Riley's Question

On our last night in Cairns, Riley Best asked Ben and Phil what they thought the key skill was that differentiated the good creekers from the bad.

Both simultaneously answered, 'rolling' on the basis that a strong roll widens your horizons like nothing else.

Beyond that? asked Riley.

'Water skills, I guess... edging, feeling the water, being in the right place...'

Understandably this didn't satisfy Riley.

On the way home, I thought some more about how Riley wanted to know a specific skill so that he could work towards it. And it occurred to me that that approach may be the wrong way round. I think you need to know the best way to learn a skill first.

Bear with me here.

Ask anyone who paddles in plastic what they think of slalom paddlers and they'll tell you they are boring. They are boring because they go round the same courses again and again. They practice the same moves again and again. They can spend hours on one eddy. It's not the time slalom paddlers spend on the water that plastic boaters think is boring, but how they spend that time.

Yet, we all know if we want to learn how to do something, it takes practice. You need to be able to learn from your mistakes immediately, adjust, and analyse whether your second attempt was an improvement or not. And then do it again.

The nature of river running denies plastic boaters this opportunity to improve as quickly. You get on at the top, you run the river, you get off, and you most likely don't paddle that river again for several weeks (months or years if you paddle in NSW or VIC).

Of all the paddlers at Chrystal Cascades in the week leading up to the Monsoon Madness race, many of them ran the course, some even two or three times. But I bet all of them had a weak move on that course, one drop that they suspected they would mess up. How much do you think they would have improved on that move if they'd spent one hour repeating it in place of one full run down the course?

Of course, you could just take this as a slalom perspective and keep practicing your first key skill instead: rolling.