If you have not yet mastered these skills, or at least made a stab at them, you should attend UKC pool sessions or ask the club officers to organize a training session on the lake at another time. Although the boats and styles of paddling vary greatly, most of these techniques are essentially the same for lake, river or sea kayaking. Before going on a river or sea trip, most of the following techniques should be practiced in the pool or on the lake. You are not required to be perfect in all skills before going on a beginner trip, but solid forward and sweep strokes are important for everyone, and for river trips, some edging and bracing experience will reduce unexpected capsizes and icy swims if you miss your roll. SK-III and above level sea kayak trips also assume that you have at least some bracing skills, to minimize the chance of stupid capsizes in moderate wind waves, eddy lines and possibly tide rips.
This may seem trivial, but it's quite important. Sitting up straight, stretching forward and not slouching on the seat back are crucial for boat control, good body rotation and strong paddling. Power for strokes comes from muscles all over your back and shoulders, not just your arms. If you have trouble maintaining an upright, active posture, stretching your hamstrings is likely to help loosen you up. Rotational stretches such as http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/494, http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/485 and http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/749 are also valuable to increase your range of motion for strokes and rolling.
Sea kayakers may relax back at times for a break or on very slow trips, but if you don't want to be at the back of the group struggling to keep up, you need to sit up and learn to paddle with your whole body. River boaters will need to vary their upper body position constantly for strokes and balance, while independently controlling the boat's position with the lower body.
In all descriptions, the "upper" hand/arm/shoulder is the one farther from the paddle blade that is currently in the water.* All strokes should be done with the paddle blade fully buried in the water, otherwise air will suck down behind the blade and the stroke will be weak. The following brief descriptions should be supplemented with advice during practice from more experienced members of the club. This page is primarily intended as a checklist of skills, to help you determine what you need to practice. If you are not confident that you have mastered each of these skills to the level that you could teach them to a novice, you should ask for more advice and practice based on it.
-Forward To move the boat forward without turning, keep the paddle close to the boat and the stroke short. Twist your back and reach forward with your low shoulder* before planting the paddle. The upper arm should straighten as the paddle enters the water and as soon as the paddle blade is completely buried, the low shoulder should pull back to power the stroke. You should stop pulling and slice the blade out before it passes your hip. Most of the motion should come from rotating your shoulders and back, not from bending your low arm.
-Sweep A sweep stroke turns the boat and gives a little forward drive. To turn the boat effectively, the paddle should reach well out away from the side of the boat during the middle of the stroke. Rotate the low shoulder forward*, drop the blade into the water on edge with the low arm straight and the upper arm slightly bent. Pull the blade in an arc about 2/3 of the way to the stern of the boat, rotating your back and shoulders, keeping the low arm straight and extended out to your side, and keeping the upper arm about as bent as at the start and the upper hand as low as possible without dragging the paddle shaft on the deck. Important: if you let the upper arm straighten or go higher, you will not have a strong turn! Lift the paddle blade straight up out of the water, and swing it back to the bow for another sweep if you need to turn farther.
-Draw For moving the boat directly sideways. Useful for repositioning your boat in an eddy on the river, or for scooting closer alongside another sea kayak. Reach out from the side of the boat with the low hand and as the paddle enters the water, move the upper hand across in front of your face to the low side of the boat. Pull the paddle toward the boat with the low hand to move the boat sideways, then either slice the blade out of the water toward the stern, or "feather" the blade by rotating your wrists back and push the blade edge-first back to its starting position and repeat the draw stroke. The paddle shaft should remain roughly vertical at all times during the stroke and recovery.
A "sculling draw" is also useful for moving sideways continuously with a forward-and-back paddle motion, but is not described here. Ask someone to demonstrate it.
-Reverse Either the forward or sweep strokes can be done backward, to move the boat straight backwards or turn while slowing or reversing. Reverse sweeps or stern rudders can be important, but feeble reverse sweep strokes are typically overused by beginners for all steering purposes. Strive to do your steering primarily with forward sweep strokes unless you intend to slow down or move backward. Paddling straight backwards with reverse strokes is worth practicing, but has a lower priority than most other skills.
Bracing is using the paddle to recover from an off-balance situation and prevent a capsize. Edging means controlling your boat with your hips and legs so it is tilted toward one side or the other. The simplest brace is a slap downward with the paddle blade flat against the water surface, done on the side toward which you are toppling. This will, briefly, provide an opportunity to lift your body back into balance over the boat. At the same time, the low knee should be lifted up to tilt the boat away from the capsize side, and your weight shifted slightly toward the (formerly) high side of the boat, so the boat is now edged stably away from the side on which you were capsizing. The paddle is then recovered from underwater by slicing the blade backward and up, or by "feathering" the blade as described for the Draw stroke and lifting straight up. This method can be used to recover from current or a steep wave hitting the side of your boat unexpectedly, if the capsize is not too rapid.
