Warming up is boring. You want to get on the water and start paddling, stretches only slow you down and get in the way. Wrong! I’ve managed to pull my shoulders and lower back a couple of times while kayaking and normally these things go away in a few hours, but last Tuesday I injured by lower back enough that it was painful to put any weight on it at all; this made standing up and general movement for the past four days suprisingly difficult. As a result of this lesson I’m no longer skipping the warm-up and in this post I’ll go over the stretches that I neglected to do on Tuesday…
Number 1: Starting with things to do before you even get in your boat – warm up your shoulders. This is quite a common warm up as far as I can see (I use it for running as well), you keep your arms straight out from your sides and make little cirles with your arms. Start with forward circles getting larger and larger until your arms brush your ears and then get smaller again, change to backwards circles and repeat.
Number 2: Something that a lot of people forget is your neck. Simply rolling your head around isn’t good for you so instead, stretch your neck muscles by tilting your head forward and take a hand to gently pull it so that you feel the stretch and hold for about 20 seconds. Slowly lean your head backwards and do the same and then to the left and right as well (try not to pull too hard with your hand or change the way you’re leaning your head too quickly).
Number 3: A final off-the-water stretch which I really like helps to stretch your bottom muscles and stops your legs from locking up after spending too much time sitting down. Get down into a lunge position, then move your forward leg so that it’s crossing your rear leg – try to get your forward knee flat on the ground. Now lean forwards and try to get your head and torso as close to the ground as possible. You should feel a stretch in your bottom, depending on how tight your muscles are you may have to lean forwards a lot or only a little. Once you’ve found the stretch point hold it for about 30 seconds and then switch legs.
Number 4: Now you can get in the boat for these final two warm up exercises. A really easy one to do that would probably have prevented my back injury is leaning all the way forwards in the boat and attempting to put your hands over the front (of course if you’re in creek boat you won’t be able to touch the front) then holding this for 20 seconds. Now lean all the way back, try and rest your head on the back deck, get both hands in the water and hold for 20 seconds again.
Number 5: One last stretch to warm up your core. Take your paddle and place one blade on the opposite side of the boat (almost like a cross-bow), look over that shoulder and straighten your top arm twisting your core against the paddle. Hold for about 30 seconds and then switch sides. This is a great exercise for those looking to practice a phonics monkey without pulling your core muscles…
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Patrick Kyak 