Serious Sculling

Thinking About Steering.

I’ve been thinking about steering lately because I’ve been coaching some people who aren’t very good at it.  This isn’t to say that they hit things, or have close calls, or even end up on the wrong side of the river (though there are plenty folks on the Charles who do).  It’s more that they don’t use all the cues available to them while they’re steering.  So, with these scullers in mind, today’s post is going to be about steering.  Since I row and coach on the Charles, I’ll be speaking mainly in reference to it and its traffic patterns.  But I hope that readers who row elsewhere will still find useful information here to apply at home. 

As I see it, there are several aspects of steering, each of which I’ll discuss in turn.  First, you’ve GOT to know the traffic pattern on the body of water you row on, or whether there isn’t one.  This can be tricky to figure out – for example, if you aren’t already a member of the rowing community in Boston, it would be hard to find a copy of the River Rules, and there are sometimes conflicting versions.  For example, a commercial enterprise that rents canoes and kayaks on the Charles has this to say about traffic on the river.  While factually completely accurate and exceptionally well written, they clearly don’t realize that the rowing community on the Charles has created its own set of more detailed, rowing-specific rules.  If I were to travel to Washington, D.C., say, I would have no idea what the traffic pattern was on the Potomac – though I’m sure I would be colorfully informed were I to violate it. 

If you take even a cursory glance at the rules document, you’ll see that the rules are fairly detailed.  Fun!  But you have to know them anyway.  This is not like knowing that in Massachusetts, if there is no speed limit sign then the limit automatically defaults to a certain number that depends on the type of road.  That’s pretty much arcane, if you ask me, unless you get pulled over by a cop.  Knowing (and following) the rules of the river really can mean the difference between having your intestines floating in the water or not.  Ask this guy.  (Sorry I can’t link to the actual PDF.  Copyright, you know.)

But there’s more to it than just knowing where you’re supposed to be.  There’s also knowing where you want to be, and what your personal course is, at any one given time.  On the Charles, the main rowing traffic pattern is to stay to your port side – just like on the roads.  Slower boats stay toward shore, generally; faster ones toward the middle of the river.  As I row or coach, I imagine each half of the river as being like a two-lane highway (or three lanes, if it’s really crowded).  I want to stay in the “right-hand” or shore-most of these lanes unless there is some compelling reason not to be there.  And sometimes there is:  Someone could be pulled over for a drink, or the main traffic pattern might actually put me through a center arch instead of a shore arch.  Or the authorities could be having men fix the bridges, and their barges could be parked in an arch we would otherwise use.  Aside from those times, however, I have a very clear idea in my head of just where on the river I want to be and where I am pointed. 

Each time before I start rowing, I check where I am pointed and “get my point” so that I’m already aimed where I want to go.  Once my course is established, there are several methods I use to keep on that course or to monitor where I am and where I’m going.  First, and most saliently, I make sure there is at least twice as much river to my starboard as to my port.  If I’m not in one of those spots where the natural traffic pattern takes me toward the center, and there are equal amounts of river to starboard and port, I feel like my fly’s unzipped. 

Cultivate this feeling.  It may save your intestines. 

For the most part, I steer by peeking over my left shoulder at the shore.  That’s because I mostly just maintain a distance of about the length of a single (say, 30-40 feet or ~10 meters) off shore.  Exceptions are where the usual course is farther away than that from shore (like in the Basin), where the shore forms a sharp cove (like at Magazine Beach), or where there’s a dock (like by Cambridge Boat Club).  Generally, though, about every 5-10 strokes I just look over my left shoulder to see how far away I am and adjust if I’m too close or too far.  Crucially, though, I’m not just looking at how far my oar is from the shore or other object.  I’m looking to make sure my bow is pointed in a course parallel to the main line of the shore. 

This brings us to a little bit of how-to.  First, in most cases I wait until my blades are in the water to turn my head.  Once they go in, I press with my legs, let my arms stretch out a little, and turn my chin to my shoulder.  Out of the corner of my eye I peek at what my hull or bow is doing.  On the next stroke is when I adjust course if I need to (assuming I’m not about to run into something).  I adjust if the imaginary line connecting my stern and bow isn’t parallel to the imaginary line of the shore. 

To adjust my course for the places on the river where the traffic pattern carries me away from shore, I mostly use a “connect the dots” approach.  Shore forms a cove like it does just after Magazine Beach and before Riverside Boat Club?  Easy.  I make my imaginary lines skim the edges of the cove, like this: 

Sometimes I’ll look for landmarks, too.  After I get enough around the corner near Riverside (depicted above), I look for the shore arch of the next bridge and put my bow right on that.  Then, all I have to do is peek left as I’m skimming by Riverside’s dock to make sure I’m not going to hit anyone.  I adjust my point as I near the bridge.  At sharp turns like the Weeks Footbridge or the Eliot Bridge, I have stern points that I use to tell me when to stop turning, or other landmarks that tell me when to adjust course.  But mostly, it’s the shore. 

