how many muscles did you say?

So I spent two days with Ben Lawry helping during our Optimist annual Symposium, and when I got home my wife asked me if I learnt anything new.
I`ve been paddling for over 14years now and think that Im ok on the water, I can handle my kayak under most conditions and paddle pretty fast if I have to.
So why was it difficult to answer her question?
Well there was just so much information it was hard to latch onto one thing .
Bens lesson on forward paddling begins with the basics of posture, grip, knee position  all while on the shore or lawn,

and there is a lot to learn  before getting to the actual paddling part

With willing volunteers he gets the point across clearly and we all managed to improve our basic understanding of the 4 stages of the forward stroke.

On the water we all began to paddle with much more style and corrected technique. One thing that did catch my attention was the  power phase and the sequence of muscle use, beginning from the lower hand pulling then the lat then the upper hand and then the obliques and then the leg thrust  last.This has the effect of using the smaller muscles first and ending with the larger ones thus getting more power out of every stroke, not to mention correct torso rotation and catch  and of course exit
So then I wondered which muscles do we use when paddling and this is what I found  Now whenever anybody says oh you kayak, thats upper body  exercise, I have a much more complete answer for them.
And yes I did learn a lot from Ben`s lesson, its just that the answer is too long  for a quick reply.
Thanks Ben, it was great working with you again.