I was diagnosed with carpel tunnel some years ago which was affecting me day
and night. I switched to a bent shaft and over a period of 3 to 6 months my
carpel tunnel subsided completely. Several years after that I switched from
a 45 degree paddle to a 30 degree only because I felt it worked better for
me play boating. I've known of other paddlers that have benefited from bent
shafts for their carpel tunnel as well.

Another thing that can contribute to trouble with the wrists and elbows is
over gripping the paddle shaft. If a paddler has small hands and is having
some pain, a thought might be to switch to a small shafted paddle.

Courtney

"Michael Daly" wrote in message
...
On 13-Jul-2004, Bill Tuthill wrote:

It's an interesting datapoint that racers are NOT using bent shaft...

Anymore. Bill, the bent shaft moved from the racing community to the
recreational over the years. Then the racers stopped using them. While
the hypothesis that the bent shaft improves performance sounds good, in
practice it doesn't really add a benefit.

I use a bent shaft Euro paddle (Lendal Archipelago) and have often advised
folks, on this forum and others, that it's only useful if you have a real
problem with your wrist/arm. It doesn't help for RSI, or more
specifically
for carpal tunnel, since that is more greatly affected by feather angle.
However, if your joints aren't quite right (like most of mine) then using
a bent shaft to reduce wrist misalignment problems helps. Otherwise, save
your money and get a straight shaft.

I also use a Greenland-style paddle and it is easier on my arms. Slightly
worse on my muscles though, as it is less efficient and therefore more
tiring. The ease on the joints is due to the fact that I control the
paddle more with my fingers than my wrists and that the technique uses a
closer hand position than does a Euro paddle (hence straighter wrists).

Mike