Dragonboat Blog | The Dragonboating Resource

dragonboat talk for dragonboaters.

Excuse the pun. It’s only a few more sleeps until Christmas and this is usually the time when we all decide to let ourselves go. But is it really okay to skip a training session and not eat healthy?

Well, let me tell you what you don’t want to hear.

No, it’s not okay and you’ll have to work twice as hard to get rid of the fat you gained over the Christmas break. Though, fear not I have some simple tips to help you during this time. Just know there are two goals to aim for:

1. To at least not gain weight or
2. To lose fat over the holidays

As most people will opt for the first goal, then I suggest sticking to that one for now, but if you’re brave go for the second goal. During this time there are two categories that you’ll be part of, either visiting or at home.

Visiting

Every year you will find yourself either being the visitor or the host. This is what to do if you visit.

Bring your food with you.

My mother always said “bring a gift.” No, I am not talking about being preachy and handing over the low carb/low fat/ dry organic free range stuffing. I said bring a gift! There are some foods that on their own are healthy and taste quite good. Bring safe items with you that you can fill up on so that you won’t have as much room for the bad and that also goes nicely with the spread. If you can’t cook or don’t care too then these ideas work for that as well.

• Veggie or Fruit Plates-Fill up on fruit and veg, lower calories.
• Hummus for dipping-Most is only 30-50 calories a serving. Goes great with those veggies too.
• Tea Biscuits and Coffee (you can find these in most grocery store in the specialty section. 2 yummy biscuits for 32 calories!)

Don’t be a boring lump.

The majority of visitors sit like a lump waiting for instructions on how to best stuff their face. CHANGE IT UP! Since you don’t have to prepare the food do a favor by helping entertain. Spend time with your family, it is why you are there.

Have another plate.

I know right, I am nuts! Here are the rules though, the first plate I want to be all the good stuff, (lean meat, veggies, fruit,) basically low calories. Next grab another plate, but this time load up on the items you have been salivating over since you have arrived. The catch is because you already filled up on the good stuff you will be more moderate with the bad. This will limit the actual amount of the bad you can take in and save you some calories right there alone, PLUS you don’t look the “dieter.” Dieters don’t have another plate.

Help clean up.

Not only does it help out the stressed out mum/dad, you burn a few extra calories. Remember the majority of your daily calories are burned in small activities, not large training.

At Home

Cook!
Look you have the home field advantage; you get to do the cooking!! That doesn’t mean to serve tasteless guck either, just make smart choices. Get a bigger turkey and serve the white meat only. Where you find the space try and substitute some items with lower calories. For example, you can use skim milk and light butter in your potatoes. This makes very little difference in taste but saves loads on calories.

Pick Your Battles.
Look you can’t make a low calorie pecan pie, it is what it is. You can however make a healthy and low calorie pumpkin pie or better yet, a pumpkin cheesecake that is to die for.

If you have to go to town on the calories then at least make them more nutritious calories. For example, instead of a “canned cranberry sauce” you could whip up cranberry nut bread.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 egg
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add the cranberries and walnuts, and stir to coat with flour. Mix together the egg, oil, orange juice, and orange zest. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture, and stir until just blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack, and cool completely.

Nutrition Facts Calories 163 Fat 3g Carbohydrate 31g Protein 3g

Want deviled eggs? Great but stuff them with something different like some roasted garlic hummus and turkey meat. Have all the flavor you want, just choose good things to make your flavour form. Remember healthy items are apart of some of the best tasting foods.

Have activities.
Don’t just make the visit to your house all about the food, be a good example. Have sack races for the kids, or spoon races. Play sports, or pull out the WII and play a round of tennis. I assure you the less awkward the visit, the more fun that is being had just hanging out, the less food becomes the star! Don’t let the TV rule the house.

Cook for only those you need to.
Don’t get carried away. This isn’t the last meal and this isn’t the send off to fight the British War. You don’t need 2 turkeys, 1 chicken, 3 pies, and 10 sides. Less is more. Pick solid dishes and let their flavors be the star. This will also lower the stress and you will be less likely to eat more because of being upset.

Lastly, stick to your training sessions if your team still runs them over the Christmas break, otherwise just get out and go for a light jog or hit the gym.

Good luck this holiday! No matter what the goal is remember that this is a time to celebrate love and give thanks no matter who and how many you are with.

Many competitive dragonboat paddlers keep a training log to record their training activities and race times. They record in their log the sessions about on-water training, pool, weight training and other aspects important to their success in Dragonboating.

It’s usually a little booklet like this one below:

You can also include body vitals, such as: body weight, body fat %, resting heart rate, girth measurements of waist, chest, legs and arms. These are usually recorded initally at the start of a training programme / season and not at each session. Then at the end of the season, a paddler can look back at their improvements, not just in race times, but in their overall body conditioning.

