Heart of Motion

Water, Work, and Wisdom: A Conversation with Olympic Kayaker Kamini Jain

• Susannah Steers • Season 2 • Episode 7

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Paddle into the remarkable world of Kamini Jain, an Olympic kayaker whose journey from shy teenager to Hall of Fame paddler reveals powerful lessons about perseverance, community, and finding strength on the water.

Kamini's story begins with a quiet 14-year-old discovering kayaking – a perfect fit for her introverted nature that would eventually lead to Olympic finals, 11 World Cup medals, and induction into three different Halls of Fame. 

Kamini has a unique perspective, with her breadth of experience across multiple paddle disciplines. From sprint kayaking to dragon boating to outrigger canoes, she illuminates the technical foundations that connect these sports while celebrating their unique challenges. Her global coaching camps have shared this expertise with paddlers around the world, creating communities bonded by their love of water.

Particularly moving is Kamini's work with breast cancer survivors through dragon boat programs. These initiatives provide not just physical benefits but crucial emotional support networks. "It brings them into an environment where people know about the treatment options, they know about how tired you are," she explains. This perspective gained even deeper meaning during her own five-year cancer journey, teaching her vulnerability alongside strength.

The conversation concludes with a heartwarming tale about Choti, a street dog Kamini rescued in India who serendipitously ended up with host Susannah's family – a beautiful reminder of how unexpected connections enrich our lives, much like the communities formed through paddle sports. Whether you're a seasoned paddler or simply curious about how athletic pursuits shape character, this conversation will inspire you to find your own rhythm in life's currents.

About Kamini Jain

Kamini Jain is an Olympian and World Champion dragon boat and outrigger canoe coach and paddler, and the founder of Right Angle Performance, a paddle sport service company in Vancouver. 

Right Angle Performance delivers to teams, individuals and coaches technical, tactical and training education for dragon boat, outrigger canoe, surfski and kayak racing. 

Kamini sees sport as a way for people to expand their boundaries, live without limits, and gain empowerment by proving their physical strength and mental discipline. Her coaching objective is to encourage paddlers to set ambitious goals and provide them with the tools to perform their absolute best & fulfill their objectives.

Right Angle Performance

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Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.

Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.

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Susannah Steers:

Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast. I'm Susanna Steers and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living. Nothing happens until something moves, so let's get started.

Susannah Steers:

You might not know this, but dragon boat racing is a big deal in Canada, with more than 80,000 people participating annually in over 300 festivals and events across the country. In fact, the biggest, most competitive dragon boat festival in North America, the Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival, happens every year right here in Vancouver in June and, judging by the scores of international awards, it seems that Canadians are pretty good at it too.

Susannah Steers:

Today I'm thrilled to introduce you to maybe one of the reasons why. Kamini Jain is the heart, soul and drive behind Right Angle Performance, providing high-performance paddle sport coaching to folks all over the world. As an athlete herself, Kamini spent nine years on the Canadian National Sprint Kayak Team, winning 11 World Cup medals and competing in two Olympic finals in 2000 and 2004. I could list her coaching highlights, but we'd be here for a while. She's been inducted into the International Dragon Boat Federation Hall of Fame, the Canadian Outrigger Hall of Fame and the Canadian Dragon Boat Hall of Fame. Clearly to say she understands paddling is an understatement. I wanted to connect with Kamini about her experiences as an athlete and a coach and to find out what she's learned about life from her 30-odd years of success in the sport. Welcome to the podcast.

Kamini Jain:

Kamini. Thank you, Susanna. It's really great to be here and talk to you today.

Susannah Steers:

Well, I kind of feel like I'm in the presence of Canadian paddle sport royalty. You've racked up some serious stats and awards over the years, but maybe we can start with some humble beginnings. Where did it all start for you? What drew you to the sport?

