Facing Discouragement
In the White water kayaking being discouraged or disappointed of yourself is can be very common especially in freestyle kayaking. Now and then you can see people getting flustered when they keep messing up. Everyone sees videos of the extremely good professional kayakers throwing tricks in holes and waves like nothing. Then we start expecting that level of performance from ourselves because it looks so easy. This can be a positive influence but then again it can easily turn into a negative impact on our attitude while kayaking.
As I been here at Keeners I have had a lot of time to observe our coaches and fellow Keeners. One thing a coach told me was some of the tricks they do took them years to learn.. Another thing is that I noticed was that they even mess tricks once in awhile and there always improving just at a higher level of performance. Instead of doing what Stephan calls the unhappy baby face when we keep messing up we should just get back in there and keep trying.
So what I am trying to say is videos we see as kayakers on social media tend to only show something going perfectly and we shouldn’t expect someone else's performance level out of ourselves yet. It just takes practice and a lot of time because everyone progresses at a different rate.
Frank Johnson
Well said. Paddle On!
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