My exit from Naish has been getting much more attention than I expected. There seems to be a lot of conjecture–some of it is pretty dramatic–so I feel motivated to give some insight as to what would make me walk away from a great company like Naish.

First, I want to acknowledge the huge debt of gratitude I owe to Robby for sponsoring me in the first place. He brought me on to the team at a very precarious time for me, because South Point had defaulted on both Timpone and my contract, which left a big void in my income. With Robby’s support I was able to continue my waterman lifestyle and support my family. I have a huge appreciation for Robby and the Naish company, and the friendship and support he has given me.

Like any relationship not everything was perfect, it doesn’t necessarily mean one or the other is at fault but rather an evolution of different paths. The Naish company path is naturally driven by corporate responsibilities. My path is driven by personal goals, the challenges of the lifestyle I follow, and creative freedom. Robby runs his company very efficiently, and like any good, strong leader it goes his way, and that’s as it should be. It is his company, he has taken all the risk and made all the decisions that go along with being successful. But unfortunately for me that meant more and more that there wasn’t much room to make my imprint on the company. At the end of my contract I had to make the difficult decision to renew and carry on with the status quo or do something different.

Had I not learned to shape a few months ago I probably would have stayed with Naish and carried on with business as usual, but the exposure to shaping got my creative juices flowing again and in the end I just could not deny what has been one of the most enjoyable parts of my whole career–the creative process.

My whole career I’ve been very involved in the design and creation of all my equipment. Windsurf sails, windsurf boards, my own fin company, longboards, shortboards, tandem boards, tow boards, stand up wave boards and race boards, foil boards. I’ve worked with Gerry Lopez, Karl Hill, Bill Foote, Sean Ordonez, Jeff Timpone, Tim Patterson, Donald Takayama, Harold Ige and Mark Raphorst. All very accomplished shapers, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount along the way.

Now I have an opportunity to take all the knowledge and experience I’ve gained and couple my own vision and feeling into boards I can ride and perfect myself. It’s really exciting to try and get the outline right, the rocker how you want it, the rails shaped properly and then go out and ride it. The best part is I don’t have to try and explain to somebody how it felt or what is right or wrong with the board, and what needs to be changed. I know already. I can take that feedback and put it directly into the next prototype. It’s awesome and so much fun. It’s got me excited to go to the beach every morning and try to learn how to make everything better. I am far from a master at this craft but at least I can create what I believe works best.

So that’s where I’m headed. The path isn’t completely clear yet, but I’m moving in a direction that feels great to me. I wish everyone at Naish, and specifically Robbie, full enjoyment of the great success that their hard work over many years has brought them. But it’s time for me to move on.

You’re invited to participate in my backyard playground. What? I’m partnering with the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea to host a Kalama-style Maui Surf Camp. You can find the skinny of the play date here http://press.fourseasons.com/maui/hotel-news/four-seasons-resort-maui-hosts-unforgettable-surf-camp-with-legendary-dave-kalama-december-4-9-2011/
. Hope to see you soon, and be ready to get your feet sandy and gills wet.

I’ve been traveling a lot in the last six months, which means I’ve been coaching a lot in the last six months. Which also means I’ve had the opportunity to observe what are the most common mistakes people make in their paddle strokes.

One general tip that I think everyone can benefit from is to analyze every single part of your stroke.  If a movement doesn’t serve a specific purpose in making your stroke work, then change it or get rid of it.

Perhaps the most common mistake is to lower your top hand too much during the recovery or exit stage of the stroke. The reason you want to keep your top hand at shoulder level or higher is that the lower you take it, the more you have to raise it again to get into proper reaching position. The more you lower it, the more wasted movement you’re creating for yourself.

The first reason your hand will drop too low is because you pull the paddle back too far. In order for your paddle to go past your feet, your top hand has to drop to accommodate the angle. The reason that’s bad is because it is very difficult to generate much power or momentum once the paddle has gone past your feet and also at that point you are actually starting to pull yourself down into the water. The fix: Don’t pull the paddle past your feet and then your top hand won’t drop too low.