Kamini Jain:

Humble beginnings are that I always gravitated towards athletics, especially the individual ones, because I was a really, really shy kid. So it just gave me a way to feel like I expressed myself and to feel quite comfortable in myself and in my body. So when I found kayak as a 14-year-old nearly 15-year-old it just seemed like the thing, because there's nothing more isolating, nothing more singular than being in a kayak racing out by yourself, but at the same time there are crew boats. So that fulfilled my need to be socialized and I did love having friends and I started at a time when there were girls my own age, so we just became like inseparable, fast friends through our whole lives to this date.

Susannah Steers:

Oh, I love it.

Susannah Steers:

So when you were in it and you were in your canoe and you had your teammates that you were working with, was it that that kept you going, or did you have Olympic dreams even then?

Kamini Jain:

Well, I had Olympic dreams, since I was 11 years old and watched Chariots of Fire. There were a couple sort of formative things in my life. One was that my neighbors were twins, super popular and super, you know, like we were friends. But again, I was shy and their dad was just a couple inches off of making the Olympic team when he was a young man. So they would talk about it, no, as a high jumper, so high jumper.

Kamini Jain:

So they would talk about how he could jump over the house and how he was so amazing. So that put Olympics in my head. And then watching Chariots of Fire in 1981, and my mom really loving the whole feeling behind that movie also, way that one could excel or, you know, fulfill a need to, you know, feel successful.

Susannah Steers:

So when you got to those finish lines, did you hear that anthem, did you hear that soundtrack playing in your head?

Kamini Jain:

No, not really.

Susannah Steers:

I just need to breathe. I just need to breathe.

Kamini Jain:

Yes, yes.

Kamini Jain:

It comes to mind that the character that I actually looked up to the most was the steeplechase runner and women didn't race steeplechase until recently because I did want to be a runner at one point, but the picture of him he's always in mud. He wasn't the most known, he wasn't the star of the movie, but he was the one that I thought and it was just the blood, sweat and tears and mud that was part of his story. That work ethic, real process, real process oriented and loving the actual moment that you're in.

Susannah Steers:

Oh, I love it. There's something that kind of has to shift, though, right when you go from being a recreational athlete and you're hanging with your friends and you're in high school and you're doing things to the point where now you're a serious athlete on track to major international competitions, and it seems to me that at that point you got to be living, eating and breathing the sport and your conditioning for it to be able to perform at that next level and I know you can speak to this as an athlete and as a coach but what creates that high performance athlete who's going to do well in those settings?

Kamini Jain:

Well, you know what, in my experience I've, you know, obviously, I've met a lot of high performance athletes and there is a variation between them. There's a variation in their motivation and their backgrounds and you know how they approach success. Some train really fast and race the same, some train not as fast but then race spectacularly well, and some had parents in the sport. Some, you know, there's just a whole variation in it, but it wasn't something that we talked about a lot Like why do you do this, right?

Kamini Jain:

But for me it was not really a choice. It's one of those passionate things where this is what I'm going to do and if I don't continue it until I feel like I've given every shot at succeeding, I am going to have regrets and at the end of the day, I'm going to have regrets anyway, because you don't know how to reach the top of a journey when you've never done the journey before. So I think that's one of the reasons why I coach is because I have that look back and say, oh, if you know this or this, this should be in place, this was good, this could have been better. You know, all of those sort of hindsight things that in some way I'm trying to fill those gaps

Susannah Steers:

Okay, so as an athlete who works with a whole array and as a coach who works with a whole array of different kinds of paddlers, you must have a pretty deep understanding of the different paddling techniques required for each. I can't imagine that kayaking techniques are the same as you would use in a dragon boat, so what kind of crossover is between them and how did you get involved from kayaking into all of these different kinds of paddle sports?

Kamini Jain:

Yeah, well, what's really interesting is that I find there is a lot of crossover in some of the fundamental things of certain ergonomics make for a strong stroke, certain ways of movement make for balance, and best transmission or my interpretation of best transmission of linear movement of a canoe or kayak. Equipment is different, seating position is different, but a lot of it is the same. But one of the things that's great cool about upbringing and sprint canoe is that I was a kayaker but we also dabbled in high kneel canoe. We also, as Canadians, we have this really cool sport called war canoe, where you're high kneeling, meaning on one knee with the other leg forward, and there's seven of you on each side and then you have a coxswain steering standing up on the back, so that's like our iconic Canadian sprint sport. So it gave, you know, gave us a whole avenue of, yeah, a paddle with what we'd call a double bladed kayak, but also had that experience in the single bladed.

