In Caoeing there are some fundamental basics you can easily train on. Following exercises I've come up with, are meant for training those skills. All you need is a lake and some floating obstructions to set out your exercise field.

The absolute basics of canoeing are in the forward stroke and the basic correction strokes. Ironically the most basic stroke of them all: the forward stroke, is often the greatest weakness of paddlers. Following exercises might help you improve  your basic stroke and correction strokes.

This exercise is meant to help improve your bow draw and stern pry. Your goal here is to rotate the boat around his rotation point using only stern pry's and bow draws. Tandem paddlers can of course use only one (bow draw for the bow paddler, stern pry for the stern paddler).

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Exercise: Paddle circles

Onside and Offside

Use following combinations to turn the canoe

• stern pry + cross bow draw

• stern draw + bow draw

Goals:

• Training to improve your steering strokes

• Work on basic paddling concepts

Focus points for this drill:

• Paddle vertical to the direction of movement

• Rotation of the upper body

• Good catch (wait 1 second between planting the blade and pulling the blade)

• Impulsive pull

• Clean but as late as possible recovery

Tests:

• How many strokes do you need to turn 180°

• How many strokes do you need to turn 360°

• how far do you go with one combination?

Exercise: 1 or 2 stroke acceleration

Use following combinations to move the canoe forward

• One powerful forward stroke

  

• Short start stroke + powerful forward stroke

• cross forward + strong forward stroke

Goals:

• Ttraining to improve the efficiency of the forward stroke

• Learn to understand the gliding of the canoe

• Understand the braking affect of the steering strokes

• Understand the need for a vertical paddle

Focus points for this drill:

• Paddle as vertical as possible

• Try over-verticality (blade under the canoe)

• Experiment with different versions of torso rotation.

• Experiment with real good torso rotation, including hip tilt.

• Training of the forward stroke in general

Tests:

• Which combination takes you the greatest distance

Exercise: Correction stroke drift

Use following combinations to test the correction stroke drift

• Move the canoe sideways by doing

• Stern pry – cross bow draw combinations

• Stern draw – bow draw combinations

Goals:

• Learn how much drift you have by doing steering strokes

• The continuous black line is the goal, the dashed black line will be reality.

•  Training to minimize the drifting when doing correction strokes

Focus points for this drill:

• Try to put the dashed and full line as close to possible to each other

• Make your steering strokes as good form as possible

Tests:

• What is the effect of the stern-pry cross bow draw exercise?

• What is the effect of the stern draw, bow draw combinations

• Does it matter with which stroke you start for either of the combinations?

 Exercise: Figure-8

Use following combinations to paddle the figure-8

• Use static correction strokes

  

• Use active correction strokes

• Use carving

• Use only stern correction strokes

• Use only bow correction strokes

Goals:

• Training an feeling for when and how much steering strokes you need

• Training a repertoire of strokes for steering

• Training of correction the movement of the canoe when on the run

Focus points for this drill:

• Make fluent combinations of good form strokes you already know

Tests:

• Work on speed, what is your fastest run?

• Minimize the number of strokes, what's the minimum of strokes you need?