weekend, Aqua Adventures lured Brent Reitz into San Diego to do two forward stoke clinics. Brent is a former world class kayak racer who noticed that sea kayakers could benefit from the type of training he had received as an elite athlete. Eight paddlers took today’s class and left with new skills and specific things to work on. I had taken the hour+ class at the SW Sea Kayak Symposium and had viewed Brent’s DVD. Although both were good, I found that the hands on class, with videotape feed back, was necessary to pull it all together. Hawk Martin, of Aqua Adventures, patiently videotaped both days of classes.

Everyone saw a tremendous improvement between their baseline and end of the day paddling tapes. Brent broke the paddle down into rotation, the “chicken wing”, the catch, the bent arm stroke, and the exit. Top professional golfers have an expression that “what you feel is not real”. Kayaking is no different. During the baseline paddle, I thought I was fully rotating. The tapes showed otherwise. The videotape feedback is extremely useful since I was able to correct this and other flaws by the end of the day. Had it not been for the class, I would have remained blissfully ignorant about gaping opportunities to improve.

Brent was very patient, and very positive with all in the class. I would urge everyone to take this class, whether your goal is to keep within earshot of your fellow paddlers or win the next big kayak race. His methods are proven and appear to work with every ability level. Although I use it close to 100% of my time on the water, today was the first time I spent any time reviewing my forward stroke. I am looking forward to refining the techniques and seeing how much they increase my speed and efficiency.

Jon Brindle

Kiran adds...

I realized recently that most of my time in a kayak is spent using the forward stroke, but that is the area of kayaking that I had the least instruction on. To rectify that, I had the opportunity to take Brent Reitz's forward stroke class yesterday and had a great time. Many thanks to Aqua Adventures for hosting Brent. I had taken Brent's dry land class at the Southwest Kayak Symposium and wanted to take the full day class to put the mantra(s) that Brent teaches into practice and to get feedback from him.

The highlight of the class is undoubtedly the video footage and seeing yourself on the screen - it is a powerful way to get feedback and realize what you are doing (or not doing) when paddling. Also, the class size was limited to eight people and that helped Brent give individual feedback to the participants.

As usual, Brent started off his class by playing his harmonica and then we got into our kayaks. Brent breaks down the forward stroke into five parts, and the plan for the day was to do the first three components, then take a lunch break where our activities of the morning would be reviewed on video, followed by more time on the water for the last two components and then more video review. I think this format worked out very well. Brent first had us paddle in a triangular course with Hawk Martin of Aqua Adventures on a dock with his video camera forming one apex of the triangle. Brent got a baseline of the various participants' stroke this way. Then he got into instruction and some drills to practice the instruction, all the while being filmed by Hawk. the big mantra for the morning was: rotation, rotation, rotation - meaning torso rotation to utilize the big muscle groups of the abs, back, and lats instead of the smaller muscles of the arms.

After a couple hours on the water, we broke for lunch and reviewed the morning's activities on tape. We were almost spared Brent's picking on us on the screen since Hawk's camera ate part of the tape, but Hawk did some surgery on the tape and it was almost as good as new. I think a lot of people realized during this time that they were not really rotating their torso much - it was certainly a big eye opener for me. We repeated this sequence of on-water drills followed by review on tape again in the afternoon. The afternoon tape review showed considerable improvement in everyone's stroke and some pretty dramatic results in some cases. The star of the day was John (CKF member in San Diego, did not get last name) and the Orange County folks better watch out for him in next year's Bay-to-Bay race.

All in all, it was a great day on the water. Many thanks to Hawk for patiently videotaping us, and thanks again to Aqua Adventures for hosting a great class. Now it is up to me to practice these skills and turn them into muscle memory. I am hoping to practice them with Mike Bode on our regular Thursday morning paddles on Castaic Lake. We have kept that going for more than a month now and hope to keep doing it every week. Here is another invitation for people in the Santa Clarita Valley and nearby to come join us!

Submitted on December 12, 2004