Seat Time

The Lap no. 7 - D-Day - 10 Months

I’m writing this with a sore bum… At the end of a long day on the water, that’s usually the part that hurts the most.

Kayaking is all sitting. Physically that’s the hardest part for me. I can vary my stroke, adjust my paddle, treat my blisters, take breaks, but one thing is constant: I remain seated from the time I launch, until I’m standing again on a beach or a slipway, often with my legs asleep. I sit when it’s calm and when it’s rough. I sit going upwind and downwind. I even sit upside down when I roll—the knee braces keep me in my seat.

I will have to sit for over 200 hours to get all the way around Ireland.

This isn’t sitting in the couch potato sense. It’s an active, upright posture that engages your core and your posterior chain to provide power and stability for the stroke. It’s more like sitting on an exercise ball or holding a “boat pose” in yoga… for up to 12 hours.

Image: NBC

There are a few ways to improve your sitting. Yoga, hip openers, and hamstring stretches all help with physical endurance. Meditation in the lotus position helps with mental squirming and non-reactivity amid discomfort. While these shore-based tools are invaluable, there’s no substitute for “seat time.”

Seat time is about putting in the hours to get your body to go farther than your mind thinks it can. Seat time is how you train for situations and environments that can’t be hacked or optimized.

Just learning to feel comfortable in a kayak was a function of seat time. I grew up paddling wider recreational boats. So when I started paddling narrow sea kayaks, I felt twitchy, like one false move would tip me over. Now, I can stop and have lunch out in whitecaps.

“Put your ass where your heart wants to be.”

Bestselling author and friend of The Lap, Steven Pressfield, writes about the power of sitting down and getting to work in his latest book on creativity, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. This is a guide for seat time in life and passion projects, a must-read for anyone setting out on a committing journey—on or off the page.

He writes,

“If you want to write, plant your backside in front of the typewriter. Don’t get up from the chair, no matter how many brilliantly-plausible reasons your Resistance-churning brain presents to you. Sooner or later your fingers will settle onto the keys. Not long after that, I promise, the goddess will slip invisibly but powerfully into the room.

That’s the trick. There’s nothing more to it.”

-Steven Pressfield

Landing in Schull after a long training paddle. I had to get the feeling back in my legs before I walked the boat up the slipway.

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Thanks for reading,

-Charlie

Thank you to Mike Jones for coaching and guidance.

Kokatat is the official gear sponsor of The Lap.

The lap will be fueled by Resilient Nutrition’s Long Range Fuel and bars.

Expedition coffee by 3fe.