Learning to Paddle, Again
WHAT 55 YEARS OF KAYAKING TAUGHT ERIC JACKSON ABOUT BEST PRACTICES, BAD HABITS, AND STARTING OVER
Eric Jackson has spent more than five decades in a kayak. In this thoughtful reflection, EJ looks back on the lessons that helped him the most, the questions he asked himself, and why he believes strong foundations remain the key to progression. Part personal history, part coaching philosophy, this is an honest look at how even the most experienced paddlers can spend a lifetime refining the basics and their habits.
In 1970, I rode in the front of a Grumman canoe my dad had bought so we could join a group of Piper Aircraft test pilots on Pine Creek in Pennsylvania. I was six years old.
At the time, I was scared of speed and motion. Roller coasters terrified me. So when my dad asked if I wanted to go on a two-day trip with him—camping, whitewater, fishing—I had one qualifying question. “How fast does the water go?”
“About 10 miles per hour,” he replied. I was immediately relieved. And from that moment on, I was never afraid of whitewater.
Instruction back then was simple: Learn as you go. We knew to paddle on both sides. We figured out how to turn. But nobody was teaching us anything systematically. Certainly, nobody was teaching perfected best practices. That was kayaking in the 1970s. Get a boat. Get on the river. Figure it out.
Learning Without a System
Fast forward to 1979. I was 15, and we got our first kayaks. Down coats. Mae West PFDs. Snow on the ground. A 210 cm Hurka paddle. A 13’2” low-rocker fiberglass kayak. And zero instruction.
My dad became president of the Merrimack Valley Paddlers in New Hampshire. The club had about 40 members, and only one person knew how to roll: Bob O’Neil.
One night Bob came to a club meeting at our house and said, “I want to teach you guys how to roll.” One veteran paddler said, “Roll? That’s a circus trick. Nobody does that in the real world.” I raised my hand and said, “I want to learn that.”
Bob rented a pool. He showed me his roll. I tipped over and rolled up on my first try. I “taught” my dad immediately afterward, and he learned in five minutes.
What was the technique?
“Pry yourself up with your paddle.” Simple.
It worked—for us. We were strong, comfortable underwater, and not afraid. If you were heavier, less flexible, or scared underwater, that same technique was a problem. But we weren’t thinking about those things.
« Once bad habits get installed, they are very hard to remove. I know because I lived it. »
From 1980 to 1983, I learned kayaking as the “best paddler in the club.” That sounds good, but it created a problem: I had nobody to emulate. I learned to ender, pirouette, and stay upright in places nobody around me was paddling. But I still didn’t know strokes. Not really.
Then in 1984, I moved to Washington, D.C., to train for the U.S. Kayak Team. That is when I got my first real coach: Bill Endicott. Bill’s coaching was not a cookie-cutter curriculum. It was more like being adopted into a high-performance tribe and thrown into daily battle with other athletes. You improved because you were surrounded by better paddlers, expected to show up, and constantly exposed to excellence.
But even then, kayaking did not have a true foundational system. Without one, paddlers learn whatever is around them. Sometimes that is good. Sometimes it is mediocre. Sometimes it is flat-out wrong.
And once bad habits get installed, they are very hard to remove. I know because I lived it.
Questioning Everything
Until 1992, I mostly did what I was told. I trained hard, raced slalom, listened to Bill, and tried to paddle like the best in the world. Then in 1993, Scott Shipley beat me in every slalom race we competed in. One reason was that he had developed a better way to do upstream gates.
I had invented my own “EJ Super Up” in 1985, but Bill didn’t like it. He was trying to teach me to paddle like Richard Fox—slender, lightweight, super strong, calm, precise.
I was not Richard Fox. I was explosive. High power. Less patient. I wanted to throw the boat around. When Bill would not time my runs doing the EJ Super Up, I stopped doing it. Within a few years, Olympic champion Oliver Fix and the world’s top paddlers were doing versions of it.
