Why changing rivers makes you a better kayaker

Stepping out of your comfort zone, learning to read different waters, and building a truly adaptable technique.

If there's one thing I've learned in over twenty years of kayaking and teaching, it's that knowing a river well doesn't necessarily make you a good kayaker. In fact, sometimes the opposite can be true.

When we always paddle the same sections of a river, we learn every bend, every rock, every rapid. We already know where to enter, where to push, where to slow down, and which line to take.
The result is that we become very good... at doing that particular thing, in that particular place.
But what happens when we change rivers?
Suddenly, the rock isn't where we expected it. The current comes from a different direction. The bank is different. The slope changes. The water speed is different. The eddies have a different shape. And most importantly, we can no longer rely on memory.
We have to go back to reading the water.

A truly effective technique shouldn't be an automatic response to a known situation. It should be the ability to adapt a technical principle to a new situation.

In the field of motor learning, there's a very interesting concept called variable practice: instead of always repeating the same movement under the same conditions, variations are introduced in the task and the environment.
The goal is to build a skill that can be adapted and transferred to different situations. The ability to use a technique, simply like an eddy-out, on different currents, crossing stronger or weaker eddy lines, even using a different kayak...The basic movement remains. The way you use it changes.
A new situation forces you to adapt, to improvise, to observe and to decide your next move, sometimes in very short periods of time. This means your brain isn't just repeating a movement. It's learning to solve a problem. And the enormous advantage is the training of reactions. You also train your brain to visualize yourself in new situations.
For example, you're scouting a new rapid: you imagine, you visualize your line, and if you then run it, you can also analyze how accurate or inaccurate, true, or realistic your prediction of what would happen was.
How many times do we fail to find the line on a passage we've never done before, and when our adventure partner runs it, you're astonished because you never imagined that line was possible. How much you're learning! How beneficial it is to learn to read and understand how a kayak reacts on new rapids, which you didn't even think were runnable! And even if you don't run them in the end, the mere fact of having seen a partner run it live will allow you to increase your skill in analyzing a rapid.

Over time, you develop a better ability to quickly recognize what's happening under the kayak. Your gaze becomes faster. Decisions become quicker. And your technique becomes less "mechanical" and more instinctive. Your visualization of yourself on a rapid becomes more realistic.

Learning to read different rivers and change environments means learning to recognize the same hydrodynamic phenomena in different forms. And the more situations we learn to recognize, the easier it becomes to interpret a river we've never seen before.

True technique isn't knowing what to do. It's knowing what to do when what you know doesn't work. How to adapt a technique that has become automatic for our body to different and constantly changing situations. And this difference emerges especially when something goes differently than expected. It is in these moments that the experience accumulated on different rivers becomes invaluable.

However, there's an even more important aspect. Changing rivers also means stepping out of your comfort zone. It doesn't necessarily mean doing something more difficult, but rather losing the familiarity of a place.
In fact, you can be perfectly comfortable on a Class IV you know well and feel much more insecure on a Class II/III you've never seen. That feeling is precious: it forces you to observe, to think, to improvise, and thus to learn.

In Valsesia, we are fortunate to have a great variety of creeks and river sections.
We can work on different environments and characteristics, choosing the most suitable route for the group's level and goals. Among the possibilities are, for example, Gronda, Sorba, Sermenza, Mastallone, Egua and many other sections in the area.

Every river can become a different classroom. Every day can present different problems.
And every problem is an opportunity to learn something that will be useful on the next river. And the concept also applies outside Valsesia, of course. For the same reason, I organize courses, workshops, and trips in other countries and on completely different rivers.

This year, for example, it will be Chile. Changing continents means bringing your technical knowledge to a completely new environment where we cannot rely on river memory, but must observe, interpret, adapt, and begin to learn again.

It's one of the things I love most about kayaking. The fact that you never really stop learning. You can become a pro, cool, expert as you want, the river always finds a way to present us with a new problem, to teach us something, to remind us to stay humble.

In Conclusion: Don't just train where you're good. If you really want to improve in kayaking, every now and then ask yourself a different question: "Where can I go to learn something that I can't learn here?"

It doesn't mean only looking for the most difficult river, but rather looking for the river that forces you to think, looking for water you don't know, falling in love with new currents or passages, trying a different kayak and, if with the right group and the right safety, facing a situation you cannot completely predict. And above all, learn to consider mistakes and difficulties not as failures, but as new information that helps you adapt better and read better.

Come and change rivers!

If you feel you've reached a point where you're always doing the same things on your usual river, perhaps it's time to change environment.
In Valsesia, I organize courses adapting the choice of river and the program to the participants' level and goals. My courses almost always start on calm river sections where learning is easier and less stressful, and gradually the difficulty increases, trying to adapt the technique to more challenging sections.

Take your kayak out of its comfort zone.