Kneeling and Knee Friction

[PaddlingPika]

I've been pondering friction points involved with kneeling in a canoe. This is regarding kneeling with a flat pad, not knee cups or thigh straps. There are multiple contact points requiring friction to prevent sliding forward: boat to pad, pad to pants fabric, pants fabric to skin (I almost always wear long pants). My old Grade VI kneeling pad with textured rubber on the bottom wore out and slides around too much so I've been experimenting with other padding. A couple of layers of thin yoga mat seems to stay in place well but one day after several hours of kneeling on that my knees were starting to get irritated from rubbing. I was wearing thin woven nylon long pants. Apparently the yoga mat was gripping the pants fabric and the pants were then rubbing against my knees. I wouldn't have thought the fabric was abrasive, but it was enough to cause irritation. That made me think back to another time with a different kneeling pad that had textured rubber on both sides. After a freestyle symposium my knees were starting to get raw and I blamed it on the textured rubber but now think it was the same issue of the rubber gripping the pants fabric and then skin rubbing on the fabric. Before my old kneeling pad wore out I didn't think too much about slippage issues, but thinking back on things there was always a need to reposition periodically when kneeling and also occasionally a need to hitch up pants which would gradually get tugged down a little. Finding pants with smoother fabric would presumably make them pull down more and require a tighter belt and more frequent "hitching up". On the other hand, it seems to me that if the fabric layer was eliminated and bare skinned knees were on a sticky rubber pad preventing any sliding then internal rubbing within the knee might be a problem.

What is your experience? Do you accept gradual sliding and needing to reposition as normal when kneeling? Is knee friction a problem?