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>The Dragon Boat Stroke>The Catch
The second component of the dragon boat stroke is the Catch. The catch describes how the paddle is placed into the water, effectively, how the paddle "catches" the water. Unlike in other types of paddling where the paddler often simply places the blade of the paddle in the water, in dragon boating, the paddler aggressively forces the paddle into the water.
There are two components of the catch that are important. Firstly, to maximize the amount of water that the paddler is going to move, the paddle must be fully buried in the water; the whole blade must be below the waterline. This requires that the dragon boat paddler aggressively pushes the paddle down using his/her upper arm while the lower arm is straight guiding the paddle. Once again pointing out the weakness of arm muscles, it is important for the paddler to keep his/her upper arm nearly straight so that the larger shoulder muscles are doing the work of thrusting the paddle into the water.
The second important component of the catch is the angle of the dragon boat paddle. In addition to moving the dragon boat forward, the beginning portion of the pull section of the stroke actually lifts the boat up in the water. To facilitate this, the paddlers should force their paddles into the water at a moderate forward slope. If the paddle enters the water at about 60 degrees to the water, s/he will actually be pushing down on the paddle to some extent while s/he pulls the paddle through the water. This lifting of the boat helps to make it move more quickly through the water.
Moving on with our analysis of the stroke that dragon boaters use, we next examine the the Pull.
The remaining sections of this article are:
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