By George Gronseth of Kayak Academy
The hip snap is part of what a kayaker does to keep from falling over in waves and righting the kayak when rolling up after a capsize. A kayaker’s ability to hip snap is a big reason why something as small and tippy as a sea kayak can be so seaworthy even in rough ocean conditions. No other sea-going boat has the hip snap advantage.
A boat is in balance when its center of gravity is directly above its center of buoyancy. When you lose your balance in a kayak, there are two ways to regain it. The intuitive way is to move your upper body, your center of gravity, back over the kayak’s center of buoyancy. In a heeled over sailboat you could do this by sitting on the high side. But in a kayak we have the option to do just the opposite — pull the kayak’s center of buoyancy under our center of gravity. Very counter intuitive, but it works. To do this we use our core and thigh muscles to rock the kayak back under us, and this is what we call “hip snap”.
Watch the skills video here:
A hip snap by itself can help you catch your balance. In fact, with a powerful enough hip snap, it’s possible to roll a kayak up without even using a paddle (a so called hand roll, which gets most of its power from the hip snap—not the hands). More importantly, by combining a hip snap with a bracing stroke of the paddle, you will be able to stabilize your kayak to stay upright in all kinds of amazingly rough conditions. (In later articles I will explain how to combine the hip snap with paddling strokes for a brace, but the rest of this article focuses on the fundamentals of the hip snap itself.) in particular, we are going to work on the type of hip snap used for doing a low brace.
When learning to hip snap, capsizes happen. So in the following exercises, it is assumed you are proficient at getting out of your kayak while upside down (if not, see the article on wet exits and take a safety course that includes wet exit practice.) The better your kayak fits you, the easier it will be to learn the hip snap. At the very least, adjust the foot braces so they help you sit up with good posture with knees bent under the cockpit coaming. If needed, add some padding to the sides of the seat so you don’t flop around loose inside your kayak when it is tilted. Also limber up by doing some warm-up and stretching exercises before practicing hip snaps.
The type of hip snap used for the low brace uses the same body mechanics as when edging a kayak. Edging is used to tilt the kayak without leaning your upper body, and a hip snap is used to rock the kayak back to level after it has been edged. The following exercises will introduce you to the low brace style of hip snap which will also improve your ability to edge your kayak.
Start with good posture while sitting in your kayak. Hold the paddle horizontally against your chest with your elbows down by your sides. Keep the blade on your control hand’s side of the paddle flat (parallel) to the water. Photo 1: Try to keep the paddle and your upper body motionless while bending sideways at the waist to rhythmically rock the kayak from side to side as shown in Photo 2. At first, just strive for a gentle rhythmic rocking motion rather than trying to see how far over you can tip the kayak. If you feel out of balance, it means you are leaning your upper body from side to side to tilt the kayak instead of keeping your upper body still while bending at the waist to rock the kayak. Try to focus your eyes on a tree or something in front of your kayak (not the bow) and keep your head and paddle still. As you bend from side to side, try to feel yourself alternately contracting the muscles on one side of your waist and then the other side. Experiment with faster and slower rocking rhythms until you find the speed the kayak likes to rock at – its natural frequency.
Dial into the kayak’s natural frequency for rocking and start increasing the angles that you heel the kayak from side to side by bending more at the waist. To rock the kayak further, focus on using your knees to alternately lift one side of the kayak and then the other (e.g. lift the knee on the side you are bending toward). Your knees provide the strongest means to transmit the hip snap forces (created by bending at your waist) into the kayak (this is part of the reason why a kayak’s knee braces are critical). Don’t let the term hip snap fool you; it’s the muscles in your core and thighs that do the work, your hips just go along for the ride. It might be helpful to think of it as “thigh snap” rather than hip snap.
Next, see how far you can rock the kayak without losing your balance. You should be able to alternately dip each gunwale (the seam between the deck and hull) into the water and also make evenly spaced waves. If you actually lose your balance, slap the water with flat side of the paddle blade on the side you are falling toward and lift up on that side’s knee to catch your balance. There, you’ve just done a brace to save yourself!
In the above exercise, you are alternately hip snapping from side to side. This was just a practice drill. In actual use when hip snapping for balance and or bracing, you would only hip snap once and only on one side. Once you get the kayak back in balance you stop hip snapping. e.g. to hip snap to the right, contract the muscles on the right side of your waist/core, which would tend to bend your upper body to the right, but instead of leaning over to the right use your right knee to lift the right side of the kayak while your upper body stays motionless. Hip snap uses the inertia of your upper body to rock the kayak back under your center of gravity. For this to work, the hip snap must be done quickly (hence the word SNAP).
Although the hip snap can be extremely effective catching your balance, at first it will feel unnatural to use it when feeling like you’re about to capsize. If you were tipping over to your right, your natural response might be to lean quickly to the left (as in the sailboat example) – that’s the opposite of a hip snap. This natural instinct only works if the boat never tips beyond the angle where it loses its stability, but what good is that to a kayaker? It’s easy for waves and currents to tip a kayak far enough that it loses its stability, and you will fall over unless you catch your balance with a hip snap – bending toward the fall. This is very counter intuitive, but it works. It works even better when you put the hip snap together with a paddle brace, and in my next article we will use the hip snap while doing a low brace.
As an instructor, I am constantly amazed by how quickly students improve their hip snap. Even just a few minutes of practice makes a huge difference, and from day one to day two of a lesson is like night and day. However, the hip snap needs to be reflexive, and since the hip snap does not come naturally to most people, expect to spend some time practicing (over many sessions) to make it become second nature. Furthermore, to keep your skill sharp, make it a habit to practice rocking the kayak with hip snaps at the beginning of each day of kayaking. I still find it useful to practice hip snaps. The more you practice your hip snap, the quicker and more powerful it will be. Making waves while hip snapping is a good exercise to warm up your core muscles before starting to paddle.
Thanks to Kokatat and P & H Sea Kayaks for helping support this project.
George Gronseth is the founder of Kayak Academy and coauthor of Sea Kayaker Deep Trouble. His happy place is paddling on the exposed coasts of North America.