What happens when a rower leans?

[Henry Law]

The novice four I'm (rather tentatively) coaching was short of a man
last weekend so I jumped in, and tried to coach from the 2 seat: not
ideal. But one thing I did notice that I wouldn't have seen from the
bank was that one of the other rowers was leaning to his right. When I
suggested that he didn't he said that he was only trying to correct what
he saw as a consistent lean of the boat to his left (i.e. starboard/bow
side).

Of course I told him that leaning was not the way to correct the balance
of the boat, and that it had all sorts of bad effects. I expect
everyone here agrees with that.

But when he questioned me more I found myself thinking about what does
actually happen when an oarsman (or woman) leans.

Statically, if the mass in the boat is assymetric then it will tend to
make the boat tip towards the side where more mass is. Won't it?
That's the effect that this rower was trying to exploit.

But dynamically the act of leaning to port requires the rower to
un-weight his or her right buttock, putting more weight on the other;
that would tend to make the boat tip in the /opposite/ direction.
Wouldn't it?

To complicate matters further, all the above assumes that the remaining
rowers in the boat do nothing. But if they balance the boat in the
approved (dynamic) ways (feet, hand heights, all that stuff) then they
are likely to correct the mass imbalance to port (created by our friend)
by making it lean to starboard. I dimply perceive something like that,
but it doesn't cound convincing.

Rather than just tell the guy not to do it I'd rather advance some
coherent arguments, but my tiny store of coaching lore is quite
inadequate for the challenge. Can some of you more experienced coaches
help me?

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

[Brian Chapman]

Henry,

If your novice boats are as old as ours you may find that they can be down on bowside and strokeside at the same time! It also may be that the rower has a misalignment of his back and feels that the boat is over to one side even though it is not.

A good exercise is pausing during the recovery, hands away, half slide, etc to see if the crew can balance the boat. That will allow you to see what is going on, effectively snapshotting a point in the recovery where they should all be doing the same thing with hands, body, slides and blades.

Brian

[Peter Ford]

I think it's an extremely tricky issue.

First of all, I partially agree with your analysis of the physics;
however, if you imagine an initially central rower rocking to his
right:
a) As he starts to rock he imparts an angular impulse pushing the boat
down to bowside.
b) once his mass is over to the right he exerts a torque pushing the
boat to strokeside.
c) as he stops rocking out he exerts an angular impulse pushing to
boat to strokeside.

I don't have a good intuition about the relative sizes of these three
effects, but my experience suggests the net effect of the above is to
push the boat to strokeside. I've subbed in/rowed in enough wobbly
crews that I find it really hard not to compensate using bodyweight;
our experience is that one* switched on rower using his weight in an
VIII full of vaguely decent rowers can send the boat dead level
without disastrous effects on his rowing. I always try not to do this,
because it's generally better to let the balance show up the technical
flaws in the crew, rather than paper them over, but it's a difficult
habit to get out of.

*the problem comes when two of us are in a wobbly eight and end up in
feedback loops compensating for one another's compensations!

I don't think it's a problem restricted to less experienced crews
though; most good crews I've seen will have their bodyweight
substantially out to their riggers (approximately sternum level with
the inside rigger track, in our VIIIs). The debate about how and when
to get from a central position to this catch position isn't one we've
ever resolved, but it's something that any decent crew will have
reached a consensus about at least on average! I was impressed by an
alumni crew of ours I subbed into earlier in the year; after the race
one member had to rush off to teach, so we paddled back to the
boathouses with no 3-man and the blade tied along the side of the
shell. When we paddled off in our VII, we had about 3 wobbly strokes,
and then bowside worked out how much extra to rock to their riggers
and we paddled the remaining 4k dead level.

Finally (for now!), while a good crew shouldn't need to make more than
tiny corrections while travelling straight, the same issues (how to
make corrections!) comes up when you try to race round corners.
Although I don't think it's very visible in the video, I (at 2 in the
leading boat) felt I was making a lot of corrections with weight,
finish timing and tap-down strength in order to counter the varying
centrifugal force as we corner at 0:24 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaxFDtwJiTQ
What is obvious is that in bow pair at least, we're sticking with my
preferred answer to the "when do we rock out" question; straight off
backstops, to keep the movements around the catch simple. I'm not sure
it's necessarily the best solution, but I prefer it with the crews we
train who will only row together for a matter of weeks before new crew
members come and go.