Kamini Jain:

And then started dragon boating at 19, just to do more cross training. It was always like, you know, when you're 19, boundless energy, let's just do more.

Susannah Steers:

More, more, more, more!

Kamini Jain:

And then, you know, just started the club that I'm at, falls Creek Racing Canoe Club down on Granville Island. We have outrigger canoes. So you jump into that, because by this time I was social. You jump into those things. You get invited to a race to Hawaii, so you just do it. But there's similarities, there's differences. That come into the kind of water. Hawaiian water is different than Falls Creek water. You wouldn't paddle a sprint kayak down in the ocean in Hawaii but yeah, there's a lot of carryover.

Susannah Steers:

And as you're training those athletes I can hear it in your voice. You're dealing with different kinds of water and different equipment and different seating positions. So there's technical aspects. There's even just in terms of training the capacity of the athlete to do the job. What kind of things do paddling athletes do to prepare for the sport other than paddle?

Kamini Jain:

Other than paddle. Lots of gym work. It's a power sport. You got to pack on some muscles. It's a power sport. You got to pack on some muscles. You know a lot of paddlers here where we are in Vancouver, because we have paddling all year round and I'm coaching sort of recreational high-end thing, not Olympic-level athletes now. So they'll go to the gym. If they like running, they'll run. If they like skiing, they'll ski. Eastern Canadians will ski, they will swim.

Susannah Steers:

Years ago I was working with a sports psychologist who asked me what I did when I was working with athletes who would literally kill. To get the point, in my work, most of the time I'm not working with athletes right up against their competitions. If I'm working with athletes, it's usually as a way to survive their sport, to help them be able to move forces through their bodies better with better efficiency, that kind of thing.

Susannah Steers:

But what I find interesting is working with high-level athletes. Whether it's high-level, recreational or high, you know, internationally, there's a drive to get the job done, push to train to their absolute limits and to push always, always, always for getting better. I know in my years as a dancer, rest was like a four-letter word and I guess that there's the young part there too. But I think things have changed a lot over the years. But there's still that in order to perform at that level you got to be pushing the edges all the time. So how do you balance high intensity needs of that kind of training with things like safe development, rest, appropriate supports for the athlete in pursuit of the sport?

Kamini Jain:

Yeah, as an elite athlete it was relatively easy to do that once a certain level was attained. It wasn't easy as a fighting to get on national team because you weren't very smart yet, you didn't know what your limits were, so it was super easy to overtrain. I would imagine most of us spent a couple of years where we kind of trained too much and got injured and got slow and all that sort of stuff that we one would expect. But once you made the team, then it was easier because finances were somewhat easier. You know, you're often away at training camps, so basically you ate, slept and trained, so that was easier.

Kamini Jain:

In the realm that I'm coaching right now, everybody has full-time jobs or they're full-time students or you know, and they train when they can. They come after work, they're tired. The challenge is for them to learn how to put in everything they can for that, because it's often distracted training as opposed to an Olympian. What are you going to be distracted by, right? So that's one of the challenges is how do you get them to actually focus so they can do what you're saying is prepare to their maximum each time, but at the same time, yes, they need their rest. They can't go to work from nine to five and train every night and train every morning. There needs to be some managing of their expectations based on their current fitness level, their health, their one could say age.

Kamini Jain:

But we'll say that can go in with current fitness level and health. So, yeah, that's a learning. Some of them just get too tired, like the whole team might. You might be a certain time in the year and you get too many people saying they're sick. It's like no, no, can't work this boat with three people. Yeah, yeah, and it's a matter of just being okay with being tired sometimes and knowing the difference with yeah, it's okay, I'm tired. That's what being an athlete is about and being like, oh, I am too tired.

