Last year somebody posted on their club FB page saying they were willing to run a river trip on the Derwent down to Artist’s Corner at Matlock. (For those unaware this is a very gentle whitewater trip, barely touching grade 2. My daughter paddled it at the age of 8 and there was a 6 year old in the group.) All good so far, running trips for a club is a great thing to do. However, there was the stipulation that paddlers had to be 2 star standard.
Now I’m all for getting people on the water, it’s a great thing to do. If I were to take a group of paddlers on this stretch of water the entry requirement would be “Can you sit in a boat, hold a paddle and wear a buoyancy aid and helmet?” rather than a now outdated award that required (from memory) paddling 300m in a straight line on flat water, draw strokes, high brace supports and sculling for support.
It all comes down to linear vs non linear pedagogy in skill acquisition. Is there a place for flat water paddling in developing skills? Absolutely. If a paddler, however, wants to become proficient on moving water then they will become so much quicker by developing their skills on moving water. The more variability there is in practice, the more retention of skill there is. In a sheltered area of flat water there is limited scope for variability of the environment in developing forwards paddling - wind could play a factor (there is of course more scope for varying equipment, using different boats and paddles). If we move the learner onto moving water suddenly every stroke is different – the movement of the water under the boat changes with every stroke causing much more variability of practice. Most importantly though, it’s more fun!
As Rob Grey says in his wonderful book “How We Learn To Move”: “The purpose of practice variability is to develop adaptability in being able to solve movement problems not to develop adjustability of an already developed technique.” And “In terms of ‘when’, we want a relatively high degree of variability from the start.” So instead of flat water, aiming for buoys and other paddlers, we should have learners on moving water, aiming for waves and eddies and avoiding rocks.
At our club we don’t have access to flat water – our beginners are thrown straight on to the river and learn in a dynamic environment from the start. We do have a more gentle pool at the top of our site where we start our beginners, and they paddle down to the bottom of the site at the end of their first sessions. They use problem solving to work out efficient methods of crossing the flow without losing height, where the areas of slack water are, where the eddylines are and what effect they have on the boat. All of this while working out how to propel and turn their boat.
It was recently very succinctly put on Twitter by @CalJonesJudo “The context isn’t something to plug in once their technique is solid, but the context is the mould that shapes how they perform the skill”.
So I will continue to hope that the ribbed buoyancy aid and wooden paddle brigade will slowly go the way of the dinosaurs and we can move forward together into a new world of fun, effective skill acquisition for all.