The second reason your top hand can drop too low is because during the recovery stage (moving the paddle forward to reach again), you lift the blade too high out of the water. I see people lift their paddles any where from six inches to three feet over the water while bringing the paddle forward. That’s anywhere from five inches to two feet eleven inches too much. Unless your paddle is much too short the only way for your blade to get that high is to drop your top hand to the side to accommodate the angle. Technically your blade only needs to be a fraction of an inch above the water to move forward without hitting. One way gain awareness about where your blade is during this phase is to actually touch the water on the way back to your reaching position. So while you’re swinging the paddle into it’s forward position give the water just the slightest tap at the half way point. This will insure that the paddle is not too high as well as give you instant feedback on how high the blade is relative to the water. As long as the front edge of the paddle is slightly higher than the back edge, your paddle won’t dive down into the water when you tap. Once you have a feel for it, just skip the tap and go straight to the reaching forward position.

Keeping your top hand above your shoulder can take a lot of energy, and fatigue you quite quickly, so here’s some free extra energy. Support the top hand by supporting the paddle with your bottom hand. Your bottom hand has good leverage, so it can do the work easily. This allows your top hand the opportunity to rest for a split second while the bottom hand is doing the work for the top by using gravity as an ally. By hooking your finger tips and cradling the paddle shaft in your bottom hand you can support the weight of the paddle and your top hand quite easily. That’s a lot of things to remember in mid-stroke, so you might cue that support when you break your wrist inward to feather the blade. Let your lower hand hold the weight and push the paddle forward toward the reach position while your upper hand rests.

One good way to be aware of your top hand is to actually focus on it and watch it for five stokes. I mean actually pick a freckle or knuckle or whatever is on the back of your hand and for five strokes keep your eyes focused on it. If your hand stays in front of your face you shouldn’t have to move your head, if you find you are moving your head to keep your eyes on it, then you’re moving your top hand too much, and you can tell if the drop in your hand is down or to the side. The trick to this is locking your eyes on the chosen spot and don’t look away or past it.

The second very common mistake is not getting the paddle all the way into the water. If you can see any part of the blade when you start to pull then you need to go deeper. A specific goal you can aim for is to have the top of your blade three inches under the surface of the water. This will enable the blade to do it’s job and permit you to get the most for your efforts. Another way to think of it is to get your ice cream scooper all the way down into the ice cream, so that you can get a full scoop. 

The third and perhaps most important mistake I see, is people working way too hard. One example I’ve been giving people lately is this, imagine drinking a glass of water. You would grab the glass with very little effort, you would bring it to your mouth with very relaxed muscles, and doing almost no flexing of your muscles at all. Now imagine grabbing the glass with so much effort you almost smash the glass, imagine bringing it up to your mouth now with every muscle flexed like a body builder posing, the glass would be vibrating and water spilling over the rim. While that my be an exaggeration, I do see people exerting that type of force while trying to paddle. Paddling most of the time needs to be a very flowing and rhythmic action, not a tense muscle flexed series of positions, but rather a constant continually moving movie. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place to exert yourself, but if your base stroke comes from a place of rhythm and flow, when you exert yourself you will be much more effective and efficient. The best fix for it is to greatly reduce your power level and learn how to use your technique as your driving force, not your power output. Decrease your power to the level that you don’t feel like you’re doing any work at all, and just concentrate on technique. You’ll be surprised at how fast you go. Just like drinking that glass of water, get to a point of calm relaxed movement before you start chugging. Have fun.

Aloha,

Dave Kalama 

Ps. Check out the clip

Aloha, Dave

http://espn.go.com/action/surfing/blog/_/post/6485013/dave-kalama-take

Looking back over the instructional articles I’ve written, I see that I refer fairly often to the mental aspect of meeting challenges. I’ve kind of glossed over it and left just enough of a trail to connect the dots yourself. But I think I should address it straight on: Mind set and/or intention can have a huge influence on performance.