Susannah Steers:

When it's going to tip over into injury or just not being able to function in your own life.

Kamini Jain:

Right, you know the other stuff you got to do, right.

Susannah Steers:

Well, I know you've been involved with the Abreast in a Boat dragon boat organization and I know you've coached paddlers recovering from breast cancer to go on to win gold medals around the world. I've worked with some of the folks who competed and I know how much that experience of training and becoming champions, how much that meant to them, especially while they were in the midst of this whole cancer journey. At the same time, what do you think that dragon boating brings to people, and maybe especially to folks dealing with cancer?

Kamini Jain:

Well, definitely brings a support network. You know, with the, I'll talk about the, the non-breast cancer teams, for a second. It brings like friends, definitely brings a support network. You know, with the, I'll talk about the non-breast cancer teams for a second. It brings like friends. It brings dating opportunities. You know that I don't have to go online. I'm going to join Dragon Boat team, that sort of thing.

Kamini Jain:

It brings fitness, it brings health and for these other, there's a lot of special interest groups that are in Dragon Boat and the breast cancer paddlers, as you say, is a huge one. And it brings them, you know, it brings them into an environment where people know about the options of treatment, they know about how tired you are, they know about what they can advise you for certain, helping with you with certain challenges that you're having. And then also this athletic physical empowerment and a lot of women and it's changing now significantly but a lot of women weren't raised with sport being something that was parallel to their being growing up. So they're coming into sport and finding it so to use the word again empowering or enlightening, or just something that they hadn't been experiencing before, and that's, in these women's groups, like a breast in a boat.

Kamini Jain:

That's, I think, quite a significant part for a lot of them. I've never been an athlete before. And then to treat them, when you're coaching them, as, yeah, you're not a breast cancer. That's not why we're defining you. You're an athlete now. And if you're an athlete, I expect this of you. I expect you to listen, I expect you to try to do what I say, and you expect me to give you feedback as to whether or not you're accomplishing what we're trying to accomplish.

Susannah Steers:

And it seems like, if you're in a place where it feels, maybe, like your body has betrayed you, or that you're, you know that all of a sudden you can do something and, like you say, it's that empowering all of a sudden okay, look, this body can do all these fabulous things. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, now I'm going to turn it to you, because I know you've had your own cancer journey. Are there things that you learned from your Abreast in a Boat athletes that have helped you along your journey? Are there things that coaching and paddling have brought to you during that process?

Kamini Jain:

So it's been five years of two cancer diagnoses and a whole crap load of treatments luckily not chemo, and so I've been fortunate in that regard. But it's a little bit different for me because, as opposed to what you just said, where Dragon Boat has shown these people that they're in control of their body, sport has shown me that I'm not. Like with cancer. I am not in control. There's a vulnerability there. It is so much harder to get up and to do anything because everything comes with a discomfort. So in that way it has taught me what it is like for anybody who's going through. I already knew what it was like if you injured your shoulder, but if you injure your shoulder, you injured it doing something fun, right? Not getting radiation, 25 treatments in a row. So just that vulnerability and understanding how, yeah, we're out to feel empowered but at the same time, the discomfort can be victimizing. And trying to figure out, for my own sake and for coaching, how to balance those two things.

Susannah Steers:

Right, well, that was going to be next question. H as it shifted how you coach?

Kamini Jain:

I don't think it has. Um, I started off as quite a hard-nosed coach and then I did a master's in leadership and I became a soft, squishy coach, and that didn't work for anybody. So I'm sitting somewhere in the middle, I think, now. But I think this illness has just made me think that everybody else, if you're healthy, then just get out and do it right, Like just get it done. And if you're my teammate, get it done too, because I can't get it done. So can you please do my part too? And I say that in jest, I don't think it really affects my coaching much, really.

Susannah Steers:

I'm curious, too, about your choice to go and do your master's in leadership. I understand the motivation. I'm curious to know why it shifted you from a hard nose coach to a squishy coach.

