I’m not quite done talking about the recovery and the front end, but today’s post concerns one of those stroke-spanning issues that doesn’t fit in neatly with the specific organization I’ve been aiming at with my first round of posts.
Reader Mark from the U.K. alluded to this issue in one of his first comments about the release, when he says, “the downward movement of the hands [for the release] started a lot earlier than where we were looking, and the faster you are going the earlier it happens.” He also provides a link to some video of elite scullers, which is very useful because it is not all of them racing. Mark makes the point that the higher the stroke rate, the earlier in the drive the downward angling motion of the handles for the release begins. You can see this if you watch some of the racing video and some of the video of Xeno Mueller rowing at steady state. There is a very useful feature at the bottom of each video on the site that allows you to step through frame by frame. If you do this with a racing clip and the steady state clip and, in particular, look at what percentage of the drive is complete when the blades first begin to peek out of the water on the drive, you’ll see that it’s a larger percentage at steady state than it is at race pace.
This phenomenon is interesting, and it is reflected in research on rowing and on other motor skills. First, let me lay out the basic issue. Then I’ll talk about some research findings. Finally, I’ll discuss the implications of all this theoretical work to what we do on the water on Monday morning.
The issue: We’ve all shopped for jeans before. Now, pants usually have three measurements that change as the overall size of the garment changes: the waist circumference, the inseam, and the rise (the distance between the waist and the bottom of the crotch). Think about how these dimensions change as the size of the pants increases from, say, L to XL. What’s important to realize is that the increases are neither constant (i.e., a straight two inches added to all three across the board) not proportional (i.e., a 3% length increase across the board). Instead, the length of the rise increases less, proportionally, than do the inseam and the waist.
Both intuition and measurements tell us that the rowing stroke also changes non-proportionally as the rate changes. The time it takes your oars to go through the water changes much, much less than does the time you spend on the recovery. That’s why your college coach always told you to take the rating up by sending the hands away faster, not by trying to go through the water faster.
Research by Dawson et al. (1998) confirms this non-proportional stretch of the rowing stroke. [Dawson, R., R. Lockwood, J. Wilson, & G. Freeman (1998). The rowing cycle: sources of variance and invariance in ergometer and on-the-water performance. Journal of Motor Behavior 30:1] These authors investigated the relative timing between drive and recovery at different stroke rates, both on the water and on the erg. They videotaped 5 pre-elites on the erg and in the single at ratings of 18, 23, 28, and 33 strokes per minute (spm).
Their findings are quite interesting and follow what one would suspect from intuition. (It’s nice when one’s intuitions are borne out. It makes one feel so intelligent and perceptive). First of all, both on the erg and on the water, as the stroke rate increased, so did the proportion of the time spent on the drive. That is, it was the recovery that shrank as the stroke rate increased. For one rower, for example, the proportion of time he or she spent on the recovery at 18 spm was 63% of the whole stroke – as compared to 43% at a 33. The absolute amount of time spent on both drive and recovery did decrease at the stroke rate rose, as you might imagine. But the recovery shortened in time much more than did the drive (though the drive did shrink a little in time). In other words, the stroke didn’t just speed up proportionally across the board. At an 18, the recovery:drive ratio was 3:1 or more, but at a 33 it was close to 1:1.
In terms of stroke-to-stroke variability, the recovery time was more variable than the drive time, in both conditions (but more on the water). The amount of variability decreased as the stroke rate increased – which is why sometimes a boat that feels problematic at lower ratings will feel better at a 26 or 28. The more experienced the sculler, the less variability there was overall. I think we’ve all experienced this, and isn’t it a good feeling to improve?
How does this research relate to what Mark noticed about the beginning of the release? If we imagine that it takes a relatively constant amount of time to extract the blades, and that the drive really does shorten some as the rating increases, then we have our answer. If the recovery shrinks and expands the most as rating changes, the drive less so, and the release (maybe the entry, too) even less, then the relative timing of these motor gestures will have to adjust in a dynamic way as the rating shifts. It would be interesting to look at video, preferably comparing one sculler to herself, to see whether there are physical “landmarks” where, say, the gesture of releasing the blades from the water always or nearly always occurs. That is, do scullers always start to extract the blades when their handles get to the hems of their shorts or some other location? Until I have the time to look at this, I won’t make any predictions about what we’d find. But I can talk more intelligently about the implications on our own racing and training of the ratio shifts that Dawson and colleagues found.
