Do you ONLY row bow-side or stroke-side?

[howard...@gmail.com]

Do you row ONLY one side of the boat - or can you row both sides but just have a preference for one side? Who decided which side you rowed on most/all of the time?

Comments from coaches and rowers welcome on this blog at Rowperfect:

http://bit.ly/1kAurqt

[Carl]

Unless we have a physical disability, everyone _can_ row on either side.
After all, most of us can walk, run, scratch, drive, type, cycle, hop,
skip, etc., with the limbs of either side, & do so without falling over,
while few of us are built with king crab asymmetry. And quite a few
rowers can also scull.

What does happen is either that someone so wants to be stroke that they
claim inability to row starboard/bowside or, having learned to row on
one side, they don't want to seem to take a step back in ability when
they change over.

UK drivers have to adjust to driving on "the wrong side of the road"
whenever they go to mainland Europe & most seem to do OK. Scullers have
to learn to handle 2 blades equally well, & again they seem to cope.
Rowing does not demand the fine neuromuscular coordination required in
such delicately skilled actions as handwriting, so I feel that a strong
"sided-ness" is down to a reluctance to change, or to having been
inadvisedly kept on just 1 side for too long.

In my experience, those who learn to do the same job with either hand
end up better at that job, so bottling yourself into a 1-sided mentality
is bad for you & hardly helps with crew selection. And every real
athlete should be up for a challenge.

Cheers -
Carl
--
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[Peter Ford]

On Monday, 5 May 2014 15:11:53 UTC+1, Carl wrote:
> On 05/05/2014 11:37, howard...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Do you row ONLY one side of the boat - or can you row both sides but just have a preference for one side? Who decided which side you rowed on most/all of the time?
>
> >
>
> > Comments from coaches and rowers welcome on this blog at Rowperfect:
>
> >
>
> > http://bit.ly/1kAurqt
>
> >
>
>
>
> Unless we have a physical disability, everyone _can_ row on either side.
>
> After all, most of us can walk, run, scratch, drive, type, cycle, hop,
>
> skip, etc., with the limbs of either side, & do so without falling over,
>
> while few of us are built with king crab asymmetry. And quite a few
>
> rowers can also scull.
>
>
>
> What does happen is either that someone so wants to be stroke that they
>
> claim inability to row starboard/bowside or, having learned to row on
>
> one side, they don't want to seem to take a step back in ability when
>
> they change over.

I see this as an advantage of sticking with one side for a while *and then switching*; I've seen various rowers end up technically better on their second side. When people learn to row, they tend to pick up various odd habits, possibly related to how their novice boat rowed, and some of these take a long time to remove. Starting on their second side 6 months or a year later allows them to relearn the movements necessary to row sweep *while they already know how to row*, and rowing in a much better crew.

Unfortunately, the bizarrely compressed schedules we work on in Cambridge college rowing tend to make it hard to find time to switch people over. When you're expecting to run:
Week 0: Rowers come back from holiday
Week 1: Head race
Week 2: Set a crew
Week 6: Race Bumps

it's hard to find time to have one of your better rowers waving her blade around for a few weeks while she works out how to rate 36 on the new side.

Our squads seem to settle down at "enough people row both sides that we can always put the best 8 rowers out as a crew", and not get far beyond that.

There are also a few people who have a big enough difference in leg length that there's one side they probably should row, but this isn't that common; while I feel more comfortable at the front on the side you'd expect based on my small difference in leg length, I think that's more due to my flexibility being slightly less atrocious on one side than the other...

Peter

[James HS]

While I always worked hard to do both sides because it got me more outings I almost inevitably ended up at bow :)

however, I do think that there are some basic asymmetries in most rowers that would favour one side over the other (I have a 10mm leg discrepancy that favours a bow ward motion)(hips, leg, ligaments and flexibility are all different on one side compared to the other.

Both sides good - one side better :)

James

[Steve S]

It is bad enough that in the USA it is common to welcome 14 and 15 yr olds into sweep rowing programs.

To make it worse, all to often the coaches identify the lads and lassies as ports or starboards and there they stay for several years of 5 or 6 days-a-week year-around training, muscles, connective tissue, and bone structure be damned.

If you think that the governing bodies might address the issues involved (#1 sweeping too young, and #2 developing asymmetric bodies), well, as far as I know, you'd be mistaken.

[Carl]

Steve - It was once said to me by a famous rower that the official tie
exists to prevent blood from reaching the brain. But you've raised this
very serious point, & let's hope this will encourage others to do the same.

[Jay]

I was picked fairly randomly as a bow sider when I started rowing on the river. Did a few outings there, stayed there. Didn't pick up the metronomic skill of stroking a boat, though did develop the skill of following stroke, controlling those behind me and generally doing that 7 role. That was it for a season. The next year, the squad I had moved into had many more strokesiders, so I stayed bow side.

I have rowed on the south coast for the last 3 years, and I am still bow. However, our coastal boats are rigged the opposite way round, so whilst I'm still not stroke, I have effectively changed sides. Physically, I am stronger on my left side, and longer in the leg, so it actually suits me quite well.

As I've mainly been pairs racing, the first skill you look for is steering, and I already had that from the river, so being bow was more important than one side or the other.

As James said above, "Both sides good, one side better." That should be applicable to the vast majority of rowers.

[LakeGator]

Rowing on either side as a sweep rower is relatively easy to accomplish if done early in the learning process. Rowing on both sides not only helps reduce developing bad habits and form but it reinforces the right way to control the blade.

It is easy to develop poor technique and habits if always on the same side. The physical damage described in the articles linked add even more reason for being able to row both sides and tend to indicate that it is best to row both sides regularly. The latter seems a challenge in boats striving for the very best performance. Even small lineup changes seem to lead to less than optimal performance.

One of the best coaches I had when I was a competitive sweep rower forced all rowers to row both sides. He claimed this was for his convenience so he could make seat assignments without need to know side preference. In fact, as he told me years later, he was making sure every sweep in the team was rowing properly.

Any novice coach who doesn't teach his/her rowers both sides from the beginning is doing his/her students a disservice.

[wmar...@gmail.com]

Haven't looked at the blog. However, If I'm coaching new ppl and all that's available is sweep boats, I get them to switch sides every row for the first while.. How long a while? Hmm. Not sure.

If there's sculling equipment around, it's "You need to be able to scull reasonably well row both sides."

As regattas draw closer the swapping sides gets less frequent and a boat may get "set"...

[Philip Straton]

From personal experience, at school we started sweep rowing at the beginning of u/16 (so from ~August in the year we turned 15).

Although myself and my fellow crew mates switched to sculling boats from about the age of 17 (until 18), at the end of school rowing we were all "lopsided" from the couple of seasons spent rowing on one side (eg: abs higher on one side, more flexible to one side etc), all depending on which side we had rowed. This was despite doing massive sculling mileage.

At university, I switched from bow side to stroke (and can row both equally well) but definitely still have some imbalances from the bow side rowing while younger.