Once you become able to brace reliably after deliberately tipping yourself far off-balance, you can greatly strengthen your skills by engaging in "boat wrestling" in the pool: ask an assistant to grab the bow of your boat and try to twist you over unexpectedly to either side, then let you brace to recover your balance. A few sessions of this will improve your reaction time so that your braces become really useful in actual capsize situations. And it's a fun game to pass the time in the pool! You can view a video of this drill on the club's Facebook page.
A "sculling brace" can also be done with a forward-and-back motion. Again, ask someone to demonstrate it after you master the simple brace.
Paddling While Edging To prevent a capsize from beginning, current or waves should be anticipated, and the boat edged steadily to one side while taking paddle strokes on both sides as needed. For example, if you are about to leave an eddy in the river so the left side of your boat will be upstream, it is necessary to edge the right side of the boat down continuously, or the current will grab the left edge of the boat and capsize you toward that side. However, you should not lean your head and body too far, or you will be off-balance. Shift your weight slightly to your right, "crunch" your left abdominal muscles to raise your left hip, and press up against deck with your left knee. This will tilt the boat but keep your body upright and in balance. Practice taking forward and sweep strokes on both sides without letting the boat rock back down to a flat position. For sea kayakers, edging the boat toward the wind will help offset the tendency of most boats to turn into the wind, and will also put you in a more stable position if the waves are white-capping or otherwise steep enough to be pushing your boat sideways.
Edging is sometimes called leaning, but usually, you do not want to lean your whole body off-balance when edging. In cases of strong current, large breaking waves, etc, you may actually need to lean your entire body to a position that would be off-balance in the absence of the current or waves, but ideally, you would feel balanced due to the push from the water. Leaning a bit too far and using a steady bracing stroke to compensate is a common tactic, since this is less likely to cause a capsize than edging and leaning too little.
It's usually better to edge/lean your boat toward things that scare you, like waves, holes and rocks, which will probably seem counter-intuitive.
Switching rapidly from one type of stroke to another or interrupting a right-left-right pattern is the first challenge for the beginner. Recognizing that the boat is, say, turning to the right, and doing a right sweep instead of a forward stroke will be essential to avoid veering off course, particularly in a fast-turning ww boat. For sea kayakers, in a cross-wind most boats will turn toward the wind, so repeatedly alternating a light forward stroke on the downwind side and a strong sweep stroke on the upwind side will keep the boat moving forward at a decent pace on a straight course (combine this with edging into the wind as described above). If the wind becomes stronger, it might be necessary to do only sweep stokes on one side. Similarly, although a whitewater boat in calm water can be turned 360° with one sweep stroke, in waves and current on the river, the ends of the boat may catch in the water and require more than one sweep on one side, for example, to turn fully toward an eddy along shore that the boater wants to reach to get out of the current. If the paddler slavishly paddles right-left-right-left instead of doing two or three sweeps in a row on one side while skipping strokes on the other side, the boat will travel too far downstream and over-shoot the eddy. Beginners can often be seen making this error. Don't be one of them!
For whitewater boaters, rolling skills are crucial, since even minor errors in boat handling can start you toward a capsize and you can't expect to brace successfully every time. Swimming every time you capsize would be like having all your gear fly off and slide to the bottom of the hill each time you fell when skiing: not fun, and not safe in some places. In addition, surfing and other river play pretty much requires a disregard for whether or not you capsize, so you'll want to learn to roll reliably ASAP so you can get on with some serious goofing off.
For sea kayakers, rolling is a much lower priority. Most club sea kayaks roll fairly easily (except for the double and a couple of the wider singles), although those with sliding rudder pedals lack adequate foot support and require modified technique if the rudder is not locked in the raised position. In principle, being able to roll is great. However, even if they do learn in the pool, few sea kayakers practice rolling often enough to remain reliable in the case of a surprise capsize, unless they also engage in river or surf kayaking. Accidental capsizes are very rare under typical conditions of club trips or lake paddling, and most of those that do occur could be prevented easily with a modestly skilled brace. Learning to brace fairly well is much easier than learning to roll reliably, and you can practice a few braces any time you are in a boat without (hopefully) even getting your hair wet, so there should be less resistance to staying in practice (throwing a few quick braces just before you land each time is a very good habit). Therefore, sea kayakers' time is better spent in the pool practicing bracing and boat wrestling, and simply doing a lot of paddling on the lake under progressively more breezy conditions, which will improve your balance and also groove your strokes to prevent "dork strokes," which seem to cause at least as many accidental capsizes as anything else.
There are many different possible ways to roll, all of which are very laborious to describe in print. Learning to roll from a written description is close to impossible anyway, so if you are interested, just ask at the pool session!
Visual aids for most of these skill, demonstrated in sea kayaks but applicable to all boats, can be found here. You should get first-hand instruction and feedback from other club members, but these pictures can be used for initial orientation or review. There are a few debatable points and hilarious errors, like the forward stroke Flash lesson that stresses "blade fully submerged" yet shows the blade only partially submerged.
*The "upper" shoulder will not usually be higher than the "lower" shoulder, this just indicates which side of the body is meant, relative to the paddle blade in use