Freestyle Kayaking??

 

Not many people know, that it was in South Africa where some of the best white water kayakers were born. In the United States of America, New Zealand and Europe, the sport has boomed, largely due to a greater participating population.

Steve Fisher, a South African Canoe Marathon legend, went on to become, and still is, an inspiration for the sport of kayaking as a whole, along side South Africa’s ‘Corran Addison’, who started Riot Kayaks, now based in the USA. Together they, through pioneering experimentation and development, developed the sport, and were apart of the few core who developed freestyle kayaking to where it is today.

Freestyle kayaking directly and indirectly draws its disciplines from a variety of related and unrelated sports and activities. Canoeing and kayaking have the majority of influence, whereby basic techniques are used to propel oneself over water using a paddle and flotational device such as a canoe or rowing boat. These facets have developed and professionalized over the years into what we see today, canoe marathons, Oxford /Cambridge Rowing etc.

Gymnastics on the other hand can be seen as an obscure but very important relation to Freestyle Kayaking. Freestyle Kayaking involves a heap of flexibility, creativity, dexterity and precision in performing seemingly impossible, amazingly breathtaking aerial movements on the water such as loops, air Screws, cartwheels, helixes, blunts, tricky woos, phoenix monkeys’ to name but a few. An amazing notion to realize is that the risks involved are minimal, as water is always a wonderfully soft landing cushion!

The framework for learning these incredibly fulfilling, creative skills, lies within a learning environment where necessities such as fitness, discipline and commitment, all perceived as ‘hardships’, merely melt away and are no longer seen any more as barriers to developing, because the excitement of an ever changing environment catapults one into an adrenaline fuelled consciousness, leading to endless synchronization in decision making, fuelling an ever increasing confidence and a yearning for more and more fun!

The spinoffs from this amazingly radical creative art are endless…

Water is global, water is everywhere. Some of the best whitewater kayaking spots have yet to be discovered. The sport is new, and so too are the expeditions…