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Something was posted on here about her innovative roll teaching technique. Can anyone who was there expand on that?

I'll give it a shot. I thought it was about the most innovative instructional advancement I have seen for teaching the roll.

Open your mind and be ready for a totally different approach to teaching the roll.

1. Mary starts by teaching the final position you want to end up in. I think she called it the finish position. Sitting upright in your kayak you pull the paddle out of the water and across your chest. Wrists are rolled back and head is turned to look down the shaft at the blade that just left the water. May have to find some video to insert here.

2. After the student has demonstrated this finish position and has it in their head, she gets the student to do a sweep from the front of the boat to 90 degrees out to the side, then pull the paddle across the chest to the finish position from step 1. I think the term for this was the "dry roll"

These first two steps are what I found to be innovative for a couple of reasons. First, you start by teaching the last part of the roll, and second, you are able to give the student a visual of what the paddle is doing when they are rolling. That is the part that has always been tough for me to convey to a roll student. Everyone tries to visualize or recreate on land, out of the boat, what the paddle is doing during the roll. I would always ask the student to not try to visualize it but get them to learn it by muscle memory that came from them being upside down in the boat and me moving the paddle across the water. Sometimes I would teach this by holding their head out of the water while they did the sweep so they could see the paddle moving. On to step 3.

3. When you are very confident that the student has steps 1 & 2 down pat. you show them the set up on the side and roll them over onto you so that you are supporting their head out of the water. Mary made this look really easy by putting her left hand on their PFD and keeping her right hand free to work with the paddle. The student could then do the sweep and watch the paddle work. Seems like she grabbed the PFD in her left hand pretty much at the shoulder where it is thin enough to grab a handful of PFD with minimal touching of the body.

The rest was pretty much the same process that we are all used to to finish. The really interesting part is that you never talk about hip snap or focus on that part of the roll. If you have the proper technique to "finish" the roll and do the sweep, the hip snap part seems to take care of itself.

I'll be interested to see if others from the class comment on their impressions and if mine is similar to theirs. I thought it was great and can't wait to try it with a total beginner to see how much more effective it is than my old teaching methods.

Dave

It's the method they teach in The Kayak Roll DVD. By rotating your torso and reaching out away from the boat, you engage your rolling knee and rotate the boat. The finish position slices the blade out of the water to shed resistance. This step alone can save a bad roll.

I think the thing that helped me most was finishing with my back hand near my ear. I had been punching it out, resulting in my paddle diving. It looked almost like I was doing a forward stroke on the way up. This was the most common mistake I saw with our students too.

I'm not sure if it's in the video, but she also had us drop our edge opposite the paddle when we rolled up. That seems to just really lock in the finish position and provide a really strong anchor.

Here's some video of me rolling:
http://vimeo.com/23738673

Dave,

Very good explanation. I wish I could see some video of her teaching it. I have always had problems explaining paddle positioning and movement during the roll. It sounds like she has addressed this issue.

Yeah, she is the BEST!
I learned from the Kayak Roll DVD and I admire Mary and Phil's teaching methods more than anything I have ever seen!
She also is great at teaching about the mental aspects of rolling and kayaking in general , which very few people teach!
I used to give handouts to my students about Mary's teachings of the mental side of kayaking. And I'll say it again, she is the BEST!!!

Needed to work some kinks out of my roll a few weeks ago so rewatched the troubleshooting section of their video and those techniques helped a lot