Shoulders, Entry, Catch

I've gotten a couple of comments in response to my post about where and how to "take up the slack" when you're placing the blades in the water, and they've caused me to screech to a halt and do some more homework.

I proposed that the slack – the slight movement of the handles toward you – as the blades enter the water should feel like it’s getting taken up by having your shoulders feel like they’re coming more into joint.  Steve from OH pointed out that videos like that of Zac Purchase and other technically proficient scullers don’t show evidence of a fore/aft movement of the shoulders, like I describe. 

It’s a good thing he pointed this out, too, because it raised some useful issues that needed to be discussed.  One is that I don’t necessarily mean to say that how I describe the way sculling feels to me should be taken literally.  Fine:  but how would you know this?  Especially when I do quick web-searches to try and justify my intuitions.  Well, you have to ask (like Steve); or rely on me to self-police, -educate, and -correct. 

In the spirit of providing accurate information for you all, then, I thought I’d check with my friend Denise Frost, who’s a physical therapist and sculler.  She works at Spaulding Rehabilitation in Boston and has a private company, Coordination Dynamics, as well.  Though she and I have clients in common and often refer people to each other, I have no stake in the financial success or failure of her company, nor she mine. 

She's written a paper called “Cuffs and Slingshots” (sorry; I'm not able to link to it today, but I will do when I see that the website is up again.  Either that, or I'll ask Denise if it's OK to link directly to the pdf).  It describes a common set of problems that scullers and rowers encounter.  It’s also what we’ve been trying to think about!  Its largest point is that when you initiate the drive, the rest of your body has to be firm, and your joints well-supported, in order to transfer the force you’re generating with your legs through your body, to the blades, and out to the water.

The next important point is that the small muscles of the shoulder that I mentioned last time aren’t up to this task by themselves.  It’s the larger muscles around the shoulder that should be taking care of this, muscles like the trapezius, the serratus anterior, and the latissimus dorsi.  If those large muscles aren’t engaging properly, whether because of injury or habit, your posture as you come into the front end will look curved, not upright.  As Denise says, you’ll have “rounded forward shoulders and a slumped upper back.”  The muscles that stabilize your shoulder blades will be elongated, which puts them into a position where they can’t effectively stabilize the joint and transmit the load from your legs to your blades.  Instead, your powerful leg drive will just make the muscles and connective tissue stretch more.  You may feel like you're hanging on the oar – but because tendons and ligaments are not well suited to the task of stabilizing joints, you might also feel like your shoulders are stretching out of joint, almost.

Muscles are perfect for stabilizing joints, as long as they’re in the right position. If you’re over-reaching or slumped coming into the catch, instead of having the large muscles extrinsic to the shoulder stabilizing your shoulders, the small, deep intrinsic muscles of the shoulder will be trying to do so.  That’s not efficient from a rowing point of view, and it will greatly increase the probability of injury, which may give rise to symptoms like the ones Denise describes in another of her documents: 

• numbness & tingling in hands and fingers
• radiating or shooting pain throughout your arm
• elbow pain
• neck and/or upper back pain
• shoulder pain due to the “ball” of your upper arm bone mashing your rotator cuff muscle (the supraspinatus) against the acromion, which is next to your collarbone and above your humerus. 

One of the technical corrections that Denise recommends is: “at the commencement of the drive, ensure that the scapula is engaged against the rib cage and that the latissimus dorsi is engaged.”  That’s the clue that we were trying to figure out, and it seems so obvious because “use the lats” is such a frequent refrain in coaching. 

If you look at the video of Zac Purchase that Steve showed us, you can see (faintly, because of the lighting) Zac’s lats jump out at each catch[1].  I think that it’s this feeling which I’m calling “feeling your shoulders come more into their joints”.  My previous shoulder movement example, with the invisible glass wall, was a way of trying to evoke the sensation for you all, but emphasized the action of the wrong muscles. 

Let’s recap:  Steve asked how you get your blades into the water without either (a) checking the boat down and flipping or (b) missing water.  I said, among other things, that you need to have your arms and shoulders relaxed and taut as you place the blades, to a level somewhere between God and Thanksgiving. Your belly-button is pressed against your thighs, and your chest is up and open. 

You also need to be stabilizing your seat in position (I have this down as a future topic) so that, as the water you’re moving past takes your blades, you’ll be able to absorb some of that feeling of movement of the handles toward you by getting a good grip with your lats – this is the feeling of your shoulders coming more into joint.  Maybe a better term would be “the feeling of your shoulders stabilizing themselves”.  If your hands are gripping the handles only as much as needed to prevent the oars from rotating as you lock on, and if your biceps and triceps are equally balancing each other out but not clenching – again, if you’re stabilizing your elbow joints, not immobilizing them, per se – you may feel the oars bump against the sides of the oarlock.  First you’ll feel them bump against the sternward side of the oarlock, then against the bow-ward side.  At least, you might feel this at steady state, when it’s calm, you’re not steering, there aren’t too many sunspots, and Mercury is not in retrograde. 

If you were peeking at your blade on one side, you’d see a pretty symmetrical splash, as long as you weren’t initiating the drive yet.  Only once the blades are fully under the water, and you’ve felt the oars moving around in their sockets, are you allowed to start the drive.  That’s what we’ll talk about next time. 

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[1] Or at least near the catch.  Since for the majority of the video we can’t see both the shoulder and the blade, we don’t know much about the timing of the two.  Let’s be charitable and assume that they happen at the same time. 

Comments

[Graham Spittle]

Hi Karen, Nice to see you back again!
I'm Graham Spittle from UK and recently have been urged to buy a single by my wife!!!
My background is competitive rowing from school several decades ago.
Currently 63 years old, 95 kgs, 1.83cms tall.
Competing in masters 4s and 8s, medalled at British Indoor Champs and regular GB participant in FISA rowing tours. (including rowing round Manhattan in sea gigs,)
With focus on sculling ahead, when boat arrives, I have found your articles really full of great info, insights, very digestible (compared to those jolly biomechanics papers), plus your articles are a fun read to boot!
I had just got to the end of the articles from 2009 and was disappointed the flow stopped !
So keep them coming!
Graham

[Michael]

Great blog! Just discovered it after getting back into sculling after a few years off. Used to scull twice a day on the Charles back in 1997. Thanks for your expert advice, detailed descriptions, and all the drills, especially. Really helpful! Looking forward to reading more!