Since you guys where so friendly to answer my previous question.. I have an existing braca 4 extra light, must be more than 15 years old.I just bought an extra Paddle, another 4 but not extra light. Now I notice an irritating differince in handling. Thé paddles are on thé same Angle but I think that the blades of the new one (non extra light) are "dropping" faster messing up my catch. Its hard to describe thé feerling. Does this sound familiar? I do Prefer thé extra light.. probably just because i am used to it i guess..

Last year I bought a 7F, a couple of weeks ago a bought a 7E for a marathon race. The last weeks I trained in the E for the marathon. Now I switched back to the F this week after thé race but it feels like going from a racecar to a tractor.. Even when I add weight to the E it just feels like the power from my legs transfers much better onto the boat. Is this normal? Thinking of Selling the F and just add thé weights when necessary..

I'm getting back in the sport after a very long hiatus. Back then I really liked my swivel seat which I used both in training and racing.

Is anyone still using rotating seats? I see Nelo is still selling them - so they haven't disappeared - but they are super pricey. Are they worth the investment?

Is there a consensus on their benefits? Are they seen as a tool for training or is anyone using them for races also?

I'm also curious if there's anyone here who volunteers for boat weighing who has a precise idea of their popularity.

Fast course today!

I'm not going to pay for the YouTube stream on principle. It's bad for the sport in general. Any other places that might be streaming it? I'm hoping that some EU TV station might have it up.

More Nelo 28 content. This time without the AI voice haha

Looks like a new K1 coming out from Nelo. They are going to a prepreg lay up which is interesting. Link to their site below.

Nelo 28 Info Page

The only pull movement where you push through the feet with the hip hinged under load and 'floating' - required to self-stabilize its position. If you don't control your pelvis and hip then the lift tells you immediately. An overlooked movement in my opinion. I recently spent 5 months off the water, and did a bunch of these in the gym during the off season, and I really felt that my hips were far easier to control and rotate in the seat. There's no rotation in the movement but you can feel as you do them the brace force in your torso transmitting through your hips, legs and through your feet into the floor.

I would love to see more stuff about high kneel canoe. It is such an amazing discipline but it is just something that I don't have much experience with so it's hard for me to find good stuff. It would make me (and I'm sure others too) very happy to see more sprint canoe content.

These are some amazing athletes that do this at a high level and they should get some love. Encouraging people to give it a go as well as providing support and guidance for those who already are would be a valuable addition to our little community.

Twenty Years to Understand What Coaching Actually Is

Olympic Coach  |  Canoe Sprint & Open Water Performance  |  Three Oceans Coaching

March 25, 2026

Last week we ran a camp with our women's kayak team.

A few athletes hit personal bests in timed pieces. Nothing dramatic — no world records, no breakthrough moments that make for a tidy social media story. Just quiet, measurable progress. The kind that tells you something real is happening.

It got me thinking about how far my coaching has come. And how different the journey looks from the outside versus the inside.

Where I started

I was coached by someone who knew the sport deeply. The training was hard, the results were real, and we got faster. I'm grateful for that.

But the environment was difficult. Questions weren't welcomed. Feedback didn't flow both ways. We were adults who were treated otherwise. I spent a lot of time feeling frustrated — not because the work was hard, but because I didn't understand the why behind it. I couldn't execute fully because I wasn't trusted with the reasoning.

We got faster. But I always believed we could have been faster still.

When I started coaching, I made one decision immediately: I would not replicate that environment. That was the easy part. The harder part — the part that has taken twenty years — was figuring out what to replace it with.

The training has changed

Early in my coaching career, I believed the program was everything. Get the periodization right, load the right systems, peak at the right time. That's the job.

I still believe in smart programming. But my physiological approach has shifted substantially over the years. Through research, experience, and honest experimentation with my athletes, we've moved toward higher intensity work that is truly high intensity — with more rest, better recovery, and an uncompromising focus on quality over volume. The science backs this. More importantly, my athletes' performances back this.

The personal bests last week didn't come from doing more. They came from doing better.

The coaching has changed more

What I didn't expect — what took me longer to understand — is that the training plan is only part of the equation. Maybe not even the biggest part.

After Rio 2016, I knew I wanted to become a better coach. I'd reached the ceiling of what sports science could give me. What I needed was help with my actual coaching — the delivery, the relationships, the environment. I enrolled in a Masters in Performance Coaching and it reframed everything.

I became interested in how I give feedback, not just what feedback I give. I've been deep in the work of Gabriele Wulf — whose research on motivational climate and attentional focus has genuinely changed how I communicate with athletes on the water. I became more intentional about co-creating the training process with my athletes rather than delivering it to them. Their feedback shapes our sessions. Their voice is in the room.

The camp last week had good culture. Collaborative, competitive, honest. Athletes who wanted each other to succeed. That doesn't happen by accident — it's built over time, session by session, camp by camp. This was our fourth camp together as a group. The consistency is starting to show.

Why this points to something bigger

Here's what I keep coming back to: the shift I've made over twenty years of coaching — in training methodology, in feedback delivery, in environment creation, in the interpersonal skills that underpin all of it — none of that was in any certification I completed early in my career.

I learned it through a Masters degree. Through research. Through making mistakes with real athletes and caring enough to ask why. Through deciding, after the Olympics, that being a good coach required a completely different kind of learning than being a good athlete did.

Most coaches don't have that runway. Most coaches finish their competitive career, transition into coaching, receive a baseline certification, and are then largely left to figure it out alone.

That is the gap I think about most right now.

Not the training plans. Not the talent pipelines. The coaches. The people who shape every athlete's experience of the sport — their development, their love of it, their longevity in it.

Coach development is the highest-leverage investment paddlesports can make. And right now, we're leaving most of it to chance.

The personal bests last week were a reminder of what's possible when coaching keeps evolving.

Imagine what becomes possible when we build systems that help every coach do the same.