In a 2 weeks time I’ll be heading out to join the Swedish Freestyle Team for the final build up to the European Championships, Austria, Lienz – Volcanic ash allowing! Sweetwater has been working with Erik  Westberg their team manger to further enhance their national team training to better support Sweden’s growing freestyle talent in achieving European and world titles.

Link to event website: http://www.euro-lienz.com/

The Speed Loader takes the hassle out of repacking the rope after use. The bag throws easily and accurately and is bright green for high visibility. So what makes the Speed Loader work better than other bags? The bottom of the bag is flat so that it will sit upright on a near by rock or river bank and the top opens super wide making it fast and easy to stuff the rope back into the bag. After stuffing the rope back into the bag simply draw the top string tight, tuck the sides in and snap together. Its simple, easy and most importantly it works.

Features/Benefits:

• Bag Material: polyurethane coated nylon pack cloth
• Mesh side vents: allow water to slip thru and speeds up drying
• Attachment webbing: 3/4 ” nylon keeps the Speedloader tight and compact
• Rope: Polypropylene sheath adds buoyancy and protects the high strength inner core.
• Length: 15m
• Color: Bright green for high visibility

For more information click here: System X

Sweetwater Coaching will be spending some time out in Are, Sweden this summer on the boarder of Norway where we have been invited to a white water coaching festival. We will be providing white water clinics for (class 3-5) river running and steep creeking. After this we will be joining more of our friends on the Nordic tour exploring the rivers in the northern terrorist.

Recently, I have been working closely with Adrian samarrato develop the first of its kind (free access) interactive learning resource for both paddlers and coaches. The website aims to develop paddlers skills and give up to date advice on many aspects of paddle sport from developing those tricky freestyle moves to planning an epic white water expeditions. The site has three sections. Freestyle skills, river skills and top tips. There is currently one article in each section with the aim to release new articles on a regular basis. This is an on goning project and we would greatly receive some feedback.

Here is a link to the site. skills.sweetwatercoaching.co.uk

I was down at Nottingham white water course this weekend to assist the athletes in developing their competition routines and provide video analysis sessions. Preparations for the 2010 Europeans are going well. The event takes place in June.  I’ll be present at the event and will providing regular blog updates on how the event is unfolding.

I was down at Nottingham white-water course today freestyle coaching. Claire O’hara dropped in for her fortnightly training session. We had great session and all’s  on track to achieve our goals for this year.

The aim of these drop-in sessions is to support or assist competition or recreational paddlers in overcoming hurdles in their performance or to keep their training fresh and energised. These sessions are available via email request, at no less than 3 days notice.

Hi All,

It’s been a busy couple of months here at Sweetwater with 4  star white-water courses proving ever popular. The star awards are a great opportunity to those who want to guide on white water, whether that be to do some seasonal work as a river guide or to assist your local canoe club in running  more white water trips.  Here’s a snap shot from our most recent 4 star course.

Sweetwater has been working on developing an on-line learning resource for freestyle and river running for sometime now and I’m happy to announce that phase 1 of creating the content is now finished and phase 2 is in progress . Over the next week we’ll be uploading the feature onto our website for a test run. If all runs well we’ll start the process of populating the skills section with further content. Our Target is to release a minimum of 1 manoeuvre a week…more updates to follow

This is a free resource for the paddler community and we would greatly appreciate any comments or requests  you have. There is a lot of background work going on with the website at the moment and it’s all part of the bigger picture for our service. See you on the river.

Although the paddling season has been disrupted with the snow fall this winter we have managed to maximise our time on the rivers - when the weather smiles in our favour! Here are a few snaps taken on a 5 Star Whitewater assessment in Exmoor on the East Lyn river. Well done all, it was a great day.