Guest blog provided by Andrew Milner

For those who haven't read it, the book is a collection of thoughts of his that just seems to come bubbling up and have been written in some sense of order. I found that a lot of what was said really clicked with me in how I would like to approach Dragon Boat, so one day I sat down and decided to transcribe some of the quotes that stuck out to me so that I could use them in paddling and coaching.

Since the beginning of the season is the best time to really break down technique for the year, I've been thinking about what separates great paddlers from average ones, and one of the things I always determine is “coordination”. So for now I'll present some quotes from that section of the book that really strike a cord with me.

The outstanding characteristic of the expert athlete is his ease of movement, even during maximal effort”

This quote always stands out most in my mind, because of the simplicity of it. If you look at slow motion of Usain Bolt (kinda have to, he's too damn fast!) or any high level sprinter, you always see just how relaxed they look while putting down those insanely fast times. The same thing happens with really good paddlers, while there is no doubt they are going hard, you should notice how smooth and fluid each of their motions is. It is to this state that I always try to get an athlete to.

Before movements can take place, there must be a change in the muscular tension on both sides of the joint to be moved. Any excessive tension in the lengthening muscles acts as a brake and thereby slows and weakens the acting. Such antagonistic tension increases the energy cost of muscular work, resulting in early fatigue. Thus, the fatigue experienced in new activities is not just from using different muscles but is also due to the braking caused by improper coordination”

“The novice is characterized by his tenseness, wasted motion and extra effort”

We have all seen some just starting out in our sport, and almost to a person they fit with this quote. This is something that I can’t emphasize enough; to pull harder by tensing up all over isn't doing any good to your end result. You are just going to make yourself more tired than what you are getting out of it. By feeling loose, you allow yourself to apply all your energy to exerting force on the water.

The ease of movement is the ability to perform with minimal antagonistic tension”

Learning coordination is a matter of training the nervous systems, not training muscles” People talk about “muscle memory”, but you must remember, muscle doesn’t have memory, they are basically pistons, they move things in one way or the other with force. The mind is what gets you to the point of having that coordination and this must always be emphasized before and during a workout. Workout your mind as much as your body, every practice, to best achieve that smooth coordination that is indicative of the well tuned athlete.

Here is a final quote that sums up my thoughts on coordination: “Coordination is by all means one of THE most important considerations in the study of proficiency in sports and athletics. Coordination is the quality which enables the individual to integrate all the powers and capacities of his whole organism into the doing of an act”

The year was 1992. The Blue Jays were on their way to Canada’s First World Series Championship, The Leafs were about to enter the Doug Gilmour era and Canada was in a recession. Makes you wish the Blue Jays would give us something to cheer about, doesn’t it?

In 1992 I was being introduced to the new sport of flatwater kayaking. I went down to the club and struggled (read: swam) my way through my first summer and my coaches were a few young guys from North Bay. Scott Madill was the head coach and he gave me my first technical coaching in this sport.

I remember one session in particular, it was late fall and I was among only a few paddlers still braving the elements. Scott paddled alongside me for most of the workout; having me do several different drills (as is his signature) along the way and at the end he took the time to tell me that I have real potential in this sport and if I stick with it good things will happen.To this day I can still remember the excitement in telling my parents that the head coach thought I had potential and one-day would have great success.

This is just one of literally one million stories of Scott’s ability to ‘fire-up’ his athletes. I don’t mean ‘fire-up’ in the sense of a canned pre-game speech, what I mean is an ability to communicate a true passion and love for the sport of paddling. There are many ways to tell when someone is speaking about a topic they truly are passionate about - with Scott that’s paddling. He can rattle off historical origins, quirky facts, significant individual achievements and most importantly share embarrassing personal anecdotes of prominent athletes, or even better, hilarious impersonations.

He is the most nervous and rambunctious spectator I’ve ever tried to watch a race with, he can be as satirical and jaded as anyone I’ve had a meeting with, he can look at and read a newspaper while also conducting a meeting and he is absolutely and positively the source of the most current gossip.

