Aloha All,
My son (10 years old) has recently just got into paddling. He loves it, super stoked in paddling, never want to come out of the boat. He is having fun but also takes it pretty seriously. He is in a club right now where there are about 12 to 15 kids that are around his age. It seems like the coaches don't really have a good structure and discipline for their practices. Minimal instructions on stroke techniques and pacing during practice. Practice is usually pick six kids, let them go out with very minimal instructions and very little feedback/instructions when they come back to the beach. Next six kids in, and repeat. Practices for older kids (12 and over) seem to be more structured. The older kids get their own canoes while the younger kids have to share one canoe. Anyway, just looking for feedback on whether this is pretty typical for all canoe clubs. Is the typical perception is that the younger kids don't really need a structured practice, with drills to work on their techniques? Is 12 the age for when practice should get more serious? Understand that fun should be first and foremost, but as in other sports (swimming, gymnastics, martial arts), technique and discipline should also be part of the learning process for the young ones.
Thoughts?
Submitted by paddle_easy on Fri, 05/29/2015 - 12:56pm
I can tell you what we do at Hawaiian Canoe Club:
Keiki 13 & under practice from 2:45-4:00 and keiki 14 & under practice from 4-5:30. The older group is in the water 3 days a week and do land training 2 days a week (running, weight lifting, rowing on ergs, agility drills.) The younger group in in the water 5 days a week.
Keiki 11 & under are called 'the maninis' (the little fish.) They often go out in our older double hull canoes, but sometimes they are in OC6s. They tend to paddl the older OC6s because the 12s and 13s are in the better 'race' boats. They usually are not expected to complete the work outs as the 12 & 13 year olds do brcause they cannot keep up phyisically. But most of the time they do the same workouts. If the older kids go father out in Kahului Harbor, the manini may stay close to shore and just swim and play. It's a balance of fun and work. While they hear coach give the same speech about technique and strategy, the expectations of them are different (it's more relaxed.) From a program perspective, the best part about them paddling at this age is that by the time they are 12, 13, 14 etc they know the drill. They understand the work outs, they understand how to line up during sprints, they know the harbor and how to handle the conditions. This makes running a practice with 75 kids a lot easier. By the time they are 14 they might have already been paddling for 4-6 years. That's huge.
We run the maninis this way because their event is not scored. Here on Maui the 'manini race' is held before the regatta actually starts and includes adult steersperons. I think if there was an official 10 & under division with points and state qualifications, the 10 year olds would have a different practice because they have different goals and expectations.
So I guess bottom line is it depends on the club and the coach and the kind of program they run. I will say that HCC has a tremendous keiki program with 150+ and 22+ canoes. This is coach Paul Lu'uwai's 30th year. It's not a perfect program, but he's had a lot of time to figure things out through trial and error and this model is what works for him.
#1 Fri, 06/12/2015 - 10:24am
same at my club. Under 12 the kids are not taught on a competitive basis, more so introduction into the sport, and paddling as a group in general. More focus goes into the 12yrs. + as this is the age group where competitive regatta starts.
the good thing about the kinds under 12, is that they also dont get intoduced to the paddle politics of having a seat on a crew. You need to understand that there is an unspoken side of paddling that is not fun, I wouldn't worry about rushing your kid to that point.
#2 Sat, 08/01/2015 - 4:43pm