Thanks Lisa. The key to doing this well is having really good pitch control on the paddle blade and knowing exactly when to apply it. When I teach folks how to do this stroke, the timing is the thing that seems to be the most problem. To help students get the feel, I put my canoe beside theirs with one foot in mine and one foot in theirs than put my hands on theirs to guide the paddle.

For what its worth, in Ontario we dropped the name "Indian Stroke" out of respect for the First Nations people. You can find a video I did about this stroke if you look up Silent Stroke on my channel.

Thanks for the kind words Gottfried and I'm glad you found the video useful. The most difficult thing about doing that stroke well is what I described as the "catch" phase. There is a very critical point where you have change the pitch on the paddle blade from what you were doing during power to what you need to do for steering that requires getting the "feel" for. Before Covid, I used to put my canoe beside a student's canoe and stand up with one foot in my canoe and the other in their canoe so I could stand behind them and put my hands on their's to guide the motion. It is an "ah ha" moment when they feel the resistance that turns power into steering but it's not easy to get the timing right. Keep practicing :-)

Thanks Ray, I had fun putting the video together and folks who've viewed it seem to find it helpful.

Hi Dot. Back when I was tacking care of instructor services with ORCA we were having a heated debate about using names for strokes. The reality is every time you put the paddle in the water its a bit different than the stroke you did just before or will do after, kinda like snow flakes. I alternate between calling what I'm doing in the video as either the Guide or the Canadian but mostly call it the Guide just so I don't offend the folks south of our border any time I demo it there. :-)

Yes, agreed, it looks more like a modified pitch just past the hips, followed by a shorter return blade of a Canadian stroke. This is very close to my personal favorite version of stroke too. I always thought of mine as a hybrid stroke. The beauty of this stroke is that it is less tiring than the J stroke, and does not involve the excessive 'push out' and weird wrist angle of the canadian stroke (canadian usually is taught with a long underwater recovery puttting a lot of strain on the wrist). This version gets the best of both worlds, with the pitching helping to counteract the canoe turn, followed by the short recovery which uses the gunnel for leverage, but does not underwater recover for too long and thereby I think puts the wrist in a better ergonomic position for extended paddling. A very relaxing stroke. Did not know it was called the guide stroke.

@@scott1967888 Basically its a version of the Canadian, it got the "Guide" moniker because most of the canoe guides doing long trips wind up morphing what some might consider a pure Canadian it something less tiring by using the gunnels.

Yes I am. It saves a lot of work on your muscles. And I've been using the same wooden paddle doing it that way for about 20 years now. If you do it right there's next to no wear on the paddle or the gunnels.