That was a big lesson. Technique is fluid. Styles change. Boats change. Tactics change. But everything still comes back to foundations: rolling, bracing, strokes, body position, timing, edge control, paddle placement, and understanding what the water is doing to your boat.
Starting in 1993, I began questioning everything. Not to be difficult, but because I realized that what “everyone knows” is not always true. What makes a move faster? More consistent? What gives more control? What requires less energy? What reduces fear? What helps someone progress instead of plateau? Best practices became my obsession.
Paddlers Plateau Where Their Foundations Run Out
People sometimes ask why Dane is so good. Nobody can take away his effort, motivation, or time on the water. But his biggest advantage was learning the foundations correctly from the beginning.
His rolling and bracing were so strong that fear of flipping was almost zero. Add strokes and concepts that allowed him to do with one stroke what takes most paddlers five, and suddenly you have a whitewater monster in the making. That is the power of foundation.
If I were coaching the top 100 paddlers in the world, I would still spend 50% of our time on flatwater working on rolling, bracing, strokes, and concepts. Maybe they are not missing all of it, but they are missing enough to limit their next level. Paddlers plateau where their foundations run out.
« If I were coaching the top 100 paddlers in the world, I would still spend 50% of our time on flatwater working on rolling, bracing, strokes, and concepts. «
By 1994, I realized my own foundational skills and habits were terrible, especially when turning my kayak. That sounds strange because I had the second-fastest time at the 1991 World Slalom Championships, finished 13th at the Olympics, and was winning extreme races.
But I knew the truth. I was strong. Fit. Motivated. Aggressive. Good under pressure. But my forward stroke was not good, and my turning strokes were worse. I was making up for poor technique with physical ability and commitment.
I should have asked better questions earlier. Not just, “How do I do this?” but, “Is this actually the best way?”
Old Boats Created Old Techniques
Another thing people forget is how much boats have changed. In the 1970s, many whitewater kayaks were 13-foot, low-rocker boats with keels—fast in a straight line and hard to turn. Today, modern whitewater kayaks have a natural turning radius tighter than most turns you want to make. That changes everything.
The Dufek stroke is a great example. In a 13’2” fiberglass kayak with a keel, it makes sense. In a modern boat, using it as the default can sabotage speed, efficiency, and control.
Boat design changed. Technique should have changed with it. But much of the instruction did not. Better paddling means doing the same move with more control, less energy, more consistency, and more speed when speed is desired.
Bad Habits Don’t Disappear
I am 62 years old now, and I still have habits from when I was a kid. That is why I still do my 12-minute stroke-drill warm-up. If I don’t, I regress. My body wants to return to the 20-year-old version of me: short strokes, not enough torso, poor turning habits, too much physical effort.
« You have to practice them until they become automatic, and then practice them some more. »
Knowing best practices is not enough. You have to practice them until they become automatic, and then practice them some more. You are not broken. You are not too old. You are not out of potential.
But you do have habits. And if you want different results, you must replace those habits on purpose.
The Coach-EJ Mission
This year I am hyper-focused on the problem I discovered in 1993: How do we bring best practices to the masses?
Very few paddlers get ongoing coaching. Most have to travel for it. I want to bring coaching to the paddler. That is why I am building Coach-EJ.com, a remote coaching platform where best practices live in videos, written lessons, quizzes, and video feedback. I am coaching paddlers from Sweden, Kazakhstan, England, the United States, Canada, Poland, and beyond.
Cool beans. You do not need great skill to have fun kayaking. That is one of the beautiful things about the sport. But progress feels good. Confidence feels good. Having your roll work when you need it feels good. Not being scared of flipping feels good. Understanding why something works feels good.
That is what I am trying to bring to paddlers—not just elite paddlers. Everyone. Hopefully, we replace flat-earth maps with globes. Hopefully, we build a new world of paddling instruction based on what actually works in modern boats, on modern rivers, with modern paddlers.
After 55 years of kayaking, I am still learning to paddle.
See you on the river.
EJ