For example, the other day I was teaching someone to surf, and they were having a lot of trouble committing to the act of standing up once they caught the wave. So I told them they looked like they were standing up to go clean a toilet (meaning not very motivated). I want you to stand up like you are going to get a double dip of coffee Haagen Dazs. As soon as I said that I could see their whole attitude change from “maybe I can” to “you bet I will”.

Just a tiny swing in intention can give a significant chance of success. Sure enough that’s just what happened. I know they were ready to quit–to paddle in disgusted with surfing. Instead they stayed out another hour, had some real success, and most likely will be a surfer for life. Besides helping them it also reminded me how significant mind set is, not only for myself, but for instruction as well.

Anyone is far more likely to succeed in executing a challenging task if they are motivated to believe they can do it. In my experience the best way to make them believe is to give them a mental connection to something they can already do. That’s why I usually ask lots of question at the beginning of a coaching session to find things that I will be able to relate my explanations to. If I can explain something to a person in terms that already make sense to them then I can most likely get them to do what I’m trying to teach them.

I think people build a mental picture that helps them aim for a goal. If they can imagine achieving what ever goal they have set for themselves they can get there quicker. I think the connection to things people already can do helps them break the goals into manageable pieces, They can imagine achieving something much closer to their current ability, and when they get there they can appreciate the success. If the only mental picture you have is of pulling off a driving cutback when you haven’t successfully popped up on a board yet, you aren’t connected to a goal that’s going to improve your current performance. If your mental picture is something like “I’m going to pop up on this board like I’m excited to get there”, then you will, and you’ll taste success.

Mood is also just as important. So if you can relate the current task to a past pleasurable experience then most likely the mind will be more engaged in the specific goal or task, thus the mention of coffee ice cream (hey, I know it works for me). Involuntarily you get an internal smile because that thought makes you happy. That’s the perfect mind set to being physically and mentally open, to learning new movements and balances. If you can create that good mood prior to learning or for that matter racing, performing, or competition, you give yourself the best chance of success. That’s not to say you put your head in the clouds and walk around in la la land. You’ve got to be focused on the task at hand. But if you do it with a positive confident attitude, it can make all the difference in the world.

I hope this gives you one more tool to use, in your building of a successful mind set. One other thing that always helps me get my mind right is, just being in the moment and having fun at whatever it is I’m doing right then.

Aloha,

Dave

That means no gym membership, no equipment other than a slightly tricked out rope, and a lot of choices about intensity, time commitment, and accommodating injuries. You can do it at ANY level.

What’s different about my workout is that I’ve always tuned up the exercises to help me be a better waterman. When I find a weakness or a new challenge in something I’m doing I add exercises to help me prepare for it. Over the years that meant windsurfing, big wave surfing, tow in, foilboarding, bodysurfing, short and longboard surfing, Stand Up Paddle surfing, racing, downwinding and endurance events, outrigger canoes for downwind, racing, and endurance events. In other words, anything a waterman might do.

These routines are NOT about doing the exercises hard and fast, and this really isn’t a workout. It’s part of a lifestyle. Something you and I can be doing ten or twenty years from now. I’ve taught these routines to people at all levels of fitness, from super-athletes (including the 2006 Women’s Olympic Ski Team) who add them to their own routines, to very unfit people who want to change their condition. You can start this at any level and keep going. Make it your own, do it where you want, make it fun.

In the spirit of making it fun we’ve put together a few silly trailers. We’ll do something more descriptive later, but for now, this will give you a little idea of what we’re up to, and maybe put a smile on your face. I’ll add more later.

Aloha,
Dave

This exercise is for any kind of paddling, and it’s effective whether you try it in an OC-1, a SUP or even something low performance like a rotomolded kayak.

