Interpretive Freestyle Canoeing: The Only Sport That's Fun to Watch

The American Canoeing Association defines freestyle canoeing as "the 'art and science' of quietwater paddling." The competition aspect of the sport is divided into a men's and a women's class, but gender doesn't really matter. The rules and criteria are the same for both and, if there are not enough men or women competing, the events are often combined. And while freestyle canoeing doesn't necessarily need to involve a hot jam, "many FreeStyle canoeists paddle to music making an expressible, interpretive art form." The sport of "canoe obedience training" is still niche, but as an optimistic paddler once wrote in the CrossPost, the FreeStyle Canoe Committee newsletter, "German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said social change goes through three stages: ridicule, opposition, and finally acceptance." They're a third of the way there.

To learn more about this truly unique sport, I talked to Elaine Mravetz, a 68-year-old freestyle paddler who has won numerous championships. In the US, there are 11 regional freestyle canoe divisions under the ACA—and one in Europe—and Mravetz is the representative from the Ohio-Penn division. She's competed in both solo competitions and tandem competitions with her husband, Robert Mravetz. (Yes, just like figure skating, you can paddle with a partner. Sadly, there are no bonus points for coordinating outfits.)

BROADLY: How did you get start freestyle canoeing? I didn't even know this was a thing that was happening or possible.
Elaine Mravetz: I actually started out just as a regular canoeing instructor, but I had some friends who had developed the discipline. Their background was in the physics of canoeing. They studied it and had quite a bit of expertise in science, and engineering, and physics, and kind of understood how efficient canoeing should go. They applied that to quietwater canoeing and helped to teach people how to paddle their canoes more efficiently so that they could have a more enjoyable time. That's how this got started.

What year was that?
Oh, gosh. I took my first class in 1999, and I participated in my first competition in 2001. I probably wasn't that good, but it was fun.

Was it a lot different to take on freestyle canoeing?
What I tell people is, I learned canoeing and how to teach canoeing early on, but I didn't really understand canoeing and the physics behind it until freestyle in 1999. That's when everything sort of came together. If you told me to do a stroke, I could do a stroke, but I didn't really understand all the nuances of what happens to the boat when you put a paddle in the water until freestyle canoeing. The discipline itself is that interplay between the boat, your body, and the paddle, which is your tool. It's amazing how little you really have to do to impact the boat, from a physics standpoint.

A lot of the stuff that you see in the videos [on YouTube] is what we call the "far-end" stuff. I often say it's for my lunatic friends who love canoeing a bit too much. It's called interpretive freestyle. It marries that love of music, various types and genres, to canoeing. It's a demonstration of how you can interpret a piece of music that you particularly like, using freestyle principles and skills, and make the boat respond to what you want it to do on a dime.

It looks like dancing on the canoe. It's crazy. I saw one video of you where you were in the canoe, making it spin around, and you also had your leg out in a half split. How do you do that?
Well, it's all physics. Part of it is your posture in the boat, and part of it is the efficiency of the placement of your paddle; the more vertical you are in your strokes, the truer a message you can send to the boat to make it do what you want. Most folks paddle a lot harder than they need to. They paddle too fast, and when they put the paddle blade in the water they give the boat incorrect messages. It sort of confuses the boat, and it won't do what you want it to do. So the cleaner your body position is in the boat—which is usually with your nose over your navel—the more true your blade is when you're putting it in the water. You find that minimal effort makes the boat respond quite a bit.

That's wild. Every time I've tried to go canoeing I've flipped out—and I haven't even been trying to do a split. Do you do strength training and flexibility training to be able to do that?
No. It's funny, because people always ask me that when they take lessons with me. They ask me, "Do you work out? Do you lift weights?" And I say, "No, I just paddle." If you paddle efficiently you're using the large muscles in your body—your shoulder girdle and your torso muscles. That in itself tones you. It's a great workout, and you can workout without feeling like you're working out.

