relaxation?

[John Greenly]

As time goes by and I make a little progress with my sculling technique, I think more and more that when I scull well (for me) it's more than anything because I'm truly relaxed in the boat. My tendency seems to be for tension to come mostly in my shoulders and neck, and if I pay attention to relaxing that it helps a lot.

I found that for me a good indicator is to sit at rest in the water, comfortably near full compression in the catch position with blades squared, and dip them in and out of the water. If that feels wobbly and awkward, then I'm not relaxed. What I'm wondering is, what sorts of exercises or drills do you do, or teach, specifically to promote relaxation? Or is this not an issue to you and I'm barking up the wrong tree?

thanks,

--John G

[davie...@gmail.com]

A coach a long time ago made a big point of getting us to relax our faces during flat-out rowing. It definitely helped and has stuck with me since.

More recently, I have found that the biggest improvements in my sculling come when I relax my legs as early as possible in the recovery.

At the finish, the hip flexors will always get used slightly to maintain posture, but once the weight is back to vertically over the hips, fully relaxing them and the quads for the rest of the recovery seems to improve all aspects of my sculling. I am more stable and quicker at the catch, I have better rhythm and use less energy to take a decent stroke.

So you could add that to your shoulder/neck drills for better effect.

Kit

[sully]

John

One of many things I teach involving relaxation is releasing. This is
a repeat, but I won't dredge up old posts.

Preliminary: Make sure your hand grip is relaxed and correct. You
should be hooking the handles with flat wrists on the drive, do NOT
grasp the handles on the drive. drop the wrists and open the hands
to feather so that your fingers are on top of the handle, and again,
they are riding on, not grasping the handle. Thumbs on the end.

Tight grip means tight forearms, which makes relaxation difficult. I
teach, 'squeeze/relax' where you squeeze to begin the feather and
allow the collar to seat itself in the sill of the oarlock, rather
than setting it there.

If you got that:
What I tell scullers after they've been out for a while in the process
of learning, particularly rowing a single, is to learn to release
high, relax, and let the boat fall.

A drill is simply to pause at the release for 5-10 strokes at a time,
where the blades are an exaggerated height at the release. Over time,
it's not necessary to always release high, but you are overcoming a
tendency the boat is teaching you, to balance the boat with blades on
the water right at the critical release
part of the stroke.

Pause, allow boat to drop to one side, and relax everything. Then
recover without attempting to do much to right the boat on the
recovery. The boat should drop, depending on the hull. Don't know
your boat, but an Aero will be more stable, a racing single will drop
for all of us at some point unless you are beautiful.

Most scullers who've sculled around 100-500 miles have learned to be
able to apply somewhat even pressure so that the boat goes straight as
a rule, at least for 30 strokes at a time. This means the finishes
are fairly even, even if they typically wash out.

What will happen for you, is that one stroke out of X, your finishes
will very closely match each other, such that when you release at same
time and high, then relax, the boat will run out for some time before
it begins to falter. If your pause is a second or two, there could be
some strokes where you don't hit the water on either side, and are
relaxed.

There is a tremendous amount of positive reinforcement for that, one
of those fun things to teach that ppl think you might know WTF you are
talking about.

When you have tight forearms, when you are using your blades as
training wheels, you will never really know when your finishes have
matched each other!

Caution. This won't have a lot of effect on boat speed. this doesn't
make you faster per se, but it's a step in the direction of good
finishes which WILL make you faster. Your rowing becomes more
efficient with this, so while you won't go faster, success at this
will allow you to sustain a speed better over distance.

It will make your rows more pleasureable and I include this drill for
everybody whether they wish to compete or if they scull out to watch
the pinnipeds.

[Charles Carroll]

> Make sure your hand grip is relaxed

A loose, relaxed grip yes! But not so loose and relaxed that the oar handles
slide in your fingers.

I learned this the hard way in the last regatta. Sixty-five hundred meters
in the water became difficult and the oar handles kept slipping in my hands.
I thought they were wet until I looked down and saw they were bloody.
Arrrrrgh! I had 3500 meters to go and the water wasn't going to get any
better, and then I had another 3000 back to the Club after that. I had
blisters on every joint of both hands, and huge blisters on my palms. I have
never had that happen before, but then I had never been so careful about
keeping my grip loose. My hands hurt for 3 weeks after.

