Why I Play: Jolynn Wong, women’s dragon boat
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When Jolynn Wong first took on dragon boating, she injured her rotator cuff by fully relying on her arms. Dragon boating is not just about arm strength, but full body power transfer, says the captain for DBS Asia Dragons Women Team.
Jolynn will lead her team in the DBS Marina Regatta on on 28-29 May and 4-5 June.
How did you get involved in this sport?
Four years ago, my boss introduced dragon boating to a few of us in the team. I wasn’t a sea sports person at all, but the first time I tried dragon boating I just got addicted to it.
It was very different from individual sports I’ve been doing all the while, like running, Muay Thai, or road cycling. The sport is especially challenging because you cannot be the only person contributing. You have to work with the others and bring out the best in your nine other teammates. And together as a team you excel. Communication is definitely one of the key ingredients for success in this sport.
What kind of a workout do you get from playing this sport?
In this sport, people think it’s just arm power, but it’s not. It’s a full body workout. The power comes from the legs actually, and not from your arms. You use your legs to kick, your trunk and core to rotate and your lats and core to bring up the paddle.
The sport actually focuses a lot on power transfer. It’s not isolated arm movement, but how you transfer the power from the kicks, to your quads, to your core, to your lats, and all the way to your biceps.
Biggest misconceptions people have of this sport?
One of the misconceptions is that dragon boating doesn’t need technique. A lot of people think that it’s just the arms, and that one arm will grow bigger than the other.
Whereas there’s a technique for you to slice the paddle in, like a hot knife in butter, so you can pull the blade positively. If you just use brute strength to just whack the water, the paddle goes in, water splashes out, and you’re not doing anything.
A traditional dragon boat can weigh as heavy as 300 kg. So for guys, if you have a whole boat of super muscular men, with huge biceps, they can use their brute strength to move the boat. But girls cannot do this. So we use a lot of our legs, and a lot of our body rotation to move the boat.
Also, there are different roles played by each section. There are three sections in a dragon boat.
The front section is the pacer pack. The pacers are usually the more experienced people, and they set rhythm and the pace of the boat. If they feel that there’s support from the back, they increase the speed, and the boat will go faster. But if they feel that the boat is dying at the back, they have to slow down so the rest of the boat can catch up. There’s that unspoken chemistry; you need to be able to feel the boat.
In the middle is what we call the engine pack. It’s like the engine of a car, without the engine the car won’t move. That’s where the strongest people usually sit. And in the engine pack you need to really be able to really dig into deep waters, so you can pull the hardest water, and the boat will move.
The back section is what we call the rocket pack. Because the water at the back is lighter, these people need to learn how to pull faster, pull a bit longer, so it gives that additional thrust to the boat.
The fundamental of dragon boat is synchronisation. Synchrony means that we must enter the water at the same time, at the same angle, and exit together.
In playing this sport, what’s been your most memorable experience?
It’s not a particular experience, but what’s the most memorable is the entire journey. For the DBS Marina Regatta, we’ve been training since last August.
Since January, a few of us have increased the intensity of our training, so now we train about six times a week. So sometimes we go to the gym at 6.30am; we do heavy weights or we do power endurance sets, which means like a hundred reps of bicep curls, a hundred reps of thrusters – a lot of hundred reps. And some of us take CrossFit as well to increase our metcon (metabolic conditioning), and every Tuesday night we will go to Kallang racetrack to sprint.
Which corporate team trains six times a week? I don’t think there’s any corporate team that trains six times a week.
At this point we’re very particular about our diet. We look at calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat; we measure our Macros every day.
The most heartbreaking experience was in 2014, at the DBS Marina Regatta as well. We lost the 200m race to another local team, and we were prepared to regain our championship position the following day with the 500m race. If we had won the 500m race, we would have been the overall champions, and we were very confident actually.
But it rained out and we didn’t get to race. We wanted to commit suicide.
Share an inspiring story you have of a tournament or an experience with teammates that made you love this sport even more.
We started with a team of six girls four years ago. But this year we grew to a band strength of 22, 23 girls. Our ages range from 20 all the way to 54 years old.
Together as a team we’re very united, we’re very strong. The phrase to sum it all is “we feed off each other’s craziness”. All it takes is one person to say, “let’s go to the gym tomorrow morning at 6.30am”, and everybody will say, “ok, on, everybody go”. It’s very inspiring and motivating.
For the Macros Diet I was the one who started it, and soon at every lunchtime, there were five or six of us gathering together and eating the same thing. Chicken breast, cauliflower for its anti-inflammatory properties, etc.
We are very good friends. After training we’ll go for breakfast, we’ll go for meals, and we’ll be talking about the race sets. We even go on holidays together. And not to relax, but because we want to take on a new sport, or for another international race.
It actually helps because all of us come from different parts of the bank. Whenever I need help from another department I know there’s someone I can trust that will get the work done.
Was there a time you felt like walking away from the sport? What made you stay?
I guess, when training gets really tough, and when you’re in the boat after two hours, and you’re paddling so hard, sometimes you feel like crying, and you feel like giving up. It’s like, “why am I doing this, it’s not worth it”. But it’s just a fleeting thought, and you come back stronger.
What makes me stay are the girls. The team.
What life lessons has this sport taught you?
Our team mantra is – “In dragonboat and in life, there are only two options – either you make progress or you make excuses.” All of us choose to make progress.
There’s another phrase we tell each other – “Today we do what others won’t, so that tomorrow, we can do what others cannot do.”
How can people get involved if they’re interested in this sport?
They can go to their nearby community centres. Each of the community centres have their own dragonboat team.
Has there been an increase in interest for dragon boating?
There were 100 teams in 2012, and this year we have over 300 for the DBS Marina Regatta. For both guys and girls, participation has increased at the same rate.
For our team, four years ago we had six girls. This year we have 23 and we’re sending down two boats.
My sport is unique because… not a lot of girls do it. It takes a lot of real power, mental strength and physical endurance.
A second point is that this sport is unique because it’s really a sport of communication, not just about your individual abilities. You can’t just be good by yourself but out-of-sync with the rest. You cannot be an individual superstar, because it doesn’t work that way. It’s how you bring out the best of the nine other people in the boat.