But the thing I admire, respect and try to emulate most of all about Scott is his true and innate passion for his task. That task being to share his passion for paddling with others and/or to care about the experience of his students, whether those students are in his classroom or his boat.

I can still remember the excitement of that fall paddle and the motivation it filled me with. Its no wonder hundreds more paddling through the Sir Oliver Mowat Dragon Boat Program have experienced something similar.

I wonder if Scott Madill knew what he was creating when he wrote the recipe?

Scott Madill is an english teacher. He is also the driving force of the Sir Oliver Mowat high school dragon boat program which operates out of Scarborough, Ontario. I spoke to him a few days ago about the possibility of having 7 crews from Mowat attend this year’s Ontario Championships.

In one of my favourite sports books entitled ‘Moneyball,’ there is significant time spent referring to University of California, San Diego, the college Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane attended – referring to it as a baseball factory. Any acclaimed baseball or football ‘factory’ in the US College system is a result of major marketing, heavy recruiting and most importantly brinks trucks of money. The athlete factory featured in this blog is only comparable to those in one facet … success!

Mowat's dragon boat program is simply the most successful sports enterprise I have witnessed in the past 2 decades!

A couple facts:

- Sir Oliver Mowat is the only school to have ever won the Ontario High School Dragon Boat Championships (OHDBC’s) … 5 consectutive years

- Sir Oliver Mowat finished an unprecedented 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th (all 4 championship finals lanes) at the 2008 OHDBC’s

- More athletes on the Canadian National Junior Dragon Boat Team (since 2002) have originated from Mowat than the rest of Canada combined

I believe this success is directly attributable to the creation of a positive culture emanating from a single source; coach, founder and inspirational leader Scott Madill.

Having been the race organizer of high school dragon boat for several years the one major difference I find between Mowat and the also-rans is STATUS. Status is critical to the life of every high school student and at Mowat you gain athletic and social status in dragon boat, while at most other schools you gain such status on the football, hockey or girls cheerleading teams. This desire for the status to be on the dragon boat team creates internal-competition within the dragon boat program and ensures individuals in it maximize their potential, thus creating a nice mixture of recruiting athletic potential and creating athletes from raw material.

As mentioned earlier, I feel the culture emanates from one individual, Madill. His infectious personality, funny delivery, uncanny ability to relate with every kid in the classroom and boat, and pure passion for individual development. I believe these qualities come to Madill naturally, I also believe these qualities are the core values or culture represented by Mowat dragon boat. Part by design and part by osmosis the athletes witness and adopt these traits and create an environment that is welcoming, fun and demands success. Surely this is the culture of a club we would all want to be a part of, gaining athletic status, social status, international dragon boat opportunities and an abundance of learning!

Mowat is not simply a dragon boat factory but also an athlete factory. Congratulations Mowat and congratulations Madill!

More on Madill, my first flatwater coach in future blogs

Who's the best coach you've ever had? If you’re into sports, you’ve probably heard this question. I've satisfied that question in my mind: the answer of course is Mr. Stein.

Mr. Brett Stein was my Juvenile Men’s War Canoe coach in 1995 and 1996. We won a silver medal in 1995 and a gold medal in 1996. Winning is definitely a big reason I associate Mr. Stein as my best coach ever but that’s a far too simplistic reason to identify him as such 12 years later.

I met Mr. Stein in the weight training room where 10 strangers (who would soon become close friends) and I were assembled as a training group. My first exchange with him went something like:

Stein (imposing): 'Are you going to be in my war canoe next year?'

Me (sheepish): 'yes'

Stein: 'okay – then you can stay.'

I can honestly say that within my first two weeks of being in this training group, I came to hate him; but less than 24 months later I admired him as the best coach ever, and a mentor.

In a single word PREPARATION is the reason I associate Stein as the best coach I ever had. Never before, and not since, have I been coached by someone who knew (or at least played a really good game at knowing) everything that was going to happen before it did.