First of all, only at race rate should you be at a 1:1 ratio. That means that at steady state you want to be at more like 3:1. My friend Annette’s modification of the 1-2-3-4 drill to counting to three on the slide portion of the recovery (in the same cadence as the two-count on your drive) sounds like it would be a good drill to practice if you need help with this.
If you, like many scullers, need to increase the amount of time you spend on the recovery, get to know it. Understand all its parts, and what you’re “allowed” to do during each one and “not allowed” to do on each one. What I mean is this: as you begin the recovery, feel as though your back is leaning against an imaginary wall as your hands come away from the body. When the arms are almost straight, only then allow the body to rock over from the hips. You can practice this by actually sitting against a wall, pressing your shoulder blades to the wall, and reaching your arms out as you would in the boat. You want the hands to lead the shoulders, not the shoulders to "push" the hands.
When the arms are almost straight (but not poked out rigidly), then rotate over with the body, keeping your lower back feeling straight. When you feel a slight tug in your hamstrings, start your slide, keeping the handle speed constant. And remember, that’s all the body angle you’re allowed. Once you get it, that’s it. No more reaching or lunging.
Relax your legs, using just a little pressure of your heels in the cups of the shoes or clogs to draw your seat to the foot stretcher. Some coaches like to have you think about using the outward pressure of your oars in the oarlocks as the way you move up the slide. Either way, the point is to NOT speed up into the catch but to approach it gently.
As you compress, press the waistband of your shorts against the hem of your shorts. Don’t put your chest on your knees. Make sure the compression happens from the hips, not the waist. As you compress, continue to feel as though you’re rolling uphill into the catch so that you don’t come crashing into the turnaround.
To help you with this, here’s a new drill sequence I invented just this past Monday. Try it and let me know how you like it.
1. 3-pause rowing
Pause at three places in each stroke: arms away, body angle, half slide. You can keep your blades on the water if you want, so balance won’t be an issue. Get to know each of these positions intimately.
2. Paddle full slide, no pauses, for a couple of minutes, mentally rehearsing the pause positions as you pass through them.
3. Pause at half-slide, using your heels in the shoes to gently regulate your speed out of the pause. Pay particular attention to the speed of the wheels coming into the pause, so you can reproduce it after the pause, instead of speeding up as you come out of the pause.
4. Paddle full slide, no pauses, for a couple of minutes. Keep your focus on the continuous, “uphill” motion of the wheels of your seat.
5. Exaggerated recovery
On the recovery, get into the body-angle position as quickly as you can (still with the hands leading the shoulders) and go slooooowwww up into the catch after that. Exaggerate the difference between how much time it takes you to get to body angle and how much time it takes you to roll up the slide.
6. Paddle full slide, no pauses, for a couple of minutes, rowing like you did on the drill, only “in miniature”. That is, bring just a little of that quick-to-body-angle, slow to the catch feeling into your regular rowing.
7. Quarter-pressure catch, three-quarter-pressure finish
Row so that your pressure builds through the stroke and your handles really accelerate to your body. Think about the hand speed out after the release as being the same as the hand speed in before the release. That way, your handles will keep up a nice, continuous, conveyer-belt kind of motion around the turn at the back end.
When you go back to regular rowing, try to incorporate the feelings you developed during the drills into your normal steady state. In particular: don’t let the handles slow at the body angle position and speed up after that. Keep them moving continuously instead, with a speed on the recovery roughly determined by the speed they came in at. Slow your wheels as you alight at the catch. This will help you think not only about the ratio between drive and recovery, but also between the first and second parts of the recovery. That’s not a form of ratio coaches tend to talk about, but it’s important nonetheless.
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