Relative Hand Positions

[Steve]

Hello,

Once more I appeal to those experienced scullers out there to help me with
something I'm trying to visualize in my head or am at least unsure of.

It's with regards to the left and right scull handles when sculling left
over/in front of right. now, initially when I heard the term "left over
right" I'd take it literally and place my right directly beneath my left
which creates no ambiguities about the arcs of each scull as they came in,
crossed directly over and carried on in parallel towards my ribs. Then the
same in reverse on the recovery.

Then it was pointed out to me that the typical 1cm height difference on the
left and right gates was insufficient to allow this type of hand positioning
to work properly and that "Left over" really also entails the left leading
the right relative to the stern as well as a lesser, but distinct height
difference.

OK, got that. So, my real problems start with the notion that given that the
right hand leads the left in towards the body, but that (as I understand)
both handles come to the body at the same time, then this must imply that
the left hand actually must pull through slightly faster to have it reach
the body at the same time as the right.

If so, then surely this must cause a slight issue with the straight running
of the boat?

or, is the relative horizontal separation of the hands maintained to the
body such that the left hand is about a handles width further away from the
body at the finish? If this were the case, then it would certainly make the
other problem I have about getting the left hand away first easier.

To many the above query might be over-thinking things, but it's just this
sort of detail that someone of my mindset needs to properly understand.

Thanks for reading.


--

Regards

Steve

[Peter Ford]

Because most of the people I put out in sculling boats for their first time are science students, I tend to end up talking about this quite mathematically. I've always told them to keep their hands close to flat, with the left a few degrees sternwards of the right, and to maintain that throughout the stroke cycle; "do the same angular velocity with both blades" is a good line as long as nobody is thinking too hard about it.

I have no idea, though, whether:
a) this is actually how I scull
b) this is how anyone else thinks about it (notably, keeping the left handle a little further sternwards around the finish)
c) this is useful.

Peter

PS Jumping in a scratch mixed double a few months ago with a friend who had learnt in the US, and hadn't sculled for years, we had the following conversation:

"You do scull left over right, don't you?"
"Yes. Er... No? or yes? I don't know!"
"You do now!"

The race was fun, but unfortunately headwinds are unideal racing conditions for mixed doubles with an average height of 5'4"...
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/734131_10151386816067982_551527110_n.jpg

[Henry Law]

On 24/07/13 13:06, Steve wrote:
> it's just this
> sort of detail that someone of my mindset needs to properly understand

I am another of that mindset, and your question had occurred to me also.

My coach encourages me not to think about pulling much with the hands at
all, certainly towards the end of the stroke ("just guide the handles in
and extract the blade" is roughly what he says), so I rationalise the
factors you describe thus: yes, the left hand has to work to catch up a
bit, but the work being done at that point is minimal (and it probably
doesn't quite catch up anyway) so it doesn't make the boat wobble or yaw.

I too have difficulty in getting my left hand to lead out cleanly. I've
traced it to my extraction and feathering technique, especially the
position of my wrists, and I'm working on that.

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

[sully]

My observation has been that a great many new scullers have difficulty
leading with the left, more than half. Caroline finds it immensely difficult,
(the young woman in the car accident) and we have had to go through painfully
tedious exercises to get her to do it.

It has to be a righthandedness thing, and I wonder why the custom is left
lead, or left on top.

I used to reason that left lead was like boxing, but who ever boxes?

[Peter Ford]

Perhaps strokesiders (ports - is that the correct noun?) are used to stroking and therefore getting their own way, and left hand sternwards is the natural way to do it if you're used to your left shoulder being ahead at the catch?

Peter

[Steve]

It reassures me to hear that scullers with many more miles under their belt
have similar issues as me. I guess for some lucky few the action of left
leading out cleanly and right leading in consistently is second nature, but
for the likes of me it isn't.

Given that I am right handed and yet my left arm is stronger than my right
often leads to me pulling in with the left leading into the body rather than
the right.

