Table of Contents
Coaching
What to look for in a coach plus a list of potential choices for a remote coach (online and/or traveling). Local coaches may be listed on the page that represents the community where they are based in the Places To Paddle section of the wiki (we could use more of these listings!).
Good coaches are often very versatile - Steve Scoggins and Simon Brownlie (photo by Ana Swetish)
What to look for in a Coach
- ICF Ocean Racing Coaching Manual This 2016 manual assembled by Dawid Mocke with a large list of contributors can suggest some of the knowledge and skills you should expect a surfski paddling coach to provide even if you are not interested in racing. Be cautious with the included survey of relative/recommended safety equipment. This was a worldwide poll and included paddlers who paddle little if at all in cold water and also paddlers who do not paddle where there are reliable rescue services using VHF. Your priorities might need to be high also for equipment like a VHF radio if it makes more sense where and how you paddle. The list of contributors at the end of the document may include someone who coaches in your vicinity or who can recommend a good local coach.
Coaches
In Person Lessons
- If local coaches have been added to this website, they will be listed in their locales in the Places To Paddle section of the wiki
- Or are you looking for multi-day training camps?
Online Programs
While most of these coaches may offer in-person lessons, they also offer coaching/training from a distance online. There are some differences in the level of focus and assistance on fitness vs technique provided by various programs. And within a number of them there are also different levels/costs available for technique and performance analysis (video, training data review, etc).
- Booth Training Michael Booth SUP, Surfski
- Full Strength Paddling Darwin Li canoe, dragon boat
- International Paddling Coach OC & Va coaching (Waka Ama in New Zealand which uses W1, W2, etc. to refer to OC or Va'a)
- Jocke Lindberg (facebook) primarily sprint kayak coaching?
- Keystone Paddling Jesse Lishchuk
- K2N Online Paddling School Robert Norman
- Mockes
- Oscar's Club Oscar Chalupsky
- Paddle2Fitness Julian Norton-Smith online training programs + a nice series of free online podcasts
- PaddleLab Greg Redman sign up via paypal then Greg will contact you about your workout/data tracking setup. Greg is basically donating this program with all profits going to local area youth paddling programs.
- PaddleLife Sean Rice
- Huksu Tenneale Hatton, Sean Rice
- PaddleMonster Online coaching (male and female coaches) for SUP, OC, Paddle Strength Training, Nutrition
- Paddle Ninja John Puakea, April Zilg, Paolo Ameglio, Danny Ching SUP, dragonboat, outrigger, surfski
- Pushing Limits Coaching Danielle (McKenzie) Richards, Bonnie Hancock Emphasis on training and technique for women
- Right Angle Performance Kamini Jain - Coaches dragon boat, outrigger canoe, surfski and kayak racing
- Strong Paddler Ben Keys
- The Paddle Channel focus on paddle training plans & perfomance tracking
- Three Oceans Michele Eray, Maggie Hogan (now based in the Gorge)
- Train LIke A King Tupuria King
- Training in Paradise Slovenian coaching for flatwater (sprint, marathon, etc). But good paddling technique is good technique. They do seem to cater to a variety of paddling types of training.
- World Paddle Tim Altman, Mitchell Trim, Macca Hynard, Luke Jones based in several Australian locations
- …
Teaching Certification
USA
The ACA's initiative to create a training and support platform for paddling coaches in the United States
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The US ACA has a registry for looking up coaches, but as of 2026 there are none listed for Surfski in the USA, which is something they are trying to develop. But we believe having a listing requires some kind of certification via the ACA. While there are already amply qualified (in terms of skill and knowledge) surfski coaches in the USA, our impression is that they haven't yet bought in to or seen the need for ACA certification. Given the newness of this effort that is understandable. But the program is also going to have to demonstrate its quality and worth if skilled surfski instructors are going to bother with the cost and time required for ACA certification.
International
As far as we know there is currently (as of 2026) no international program or formal set of standards for surfski instruction. The ICF has endeavored to construct a set of suggestions for such standards in its coaching manual, but it is unclear to what extent any organized system for certification is likely to be created in the future. From the 2016 ICF Coaching manual: “It does not offer a constructed program or system but gives valuable insight into what a Surfski coaching and instruction program should include as a minimum.”
(The ACA database mentioned above seems to include instructor lookups for many countries, but as of 2026 it is not clear whether any international instructors have been (or will be) added to their list of available instructors.)