photo from mnorri.
I figured something out!
In track cycling, you are supposed to just keep turning left. It's joked about on bumper stickers and in friendly advice. No brakes & left left left. But in slalom kayaking, turning repeatedly to the left is, well, dumb.
But I seem to do just that on flatwater. My forward stroke pushes my nose a bit left, and my crossbow strokes don't do much to straighten me out.
When I do my off-side forward strokes, I am less stable than on my on-side. To compensate, I end up transferring weight to my left knee rather than keeping the weight even on both legs. This means I drop my left edge -- of course I am going to carve left!
After I realized this, I tried some off-side strokes focusing on keeping the boat level. Much more control & no more drifting off to the left! I'm also developing the habit of doing a mini j-stroke on each onside -- it is nice to have that control on a lake, but I wonder if it is the best habit for whitewater.
I need to work on separating my edge control from whatever my upper body is doing. Ideally, they can function totally independently. I'm nowhere close to that in a C1 yet.
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