Going back to the weight room, I remember walking home with a thick ‘booklet’ of workouts we would complete over the course of the semester. I’m talking a heavy book – seemingly a hundred pages deep each with a series of different styles and varieties of weight training workouts. The entire year was mapped out in that booklet; the pages told me which specific workout we’d be doing on any given day. We all dreaded that book; but despite our fear of it, the book said something to each of us: Do This and You Will Win. And Win we did!

For those two years on his team, Mr. Stein was always the first at practice and the last to leave, he knew the phone numbers of every athlete, and he wasn’t afraid to use them (especially when an athlete missed a practice unannounced), and he had a very clear map that he wanted us all to follow. By map I mean a clearly setout plan for each and every day of the process that in his estimation would result in our best possible performance at the right time. It is interesting to note that the only race we won in 1996 was the Canadian Championships.

Years later, and a silver and gold medal in between, I earned the position as coach for the RBC Dragon Boat team in Toronto. Not surprisingly my first call for help was to Mr. Stein. He helped provide a well-organized season plan, and offered some of his anecdotes from his years as head coach of the same RBC crew.

 A few years later RBC won the Bankers Cup at the Toronto International Festival with me as their coach. It was the first time they had won the cup since they were coached by Mr. Stein.

More on coaches I have modeled my coaching ‘style’ after in upcoming blogs.

Brett Stein and I now play ‘competitive’ hockey every Friday after work. We are the two goalies so we are pitted against each other in every game. We keep track of wins and losses with a marker on the dressing room wall.

I fell in love with the sport of dragon boat racing in 1996 – even though I never got into a boat until 1997. Having followed the Canadian team play in the World Junior Hockey Championships recently, gave me a shot of adrenaline, it reignited the sporting enthusiasm within, it served as the tonic, the ideal elixir, the perfect aphrodisiac for a Canadian dragon boat coach.

That’s right, I said dragon boat coach! What stands out most to me about the World Junior Hockey Championships, is the overwhelming sense of camaraderie, togetherness and accomplishment Canadians derive from rooting for a team of young athletes. Canadians really do savour this opportunity to unite in common purpose through athletic achievement.

As a Canadian and a dragon boat coach, the final game highlighted both the preeminent reason we enjoy the great sport of dragon boat racing, and where my eternal passion for this sport began. In the summer of 1996, I was 18 years-old, the same age as sniper John Tavares, the on-ice leader of our heroic Canadian junior team. A mediocre flatwater kayaker on the local club circuit (think Adam Vankoeverden … but a whole lot slower) I had an overwhelming single-mindedness – to accomplish only one thing – win Canadian Championships … in Juvenile Men’s War Canoe.

My entire training regimen that year was designed to accomplish my goal, and never in my entire athletic career had I been more committed. I think it was at that time that I began to realize, it was the journey, the process; that meant more than the result. The personal growth, the discipline of mind and body, and beginning to understand the complexities of sport were the things I truly gained from the experience. The National Championship and my pursuit for the elusive gold medal certainly became an important ingredient for the impression branded in me in the summer of 1996: it sparked a serious emotional connection to this sport and left an indelible passion in me for team watersport; enter dragon boat racing. It’s these experiences that I had as an 18-year-old that I was reminded of in last Monday’s Canadian win.

Of course, all of this brings me to the obvious connection to dragon boat racing: the importance of camaraderie, togetherness and collective accomplishment. It is these attributes that we gain from dragon boat racing that in my eyes make it the perfect sport to coach.

The journey can be made so valuable because the sport is so intrinsically tied to the importance of camaraderie, togetherness and collective accomplishment – three things that the World Junior Hockey Championships inspire in Canadians every year. So that’s how my love and passion for dragon boat racing began: the mentality of a hockey player put into a competitive war canoe crew competing on a National level. 

More on my coaches, my teammates and my introduction to dragon boat in upcoming blogs.