The Lunar Orbit is another of my favourite moves. It looks quite complicated but actually it’s much more simple than you might think.
It’s just a Stern Squirt into the bow end of a cartwheel. You start it from a front surf/ blast in a hole. You can even practice the motion of stern squirting into cartwheels on flatwater to get a feel for the move before trying it in a hole.
Step One:
Lift your bow up onto the green water so that you’re sitting in a front surf. You lift the bow using a big sweep stroke and place the nose of your boat slightly pointing in the direction you plan to rotate.
Step Two:
As soon as you reach the front surf, drop your upstream knee so that your edging upstream (catching the water on your tail), at the same time as this tense your core & look around in the direction you’ll rotate and using the back of your blade pry the boat into a stern squirt.
Step Three:
Now your boat will have gone vertical and started to rotate around that prying blade. To keep it in control have a marker directly upstream of you and keep looking ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker just before you slam the bow down again.
Step Four:
Having spotted your upstream marker, switch your pry stroke into a push stroke, keep your weight forwards and aggressively as you can push the bow under the water.
Finishing the move:
After this last end you can either do a big back stroke to make sure you retain in flushy features or in more retentive spots you can continue into more cartwheels or other moves as this move links very well.
Main points to remember:
- Make sure you set your angle & edge correctly on the initiation.
-Keep your core tensed and use your pry to stop yourself from just catching an edge and falling over upstream.
-Look ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker.
-Play around with how far back & forwards you lean during the move to get it fine-tuned.
This month i’m going to teach you how to do the McNasty.
It’s a great move, you can start it from many different positions and setups, it’s quick to do, impressive to see and is one of the highest scoring moves.
The technique I’m going to show you here is the most commonly used one and is the one I use nearly all the time.
Step 1: Get yourself into a nice stable side surf.
Step 2: Keep your upstream knee up, hold that edge on, then push off the back face of your paddle and sweep your boat into a back surf.
Step 3: Just before you reach a backsurf, lean forwards and drop your upstream paddle blade into the water and start pulling on the green water.
It’s important not to pause too long in a backsurf or drop your edge here, keep your momentum and keep that edge held on.
Step 4: As your pulling keep looking ahead of the boats rotation. If you have the correct amount of edge you’ll start to go vertical now.
Step 5: Now you should be in a normal looping position. Push down hard on your feet for added pop, jump up and then tuck hard forwards smashing both your paddle blades off the water to push you as high as you can.
Step 6: When your body has gone all the way to the front, snappily open out your body as aggressively as you can & kick your feet out in front of you.
Step 7: Once in a front surf again, do a few quick powerful forward strokes to retain the hole.
Top tips for learning this one:
-Play around with how fast you spin the boat, how much edge you hold on and how long you pause before the loop. Find what works best for your features, boat & style.
-Make sure you spot an upstream marker like a tree or a slalom pole before you throw the loop. This will help you to keep it straight and make it more likely to score.
It’s one of my favourite moves and one of the most fun to do, good luck & get out there and try it.
This month I’m going to show you how to Loop in shallow holes.
Being from the UK, one of the first obstacles I had to overcome was how to do the moves in shallow features. It’s an invaluable skill to have for many reasons.
Getting normal loops is relatively easy in modern short boats but many people still struggle when the holes aren’t very deep.
Ordinarily on the loop you stamp down hard, get the boat as deep as possible and then jump up with your arms to get the height and go as big as you can.
Shallow spots require a very different approach however.
Step One: In a shallow hole, you take as little speed as possible going into the seam line.
Step Two: When the nose touches the seam try and catch as small amount of water as you can whilst still getting vertical.
To do this back paddle and use your core stomach muscles to keep the boat straight as you approach the seam line and then continue these little micro strokes to maintain control whilst initiating the bow in the green water.
Step Three: Once vertical you want to effectively do a flat-water loop but in the hole. Push down as hard and snappily as you can with the back of both paddle blades.
Step Four: When you’re body is as far forwards as it can go, grab the water with the power face of your paddle blades and open your body out like the opposite of a sit up as snappily & aggressively as you can.
This will kick your feet out in front of you and push the nose of the boat back into a front surf.
Tips & Tricks
You can practice this motion on dry land by lying on your back with your legs in the air then try and kick out as hard as you can. On dry land the idea is just to get a feel of this movement.
Spending some time perfecting your flat-water loops will help you with these skills too.
When you have this shallow hole looping technique perfected, the way you finish the loop by grabbing the water and kicking out can also be applied to finishing Phonic’s and Mc’Nastys and is a very very good way of forcing the boat to keep straight, and retaining the feature. For competing this skill is invaluable as it enables you to force moves to keep straight when the pressure is on.
How the gear I use helps me…
Out with my Dad on the Washburn in my beloved Jitsu, toasty warm in my Palm Spark suit. Life is good!
What’s also going to help your freestyle progression is using the right tools for the job.
I’m very fortunate to be using what I consider the best equipment possible for what I do so I’d like to give some of the stuff I use a little shout out!
I use Dagger’s new Jitsu kayak that I was involved in the design process of, so it’s pretty much my dream boat. One of the reasons is its slicy ends. It makes it easy to initiate the nose and cut it in to the water whilst keeping a volumous poppy centre that give you that much needed lift to get big air. Having precise but short back end gives you the freedom to play in shallow features without hitting the bottom on the landings and pull stuff though quicker and easier in normal holes.
Being a very cold winter for play boating I’ve managed to paddle the whole winter through thanks to having my Palm Spark suit to wear, it’s much lighter and less restrictive than ordinary dry suits and feels a lot like wearing a top deck only much warmer with great freedom of movement!
Good luck trying this one out, and enjoy the coming spring!
