Posts in Tag

motivation

I recently read a nutrition blog post where the author answered a series of questions about her nutrition and wellness routine. It inspired me to think about my own answers to the same type of questions relating to my own fitness and workout routine, so I thought I’d share them with you. 1. What’s your favorite workout? Outside of paddling? Well, I’m a water-lover by nature, so I love to swim. Not only is it a whole-body workout, it’s also great cardio AND it correlates well with our sport. I

Let’s talk about confidence. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately and so I decided to look into the relationship between confidence and performance. Why? Because I am frequently doubting my own abilities and I am always intrigued by other paddlers I see who seem to be incredibly confident. I really began to wonder not only how this affected my abilities, but also how I could get some of that self-assuredness. I truly hesitated publishing this post. In fact, I’ve been stewing on it for over a month. Examining

With all the Olympic events a few weeks ago, it got me thinking about success and how it is defined. Sure, we talk about gold, silver and bronze medals and the athletes who win them, but is a medal the ultimate symbol of success? Does a gold medal mean that you had more success than the silver medalist? Does simply being on the podium suggest that you are more of a champion? Success in Racing Consider the various regattas your team has entered. At some, there is little to no

Teams vary from highly competitive at one end of the spectrum to all-inclusive at the other end, with everything in between. Finding the right team for you is often a difficult process. Some paddlers find themselves wanting more of a competitive challenge, yet the club they belong to has more of a social focus. Other paddlers want to be on the race crew more often, yet their skill set isn’t developed enough and so they find themselves as a “spare” quite frequently. Some paddlers truly believe that they want to

  This was my first full year training in a location that actually has seasons and, therefore, a true training cycle. I’m sure that sounds funny to most of you, but I began my paddling career in Miami. It’s a place where there are essentially two seasons: “really hot” and “even hotter”. There, we spent the whole year on the water and never thought twice about it. Now that I am living in a city with actual seasons which limit our on-water time, I see how beneficial it is to

Recently, my team held time trials on an OC 2. We had to paddle 200 meters as fast as possible while someone else steered the 2-man outrigger canoe. 200 meters sounds like a short distance, but when you are pulling someone else’s weight, it feels more like a 2k. (Read more about OC time trials in a previous post) I stayed at the site after my own trial to cheer on my teammates and to catch up with them, as I’d been out of town for a while. While watching Jen, one of my teammates who

A few weeks ago, I steered a race for my Florida-based team. It was a beautiful race venue, but that particular weekend there were several conditions which proved to make the steering challenging; the ever-changing winds, the tippy 10-man boats, and strong currents all played a factor in making the races more interesting, especially from a steer’s perspective. No one was immune to these elements and yes, there were a few incidents throughout the weekend. Steering mishaps during a race are indeed a steer’s worst nightmare. What inspired me to write this blog post was

I have been pondering motivation quite a bit lately and contemplating its effect on us as paddlers. Some days I feel like I am much more motivated than other days in the gym, paddle pool, or even out on the water. Each of my teammates seems to have a different level of motivation as well, but more importantly it appears that each has a different source for his or her motivation. So, I started wondering: what exactly is motivation? And what motivates us? In basic terms, motivation is the desire to do things, and in