Have you been dialing in new skills only to watch them fall apart when things get spicy?
Maybe your roll works great… until you get in the current.
Maybe the moves you’ve been practicing fall apart on a new or harder river.
Maybe skills that use to feel easy, now feel challenging.
You’re not alone.
And you’re not failing.
You’ve just been focusing on the wrong thing.
We typically address the symptoms — the visible stuff that’s easy to identify — instead of the root cause hiding underneath. Until… the surfaces fixes no longer work, and our weak foundation eventually cracks.
I’ve seen it in my students for over two decades, and I’ve been living it myself the last 7 months healing my back.
Here are some examples…
Stop lifting your head!
It’s the most common cue I hear in pool sessions and on the river, when someone is diagnosing the roll.
When you tell someone to stop lifting their head, you’re not actually helping them.
Yes… their head is coming up.
But telling someone to stop lifting it is like telling someone you’re leading down a rapid to ‘just follow
me.’
Not helpful. Not effective. Not addressing the root cause or building a strong foundation of skill.
Lifting your head isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom of holding too much tension in your opposite hip.
If you’re rolling on the right and lifting your head, chances are your left hip is clenching for dear life. And that tension is almost always driven by something deeper:
👉 Fear. Discomfort. Not feeling safe underwater.
Once we address that (the root) — not the head, but the fear – everything changes.
I’ve seen paddlers who spent decades muscling through rolls suddenly discover ease and consistency when they finally explored the root cause: an old fear they had been outrunning for years.
The deal is, it takes vulnerability and courage to look at, and address the root. That’s why people try to outrun their fear for years – because it’s uncomfortable and hard to face.
My Own Humbling Lesson in Weak Foundations
I’ve been a yoga teacher for a few decades now, and in my mind, I was taking good care of my body and my back. I even prided myself on teaching others how to care for their bodies on and off the water.
After I pushed myself over the edge into debilitating pain due to a herniated disc, and went to a new PT, she promptly informed me that I hadn’t been engaging my core effectively for the last 50 years.
That was VERY tough to hear.
I had layered the yoga and self-care practices on top of a weak core, and my foundation cracked. It cracked so bad, that I couldn’t sit at all for 2 months, spent days lying on the floor, and took me out of paddling for 6 months.
I had to start over, and learn how to engage my core effectively. It was slow and took a lot of patience and commitment.
At times it was excruciating, and felt like nothing was changing.
Now that I’m getting back to kayaking (yay!), I feel stronger and freer in my body because I did the challenging work of addressing the root cause.
So How Do You Actually Get to the Root?
This may also be hard to hear, but it’s also an important truth to face. You can’t do it alone.
It took me going to a new PT to uncover the blind spot I had for core engagement. We all have blind spots, and it often takes someone else, someone with a new perspective to help us see what we can’t see on our own, because we’ve been masking it with ego and surface level fixes.
I’ve been doing a lot of video review sessions recently for folks working on their rolls in the pool, and each session, my clients are blown away by my assessment. They rarely see the root cause of their struggling roll themselves. Having me come in with a new perspective, and with the experience of decades of diagnosing rolls, gives them a quicker and more direct path to success.
We all have blind spots — especially in the moves we do every day.
Sometimes the root is so close to you, you can’t see it.
Here’s what your ego tells you though:
‘I’ve already got it figured out.’
‘I should be able to figure this out by myself.’
‘It’s not worth investing in someone else telling me something I already know.’
And so on… There are many ways your brain will convince you that you don’t need help, or nothing will help except practice. But if you keep practicing the same mistakes or inefficiencies (in body and in mind) over and over, then nothing will change, ever.
The way to get to the root is to be humble and vulnerable. Face the fact that there’s something missing and you don’t know what it is. Be courageous, and invite a new perspective in. Preferably, the perspective of someone who you trust, and who brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the situation.
If You Want Support Doing This Work
If you’re ready to invite a new perspective then I recommend registering for Mental Agility Mastery 8 Week Course coming up in January. CLICK HERE to learn more and register.
Want help nailing your roll? EMAIL ME to learn about video review sessions.
