Monday, 11 July 2016

Facing Failure

Over this session of Keeners, I have learnt to flatwater cartwheel, flat water loop, off side bow stall and to blunt both directions. As those are only a few of the successes I’ve had, it has taken me through a hardship of failure to achieve this success. For example, a rough estimate of time for how long it took me to bow stall would’ve consisted of over 20 hours of practise. During these hours of practise I would be failing, falling on face, getting water in my ears, up my nose and disorienting myself under the water. Dealing with so much failure just to get one thing right can be mentally and physically exhausting to do over and over again. However doing so becomes important as it builds our resilience, both mentally and physically, as we push through failure to achieve success. Failure can happen anywhere, whether it’s learning something new on the river, speech night, knot tying or during our social time with other Keeners. Being able to face failure is something that requires you to be able to learn from it and try again as while kayaking, there’s always potential for many things to go wrong. At Keeners, we live in an environment where failure is everywhere (besides the Keeners and Coaches ;) ), allowing us the opportunity to develop our resilience to failure which will become a very important and useful skill in each keener here. This is one of the many reasons why Keeners isn’t just about kayaking, it’s also about self improvement whether it’s off the water or on.

By Max C

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