Use a more traditional Hawaiian style stroke for this exercise. A Tahitian stroke already emphasizes the front part of the stroke so it won’t show reach efficiency as clearly. This is a two part drill to show the effects of reaching versus paddling past your half way point of the stroke. What you are going to do is break the stroke into two parts, the front half and the back half. Then, once your mind wraps around the reality that reach is more important than power, we can work on the second part, making you faster and much, much more efficient.

First, a little prep. Sit in your OC, kayak, or stand on your board in your trimmed position and reach as far as you can. Loosen your grip on the paddle, stack your upper shoulder to the keep the paddle vertical. Push your lower shoulder forward as far as you can and let your upper shoulder move back to balance the movement. Let your top hand come a bit over your head. Strain forward a bit, reaching as far as you can. Mark the spot where the blade would touch your boat or board with contrasting tape so you can see it easily. Get back on the board or boat and try to get past the tape. Move the tape to whatever new spot you come up with. When you have as good a reach as you can do with moderate strain that’s your target. As you learn to use muscle stretch to increase your reach you’ll go well past it, but that’s for another time.

Now stroke a few times with your traditional stroke and see where you’re pulling out the paddle. In a canoe it’s probably somewhere around your waist, on a SUP it might be somewhere around your toes. If it’s past your waist or toes that’s fine, we want your natural stroke. People who paddle well past their feet are the most surprised by how little power that develops. Mark that paddle exit point with contrasting tape.

Now take your tape measure and find the midpoint between the two tape strips. Put a third strip there.

First I want you to just paddle the back half of your stroke for a few hundred feet. Put the paddle in at the mid mark and pull back as far as you want and as hard as you want. Just make sure that when you do the second half of the drill, you exert the same effort. Make a mental note of the speed and acceleration you generate. Now I want you to do only the front half of the stroke for a few hundred feet. Reach as far forward as you can and only pull back to the middle tape mark. Now make a mental note of the speed and acceleration, if you are able to use a GPS in the monitoring of the experiment, even better, but it’s such a big difference that you really won’t need it. I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Here’s a video that illustrates the drill:

But DON’T just watch the video and say “okay, I’m convinced, I don’t need to do the drill, I’ll reach harder”. There’s a big difference between watching a demonstration and experiencing the feelings. You wouldn’t even think of learning to ride a bicycle by watching a video. Your body needs to be convinced, it needs to know where power comes from. It can’t be just a theory.

Now here’s the second part. Now that you are convinced, I want you to leave the tape in place and concentrate on your reach and SMOOTHNESS for the next few weeks. Do not push to apply power. Adding power to your stroke is the easiest thing you can do, but it covers up all the technical flaws and mistakes in your paddling and it will not make you fast. Watch Danny Ching paddle some day. Sure, the dude has some shoulders, but his reach is huge, his application of catch and pull is so smooth the water just gurgles, and if he’s working hard it doesn’t show. Sure, he has a twenty year head start on you, but he didn’t get great by practicing mistakes, and neither will you.

Focus on reaching the tape with every stroke. Keep your form as clean as you can so your muscle memory for a good stroke will start to embed. Shoulders stacked, relaxed twist, Reach, Dammit, Reach, and then apply power gently and smoothly. Stop applying power as you reach the middle tape and just do the recovery however you’re used to doing it–right now we don’t care much about that piece. We’re focused on reach and smoothness now, don’t add any more complexity, this is tough enough.

Keep your cadence slow and hesitate slightly just before you push the paddle in order to load your upper body to it’s full potential and then unload on the paddle as you drive it down into the water. Some time in the first few hours of practicing this you will suddenly find this magical moment when your stroke merges with your boat or board, and everything flows effortlessly forward. It may not last, but you’ll know what we’re shooting for.