[davie...@gmail.com]

A tip I have learnt is to make sure your finger pads are pushing into the sternwards facing side of the scull handles, ie the side away from you. Then there is less need for your hands to grip the top of the handles via friction, which is what causes the blisters.

[wmar...@gmail.com]

For relaxing the grip - something you can try is... at a relatively low pace, after you've taken the blades out of the water and feathered, open your hands completely - point all 10 fingers straight (with the eight fingers pointing to the stern)... "relaxed" and use the weight of your hands to hold the weight of the blades clear of the water.
Regrasp the handles just in time to square. Lather, Rinse Repeat. Try this for a few minutes at a time. Try it with your eyes closed.
Cheers,
W

[James HS]

I am going to take the meaning of relaxed as 'less tense'.

My coach always used to shout relax at me - and my response to being shouted at was to tense up :)

In my 1X and 2X reducing tension involves a few things - smiling :), playing piano on the handles on recovery. Thinking of myself as the mix of a ballerina, weight lifter and tightrope walker - using repetitive muscle movement (so a strong core) to as precisely as possible make each stroke the same as the last one (if it was good :)) to think about sequence, sequence , sequence so that it becomes well worn. To be more efficient as opposed to work harder - I can feel when I am wrenching and do a 'note to self' to reset in 3-2-1 - change to a lighter feel and more accurately place everything.

I like to emphasize (to myself) that I should be in charge of the blades (extraction and placement) not the blades in charge of me.

Reset exercises for me are pause drills, dibbing, slicing the cake - roll ups. But I can do all of these badly, so really I have to remind myself to be more precise and less brutal, and then the rythm calms (relaxes) me :) and makes me faster and feel effortless.


James

[John Greenly]

This morning I had a chance to use all your coaching suggestions. I can report that the results should make you feel absolutely that you know what you're talking about!

Luckily I was taught right at the beginning a proper grip. I often did the open-fingers-out-straight-on-the-recovery drill, that's a good one. If anything I tend to grip too lightly. I once took a swim when a wave top took the oar right out of my hand on the recovery. I really wasn't using my thumbs at all. I use my thumbs better now- in fact the only blisters I got in last year's 20 mile Blackburn Challenge were on my thumbs. So I think that's pretty much okay.

Because I have been rowing mostly in open, rough water, I have learned to use a high release and recovery to keep from hitting waves. In my new (old) racing single I had been actually working on keeping lower. Today though, I had beautiful smooth water and worked on Sully's pause-after-high-release drill. It is already a tremendous help! I had been doing a drill pausing in the middle of the recovery just before raising the knees, and was doing that pretty well I thought, but pausing right after the release showed me that I wasn't setting the boat as well as I thought I was, and had been doing some compensation to come to a good balance later. I settled in and did the drill for 4 miles at a stroke rate of 8-10, holding the handles low against my stomach after the release for a couple of seconds to keep the oars still. I found that I was disturbing the boat mostly with my body rather than with the release of the blades- I would release with my weight not quite centered on the seat one way or the other. As I concentrated on that, the boat began to feel rock-solid after the release, so I began to pause also at the middle of the recovery. Then I realized that I was often disturbing the boat early in the recovery by not pulling evenly with the hip flexors to bring my body back over my legs. So I worked on that for awhile and it improved.

Next I investigated Kit's suggestions, and found that a feeling of relaxation in the hip flexors through the recovery really helped to keep my motion smooth and undisturbing of the boat's balance. Obviously they are being used, but the relaxed feeling seems to help me use them evenly and smoothly- likewise with the quads.

Then I worked on Kit's suggestion about facial relaxation. I have realized before that I tend to row with what could charitably be called a smile on my face, but is really more of a tooth-baring grimace. I try to stop this but always forget and find myself doing it again. So today I tried making my mouth into an O shape when exhaling. I remembered a video of Olaf Tufte doing that in a race. In fact, I came up with a mantra to enforce this: mentally reciting OOOlaf Tufte, OOOlaf Tufte... with the exhale on the OOO on each stroke. It worked! and I found it instantly helps my neck to relax and my shoulders to go down, and the boat to balance better. ...and, I'm sure it also promotes world peace at the same time!

So, then I tried to put all this together for a final 2 miles at about a 20 rate, and I don't think I've ever sculled as smoothly, or as easily. I found that the boat set most solidly when I finished out the drive strongly with the arms all the way to the release. I know that when I up the rate to 28 or more I'll start having the issues that James talks about, so for awhile I'm going to keep it down and try to really train all I did today in firmly.

