After Paddling with a Dragon

The inaugural dragon boating workshop for the KL Bar lawyers was carried out on 18 June 2011. It has been something I have been thinking about for a long while now - to introduce dragon boating to more people. I am comfortable enough with my basic knowledge of dragon boating to hold an introductory session and the sport of dragon boating just fits in so well within a corporate culture. A group of individuals coming together to work as a team and to build camaraderie.

Elements of my workshop included a slideshow presentation to explain the bigger context of dragon boating. The history and culture, the international sporting scene and the different aspects of dragon boating.

The first thing that needs to be mastered by any paddler is to have basic paddling technique down first. One has to master the dragon boating stroke before thinking about anything else.

I couldn't ask for a more enthusiastic bunch of new paddlers. All of them were very keen on picking up dragon boating and I was very proud of them as I could see them applying everything that they were learning. 

There are several obstacles to immediately picking up dragon boating. The first difficulty is obtaining equipment. In KL, the only readily available facility is all the way in Putrajaya where you can rent dragon boats, paddles and equipment, and it is not that well publicised and not that cheap. Next, you need at least some basic coaching and there are no coaches available. You need to be inside the scene, which is still heavily dominated by inter-government sport clubs. You will also need an experienced steersperson to steer at the back of the boat since it is very difficult to just have an absolute beginner pick up steering.

My aim with this workshop and with further workshops and training sessions for the KL Bar is to try to lower all these obstacles and hurdles. I have trained up other colleagues who are now experienced in steering and they very kindly agree to help steer at the KL Bar sessions. I then have to step in to give some basic coaching although I myself still have so much more to learn by observing other coaches and other teams. 

But there is this huge sense of accomplishment when I can see for myself the impact of the lessons on a group of new paddlers. They excitedly come up to me during the break to ask me more about competitions, what is it like, whether they can form a team.

Even after just one hour of paddling for the very first time, the boat is already looking in decent form as seen below:

So it looks like I will be able to form a KL Bar dragon boating team and our aim is to compete at the Putrajaya competition in October. We will be able to join in the corporate category hopefully and I can't wait to see the new team's faces when they experience a competition for the very first time.