Play the River
The Play the River course is all about playing: Get on the river with your Riverrunner and give it your all! Here you'll learn how to play your way down the river with tricks and style. Targeted drills will help you improve your technique, get your tail under water and keep your boat tip in the air! In addition to the different variations of undercutting, we will explain and practice rock splats, rock spins, pirouettes and many other riverrunning techniques in detail.
Individual and exclusive care
In order to offer you the greatest possible learning success in this course, we will take a maximum of 4 participants per kayak instructor. This ensures that there is enough time to address all topics and questions and to work with video analysis during the course again and again.
To join the Play the River course you should already have a good general technique(F2 level or higher) and a roll rate - even in unfavorable conditions - of at least 80%.
This course opens up new, playful possibilities!
Kayak course information
- Explanation of the main terms and material
- Tips for fitting your kayak and finding the ideal seating position
- Fundamentals of flow theory
- Torque on the boat "hold" and learn to use it in the various moves
- Steering kayak by weight shift and upper body rotation
- Use the current: edge correctly and build up pressure on the paddle blade!
- Different variants of undercutting
- Rocksplats and Rockspins
- Candles and pirouettes
- Backdeck Roll and much more.
- Dynamic sweeping with dry tip and dry tail
- Hold" torque on the boat over several changes of direction
- Undercutting when entering the flow
- Undercutting when entering the sweep water
- Putting the kayak on the stern when crossing waves
- Candles in rollers and small steps
- Keeping the kayak on the stern and on the tip for a long time by shifting weight
- Implement Rocksplat from the drive and from dynamic undercutting.
- Wavewheels and kickflips over waves and shoulders and much more.
We offer this course in North and South Tyrol and on the Soča River.
- Merano (Slalom Canal and Passer)
- Sterzing (Eisack)
- Innsbruck (e.g. Inn River, Imster Gorge)
- Soča
To participate in the Play the River course, you must have
- can swim.
- be in good general health.
- ride safely class III whitewater (e.g. Lower Ötz, abseil section of the Soča, Brandenberger Ache: Wiesklamm, Loisach).
- master the Whitewater Roll (at least 80% rewind rate).
- be at least 14 years old (we offer special youth courses).
- bring a Riverrunner kayak. If you don't have one (yet), we can lend you one.
- Discover the fun of river running and learn as many moves as possible
- Improve boat feel and control over maneuvers
- Recognize own "problem areas" through video analysis and feedback from the trainers
- Define individual exercises that will help you personally and which you can perform at any time after the course
- Implement playful driving in white water
