How To Bow Stall

It’s been a while since my last tutorial post (How To Double Pump) so I thought I’d do a follow up article explaining the next step – how to bow stall. Some people manage to figure this out almost immediately and others take months, I found that the process requires three key steps and once you know what they are everything seems to come together of it’s own accord. I know that many of us (including myself) have been unable to access whitewater over quarantine so I hope this post helps those of you stuck on flatwater right now…

Once you can double pump the movement requires a little tweaking before we can turn it into a bow stall, instead of looking forwards (the direction you’re paddling in) to bring the first end through you’ll want to look to the side – the direction the boat will be facing while bow stalling. As I’ve mentioned before looking where you want to go is vital, if you continue looking forwards throughout a double pump you won’t be able to halt the boat at the top of the movement or hold it there. Whereas before you wanted to use your left paddle blade to low brace (if you’re right handed) flattening the boat after your first end, now you want to get it touching the water as soon as possible – this is what kills your momentum and allows you to balance. If you’ve followed my double pump tutorial but have implimented these two changes then you should now be able to stop the boat at the apex of the move and are probably wondering how to hold it in this position.

Imagine an equilateral triangle formed by your head, paddle and the tip of your boat – if you move one it affects the other two. When doing a double pump you want to stay leaning forwards and it’s exactly the same while bow stalling, standing up might seem like a good way to avoid falling on your face but it actually kicks the boat out from under you whereas crunching forwards pulls the tip of the boat up and flattens it off. You also need to reach out with your paddle blades and keep them in the water. If your paddle is touching your deck then like a tripod with it’s legs too close together you will likely tip over, the further away your paddle is from your knees the more stable you will be. If we go back to the triangle analogy then your head needs to be roughly equidistant from both the paddle and the tip of your boat, if it’s too close to one or the other then you won’t be able to hold the bow stall. This tends to be a bit of trial and error because the balance point depends on how far forwards or backwards you sit in your kayak, how high your seat is and even how long your arms are… Finally, don’t look down (at least when learning). I’m repeating myself but your boat wants to go where you’re looking, so if you look down into the water then that’s where you’ll end up – try to look straight ahead. If you just remember that tip and think about triangles then you’ll be balancing in no time.

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