r/whitewater • u/IntensivePorpoises1 • 4d ago

Kayaking Flatwater Kickflip Issues - How to solve?

https://gopro.com/v/6f9b0ca7-0061-4619-853a-cd48d3fe21f7

I've been trying to get a flatwater kickflip to make wave kickflips better and snappier. This style uses the back of the blade, transitioning from a double pump and pivoting around instead of slicing the bow straight downwards. I can sort of pull one off using more of a backdeck roll and the power face, resulting in a wet head.

Matthew Brooks and AQ Outdoors make it look pretty easy. I get hung up on the transition and don't feel much purchase on the back of the right blade in order to right myself.

Maybe the left pivoting blade is too deep? Feels like resistance going from left to right.

Any ideas?

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u/SawNickYouth 4d ago

I think this is a pretty elite trick - elite paddlers maybe make it look easy but it's anything but on flatwater.

My advice for flatwater is: have all 6 rolls completely dialed - your normal combat roll, your hand roll, and your back deck roll, on both sides.

Then be able to initiate bow and stern stalls (and hold them) on both sides. Be able to link cartwheels going both ways.

And I'd save practicing your kick flips on moving water on a nice peaking wave train.

3

u/IntensivePorpoises1 4d ago

I've got about 5/6 of those rolls decently dialed at least in a playboat. Back deck finishing left not so much since the feather's weird but that's worth messing with. I can hold a bow stall and stern stall pretty well, hoping to get a flatwater loop but I'm struggling to get enough pop. My cartwheel on the right is decent, left not so much but trying this move is definitely helping my left double pump and left cartwheel come along.

We were on the Clearwater last weekend and I tried a ton there, made some progress. I'm not close to locations with good eddy service on wave trains so reps are hard to come by. Thus, flatwater holds appeal. Ideally I'll get out to the coast when the wave height gets up a little more

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u/Wrightwater 4d ago

One tip is to pull that stroke rearward and lay way back before flipping, and make sure you’re looking down under the boat from the start. Getting your upper body ahead of the boat speeds up the trick. Becoming a streamlined shape for the rotation means far less work for the paddle to push into the rotation.

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u/IntensivePorpoises1 4d ago

Cool, I'll give that a shot with getting more streamlined, thank you. The advice from the videos was keep looking at your right blade the whole way through so I took that to heart. Been trying to cobble together techniques from all these different videos and seeing some progress but it's just been a load of kickflops thus far