Now I feel embarrassed about getting all this free coaching- Sully, I especially appreciate your taking the time to repeat your release drill instructions! I haven't figured out how to see earlier archives on RSR than the ones that show up on the list at present.

well, at least I can say Thank you, all, very much!!

Cheers,

John G

[John Greenly]

Charles,

that's a terrible story! But you are not alone. Last year Dan Gorriaran, probably the best open-water racer on the east coast (usually rows a Peinert Dolphin on open water), did the Blackburn Challenge (20 mile race on the ocean off the Mass. coast) in his Van Dusen Advantage single, trying to break 2 1/2 hrs for the race. He almost did it (a minute over), but he said he would never try it again in a racing single- he tore up his hands badly. Was your race in rough water, and were you hitting the tops of waves often on the recovery? That jerks the oars in your hands and really aggravates blistering. Maybe your grip is fine for easier water.

best regards,

John G

[sully]

On Jun 9, 11:12 am, John Greenly <jgc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, June 8, 2013 5:51:22 PM UTC-4, sully wrote:

snip

> Now I feel embarrassed about getting all this free coaching-  Sully, I especially appreciate your taking the time to repeat your release drill instructions!  I haven't figured out how to see earlier archives on RSR than the ones that show up on the list at present.
>
> well, at least I can say Thank you, all, very much!!

no apology necessary. Teaching rowing is just like rowing.
Becoming a good
teacher comes from the same sort of discipline and repetition as
rowing well.

An approach that might motivate and inspire one sculler can
confuse another.

so it's good for me to repeat myself.

[Charles Carroll]

John,

So Dan Gorriaran in a Van Dusen Advantage 1x was able to scull 8 mph for 2
hrs and 31 mins! Or about 3.58 m/sec! That is so far beyond my reach it is
all but in conceivable to me.

But it is often said that misery loves company, so it is nice to hear that
Dan experienced the same problem I did. Words cannot describe how terrible
it feels to have your hands torn up in the middle of a race. But my
experience cannot really compare to Dan’s. My course was about one third the
length of Dan’s and completely enclosed in Richardson Bay.

Friends tell me that the Blackburn Challenge is unpredictable. We had a
couple of people from Sausalito scull it a few years back. The year they
raced turned out to be one of those years when the water was flat and near
perfect. I believe someone in a Van Dusen came in first that year. If there
was a problem with his hands, I never heard about it.

My hand problems were one hundred percent my fault. I was seduced with the
notion that if a loose grip was good, then a very loose grip must be even
better. I have had blisters — I don’t know any sculler who hasn’t — but
never like this.

Now to answer your question about whether the water was rough. For the last
two fifths of the race I did indeed find the water difficult. My guess is
that conditions, with the exception of the wind, were probably Force 2 on
the Beaufort Scale — light breeze, small wavelets, crests of glassy
appearance, not breaking. But, as I say, in no way would I describe the wind
as a light breeze.

It is interesting that you ask about hitting the tops of waves on the
recovery. I was rigged very low. In fact I was rigged as low as I could get
my oarlocks — i.e. not a single snapper underneath the either oarlock. When
the water started becoming difficult, I constantly slammed into wavelets on
the recovery. Frankly it never occurred to me that this might cause
blistering.

It may amuse you to hear that last Thursday I raised my oarlocks by 12 mm (2
snappers). I have only sculled twice since this change. I am accustomed to
lower oarlocks, so the higher oarlocks seem a trifle strange. Even so I have
to admit that it is nice having higher oarlocks in rougher water. I am sure
that I will soon be comfortable with the change.

Cordially,

Charles

[John Greenly]

