2 Paddler Training for Canoe Polo in Barcelona

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Marc Van Der HS (or as I like to call him, Marco Polo, because everyone here is called either Marc or Jordi) in Barcelona. Despite this being a prosperous city on the sea front where people do a range of sports from bike polo to long boarding there’s only him doing canoe polo. So we do training a couple of times a week in Port Olympic. There’s a limited amount you can do with two people and no goals in what should be a game with two teams of five people but Marc has found a range of useful exercises to do. Here’s some of them for my own notes and anyone else who’s interested.

Warm up:

• Paddle forwards over a length about 50m long
• Paddle backwards over the length
• Paddle forwards dipping the nose on each paddle stroke
• Paddle touching your blade onto the sterm of your boat with each stroke
• Paddle with a bow rudder on each stroke so you zig-zag
• Slide the paddle so your hands are at the extreme left and right of the shaft and you are paddling with an extended shaft on each stroke

Ball thowing on the move, paddle side-by-side over a length of about 50m

• Throw a ball to each other while paddling infront of the partner’s boat
• Throw a ball to your partner’s body
• Throw ball to the front of your partner’s boat so they can bat it forwards with their paddle blade
• Before each throw do a fake throw forwards, for bonus points don’t look at your partner

Passing between two people

• Pass with two hands facing each other
• Pass with two hands throwing the ball up in the air, the thrower should keep eye contact on the person they are throwing to
• Pass with 1 hand from right hand to right hand or left hand to left hand, the elbow should be kept high and the ball should be thrown above the head, use the middle and ring finger to throw, rotate the shoulder backwards
• Same thing up in the air
• Passing over a long distance
• Passing sideways while boats are parallel to each other
• Pass to your partner’s paddle blade on the left and right sides
• Pass above your partner’s head to catch with paddle blade
• Pass to the front of your partner’s boat to be caught with paddle blade

Series

• Paddle forward gently, one person shouting “go” means you do two paddle strokes forward hard
• Ten strong strokes followed by ten short strokes

Other Bits

• timed races zig-zagging over a floating chain
• piggy in the middle with one person in the middle and three others all of who’s boats must touch the centre boat
• with helmets: two boats next to each other parallel, one person uses a strong reverse sweet and edge to slide the tail of their boat under their partner’s then paddle back some strokes
• play defence/attack where one person tries to get the ball from another person
• do short laps with a 180 degree turn at each end, on the turn move both hands to the end of the paddle blade so you have an extended paddle shaft, use a reverse sweet and edge away from the paddle side to raise the front of the boat