J lean

Kayaking is a whole body experience. To most effectively control a kayak, you need to change how the hull is presented to the water --- not just learn the strokes.

You change the hull's profile in the water in two ways:

1. leaning the boat or
2. edging the boat

• To lean a boat, you lean your upper body over the edge of the boat using support from the paddle to prevent a capsize.
• To edge a boat, you use a J-Lean (yes, its confusing since you use a J-lean to edge, but don't blame me. I didn't come up with these terms).

In the J-Lean, you use your hips to tilt the boat, but maintain your center of gravity over the center of buoyancy by keeping your upper body upright and perpendicular to the water surface. Its called a J-Lean since if you look head-on at someone doing this move, their body is in the shape of the letter J.

An advanced paddler can do the full range of strokes with a J-lean in either direction. This should be your goal -- to be able to do forward strokes, reverse strokes and sweep strokes with a J-lean on either side.