Peter

[johnf...@gmail.com]

My two cents: one should not lean to set the boat. One should set the boat by:
(1) Rotating your hips as necessary to apply pressure to one sitzbone or the other. A simple drill in a 4 or an 8 to see this effect is laying the blades flat on the water, letting go of the handles, sitting upright, and together rocking hips to left and right to make the boat lean - while keeping the upper body directly above the keel.
(2) Using handle height, particularly on the drive. A drill for this is to repeat the setup above except with hands on handles, and then have ports and starboards raise and ports lower handles, and then vice versa. Again without leaning the upper body. To me, the set is established by handle heights on the drive and the goal is to avoid disturbing it on the release, recovery, and catch. A dragged release can pull the boat down on that side. Dipping the handle as one comes to the catch will pull the boat down to that side. So when working on set it's important to try to figure out if the set goes off at a particular point in the stroke cycle.

This isn't to say that the upper body remains rigidly centered over the keel throughout the stroke cycle! If one's body mechanics involves rotating out at the catch or whatever, one should do whatever provides the most effective stroke and not screw that up by adding a lean to try to set the boat, especially during the recovery.

It's hard to exert power while leaning fiercely to one side to try to set the boat. This would my coherent (?) argument for why leaning is a bad idea.

P.S. This is for sweep (aka "rowing") boats. The situation for sculling boats is in some ways different.

[sully]

On Mar 4, 4:28 am, Henry Law <n...@lawshouse.org> wrote:
> The novice four I'm (rather tentatively) coaching was short of a man
> last weekend so I jumped in, and tried to coach from the 2 seat: not
> ideal.  But one thing I did notice that I wouldn't have seen from the
> bank was that one of the other rowers was leaning to his right.  When I
> suggested that he didn't he said that he was only trying to correct what
> he saw as a consistent lean of the boat to his left (i.e. starboard/bow
> side).
>
> Of course I told him that leaning was not the way to correct the balance
> of the boat, and that it had all sorts of bad effects.  I expect
> everyone here agrees with that.
>
> But when he questioned me more I found myself thinking about what does
> actually happen when an oarsman (or woman) leans.
>
> Statically, if the mass in the boat is assymetric then it will tend to
> make the boat tip towards the side where more mass is.  Won't it?
> That's the effect that this rower was trying to exploit.
>
> But dynamically the act of leaning to port requires the rower to
> un-weight his or her right buttock, putting more weight on the other;
> that would tend to make the boat tip in the /opposite/ direction.
> Wouldn't it?

I'm not following this. If the rower is leaning to port, he has his
weight on his right butt cheek, not his left. (port= left
side of boat as facing to bow).

[Carl]

And there's always a bit of self-kidology in the idea of transferring
weight from one cheek to t'other. You can only do this if you
correspondingly shift your own CofG towards that side. I think that
implies a small, hard-to-see but real lean.

Peter's right about what happens when someone leans, independent of the
others. To start leaning needs the CofG to be moved to that side, which
requires an initial impulse which will tip the boat against the
direction of lean, after which the boat will indeed tip towards the lean
as the body stops leaning further, & then stay that way.

However, our blades are in the water for ~50% of the time at race pace.
So we should for that part get the boat back to level, 30 to 40 times
a minute - if we row equal hand heights. And then it should be easy to
stay level for the brief period of the recovery - no?

Well, rowers do funny things, which all tend to destabilise the boat:
1. They don't all row to equal depth, so the recovery starts on 1 ear.
2. Some wash out or finish early. They screw it up for the rest of the
crew, yet the reason is often that they know their side's going to be
down so they do this to be sure they don't catch their own finishes!
3. Anyone who goes for a hard vertical tap-down is going to have to
finish short (&/or get caught up - see previous discussions of the
impossibility of a vertical tap-down) & will also tip the boat through
the rotational couple they thus impose by adding so much
vertically-directed angular momentum to their own oar.
4. Some sky before the catch, which has the same effect as 3 above. And
then they miss their catches, which also doesn't help.
5. Some get to front-stops, leaning onto the rigger, then try to
'gather' or 'poise' - i.e. they stop. So the boat flops to their side
as their upper body was moving somewhat diagonally up to that point.
6. Unduly brisk finishes result in still loaded oars vibrating as they
unload themselves against only air resistance & their own very limited
internal damping, so they vibrate & continue to do so as they are feathered.
7. Often hands don't move forwards at the same or at constant heights.

I'm frequently surprised by the very basic faults in technique in many
crews. Some of these come from trying to do too much. Some from fear
(who ever thought is clever or rational to tell a rower he/she could get
caught up at the finish if slow with the hands?). And all of them
because it was thought more important to get the rate up than first to
learn to row well & confidently together.