Kamini Jain:

Because they tell you. They tell you why I decided to do it was I wanted to see. You know, as an athlete I had a lot of different coaches, most of them really good. A couple of them taught me how not to be, but most of them I really learned a lot from in positive ways. And then I just thought, well, what does the scholastic side of this look like and is there a way I can move into a different form of business? And I went through it all and I stayed in the same business. So what they taught me was things like you know, you got to listen to people, yeah, obviously, but a lot of these sort of soft skills of I kept, just kept getting the impression that I had to be nicer and I was never that stereotypical Eastern European coach which I had, many of which they were, and you know, you learn how to, how to work with them and you actually get a lot out of them. But that won't work for a non elite athlete.

Susannah Steers:

There's a level when I think back to some of my ballet teachers or dance teachers over the years and you'll get an inconvenient little pain in your buttocks and you keep going. That's cute, good accent. But you know all of this stuff where it was, it seemed pretty harsh at the time and there were tears. And certainly when I think about being pushed into positions, physically pushed into positions, or pulled into positions to make it happen, and there's no way you know I would never lay my hands on anybody the way that it was for me in my twenties but sometimes I wonder there's a line between being nice and being effective and sometimes you really do have to say no, that's not working, step it up.

Kamini Jain:

I agree you got to harden up.

Kamini Jain:

You can't be an athlete and be soft. You got to harden up. You got to ride through your bumps. You got to ride through the tough teammates, the pains. But then you got to be smart. If you got a pain, you got to go to a therapist. You have to do something about it. You have to learn what your coach wants. You have to learn how to be a good teammate. There's all sorts of things that make that tough love actually work for you. But soft love doesn't work, I don't think, for athletes.

Susannah Steers:

Well and how to advocate for yourself. That, I think, was one of the biggest lessons that I learned was you know, what's good for the sport is not always good for the body in terms of whether it's techniques or positions or repetition or whatever it is, and there are ways that you have to look after yourself, and the way your bestie looks after herself or himself is not necessarily going to be what works for you. So you can use the community to learn, but you do have to learn and figure out. Like you say, you got to go get the treatment if you need the treatment, you got to stop. If you need to stop, you need to do all those things. Maybe that is just growing up.

Kamini Jain:

And I think athletics is either a really long journey where you live through the ups and downs and stuff, or it can be a reasonably short journey where you succeed in a short amount of time and then you stop before you have to deal with the ups and downs of things breaking and stuff like that.

Susannah Steers:

I thought you were going to say you blow out. But yeah, that's another avenue. Right, stop before you blow out. I know that you do a bunch of coaching clinics all over the world and I call it a clinic. That might not be what you call it. How do those work? Who comes?

Kamini Jain:

So good, I do a variety of things. Like a team will ask me to come and coach, so I'll go and coach them. It could be an outrigger team or dragon boat team and then just go, or it can be I do some camps. So like I'm going down to the States, I'll do some camps and people sign up so anybody can sign up for them. One of them is in Arizona, so it's five days and then we race in a dragon boat regatta. So a lot of people from my own teams that I coach at Falls Creek come to that, and as well as a variety of people from all over come to that, and I've done them in France and Thailand. Yeah, it's just really great to have Outrigger in California. So that's just like try to put it out to the universe and have people sign up. That's fantastic.

Susannah Steers:

Yeah, it's really fun. And then have you got stuff. I mean there's the big competition coming up in June here. Have you got teams preparing for that?

Kamini Jain:

Yeah, my focus is on two teams. One is a women's team of over 60s. They're really great. We went to a world event last year and won two of the three distances, so that was pretty cool. So I wanted to take more of a break from coaching, but they wanted to get out on the water, so we have been out and it's proving to be. We've had two practices so far and they're rocking it. And then a group of younger mixed, so men and women in a younger group. Those are my two focuses.

Susannah Steers:

So we know who to root for when it comes to June. That's right, june at Falls Creek, we're looking for those two teams. The other thing I wanted to talk about today was how we met, because I think, it's kind of a magical story. It really is. We met over the love of a dog, and so maybe I'll let you tell the first part, because you know this part.