On Monday, June 10, 2013 1:47:24 PM UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:
> John, So Dan Gorriaran in a Van Dusen Advantage 1x was able to scull 8 mph for 2 hrs and 31 mins! Or about 3.58 m/sec! That is so far beyond my reach it is all but in conceivable to me. But it is often said that misery loves company, so it is nice to hear that Dan experienced the same problem I did. Words cannot describe how terrible it feels to have your hands torn up in the middle of a race. But my experience cannot really compare to Dan’s. My course was about one third the length of Dan’s and completely enclosed in Richardson Bay. Friends tell me that the Blackburn Challenge is unpredictable. We had a couple of people from Sausalito scull it a few years back. The year they raced turned out to be one of those years when the water was flat and near perfect. I believe someone in a Van Dusen came in first that year. If there was a problem with his hands, I never heard about it. My hand problems were one hundred percent my fault. I was seduced with the notion that if a loose grip was good, then a very loose grip must be even better. I have had blisters — I don’t know any sculler who hasn’t — but never like this. Now to answer your question about whether the water was rough. For the last two fifths of the race I did indeed find the water difficult. My guess is that conditions, with the exception of the wind, were probably Force 2 on the Beaufort Scale — light breeze, small wavelets, crests of glassy appearance, not breaking. But, as I say, in no way would I describe the wind as a light breeze. It is interesting that you ask about hitting the tops of waves on the recovery. I was rigged very low. In fact I was rigged as low as I could get my oarlocks — i.e. not a single snapper underneath the either oarlock. When the water started becoming difficult, I constantly slammed into wavelets on the recovery. Frankly it never occurred to me that this might cause blistering. It may amuse you to hear that last Thursday I raised my oarlocks by 12 mm (2 snappers). I have only sculled twice since this change. I am accustomed to lower oarlocks, so the higher oarlocks seem a trifle strange. Even so I have to admit that it is nice having higher oarlocks in rougher water. I am sure that I will soon be comfortable with the change. Cordially, Charles

---------

Yes, Dan is an amazing sculler. He is not a big guy- weighs about the same as I do, 150 lb, and is maybe 5' 10". But he's always in fantastic condition. He is also a Head of the Charles record holder with his partner in Masters Doubles. I don't understand how he keeps up that speed in rough water at all, never mind for 2.5 hours. I was talking with him after one very rough race, complaining that I barely was able to make any headway in surf for several miles. He said yes, sure, that happens to all of us- but he still averaged better than 7.5mph for the 14 miles that day.

I love the Blackburn, have done it the last three years. Conditions are certainly quite variable, even within any one year's race. It starts out in a river crammed full of moored boats, buoys, projecting docks, curves, sandbars, etc., for the first three miles, then there's a 5 mile stretch past a succession of rocky points that tends to have short beam seas, then a couple of miles across the mouth of a bay that tends to be downwind where you can get good rides on waves, then a looooong offshore stretch that usually has confused swells from various directions and a steadily strengthening headwind, and then, just when you think it will never end and are asking yourself what ever possessed you to do this, you round the breakwater for the final two miles into Gloucester harbor with huge, killer wakes from fishing trawlers and such. It's one of the highlights of my year, because it really is a challenge, it is in a very beautiful place, and there is a great feeling of mutual support among the participants- and a fine party afterwards on the beach. It's a real celebration of life, and of the living sea.

I raised the rigger on my Maas Flyweight twice during the first year I had it, to get the right height to clear the waves more easily. It is so much less tiring on a long hard row when you aren't hitting waves on the recovery all the time. And it really is a lot easier on your hands too.

Cheers,

John G

[John Greenly]

Regress report:

(the opposite of a progress report)

Well, I was so excited when I tried out all your relaxation suggestions and my sculling instantly improved. But, here's the thing: I'm not consistent. This isn't new, I've noticed it often. Some days I go out and nothing feels right, I feel like I'm flailing my way along, flopping from one side to the other. I don't seem to be able to just sit steady in the boat. I've found that If I keep bashing my way along until I get tired, then finally it all smooths out and I'm going well again. I seem to remember reading somewhere that a famous sculler said you only really learn to scull when you get tired, and I guess that's what he meant. I can't figure out whether it's my mind or my body that's off on days like that- probably both I suppose. Does this happen to any of you, and if so do you have some special way of finding that well-centered, steady feeling on days like that?

--John G

[wmar...@gmail.com]

On the basic assumption that your rig is "right"...
um... stop trying so hard, go out and have fun - enjoy the push on the water - enjoy the glide between strokes - Keep It Simple
Put both blades in at the same time. Push evenly. Extract the blades at the same time, same height off water, same speed, and enjoy it.
Walter

[James HS]

In my experience it is a combination of over controlling the 'elements' and letting the blades control you rather than you control the blades.

I used to find the same thing in squash - my best play was always when I was tiered.

Now, I think that the warm up period should be predictable and properly warm you up. The benefit is that it helps me leave my head at the dockside, and helps me feel what kind of outing I am starting with (bad or good) .....