When I’m connecting my dots or in a straightaway, I try to make sure that my course is pretty even so I don’t oversteer or drift.  To do this, I just either pick a random stern point and try to keep my stern on it, or I watch my wake to see that it’s straight. 

There are just two issues left:  Watching out for stuff, and how to turn on the fly. 

DON’T FORGET TO WATCH OUT FOR STUFF. 

‘Cause there’s always stuff:  bridge abutments, couches, and kayakers who just sit there wide-eyed and mystified as you row steadily toward them are all objects that have been found in the Charles.  To notice stuff, you have to ask yourself, “What’s ahead of me?”, then check, and then memorize it.  To notice moving stuff, you have to also ask yourself, “How fast is it moving and in what direction?”  You have to check by looking over BOTH shoulders.  Memorize what you see and check again after a stroke or two to see if it’s still in the same place, adjusting your course as needed to avoid it.  (Unless, of course, you are tired and think that a rest on a nice waterlogged couch is just the ticket.)  To avoid large immovable objects, figure out where the object is and where your bow is headed by taking a peek over each shoulder and averaging.  Then adjust as needed. 

Finally, a quick how-to, part of which will be review.  Looking over your shoulder when your oars are in the water will give you more stability (though of course you should look whenever you need to, in a pinch).  To angle your boat, reach out farther at the catch on the side opposite the way you want to turn.  So, if I want to turn to starboard, I reach out farther on port at the catch.  This makes a longer arc on the port side, which will bring my bow around to starboard where I want it.  You could make a longer arc on one side by lengthening at the catch end or the finish end, but it’s more efficient while rowing to push your bow by getting more length at the catch rather than pulling your stern by getting more length at the finish.  Since you’ll have a longer arc on one side than the other and the same amount of time to get through both of them, it’s going to feel like you are pulling harder with the outside arm than the inside.  And if you need to turn very sharply, you can even increase the difference in the arcs by keeping your inside arm bent or by not squaring the blade that’s on the inside of the turn as you take a stroke. 

The astute reader will note that I haven’t said anything about mirrors.  This is because I don’t use one.  I keep expecting them to act like the rear-view mirror in my car, and they don’t – they keep moving around when I move my head to get a better look.  Since I’m already used to looking around by moving my head, I figured I’d save the money and stay with what I knew.  I like it marginally better in a theoretical way because while you’re craning your neck around, you catch sight of stuff you might miss if you’re peering into your mirror.  But it doesn’t seem to me that one method or the other consistently results in more accidents – it seems to be that NOT using one method or the other consistently results in accidents.  So use what works best for you, and: 

 

Don’t forget to check for stuff! 

The Importance of Lactate.

See, TC?  I’m making good on a promise to discuss an issue I referred to.  –And that check will be arriving soon, yes? 

Also, people interested in training by splits may want to look back at a comment to the original post on the topic, because reader Joy asks how to calculate the splits.  I've replied to her comment with that information, and can give folks some information on how to construct workout plans for yourself if you don't have a coach to do it for you.  But now, on to today's topic:  Lactate. 

 

In the throes of acidosis, I’ve often wished – prayed – begged – that we could race without incurring all the pain of lactate production.  And, of course, realized how futile that wish is.  In any case, it might be useful to look a little at why lactate is important in rowing, and when it might or might not actually help you. 

 

First, I feel it’s necessary to clear up an issue that I might have misled you on (well, me and practically everyone else who writes about aerobic or anaerobic thresholds).  When we use terms like “anaerobic threshold”, that implies that your body doesn’t begin producing energy anaerobically (i.e., producing lactate) until you reach a certain level of output.  But of course that’s not true.  You’re producing lactate all the time.  It’s just that, when the energy demands on your body get to a certain point, you need to produce proportionally more of your energy anaerobically.  Keep that up and it’ll eventually result in your reaching a point where you can just barely keep up with processing the amount of lactate you’re making, and that’s your anaerobic threshold.  Ernest Maglischo, author of my favorite book on exercise physiology, says on page 343, “A more accurate term is the respiratory anaerobic threshold, or simply the respiratory threshold.”  [This book has 791 pages, just so you know.]

 

It’s also going to be useful to understand the three stages of energy metabolism.  They are: aerobic metabolism, anaerobic metabolism, and the ATP-CP system.  Without going into too much detail here and distracting from the topic at hand, the aerobic metabolism functions to derive energy from aerobic glycolysis, changing muscle glycogen to glucose, then to pyruvate and hydrogen ions, and finally to carbon dioxide and water.  While aerobic glycolysis is much more efficient than the anaerobic phase of glycolysis, in that it allows much more energy to be released (something like 13 times more energy), it also takes about twice as long. 

 

On the other end of the energy spectrum is the ATP-CP system, also called the “anaerobic alactic system.”  That’s because is does not use oxygen to produce energy, nor does it produce lactate.  In this metabolic process, ATP is recycled (and energy produced) by breaking down CP, or creatine phosphate.  This process releases energy very quickly, allowing muscle fibers to contract at maximum speed, but only for about 5 seconds.  The CP supply within muscles declines quickly enough that by the end of the first 20 seconds or so of exercise, the contribution of this system to energy supply is pretty much nil for most races. 