Kamini Jain:

This is one of the most amazing things in my life. My father is Indian. So we were in India and outside of Delhi, a place called Noida, and we just arrived the day before and the night before staying at my uncle's house, and my mom, myself and my niece had gone for a walk and there was this dog standing there this really busy road. And there's this dog standing next to these tuk-tuk drivers and she's standing on three legs and she's the cutest little dog you ever saw, tricolored and sort of looks like she's got some whippet in her and then something else. And she's standing there on three legs. And then I look away and then I look back and she's standing right next to my niece and I. She's just standing there looking into space, just standing there, and I look at her leg and she's got this like three inch gouge right down to the bone on the bottom of one of her legs and she's just looking there, standing there. So I'm like, okay, we got to save this doggie. So I sent my mom somewhere.

Kamini Jain:

My cousin went to see what he could do. He didn't. He thought I was crazy. And then I stood there trying to hold this dog because she was starting to shake. So I was holding her leg up and then I'm like, oh, what the hell? I'm just going to see if she'll sit on my lap. So I'm sitting there. She was so sweet, she's sitting on my lap.

Kamini Jain:

We ended up getting into a rickshaw. It's on my lap. We're driving, we think we know where there's a vet, but there was no vet. Then we found a vet. And in this vet we ran into a woman from we'd driven on this rickshaw forever, but she brought in her street dog and she lived like a block from my uncle and she fed all the street dogs. So it was like the most fortuitous thing ever. So this dog that I called Choti, which means little one in Hindi, she got her treatment. She was so sweet, her mouth was so soft even as she was getting these sizzling treatments, and this woman Nidhi said let me know where you leave her and I'll make sure she gets her medicine every day.

Kamini Jain:

But I couldn't leave her. I brought her to my uncle's place.

Kamini Jain:

Oh man, he was so pissed. Anyway, long story short, needy ended up having a friend with a shelter. They took Choji to the shelter I organized to get her to Canada. I had a friend who, I was so lucky, agreed to take her and then she came to Canada and she lived with them for a couple of years, but it didn't work out with her other dog and then she ended up with you?

Susannah Steers:

She did. You know we had gone to the SPCA and you know we'd had a dog for years. We moved to this apartment and and the dog that we'd had reached the end of his life and my son was like we need another dog, we need another dog. So we went to the SPCA and he'd seen her online already and said, NOW. We're going. And so we went and we took her for a walk and did all the things and anyway, long story short, finally ended up bringing her home and she has just fulfilled our lives. It's been really, really fun. I was talking to a client about her and telling the story that we found this dog and she came from India and we were really excited about her and her name was Choti. And this woman her eyes just opened right up and she said what she said I know this dog. I said what are you talking about? You know this dog. She said do you have a picture? And I said yes. So I showed her a picture and she said oh my God, I know this dog.

Susannah Steers:

She had been one of your athletes over the years and recognized Choti and put us together, and so I always love to say that she's got a fairy godmother.

Kamini Jain:

Oh, does she ever! I was so scared to contact you because I thought you might say I don't want anything to do with you and then I'd be so sad. But I thought I'd never see this dog again. I was visiting her at the SPCA and then she was not there anymore. She's great.

Susannah Steers:

I think that's great. So we have this shared life between us, which I think is really fun, and that we get to walk her together sometimes is pretty special, sweet, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Kamini, for joining me today. Thank you, I will put in the show notes your website and where people can find you. Is there anything that you want people to know about that's coming up?

Kamini Jain:

Yeah, just come to the Vancouver Festival and see what the sport is all about. It's pretty fun. It's got all sorts of entertainment and all sorts of things going on. And then cheer for Falls Creek Racing Canoe Club Woo-woo.

Susannah Steers:

All right, well, thank you so much for joining me, and I hope we'll get together for a walk again soon.

Kamini Jain:

Sounds good. Thanks, Susannah.

Susannah Steers:

Bye-bye,

Kamini Jain:

Bye

Susannah Steers:

.

People on this episode

Contributor

Susannah Steers

Host
Contributor

Kamini Jain

Guest