Rigging settings for children sculling

[sander]

Situation: a typical youth single, a bit shorter boat than usual. Wing rigger allowing span around 160cm (center value) with a few cm to move the oarlock pin on each side. Standard Concept 2 oarlocks.

We haven't bought the sculls yet and we have two camps. I am in the "shorter sculls" camp. They must be Macon blades because of national race rules.

The typical child rowing this boat would be any size and weight today's 11 to 14 year old girl or boy comes in, which is a wide variety of length, weight, strength etc. The taller or more overweight boys will not row this boat. The girls are typically taller.

The kids race 500m.

I would be interested in your recommendations, insights as well as common practices at your clubs for scull length but also other rigging parameters. For sculls we still have a choice what we will purchase.

[tony....@gmail.com]

I have communicated in the past with Volker Nolte of the University of Western Ontario, who is a renowned expert on rowing biomechanics. Rather than interpret his comments I am copying here my message to him and his reply:

Mr Nolte
I seem to recall you talking about kinderboats for teaching children to row. This isn't our case unfortunately. But you seem to have specific ideas regarding children's rowing.

Our (nautical) club has a rowing sports program which includes racing canoe and kayak, and rowing, for youngsters as young as 11 - 12 years.

We use Alden Quests http://www.adirondackrowing.com/alden_quest.htm for the program, but these boats are also used for our adult learn to row program, which limits the adjustments we can allow for the spread.
Presently the boats are rigged at 161cm spread. We use concept2 oars, fat smoothie 2, low inertia, length range 274-279 with the thin green thermoplastic grips. The oars are adjusted to the shortest length (274) and I vary the inboard a bit to compensate for the body size and strength of the rowers. For these youngsters a longer inboard makes the "pull" easier but too much crossover complicates their ability to manipulate the oars. We use seat pads to raise their height relative to the pins as well.
My question is the following: Is it worthwhile or even advisable to order shorter oars (special order) and how much shorter? I am taking into consideration that these oars would only be suitable for young
rowers so we have budget considerations to include in our thoughts.
Someone suggested that we should not use shorter oars but that we should order soft shafts to reduce the chance of back injury.

Any thoughts you would care to offer would be greatly appreciated.

Tony Tarlo
club aviron de Sherbrooke

Hi Tony,

You are doing already a lot of good things and you are certainly on the right track with your ideas. The major problems with too long oars come when people start training and trying to pull hard. So, learning is not so critical with regards to scull length - well, as long as you are not ridiculously long, which you are not!

I would indeed order shorter sculls and you can go as short as 2.65m. Those sculls could be used for children as well as adults. However, you would have to set the span to 1.55 - 1.58m and the inboard to 0.85 - 0.87m. The benefit for shorter inboard and span is that rowers learn to use larger sculling arcs (the arc that the sculls sweeps over the whole stroke). This is a special skill that not too many rowers really master which is one of the reasons for that Canadian scullers struggle internationally.

I hope this makes sense to you?

Cheers,

Volker

[carl]

Your questions & Volker's reply both make perfect sense.

A 161cm pin-to-pin spread would be on the wide side of normal for a
1.85m tall man. Were you to re-proportion that to a 1.5m youngster the
span would fall to - wait for it - 130.5cm. Similarly a 268cm scull
would re-scale down to 232cm. And that combination would work well.

We don't expect a small runner to take the same stride length of use the
same cadence as a tall one. We don't expect juveniles to ride bikes
with the same dimensions as pro racers. And for example, I understand
that in the British 2012 squad Emma Pooley, who is not tall, rode a
smaller bike than the others in her team.

If we are to teach competent use of the equipment from a young age, it
surely makes sense to change the rigging so that its proportion bears at
least some meaningful relationship to stature of the person in the boat?

Cheers -
Carl

--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
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[sander]

Shorter sculls ordered. It will take some effort to convince the trainers though.

Apart from doing the numerical analysis, I also go on observing this age group at our national championships and I got a strong feeling that the lighter rigged kids in the more proportionally rigged boats (if that is a good way to say it) were rowing better as well as were more able to react to circumstances like a competitor threatening to take over them. All in all it was more fun to watch and I believe also more fun to row for he kids.