How to record your data?

A simple way to make sure your data is recorded accurately is to buy an exercise book with lines and draw some columns with headings (you can also type it into a computer on an excel spreadsheet and print it out as well, or even more advanced is to store it on a PDA, whichever way you choose just make sure you can access it easily after every training session). Here’s an example of what I do:

Also a crucial aspect is to be honest with what you do on the water and off the water. Write a brief summary of how you felt after the training session and make sure it’s dated.

Training logs will help you in the long term. If you have a bad racing year, you can look back at previous years logs and find out how hard you trained and felt in previous years. Good paddling years are usually a result of how well you have trained.

If you are like me and would prefer to keep everything electronic on the Internet, here’s a website called iLog that can keep track of your training sessions and results.

Good luck with your training and if you have any additional comments, please write them below.

Recently a reader asked a comment about Mesocycle and what is an ideal Mesocycle for Dragon Boating. Here it is below:

The definition of a Mesocycle:

“Part a training programme that lasts between 1 and 3 months. It usually consists of a number of microcycles and focuses on the development of a particular training component, for example, the development of general aerobic fitness in the pre-season stage of training.”

Mesocycle for Dragonboating

As Dragonboat training varies with each team’s style and individual’s goals, there is no set training programme that everyone has to obide by. Though there are some ‘ideal’ Mesocycle programmes that top dragonboat teams have been using leading up to State and National titles during a season.

Below is a sample training program used by the Hong Kong Island Paddle Club (HKIPC). They have explained it in quite some detail and may take you some time to read through, but it is worth the read:

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The basic concept is that a weekly micro-cycle varies intensity from one day to the next allowing us to balance hard work with recovery time. Macro-cycles prescribe increasing levels of intensity week to week in order to achieve specific performance goals within a 4-8 week period. Our bodies tend to respond best when stressed and then are allowed to heal. The healing process is what makes us perform better in the next cycle.

The three main Macro-cycles are:

• General Fitness Preparation
• Strength and Endurance Development
• Speed Development and Race Preparation

General Fitness Preparation (4-8 weeks)

The objective of this Macro-cycle is to create a performance base. Development is to be more general allowing for a broad range of distances and variety in exercises during this phase. Work should never-the-less be more specific than in the off-season and focus of paddling related activity to build up local muscle endurance ie. the muscle groups which will be used for racing.

a) General Aerobic Conditioning

Work in the boat will focus on low intensity, larger volume exercises such as steady state intensive paddling sessions mixed with longer extensive sessions if training seeks to develop marathon abilities. Work should be comfortable but strong earlier in the cycle but should progress to uncomfortable and fast paddling. The cycle will end with a level of intensity which borders in painful ie. Maximal Aerobic work.

There are two objectives for this Cycle. To improve our the general cardio-vascular potential such as cardiac stroke volume, VO2 max. etc. and to increase capillary density in our paddling muscles. This will provide the staying power for races even as short as 500m.

Alternative sessions to the boat would be running, swimming, kayaking or rowing (boat or ergometer) as long as it’s working to the same level of intensity and duration. Effort should be made to raise anaerobic threshold levels and to achieve maximum aerobic functioning.

b) Base Strength Development

Muscle mass should increase (hypertrophy) and base strength should be developed in the gym for all muscle groups (see section 2.2 for dryland strength development — Hypertrophy Phase). Even a simple routine of push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and dips at home can go a long way in developing a base strength that can contribute to better paddling performance.

A small amount of resistance training in the boat is good at this stage as long as the resistance level is also low eg. dragging a tire or having 1/2 of the boat paddling for 50-60 strokes.

Strength and Endurance Development (2 cycles @ 4 weeks each)

This Cycle seeks to make improvements to paddling strength and specific race endurance. Neuromuscular recruitment is important, so effort both in the boat and during dryland training should be intense striving to ‘feel’ for maximum resistance during a paddle stroke. Speed work should begin in the later stages of the cycle.

The Paddling Programme includes two Strength and Endurance Macro-cycles allowing for a period of transition. The second Cycle starts from a lower level of intensity builds to a higher level much faster that the first Cycle. The purpose for this is achieve a better balance between aerobic and anaerobic conditioning exercises which are taken to greater extremes in the second Cycle.

a) Aerobic/Anaerobic Endurance Training

The range of work should begin with Anaerobic Threshold training and advance to Lactic Tolerance training later in the Cycle. The emphasis is on intense interval sessions at least once a week alternating with intensive steady state paddling on other days in the week. Close attention should be paid to heartrates during activity to ensure that work is targeting the appropriate intensity. This is air-sucking, heart-pounding, rubber-leg kind of work, so don’t expect improvement if your going for an easy jog.

b) Maximal Strength Development

The initial Cycle should accompany the dryland Strength Phase (see section 2.2) and the latter Cycle should correspond to the Maximum Strength Phase of the Dryland Weight Training Programme. The level of resistance in the boat should also be increased during resistance training sessions. Care should be taken to avoid back to back strength training sessions ensuring that proper recovery time is allocated.

