BRT Insights - WW Kayaking & Hiking

Play Daze [VHS video] "Recognizing that instructional techniques should evolve with boat designs, Play Daze introduces the skills needed to take full advantage of today's playboats. You'll learn how to front and back surf more effectively, spin on smaller waves, link endless cartwheels, and stun your friends with wave wheels or kick flips."

"Play Daze, by Ken Whiting and Chris Emerick. Playboating is all the rage these days, but despite how easy the pros make it look learning the moves takes time, dedication, proper technique and a flood of freestyle trial and error. Former World Rodeo Champion Ken Whiting’s instructional video, Play Daze, provides all that and more, taking paddlers from front surfing to kickflips and all points in between. Play Daze won the prestigious “Professional Instruction/Safety” class award at this year’s National Paddling Film Festival in Kentucky. It provides rodeo instruction for all levels of playboaters, starting with the basics of front surfing and balance, before moving on to advanced techniques. Play Daze offers the chance to learn from some of the best playboating instructors in the world. - Nate Johnson" (Paddler Magazine, june2000)

Three Golden Rules of Whitewater Kayak Playboating Technique.

The video explains three golden rules for kayaking: power the paddle via torso rotation, upper body and lower body work independently to control paddle and kayak, and control the kayak with an active paddle blade in the water. Then these important basic rules are applied to all of the kayak surfing and playboating skills.

Basic Moves for Kayak Freestyle Playboating.

The video describes front surfing, back surfing, stern squirts, side surfing, 360's, flat spins, and back desk roll.

Advanced Moves for Freestyle Kayaking in a Playboat.

The video describes cartwheels, splitwheels, flatwater cartwheels, wathunck, wavewheels, blunts, back stab, and kick flips.

The video does a good job of introducing many different playboating moves for whitewater river kayaking. A little more explanation of the progression of moves needed to complete some of these maneuvers would be helpful. The maneuvers zip by too fast when viewed at normal speed in the video. It would have been nice if the video replayed the maneuvers in slow motion with more narration. To get the most out of this video you need a video player that can run the video in slow motion so you can do your own detailed analysis of these maneuvers. I rate this video as good (*** 3 stars out of 5).

More about:
• Critical reviews of books and videos for whitewater river kayaking - BRT Insights.
• Skills & Techniques for Whitewater River Kayaking - Freestyle Playboating.

IceRocket Tags: kayaking.
Tags: kayaking, whitewater, river, paddle boating, paddlesports, playboating.

Labels: technique, video