Byron Bradley: My name is Byron Bradley. I am an American Canoe Association Canoe Instructor. I am going to teach you canoeing maneuvering strokes as we are learning about solo canoeing today. The maneuvering stroke we use is called the sweep stroke, with the sweep stroke we take our paddles, we extend them forward. Place the blade in the water keeping the shaft in an angled position, almost horizontal. From here we actually move the blade away from the boat, allowing the boat to be pushed into the direction we wanted to go.

Sweep strokes starts at the bow of the boat, you can extend it all the way to the stern of the boat if you like or you can just take a little sweep stroke, very small and continue to put it into the water dipping until the boat comes all the way around. Continue doing the sweep stroke, you can turn your boat in a full circle, very easily. Now, I am going to show the sweep stroke at full speed, that will allow you to actually see how the stroke moves the boat through the water. The next stroke we will talk about is a reverse stroke which will allow us to move our boats in the reverse direction when canoeing.