This translates to greater acceleration, faster turns, more secure braces, and greater stress loading on various body parts. Freestyle's slower cadences limit stress, but the paddle that provides forward power and secure braces at thirty strokes a minute stresses the paddler at a cruising cadence. Use a smaller blade when it's time to move out. Blades are subtly shaped to perform efficiently. A proper blade needs sloped, or relieved, shoulders, allowing the blade to pass under the canoe during the center portion of a forward stroke.
Full shoulders keep the paddle farther abeam the keel.
This tip shaping allows sure and quiet entry and exit from the water and reduces riffle chewing. In summary, the freestyle blade should be about nine inches wide and about twenty-three inches long with additions or subtractions to fit paddler strength. Tapered shoulders and rounded ends reduce the surface area of our ideal paddle to about 160 square inches, plus or minus 20 square inches. Cross-sectional shaping is critical to elegant, effective slicing. Blade edges don't have to cut bread, but finer ones allow the blade to slice with less resistance, turbulence, and flutter.