I flew out to Slalom World Cup 4 last weekend in Markkleeburg in Germany in my role as sport psychologist with three British and Irish athletes. 30 years ago, such a trip would have been almost impossible, and not just because budget airlines didn’t exist, but because it would have meant travelling behind the ‘Iron [...]
Archives for Slalom
Ivrea – European Masters Games Slalom
The European Masters Games has been my main competitive focus since the World Masters Games in Auckland in 2017. Ivrea Canoa Club hosted a friendly yet professionally run slalom, welcoming over 70 competitors from across Europe, the US and Australia. I was delighted to come away with two gold medals, individually in the K1 55+ [...]
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Augsburg!
I first became aware of the Augsburg slalom course watching the 1972 Olympics on TV, but this was before I’d ever thought of getting in a kayak. A few years later it made a much bigger impression, when I watched a 16 mm film about the 1975 (?) International slalom. By that time, I was [...]
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Never take paddling for granted
Winter seems to be dragging on here in Britain, but I’ve been able to paddle and train regularly and now the first Premier slalom race is a little over a month away. I’ve focused on three key areas over the winter, and as always there’s still plenty for me to learn about this sport despite [...]
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World Masters Games, Auckland 2017; Dropping the weight of expectations.
The WMG have been my training focus for the last couple of years, and I’ve put in plenty of time and effort to prepare. It was a treat to be on the start line with world class paddlers like Peter Micheler, Vincent Fondeviole and Donald Johnstone. Off-water, the camaraderie of the Masters Games made it [...]
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Look through the gate
I was recently tackling short gate sequences on the two big drops at Lee Valley. These ‘feature moves’ are easy to get wrong, but they feel fantastic when you nail them, and require a precise combination of boat speed, angle and position. Typically this involves coming down one side of the drop and surfing across [...]
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Familiarity or mastery?
I had an interesting intersection of learning in work and paddling last week. My company, Performance1, hosted a workshop that explored what it means to work with the “millennial generation”. These are people aged in their 20s to early 30s now making up the majority of the workforce in many organisations. One of the characteristics [...]
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Effort vs Age
I’ve become increasingly aware of two countervailing forces in my paddling life. On one side is the training effort that leads to improvement, on the other is the decline brought about by increasing age. This season it feels like a pretty even match between the two! I raced in 10 slaloms over my first full [...]
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Small change, big difference
I’ve had two beautiful paddling sessions at Lee Valley this weekend. 30 degrees, sunshine, whitewater and good vibes. It’s a welcome change from the long cold winter. Lee Valley has been my default paddling destination over the last few months. I decided not to go creek boating in Italy this spring, and also passed on [...]
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Re-learning old lessons
One of the curious things about human nature is that people (and I mean me) can be a bit slow to learn, despite being taught the same lesson time and time again. One of the lessons I keep having concerns the expectation trap. This is the way that expectations, even positive, seem to interfere with [...]
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