Forgive the delay in the arrival of new material. I plead "doctoral" -- just had a meeting this morning with my advisor, and that always means I get a day or two off.
...We’re not done talking about the finish yet, not by a fair length. This time, I’d like to move from the focus on what the hands and blades do to what other parts of your body do just before and after the release. It will be a fairly personal and eclectic post, in the sense that I can really only give information to you about what my body does – but there are lots of little pieces of information to talk about. The details I’ll be discussing are so tiny and subtle that they are not easy to see in others, but so clear to feel in onself. Perhaps other scullers do things differently, and in that case I will be anxious to hear from those people about what they do.
I am also still in the process of investigating the issue of blade trajectory before the release. Reader Mark pointed out some very useful online video, and Reader Bob told me about some interesting DVDs that I may purchase. In addition to these sources, I plan to grill the elite coaches and athletes I know to see what their opinions are. A summary will be forthcoming once I feel it is complete.
Now, when I think of the end of the drive and the turnaround at the finish [see previous post "Feathering and the finish" for my informal definition of “finish”] the image that comes to mind is that of a talented gymnast performing an advanced move. Imagine a vaulter, for example. When he has finished his vault, he lands gracefully and precisely on the mat, sticking his landing most professionally. The last movement he makes is to finish the move, and this he does with a flourish of his hands.
Think particularly of his body as he does this. He holds himself almost suspended, muscles taut but not tight, stabilizing himself as his hands make their precise flourish. His hand movements are highly stylized for aesthetic appeal, but the way that the rest of his body supports those movements is eminently functional. He holds himself erect and still so that the flourish is highlighted.
That's the type of posture that I aim for around the release: holding my body supported to allow the small, delicate movement of extracting the blades from the water to operate with precision. My core is taut so that I feel suspended by my abdominal muscles. After I have finished the swing back into bow during the drive, I hold myself steady in that position to allow my abdomen to function as a reflecting board of sorts when my handles reach my body. I sometimes see scullers whose bodies continue to move back toward the bow as their hands come toward their bodies, allowing the finish to become soft and to dissipate the energy of the handles instead of sending it back out through the blades. A different, but equally ineffective, move at the finish is to allow the waist to curve so that the handles are absorbed into the midsection.
After I set my back to its layback position, I lever my arms in off of my tautened core. Shoulders are low, elbows are out to the sides and slightly higher than the shafts of the oars. This allows the hands to follow the arcs of the handles “for free” – in other words, because the elbows are out to your sides, simply extending the elbow joints naturally moves the hands in an arc anyway. Your hands will naturally rotate slightly on the handles so that the wrists can stay in a flat, relaxed position; the knuckles can be diagonal to your body instead of facing the stern.
The sensation of drawing the handles toward yourself before the finish is not like it is on an erg. The erg handle only goes straight back and forth, while the oar handles move in arcs. Other coaches have likened the arms-only movement to that of pulling open a bag of potato chips: Your elbows go out to the sides as you pull the two layers of plastic apart. I like this metaphor, though it usually makes me hungry. Sometimes coaches describe the feeling of your abdomen tautening as your handles approach it as feeling like you are pulling yourself to your handles rather than pulling the handles to you. Frank Cunningham says this is one of the two examples of “countermotion” during the stroke. He is referring to the fact that the body should not continue to move into bow as the handles come to the body, but should feel almost like it is beginning to move toward stern slightly before the hands have finished. In his words:
"The first {example of countermotion} appears just as the handles approach the body. The stroke is completed and the body returned without any consequent interruption in the speed of the boat. To accomplish this, draw your handles home with the shoulders, squeezing your shoulder blades together to arrest your back at the end of the swing. Your back then travels through the shoulders on the way out of bow." (p. 84, The Sculler at Ease)
While I lever my arms in against my body, I like to stabilize my entire self with my legs and feet. What the feet do isn’t commonly discussed in sculling, perhaps because different people use their feet differently. In mid-drive, I spring off the balls of my feet in order to give myself the longest stroke possible. I have heard others say that they feel this is not efficient – they ask, “Would you stand on your toes while you do a squat?” I disagree, however, that this is a relevant counterexample. First of all, when I squat, the amount of force I need to generate is much larger than what I need to generate in sculling, even during a race. (If it were not, I would only be able to row five or ten strokes per race – then I’d have to rest a few minutes before taking up the next five or ten strokes.) Second of all, Olympic weightlifting athletes do indeed come up on their toes when they clean or snatch the heaviest weights they can manage. I feel this maneuver in sculling allows me a long stroke, and keeping my legs taut until I’m on the hands-away and my blades are feathered is the equivalent of the gymnast’s finish on his move.
To pick up a thread from previous posts on the finish, let’s think about how to keep the blades buried as the arms finish off the stroke. Just as the release is made, in part, by the forearms rotating down from the elbows, so the blades can be kept buried by ever so slightly rotating the forearms up from the elbows. The sensation isn’t one of using very many muscles. Instead, you may feel just a little pressure on the pads of your fingers as you draw the handles around the arc and into your body. If you haven’t done this before, and are used to washing out, you may feel as though you have to lift up and then out slightly before the finish. One of my scullers thought it felt like the handles had to go up and over a lip before she could pop them down to initiate the release.
My mention of how I like to use my abdomen as a reflecting board may suggest to you that I to have the handles fairly close to me at the release. I do like them about 6 inches apart, with my thumb knuckles on the curve of my ribs. I think that the stabilization my thumbs receive by resting slightly against my ribs as I extract and feather the blades helps the release feel more stable. However, I see many scullers who prefer to release the blades when the handles are more to their sides, or even slightly in front of their bodies. I confess that I am slightly envious of their ability to maintain the set of the boat when the handles are unstabilized like this. But perhaps this is because of my very square-feeling release, whose tradeoff very well may be that it decreases boat stability.
As mentioned, a taut abdomen reflects the handles’ speed instead of absorbing it. A former coach of mine, Jordan (Datsi) Balchev, used to say this in his Bulgarian accent: “Shove da wator!” I love the feeling of shoving the water away from me as I come into the finish, feeling my oars almost shiver with the energy traveling through the handles to the blades to give them that one last flick.
Finessing the finish also means that I use how and when I release the blades from the water to adjust the set of the boat. If the boat is listing slightly to port, say, as I come into the finish, I allow the starboard blade to maintain its gentle grip on the water just a shade longer than usual, hoping to pull the boat slightly back down to startboard to right itself. Done with discretion and without tight muscles, this kind of fine adjustment can damp out a lot of wobbliness in a boat, especially if you are rowing bow seat in a team boat. In fact, since bow seat in a team boat is farthest from the fin, this person has the most leverage in turning and setting the boat. Thus, bow seat in a double or quad has the most effect on and the most responsibility for the set of the boat.
This, in fact, is part of why I decided to start my blog at the back end, as it were, instead of some other place. The finish is the source of so much of how the boat sets that I often spend more time working on it with scullers (scullers with whom I have long-term relationships) than other parts. If you can get your finish polished and efficient, so many other parts of the stroke will feel much easier. I hope these posts help.
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