Variations include a few strokes moving up through the gears to remind me what I should be doing, then over 2K of paddling I run through my classic mistakes and remind myself of finger mobility and spearing fish at the catch etc, then I throw in some bursts - 5 and 10 stroke sequences where I up the rate (but not the power). Then I stop, drink, take off any surplus clothes. Do an exercise for 1K (square blades, pause drills etc - to fix whatever was on my list), then I am ready to begin my outing :)

Maybe it just suits my brain - but I find this procedure reassuring and I am set up ready, having left any inconsistency in my warm up. Depending on where I am in my training cycle, the outing is then a series of 'exercises' or power building with exercises.

So my outings normally have a 'purpose' and I most often focus on a few things and let the others go - if they annoy me then I put them on the list for work :)

Works for me, but I am a bit anal :)

James

[sully]

I strongly suspect focus and concentration.

BTW, I don't do that anymore when I row, nor do I care. I'm often
thinking about other things, the only thing I really think about rowing
wise is my course, or concentrating on a few good strokes at a time.

If you took a couple suggestions the other day, and if you're
serious about applying them, then focus on one of those things for
your whole session at exclusion of other things.

It takes more than getting it right for a few strokes to actually learn
to do it, next to perform at will, next to do it automatically and
at various pressures and rates.

you can teach someone to change their rowing, get them to apply it at 34 spm, then the instant they start racing at 34 it all goes away and they revert
to previous technique.

[John Greenly]

I think James has me figured out. I realize I don't really have a consistent routine for warming up. I do begin by paddling slowly for a while, and that's when I see that I'm having one of those bad days, but I don't have any particular strategy for getting past it. Usually I just row faster, and then it begins to feel better. A good warmup routine like what you describe would be very helpful I think. When things aren't working well it's the recovery that feels jerky and unsettled at low rating. I think you're right that I'm overcontrolling instead of just letting it happen. So, probably Sully's pause-at-release drill would be really good for me as part of the warmup.

thanks!

--John G

[Charles Carroll]

> Because I have been rowing mostly in open,
> rough water, I have learned to use a high
> release and recovery to keep from hitting waves.
> In my new (old) racing single I had been actually
> working on keeping lower.

John,

Why do you want to “keep lower?”

In “Rower Faster, Second Edition” Volker Nolte has a chart titled Special
Circumstances and Suggestions for Modifying Equipment Accordingly. (p. 137)
For very skilled crews Nolte suggests:

1) Decrease overall oar length.
2) Decrease pitch on oarlock.
3) Increase oarlock height.

Why increase oarlock height? For years I have labored under the idea that
the more skilled you become, the lower you set your oarlocks. Of course this
assumes flat water.

Just curious.

Cordially,

Charles

[John Greenly]

Charles,

I should start off by reminding you that I'm no expert on anything about technique. What I meant in my comment that you quote was very simple-minded. I tend to row with the blades rather high off the water on the recovery, to avoid hitting waves on rough water. As I learn to use my racing single on flat water I'm keeping the blades lower on the recovery just because it feels like wasted motion to raise them way up when it's not necessary. And, as I come to the catch it seems counterproductive to have the blades high off the water- we certainly want them fairly close to the surface (but see note below) as we begin the catch, no sense in having to move them vertically any more than necessary, wasting time at the catch- right?

As to your quotation from Mr. Nolte's book (which I have not read), I think I can understand his first two points- in fact I just decreased the pitch on my racing single and I think it gives a more direct, horizontal feel to the drive. My open-water boat is set at higher pitch, because it gives me more security for setting the boat in rough conditions.

As to the third point, let me ask you a question: why would you want oarlocks lower as you become more skilled? I don't know.

note: okay, let's think about blade immersion in the catch from a physics point of view. You want the blade to enter the water as fast as possible, and physics says that with a finite force it takes a finite distance to accelerate a mass to a given velocity. So that means you can actually minimize the immersion time (the interval from blade just touching the water to full immersion) by starting to accelerate the blade downward from some distance above the surface, so it's already traveling fast when it touches. But the oar is so light that it takes very little force and little distance to do that acceleration (I think I remember a post of Carl's in which he estimates the vertical force needed on the handles to accomplish a very quick immersion, and it's quite small), so you don't need to start way up above the surface to do it. Probably a couple of centimeters will do it.

By the way, I often try to learn good sculling by watching videos, and my current ideal sculler
is Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski in her gold-medal performance at the 1994 Athens Olympics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6yHQ9hoJ_E

I imagine everybody knows this one, but if you don't- enjoy!! Her bladework (and everything else for that matter) is wonderful to watch- to me, at least.

Cheers,

John