It’s quite a simple drill but it really helps to illustrate what part of the stroke is most important to focus on, and also shows why the Tahitians would spend most of their time focusing on the most effective part of the stroke. Hopefully after you’re convinced about how important reaching is, you’ll be inspired to focus on all the techniques that help you to maximize your reach to get the most out of your effort. I’ll show you more later, but for now, Reach, Dammit, Reach. Have fun.
Aloha,
Dave

About four years ago, Laird and I had concocted a plan to Stand up paddle across all the major channels in Hawaii and ride our bikes across every island, in an effort to help support our friend Don King, who was making a documentary about raising a autistic child.  He needed some money to finish the project and Laird and I needed something to occupy our comfortable summer with some type of pain and suffering.  It seemed like a great idea at the time of inception but turned out to be way more than I bargained for, but that’s par for the course when you run with a like minded, slightly skewed, well intended, but over zealous type like Laird (meant in the best way possible).  In the end, it was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life.

While there are numerous stories to pick from, for this article I’d like to share an experience that I had while paddling between Oahu and Kauai.

We started from Kaena point at ten thirty at night, hoping that we would get to Kauai before sunset the following evening.  That channel can be done in the course of a day but unfortunately for us the winds were blowing Kona.  Not strongly but nonetheless the opposite direction you want for paddling that channel. With trades it’s 12 to 15 hours, with Konas 18 +.  I honestly thought when we jumped in the water we were just playing a game of chicken, because neither one of us was going to back down–the Kauai channel is hard enough when the wind is blowing with you, it’s just unimaginable when the wind is against you.  But in classic testosterone-fueled fashion, neither one of us was going to be the first to say uncle, so we paddled on into the night and for the next twenty two hours.

Somewhere around one or two the next day, Laird had managed to get at least a mile ahead, probably closer to two.  It was weighing on me heavily at the time because I wanted this to be something we did together–literally.  But over the course of about three hours Laird was really maintaining a faster pace then I could.  When I first started to consider a push, to try and catch up, it seemed unimaginable.  After paddling for at least fifteen hours at that point, where would I find the energy to make a push like that?  I waffled back and forth for about twenty minutes trying to decide if it was a smart thing to do.  If I went too hard, I might kill my chances of even making it, and after paddling that far I did not want to come up short.  So I came up with lots of sound reasons to just maintain my pace and finish the journey. But I would have finished in the dark and probably an hour or two behind Laird.  No shame in finishing second to Laird right?  Wrong!

This was a moment in my life, where I was presented with a true challenge. Not a game of chicken with a friend or a challenge from a drinking buddy, but one that could possibly define me.  Define what was inside, define what I stood for, define my very soul.  Was I going to be content to just finish, or was I going to stand up to a task that just seemed unfathomable at a point where everything sensible told me to be smart, conserve my energy and finish.  So to get my mind right for the challenge I used a technique I employ when I am being worked by a big wave.  I compartmentalize the situation and just try to manage the task right in front of me.  Don’t try to manage the whole thing at once, just deal with what’s right at your finger tips.  And then after a few seconds deal with the next thing that’s at your finger tips and so on.  That way you make your path through a tough situation one small manageable step at a time rather than overwhelming yourself with the whole ball of wax.

So with that in mind, the first thing I attacked was my breathing.  Starting slow at first and very cautiously increasing at an almost unmeasurable pace forward.  In my mind I kept saying to myself  ’just go for a little while and see how you feel’, being careful not to try and catch up all at once.  After about five minutes I felt like I was playing with fire but still under control, so I thought I would turn up the focus on breathing for a while then turn up the intensity of my stroke.  This went on back and forth for about twenty minutes and by this point I was starting to work myself into a bit of a lather.  I had focused so much on my breathing that it had literally sucked me into a trance.  I looked up occasionally  to see if my effort was making any difference and for the first half hour it was hard to tell because he was so far ahead of me.  And then one time I looked up and YES!  It was making a difference.  So that fueled the fire and I took my breathing to a full blown possessed inhale and exhale, which in turn sucked me into a complete paddle frenzy.  So much so, I distinctly remember saying to myself ‘I don’t care if I make the paddle across the channel, I will catch Laird if it takes my last breath’.  I had managed to work myself into a full blown possessed paddle frenzy, and I don’t say that lightly.  I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since, but at least I know it’s in there. If I ever really needed to call upon it again I hope I could find it, but I’m not sure.