Race Preparation (4 weeks)

This is the Cycle where speed becomes the main feature, converting the strength gains which were made in the earlier Cycles to power. Maximal intensities will be stressed with a duration of work which is closer to the actual race. Race rehearsals will be conducted where all of the trained aspects will be put together for a specific target performance. Smoothing out the transitions from utilization of one energy system to the next is the goal in discovering the optimum racing pace.

a) Race Specific Aerobic/Anaerobic Conditioning

Maintenance of aerobic conditioning is important in this Cycle both in the boat and on land. Longer distance steady state paddling sessions will provide recovery activity for extreme lactic tolerance training. Specific endurance for the sprint race distances is the goal to the extent that there may be some decrease in long distance endurance.

Interval training on land should continue to stress improvement to VO2 max. and anaerobic thresholds.

b) Development of Power

Strength work should focus on converting absolute strength to power. Fast contractions and less load should replace maximum loads early in the Cycle (see section 2.2 – Power Phase). Acceleration drills and maximum speed exercises will be carried out in the boat the stress maximum application of power throughout the race distance. Endurance of strength is important and is best to be improved in the boat, paddling.

The Taper

Critical to top performance is tapering down activity to limit damage to muscles and let our bodies recovery for a race event. It does not mean that work stops all together, particularly for sprint races. Generally the density of practices is reduced, but is replaced by extremely high intensity work for short duration to maintain speed. Alactic activity is stressed, limiting extreme work to 15-20 seconds in order to prevent accumulation of toxins. Low volume is also a must to avoid over-stressing central energy stores.

The duration of the Taper Cycle if difficult to determine. Where the density of training high ie. 10 to 12 sessions per week then typically the taper is longer, perhaps 2-3 weeks. For a lower density training of 3-4 sessions per week, the taper probably needs only 1 week.

Combined with proper nutritional preparation, the end result is a performance peak.

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If anyone else has a Mesocycle training programme for their team, I would love to hear about it – simply leave your comments below.

Recently I came across some people who were being invited to attend a dragonboat session on the weekend. When the weekend came around they didn’t turn up. That gave me an incentive to find out why they didn’t come rather than just go, oh well, they had other things on. I think these are the top 5 excuses people make:

1. Time / Priorities – My partner (wife or husband) needed me to home or with them for something
2. Fitness – It looks really hard and I’m not fit to do it.
3. Money – I don’t have enough to be able to afford the dragonboat equipment
4. Friends – I’ll wait until so and so joins and I’ll try it then.
5. Lack of Motivation – I’m too lazy and I can’t see myself rowing. It looks too tiring.

Until their perfect scenerio is met then I doubt any of these people would even try dragonboating. Maybe we could think of ways to counteract these excuses with some other incentives.

I thought that this was a great video that Hydroblades created. It looks like it did take some time to create as it was definitely not a quick video put up in 5 minutes. I give them credit for their work to promote their team.

About Dragon Boat Program
A company called Dragon Boat Program located in Vancouver, USA has a number of courses they run that helps maximise a dragon boat paddler’s potential. There are a series of classes or workshops, clinics, and weekend or weekly camps that run throughout North America. These classes or workshops have been individually tailored so that any paddler wishing to develop their dragon boat skills will be able to do so through a one on one coaching program.

The Dragon Boat Program brings together numerous state and national coaches that will help train novice to elite Dragon Boat Paddlers all in a structured training environment to bring the best knowledge and skills to the program.

They also have programs that are dedicated for corporations and businesses allowing them to do team building sessions and mix in fitness to their busy work lives.

What Programs Are There?
Dragon Boat Program offers numerous tailored programs that is suitable for most dragon boat roles, e.g. paddler, steerer, coach, team manager:

Below are the following different programs currently available:

• Novice Paddler Program
• Intermediate Paddler Program
• Advanced Paddler Program
• Dragon Boat Coaching Program
• Elite Coaching Program
• Novice Race Officiating Program
• Basic Race Officiating Program
• Race Officiating Program
• Steering Certificate Program
• Competitive Drumming & Calling Program
• Festival Management Program
• Fundraising & Sponsorship Program
• Time Trial Program

How Much Does It Cost?

The Dragon Boat Program compared to other courses is at the top end and starts at $600 (before the 1st December 2008) for each individual for a 5 day program. It goes up after that date.

Other similar courses I have heard from other companies cost:

Great White North: $425.00
Double Fifth San Diego: $600.00
Water’s Edge: $750.00

You can visit their website for more information at http://www.dragonboatprogram.com or you can contact them at:

Telephone: 1-971-222-3679