Training for Dragon Boat
Active Living Physiotherapy and Fitness Club is one of the 63 teams already signed up for the 2017 Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival taking place this June. We are new to the race scene this year and the majority of us have never participated before. With limited "in-boat" practise time, I took it upon myself to look up a specific training program that targets the major muscle groups involved in producing a powerful stroke to improve our overall dragon boat performance!
Anyone who has participated in a dragon boat race would agree that there is a tremendous amount of upper body strength involved in putting out a powerful stroke. The article listed below explains the importance of breaking down the training program into a "Pull Phase" and a "Catch Phase". The Pull Phase focuses on strengthening the muscle groups in the back while the Catch Phase focuses on building up enough strength to grab as much water as possible with the blade of the dragon boat paddle. Strengthening all upper body muscle groups by using the variety of free weight, and body weight exercises listed in this article will carryover to have a positive effect on performance. As a team, we can each individually work on increasing our own upper body strength to achieve maximum strength for race day!