 

So, from about 5 or 10 seconds into a race until the end, you’re getting most of your energy from glycolysis (breaking down glycogen).  The anaerobic phase is actually the first part of glycolysis, and you can continue metabolizing the byproducts of this phase aerobically into CO₂ and H₂O if the energy demands on your body are not too great.  The rate of anaerobic glycolysis, on the other hand, is limited by the amount of certain enzymes that are used to catalyze the reactions, but that amount can be increased with training – sprint training.  Acidosis is actually caused by a buildup of hydrogen ions, which lowers the pH in your muscles, and causes not only pain but a loss of muscular power and speed.  And even though you might will yourself to work through the pain, pain tolerance alone won’t help you overcome the reduction in speed from acidosis.  If you keep going, you get stiff, then numb, and once I even felt a kind of interesting "sparkling" feeling just as my muscles sort of ground to a halt. 

 

So why’s it good? 

 

There are several reasons. 

 

One is that when you start getting acidic, it can mean you’re pulling hard enough to achieve the benefit the exercise is designed to proffer.  Getting acidic can also mean you’re pulling too hard, especially if what you’re trying to train is the aerobic glycolitic energy system.  

 

Engaging in anaerobic glycolysis enables you to perform at speeds that are higher than you could if you stayed completely aerobic.  You know that already – if you don’t pull hard enough, sure, it doesn’t hurt; but you also get beat real quick. 

 

In a larger sense, there are substantial advantages to lactate-production training.  You do this to improve sprint speed (and, remember, as rowers we sprint at the beginning of some races, as well as at the end – but don’t get me started on that topic.  Yet.)  You also do it to increase your body’s ability to buffer lactic acid, because eliminating it won’t completely do the job. 

 

Improving sprint speed involves, in turn, two parts.  One part is developing the ability of your muscles to produce large amounts of force very quickly, using the anaerobic system; that is, developing anaerobic power.  The Canadian rowing trainers (that’s a way for me to say “Ed McNeely” without sounding like a sycophant, though that’s kind of what I am) have a “Peak Power” workout that they use with rowers and scullers for just this purpose.  The idea is that increasing the peak power your muscles can produce during rowing, you’ll also improve your submaximal power output.

 

Improving sprint speed also involves increasing your anaerobic endurance, which is the largest percentage of maximum (anaerobic) power that you can maintain for the length of a race.  For most rowers and scullers, races fall into the “middle distance” category, which means that half  to three-quarters of your energy during racing comes from aerobic sources (depending on the length in time of the race, not just on the distance of the race).  For this reason, middle- and longer-distance athletes need to work more on oxygen consumption and lactate removal more than lactate buffering.  To that end you will add to your aerobic and peak power workouts what Maglischo calls “Lactate Production training.” 

 

Even though there is a lot of truth to the idea that training to produce lactate is antithetical to training to remove lactate, in fact both are important.  Training to improve the ability to produce lactate very quickly is a way of bumping up your sprint speed, and then taking lactate away quickly allows you to keep up that high rate of speed longer.  But when you do lots of basic aerobic endurance training, the contraction speed of your fast-twitch muscle fibers, the ones that like to be anaerobic, will decrease.  So you can train the fast-twitch muscles even without affecting the slow-twitch muscles (because basic endurance does the reverse). 

 

During peak power workouts, you want to give yourself a lot of rest.  You also want to avoid a lot of pain from acidosis.  Why?  Because you want to build it up fast and get rid of it fast.  You don’t want to incur a lot of acidosis, since this actually slows the rate of anaerobic metabolism.  It turns the workout more into a buffering one or a pain-tolerance one.  And those are important, but in smaller quantity. 

 

At the beginning of your workout three to five mornings per week, take a very easy warmup (like what you would do for lifting).  [TC, you’ve just reminded me that the topic of lifting for rowing is a very important one and that I should cover it at some point.  So there.]  Then, do the following:

         10x [10 seconds on, 1 minute off]

Your 10 seconds on will be absolutely all out, as hard and fast as you can go, for about 3 strokes at most.  It doesn’t really hurt, because you mostly use the alactic anaerobic energy system.  Then you paddle really, really easy for a minute, or even longer if you want.  Do that ten times, then do your regular workout for that day. 

 

To progressively overload yourself throughout the training season, you can increase the speed at which you do sprint pieces as the season progresses.  Increasing the volume (doing more of them) is also a good way of pushing yourself with this work.  But don’t decrease the rest between the pieces.  If you do, then you’ll just cause acidosis to occur sooner, and you will reduce the pieces’ effectiveness.  You want to rest enough that you can pull at the same speed through all the pieces; if your speed suffers, you’re done with the workout and it’s best to move to something else. 

 

Does this answer or raise questions?  Let me know.  First time I’ve written about this, so I expect I can do a better job with practice.  But let me know.