What I think was unique about this was not that I had got myself into that state, but rather that I maintained it for about an hour and a half to two hours.  I remember seeing Laird’s escort boat captain Donny looking back when I started to get closer and doing the full double take with his head, as if to say, ‘you’re not supposed to be there, you were just a couple miles back’.  During most of that time I had never considered what I would do if I actually caught him.  I was so focused on paddling, but as I began to near I thought to myself, ‘now what are you going to do if you actually catch him’?  I hadn’t put much thought into that part of the equation but it started to dawn on me that, yeah I might have caught him but now can you stay with him after expending that much energy to catch up?  I didn’t know. I was in a very vulnerable place.  When I finally did catch up and Laird turned around and saw that I was ten feet behind him, it was one of the most satisfying moments of my athletic career.

Winning prestigious down-wind or channel races is great don’t get me wrong, but people expect me to do well.  I expect me to do well, so there’s a bit of this: I’m only doing what is expected of me. But this time, I didn’t expect it, and anyone that really knows Laird knows what a physical freak he is.  True, some of his strength is God given, but nobody out works him when it comes to preparation, not even me.  He’s not just the kind of strong that comes from weights, that strength is accessible to anyone.  His might comes from within, within his heart and his mind.  There is never doubt in his actions, there is never caution in his movements, only confidence. To me that is real strength.

So for me, on this occasion, I got to be an equal with someone I hold in very high regard.  That’s what matters to me, the internal competitions that you don’t sign up for or pay an entry fee, there’s no prize-giving at the end of these competitions, only satisfaction within, knowing simply that YOU CAN.  Those are the ones that matter, those are the ones that I want to win.

When I pulled up along side Laird no words were spoken, only body and eye language.  And what he clearly said were two things: Glad you caught up and we still have a along way to go.  Simple but true.  At this point he could have destroyed me, but I think he acknowledged my effort by slowing down just a smidgen so that we could finish together.  We still had about four hours of paddling left to make it to Kauai, and we ultimately did, but the bigger accomplishment for me was catching back up.

Since that experience I’ve had time to analyze what it was I did that allowed me to get into that place where I literally paddled at close to 100% for almost two hours.  Mind set was huge but in actual mechanics, it all started with the breathing.  Even the best of athletes constantly have to remind themselves to breathe or focus more on their breathing.  It’s natural to focus on the mechanics of the body especially if your working on a new technique.  It would be like buying a tricked out race car and putting middle of nowhere, dirt road, gas station, gas in it.  You’d be wasting all that time and effort of learning the proper technique, without giving your muscles the fuel they need to operate.

I was very fortunate to experience trance like paddling, I’ve tried to go there again a few times but have never really gotten back to that place where you’re completely possessed and going full bore for a good length of time. I think there must be something about the paddling for fifteen hours prior to, that tore away the clear and cognizant frame of mind that would normally protect you from doing something like that. But that’s what allowed me to literally get out of my own way,  and let my body go to a place only it knew it could get to. Whatever the true reason, I’m just glad I got to experience it and I hope that you might too. Be careful though, it wasn’t effortless paddling, I had my finger on the button of a complete explosion that would have destroyed me, had I blown up. I’m sure in reality my heart was red lining for a little while there. Even if you can’t get to that place where you paddle possessed, be possessed to get on the water as much as you can. Not only will it be good for you, it will be good for me if you’re happier when I run into you some day.

Aloha,
Dave