Paddling Put in Perspective : Outrigger canoeist Leslie Davis counsels a more focused approach to training in even the most grueling sports.

All right, let’s say you’ve been routinely paddling 500-pound outrigger canoes over miles and miles of open sea for the last 17 years or so. You’ve led your team to a record six consecutive world championships over the 42-mile open ocean course between Molokai and Oahu.

Now it’s time to kick back, right?

Right, says Leslie Davis. Absolutely. Time to cut back the ol’ training regimen. Today, she’s pared her regular routine down to an average daily run of about six miles, followed by 90 minutes of weight training. Then she goes out and paddles an outrigger canoe for another 90 minutes.

“I actually have scaled back,” says the president of the Corona del Mar-based Offshore Canoe Club. “I used to train much harder in terms of time. I used to be a more-is-better person and I found myself overtraining.

“It was youthful enthusiasm. When you’re right in the middle of (training), you can’t see it--those endorphins take over and I found myself with all the symptoms of overtraining: I’d get sick, I’d get injuries, I’d get cranky. I’m more sports-specific now. The same things I’m telling my clients I’m now applying to myself.”

Davis, who is a personal trainer and aerobic instructor at the Sports Club/Irvine, won’t reveal her age--she calls herself “a thirtysomething fitness buff”--but says that age likely is no impediment to indulging in even the most strenuous and grueling sports if one trains intelligently. Also, she says, a more focused approach to working out enables the athlete to lead a more varied life.

“The theories of specificity are what’s important,” she says. “These days I have time for other things, like my work, my friends, keeping my house clean.”

While it’s likely that Davis’ current training routine would make most weekend athletes’ jaws sag, it is far more particular than it was when she was in her early 20s. After studying sports medicine at Orange Coast College, she says she was often playing volleyball and working out in various ways for long hours with no clear goal in mind. She wanted to be fit and competitive, and the hard work often felt good. But, she says, it also often took its toll when she overtrained and her body rebelled.

But with age--and specific goals--came wisdom. Davis said she began taking her own advice and started to concentrate on the types of workouts that would not necessarily make her run faster or jump higher, but that would allow her to pull harder, longer and more efficiently on an outrigger canoe paddle. The combination of running, lifting and paddling worked, and continues to work as the years pass.

Still, she says, several hours of paddling an outrigger through open ocean swells isn’t for everyone, and likely would frighten away the unprepared forever.

“If someone tried it with no preparation,” she says, “they’d be crippled and mad at me and they’d never come back again. But when you get used to the physical experience of your body going through that, it feels normal. To me, it’s normal and wonderful and it feels good.”

At first, however, she didn’t like it.

“I was very much coaxed into it,” she says. “It looked horrible and unpleasant and at first I didn’t stay with it.”

However, with the approach of summer, the appeal of sun and water and, says Davis, “a lot of great looking men” in the club lured her back. She became a permanent member of the elite women’s team.

“I was lucky enough,” she says, “to adapt to it quickly.”

Davis fit not only the physical profile--she was already in top shape--but also had the necessary mental outlook to take on one of the most taxing sports in the world. She says that success at the elite level is unlikely without both.

However, you might like outrigger canoeing--or a similarly demanding sport--if you’re “someone who’s not satisfied, someone who’s hungry,” says Davis. “You should be someone who’s curious, someone who’s lacking fear of trying something new.”

She says she sees such qualities in some of her clients. Many health club devotees, she says, simply want to stay in good shape, but there are others “who tend to reach beyond, who have an extra little spark. They might work particularly hard to please me when I’m working with them.”

The reward for the effort required to compete at the top, she says, is “the exhilaration of competition. It’s a place where you can risk your abilities and challenge yourself against other people. If you never test yourself, you never know about yourself. And there’s really no such thing as failure, it’s just learning.”