Slalom Stroke Workouts
Whether you have an interest in exploring the world of slalom kayaking or simply wish to improve your strokes for casual river running, you’ll enjoy these workouts. Maybe you’ll even discover your inner competitive spirit and join our community of slalom racers! You may never want to race, but gate training is invaluable for paddlers of all skill levels because it develops the precision and timing essential to control on the river.
Liquid Adventures continues to be a local and regional source for adult slalom training. Our love of this form of paddling has led us to incorporate it into the Liquid Adventures curriculum. Clinics are taught with low student/instructor ratios to ensure personal attention. Instructors have national racing and/or coaching experience and training. Liquid Adventures’ Sarah Park is ranked as one of the U.S. Top 10 Slalom Paddlers. Try your hand at Slalom Racing on a basic level and join Sarah and Liquid Adventures for the Penn Cup series in the fall!
These weekly clinics will introduce you to:
- Skill and technique building
- A curriculum of paddling and slalom exercises for you to adapt for your own personal workouts
- A Winter Training Program in order to develop skills and strength and become twice the paddler throughout the winter months
- How to design your very own workout!
Goals of Liquid Adventures Slalom Club:
- Encourage and assist individual development of aspiring citizen racers
- Promote the development of junior paddlers – our Olympic hopefuls of the future
- Promote the progress of whitewater paddle sports through positive public relations
- Win the Penn Cup, a series of slalom races for novice paddlers
- Develop paddlers for local, national and international competition
Rules about racing:
- Racers negotiate through a series of up to 25 gates in numerical order through a boulder-strewn rapids course.
- Upstream gates are identified by red poles and are entered by racers paddling upstream. Downstream gates are identified by green poles and are entered by racers paddling downstream.
- Penalties are added to the time of a paddler who misses, touches or runs a gate in the wrong direction. 50 seconds are added to a racer’s time for missed gates and 2 seconds are added for each pole a racer touches.
- Each boat completes 2 race runs. The boat in each class with the lowest time for both races, including penalty seconds, wins the race.
- The four Olympic slalom classes are Men’s Kayak (K1), Men’s Canoe (C1), Men’s Tandem Canoe (C2), and Women’s Kayak (K1W)
Who: Intermediates and Advanced boaters with an interest in improved strokes technique OR an introduction to slalom racing
What: 2 hour-long workout clinics
Where and when: Saturdays at 9 AM at the Brookmont Feeder Canal from May through October.
What to bring: You can bring your own boat and equipment or borrow ours. (Sorry, only whitewater boats are available – we don’t carry slalom boats in our fleet.) See what to bring for details.
Cost: $50 per class
Prerequisites: Intermediate-level paddling, a reliable roll and basic stroke techniques
Go to our registration page to sign up and consult the calendar for dates.
