Die Trying: Extreme Kayak ft. USA Bronze Medalist, Evy Leibfarth
Donny Enriquez | Die Trying
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00:00Welcome back to Dive Trying. Today I'm at the U.S. Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
00:04An Olympian, Evie Liefarth, is going down right now. She's going to teach me how to kayak.
00:09It's pretty intense.
00:14I'm going to attempt to do that. We'll see how it goes. Good thing I can swim,
00:17but I do not know how to kayak, so this should be a fun one. Come on.
00:30So
00:49this is the U.S. National Whitewater Center, a man-made class four rapid center that is the
00:54home to premier kayakers across the world. Hi, Mom. How's it going? Good. Fun episode today.
01:05A little dive trying. No, this one's good. I'm kayaking today down. We're doing some
01:10class four rapids. Oh, brother. No, the worst that happens is if I get stuck under,
01:16I can drown or I can bang my head against a rock. Oh, my gosh. What is that?
01:25It's going to be uncomfortably tight.
01:40Do a little rock and roll. How are we feeling on intensity today? Let's go more intense.
01:46More intense. You're going to want something on your feet. Obviously, bands probably not.
02:03The main thing is staying calm. If you can stay calm, then the rest of it's a lot easier.
02:09If you're somebody that's going to panic, then panic ensues.
02:16By the time we got everything going, we'll have six pumps.
02:22It's pretty fast. Those pumps pull a lot of water. You can fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in
02:26three minutes. Watch out. It's a wave pool. I'll tell you that. A lot of power. A lot more than I
02:34thought. I don't know why I keep doing this thing and it's going to be easy. I got to learn by now
02:39it's not going to be easy at all. You look awesome. I feel the part. I feel like at least
02:46I look like I know what I'm doing. You totally do. All right, well, that's one step. One box
02:51checked off. Ebby Lee Farth, world-class professional kayaker, U.S. Olympian, and now
02:57bronze medalist. Her test today, teach me how to kayak and keep me alive. First thing that we'll
03:03do is we'll show you how to wet exit so that when you flip over, you can get out of the boat.
03:08Then we'll work on a couple of strokes and then we can send you on the channel.
03:12All right. Sounds good. Sounds easy enough. All right. Are you pretty chilled water or
03:16are you kind of like panicked when you got here? I can't swear. No, I'm chill.
03:24So hop back in. We'll get your skirt on and then we'll practice just taking off a couple times.
03:27Okay. Because when you flip over like that, you'll want to just be able to
03:31get yourself out of there. Sound good? What's the key to getting out? Nothing.
03:34Nothing. Practice going over and snapping your hips up. And while you do that, you want to keep
03:41your head kind of down, like towards the water. And you want to work on using like more of your
03:44hips and less of your hands to push up. Yeah, that was perfect. It's a great ab workout.
03:55I want you to practice it on my bow. It's just a lot of technique to get it,
04:00to really feel like a snap. Okay. You can take a break. You don't have to keep dunking yourself.
04:08And so for a T rescue, you're going to be upside down and I'm basically going to
04:12come up to you and put my bow on the side of your boat and you'll kind of reach for it.
04:18One thing I learned pretty quickly with kayaking is you spend a lot of time upside down.
04:23You good? Did you almost die? What happened? I do. I mean, I'm trying to get the basic
04:28hip snap technique and it's not, it's not the, it's not going too well for me over here.
04:34Moving my hands. I don't know what I was doing. I have no idea. You know, it looked cool. I'm
04:39going to give you style points for that one. So reach for my bow, get your hands on there
04:45and then try to pull yourself up. Remembering to keep your ear towards the water. Perfect.
04:57That was awesome. Also that hip snap was perfect. Hell yeah. Oh yeah. I think that's pretty much
05:01all you need for going down the wilderness. Yeah. You know, you got your main flow occurring here.
05:09These kind of side pools here where you see the water actually going back upstream or circling
05:15around. Those are called eddies. Okay. Essentially an eddies where you want to end up if you ever
05:20come out of your boat. At any point, if you're swimming out here, I do not want you standing up
05:25if you were in the main current, only stand up if you are in an eddy. Got it. Right. Or if you
05:31are told that it is safe to stand up. Okay. My mind was spinning. There was so much to remember,
05:36but the time was now. The theme is just keep paddling. If you're scared, paddle. If you're not,
05:41paddle. Here goes nothing.
06:11Good. All right. So far, so good. Didn't flip. Made it through. Now it's going to get a little
06:21bigger. Okay. If you want to just follow me as tight as you can, we're going to curve around
06:27to the left side here. When you get into that eddy, I want you to keep paddling deep. Let's go.
06:42So
07:04not ideal. Well, took a spill. Thought I was going to be able to roll over. Couldn't roll over.
07:11So that's like a D. I'm not really happy with that one. We're going to try again here.
07:16I got this. Make it through. This is way harder than I thought it'd be. I'm doing like a tiny
07:21rapid compared to what these guys do. And I'm barely making it through. I'm already out of
07:24breath. Round two. Round two. We're trying again. Second time's the charm. I think they always say
07:30that. Yeah, that's exactly what they say. Yeah. Keep paddling. Keep paddling. Yeah.
07:52Yeah. Sick. Hell yeah. That was awesome. Paddle five.
08:10Yeah. Before I could do the class four rapids on my own,
08:13Evy took me down tandem so I could get a feel for the course.
08:43Woo. Keep paddling. Keep paddling.
09:09Woo. Hell yeah. That was awesome. Sick. It was really cool just to get somewhat of a
09:21taste of what it's like. Evy did a great job keeping us afloat and above water there. I'm
09:27so sore just from that. I can't imagine she was pulling all the weight there,
09:30but that's a lot of fun. This is no joke. Here goes nothing. Oh man. What am I doing?
09:39Woo.
10:09Woo.
10:19You all right? Yeah, I'm good. Let's go, dude. I made it down one. You held on for a hell of a
10:28time. That was awesome. I did. Made it down at least one drop. Got a nice little battle in here,
10:35a good scrape. Yeah, it was tough. You can't miss and I just slammed. After that, I held on
10:43under. I just held as long as I could underneath. A lot of people were like, hey, you held on a long
10:47time. You know what? I'll take a pat on the back for that. I guess that's something, holding your
10:52breath under longer. How long do you hold your breath for? I don't know. It felt like a long
10:56time. Were you getting a little panicked? Yeah, I was panicking. I was like, ah,
10:59shoot. I should probably get out. You know what? He crushed it. He made it past teeth
11:02screener. It's like a hard channel. I battled for like five years before I did it. He held on
11:08for a while. That was pretty sick. That was a lot of fun. I have a lot to learn. The sport is no
11:14joke. Credit to these guys. Make sure you go check out Evy in the Olympics. He's going to crush it.
11:21All right. Next sport.