This probably sounds easier than it actually is.
Well, people are amazed once they learn. In fact, we've gotten to where even our beginner classes—where we're working with kids and even older folks—can canoe. I mean, I'm going to be 69. You don't have to be young to do this, but you do have to be efficient. The cool thing is, once you learn the physics behind it, you can paddle a river, you can paddle a lake, you can paddle through waves, you can paddle through adverse conditions, etc. You can control the boat and make it go where you want it to go in spite of whatever is happening. When I teach kids classes, I'll say, "Okay kids, today you're going to learn math, and you're going to learn science. Specifically, you're going to learn physics, because canoeing is 100 percent all about the physics of what happens when the blade goes into the water."

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I'm bad at math, but I love the music and the costumes. Do you have any sort of philosophy on what songs you usually canoe to? Do you have a uniform?
Not a uniform, no. When folks get into interpretive freestyle they usually choose a piece of music that they enjoy, first and foremost. When you are choreographing a routine, you have to think about the tempo of the music, what strokes or maneuvers lend themselves well to a particular piece of music, the timing, and the dynamics in the music itself. Some people like using vocals; it's broad. People paddle to all genres. The only thing is you want to watch that the tempo isn't too fast so you don't have to strain to keep up with it. It can't be too slow, either.

What's your favorite song to paddle to?
I've got several kinds of music I really like. I've done quite a few things to Andrea Bocelli. His music has wonderful dynamics. The music really has to speak to you. You need to have the song be a piece that you like because you don't want to get sick of it. Like with any competition, you practice, you practice, and you practice until you refine your timing exactly right. But people use a lot of different types of music and genres. [My husband and I] have a friend who loves to paddle to Appalachian music.

Has anyone ever paddled to a rap song?
I can't think of anyone off the top of my head.

What are the competitions judged on?
It's a lot like figure skating, in that you have required maneuvers that you have to do and those are judged on a point system. The whole routine is judged for use of space, choreography, and creativity in your interpretations. There's an overall score you get for all the artistic elements, and there's also a score you get for the technical elements—making sure that your turns are 180 degrees, that your boat is railed to the water, that your presentation and the pieces of each maneuver are as they should be. We always tell people that it's better to do simple maneuvers and do them well, rather than to try to do something that's very difficult and flashy not as well. It'd be like a figure skater who wanted to do an axle or some kind of jump that they weren't ready for; it looks kind of sloppy.

I noticed that, like in figure skating, there's a couple's tandem competition. How does that work? Are there two people in one canoe, or are they in two separate canoes?
In a tandem you have a two-person canoe. One person is the bow paddler, and the other is the stern paddler. Again, you have a set of maneuvers you have to do. Though it's a little more complicated because you've got two people in the boat. You have more combinations you can do, but there are also more opportunities for things to go wrong. One person in the boat can be doing it perfectly accurately, but if the other partner momentarily forgets something and the timing is off, it won't work. In judging tandem paddling, you look at the synchrony of the movement, the cadence, and how well the partners are working together.

You compete in tandem events with your husband?
Yes, we actually have competed several years, and we won the national championship several different times. My husband and I have been married for 36 years. I actually never paddled a canoe before I met my husband. He got me into it. He likes to go on wilderness trips to canoe and, for safety reasons, he wouldn't take me until I learned how to paddle. So I learned and I found that I enjoyed it. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we ended up becoming certified to teach kids and adults. It built from there. We enjoy paddling together, and we enjoy teaching together.

That's awesome. You guys aren't competitive with each other when it comes to canoeing?
No, not really. With tandem canoeing we both have to work together or the boat doesn't do what we want it to do. Usually when something goes wrong, it's not all one person's fault or the other; it's a little bit of both. When something goes wrong during practice, we usually stop to do a self-analysis. It's like a problem-solving exercise: What did I maybe do? What was he doing? What was our timing? A lot of the time we videotape ourselves and look back at the video to see what happened.

That sounds so cute. I want to start paddling with my boyfriend.
It is a lot of fun. We know this couple who met taking freestyle classes. They were both taking solo, one-man canoe classes and darned if they didn't fall in love. Then they started paddling tandem together, and the next thing we knew they were engaged. They will be getting married this fall, and they want to get married at one of our freestyle events.