The whole spacing of the hands during the recovery is what causes me to find
square bladed sculling very difficult with my left hand causing the bottom
edge of the blade to scrape the water as if I don't have enough room. I
actually do, but it stems from not maintaining correct relative hand heights
and more importantly not getting the left to lead cleanly out.

it's very frustrating and I wondered if there were some clever exercise
floating around that would help with this.


--

Regards

Steve
"Henry Law" <ne...@lawshouse.org> wrote in message
news:D4qdnbkQdI2-1G3M...@giganews.com...

[sully]

On Thursday, July 25, 2013 2:56:09 AM UTC-7, Steve wrote:
> It reassures me to hear that scullers with many more miles under their belt
>
> have similar issues as me. I guess for some lucky few the action of left
>
> leading out cleanly and right leading in consistently is second nature, but
>
> for the likes of me it isn't.

Careful, I observe a lot of long time scullers where getting
these details correct just isn't important, or observe a
champion with the same sort of quirk in their stroke, and call
it a "feature".

>
>
>
> Given that I am right handed and yet my left arm is stronger than my right
>
> often leads to me pulling in with the left leading into the body rather than
>
> the right.

You really don't want to think about 'pulling' at all, though we
use the term all the time, and indeed what we end up doing IS pulling.

a visual I use in teaching drive mechanics is to close your eyes while
you row for about a series of 8 strokes (in a stretch of water where it's safe or where someone's watching for you), and imagine that the balls of your feet
are attached to the blade, and when your blade enters the water, your feet
are pushing directly against the puddle.

I do this even when sculler isn't using legs, just swing only or arms only,
to imagine the feet driving against the water even when legs aren't used.

This does nothing for your hand sequence situation, I know.

It's simply going to take some focus on it to fix. You can practice this off water a little while you're watching TV at some point, but basically when you scull you have to put some dedicated time to slow things down and make your hands do what you want them to do, and keep coming back to it over the session.

I think the hand sequencing is pretty important. It's very difficult to keep proper relaxed grip on the handles over time, rough water, hard rowing, minor mistakes all conspire to make us grip the handles, then once gripped we tend to keep gripping. the effect of improper hand sequencing at this rig will cause us to grip tighter, preparing for or trying to mitigate the inevitable hand collisions. tight grip --> tight forearms --> more pulling on drive --> less efficient body mechanic on drive, more upper body fatigue --> slower 2nd half of race.

[robin_d...@hotmail.com]

The guideline I always use with beginner scullers is that your right hand finger knuckles should be just brushing your (left-hand) watch-strap at the drive and recovery cross overs with the handles in the fingers rather than gripped in the palm, so your right (stroke side / port side) hand is one hand-length bow-wards of the left (bow side / starboard) - assuming the boat is set up for that approach. That way the handles are broadly level with each other. Works o.k assuming the rigging is the correct height for the athlete's build and the boat is the correct weight rating for the athlete and so on.

[sully]

On Friday, July 26, 2013 1:41:42 AM UTC-7, robin_d...@hotmail.com wrote:
> The guideline I always use with beginner scullers is that your right hand finger knuckles should be just brushing your (left-hand) watch-strap at the drive and recovery cross overs with the handles in the fingers rather than gripped in the palm, so your right (stroke side / port side) hand is one hand-length bow-wards of the left (bow side / starboard) - assuming the boat is set up for that approach. That way the handles are broadly level with each other. Works o.k assuming the rigging is the correct height for the athlete's build and the boat is the correct weight rating for the athlete and so on.

What's fun is that I have training videos of a couple dozen scullers from the US and other countries as well. I had set up a progression to show a group of college kids who are sculling here this summer, I showed them the scullers in
order of speed, from slower to faster to Oly golds.

Most of these guys just learned to scull at beginning summer, so we talked about this hand position thing. I showed examples of some really good hands
in the scullers on film.

Then the last sculler in the progression, an Oly gold medalist training in his single doing aerobic work at low rating, there he was leading with his lower right hand!