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How to Cartwheel

By 829 Dev

The cartwheel is one of my favorite tricks to do in a hole. The cartwheel will improve your edge control immensely making lots of tricks on waves and holes easier.  IMOP the loop is easier to learn than the cartwheel so don’t get discouraged, in time you will get it sorted out.

Definition of the cartwheel:

Two consecutive ends in the same rotational direction and both ends at a vertical angle between 45 and 100 degrees.

Here’s my way of explaining how to do a cartwheel in a hole.

Right Cartwheel:

Step 1: Get to the top of the pile either by spinning on the corner or side slipping.

Step 2:  As soon as you are at the top of the pile get your boat on it’s right edge around 45 degrees and do a small right forward stroke lifting the bow up and out of the water, staying edged. Take a right back stroke and slam your legs down on it’s edge, keeping your body in a neutral position and looking upstream.

Step 3:  Once the bow starts to rotate under you remove your back stroke quickly, rotate your torso looking over your right shoulder, switch from the right edge to the left edge to bring the stern around and use your left blade to help pull the stern around.  I find that it’s more of a brace than an actual stroke when you are rotating on the stern, if that’s makes sense.  If you have really good torso rotation and good balance you can clean the stern end by just keeping the blade out of the water.

Step 4: Once the stern rotates around you you can flatten the end out and do a right froward stroke to help keep you in the hole or you can keep cartwheeling.  The 3rd end is always the hardest so if you want that third end wait for the bow to start to drop back in the water and continue to cartwheel.

I hope what I said makes sense I have a funny way of explaining things. Here’s a video to get a better understanding.

Practice on eddy lines or in flatwater.

Till next time,

Elaine Campbell

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