Earlier this week I posted a video showing the similarity between all the forward finishing rolls. I focused there on how floating and getting near the surface was a consistently important part of learning any of the forward recovery rolls.
This post is to demonstrate that the same thing is true of lay back rolls. Floating and getting your body flat with shoulders parallel to the surface is a critical body motion for all lay back rolls. Watch this video and see how it doesn’t matter how I am holding the paddle, or if I am holding a paddle at all, my body does the same thing. I curl up to get close to the surface, I float up with my shoulders flat, rotating the kayak as I go, and then I sweep my body back on to the aft deck.
Here are six different rolls as a montage showing you how similar my body position is:
Click on the image above to see it even larger for greater clarity.
