British Canoeing Awarding Body

White Water Performance Award

Read the river - Then carve it up!

White water kayaking is, at its core, about our ability to put the boat in the exact place we want it, whatever the conditions. When possible we use the river to help us. However sometimes that isn’t possible. Either way if you can control the boat on easy water the process is the same in more advanced conditions. 

At Wild River we pride ourselves on our technical understanding of the discipline. We will teach you the most up to date techniques that will allow you to progress without any barriers.

Course Content

On our performance course we will teach you to:

Read the river ahead and make swift calculated decisions where to go. Combine a range of technical skills to achieve this.

These include:

• Use of acceleration.
• Making dynamic changes of direction.
• Feeling the river and reacting to it to maintain direction.
• Using eddy lines or other features to help you move around the river.

Since we all get it wrong, sometimes rolling is definitely a useful tool.

This course is two days of coaching in the skills needed for white water paddling on grade two rivers, with the opportunity to achieve the White Water Performance Award. All candidates leave the course with a clear, precise and personalised action plan; safe in the knowledge that they have a range of techniques that are effective and safe.

Venues

Possible venues we use for this course include:

River Lune near Sedbergh
River Eden north of Penrith
River Derwent near Keswick
River Leven south of Windermere

We have a small but high quality fleet of Dagger creek boats that can be used on this course. Please see our equipment page for further details of this.

The NEW Personal Performance Awards are designed for paddlers wanting to gain recognition of their learning and development, in the craft and environment they choose.

These awards allow paddlers to improve their skills, working towards the award of their choice, developing their decision making and fundamental skills.

From January 2019, the Personal Performance Awards will no longer be directly linked to the Coaching or Leadership awards. 

The changes do not affect current Star Award holders. Any Star Awards taken with British Canoeing will remain recognised.