If crews learn that long, deep finishes carry no hazards, then they can
learn to finish together & level. And it will feel really good, too.
If they are not harried to be quick away, they won't screw up the start
of the recovery. If their hand heights are monitored and gently nudged
to a common standard, the boat will continue level. And if the crew are
not allowed or encouraged to wait for something to happen at the catch,
but to take the catch early (as it will first seem to them) & crisply,
then they will not find the boat flopping over there either - & again
the boat will fly.

So I'm in favour of simplifying & demythologising what is an essential
simple, low-skilled job & giving the rowers something correspondingly
simple to do.

Cheers -
Carl


--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing Low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey KT16 8RP, UK
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Email: ca...@carldouglas.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1932-570946 Fax: -563682
URLs: carldouglas.co.uk & now on Facebook @ CarlDouglasRacingShells

[A3aan]

Without having read all the other undoubtedly excellent responses I just quickly want to add my main argument against leaning:

By leaning, the rower is not in position to perform a good rowing stroke.

This fact alone should be enough if you accept that balancing a boat without leaning is also possible (which you should, just look at some elite crews). The thing is that rowers always find solutions to make their rowing feel more comfortable no matter what the consequences. You have to convince them that to get better in the long term they might have to endure some less comfortable rowing in the short term.

cheers,

A3aan.

[James HS]

I think Carl hits the nail on the head with these potential causes.

Each one has exercises designed to help the crew feel what it is like to get it right - for me roll ups and pause drills being the best of them, and the rower has to be educated that if he develops this habit then he will not be able to jump in another boat as he will not have learned how to work in a crew.

Any one of the issues that Carl highlights can cause this - but normally I find it is timing, getting the rock over together and moving forward, catching at the same time (with as much power as they are skilled enough to apply and no more), and releasing at the same time.

Roll ups emphasise hand heights and working together, and pause drills emphasise working together. Then I do pyramids to find a sweet spot at which the boat sits up well - often novice boats take too low a rate (18 and below) and 'stall' and fall over at each stroke - whereas at 20/22 they can suddenly become a stable platform.

(You can probably tell I am mainly a sculler :))

James

[Henry Law]

On 04/03/13 20:35, Carl wrote:

> Well, rowers do funny things, which all tend to destabilise the boat:

> 1....

Thank you all for the many excellent posts in response to my question.
I have learned a lot and worked out some things to do next weekend.

I have to say, though, that this post of Carl's is a classic keeper; I
have copied it for reference!

[johnf...@gmail.com]

On Monday, March 4, 2013 2:35:08 PM UTC-6, Carl wrote:
> And there's always a bit of self-kidology in the idea of transferring
> weight from one cheek to t'other. You can only do this if you
> correspondingly shift your own CofG towards that side. I think that
> implies a small, hard-to-see but real lean.
>

More like a bit of self-kideology in thinking of the body without awareness of its anatomy. The spine meets the pelvis in a "joint" which allows swiveling of the hips up/down (and forward and back). It's not a ball joint but it may help to think of it that way. Rotations of the pelvis enable us to walk and run without weaving back and forth with our upper bodies.

Try sitting in a chair facing a wall. It's quite easy to transfer weight from one sitzbone to the other by rotating the pelvis without moving head or upper body. No leaning. Same thing can be done in a boat to weight one side or the other. Or one can consciously keep equal weight in both sitzbones to try to maintain the set when the boat is level.

[johnf...@gmail.com]

On reflection, slight corrections:
When you rotate your hips, you in fact move the CG laterally without leaning your torso.

Neither hip rotation or leaning seems like a good way to set the boat, because both will interfere with form and power delivery. STM the way to set the boat is handle heights during the drive and then finish cleanly and together so that the boat is level when the blades have emerged. And then try not to do anything during the recovery to upset the set: no leaning, weight even on the sitzbones, no changes in handle height during the recovery, etc.

Rather than having eight (or four) people chasing a level set during the recovery (often with different ideas of what is "level"), it seems better to have them focus on getting the boat level during the next drive and maintaining that on the following recovery.

That's been my experience coaching novice and semi-novice 8's. Otherwise Carl's problem points and JamesHS's suggestions for pause drills and technique and togetherness focus mirror what I have seen over the past few years.

[sully]

I'm still confused folks, help me out. Is it so obvious that John
meant
weighting the opposite cheek than he states above me here?

If I lean to port, I'm unweighting my left cheek, and weighting
my right. right?

I'm ROWING, not coxing! right?

Am I having a major senior moment and have my port/stbd
confused?

[johnf...@gmail.com]

"I'm still confused folks, help me out. Is it so obvious that John
meant weighting the opposite cheek than he states above me here?
If I lean to port, I'm unweighting my left cheek, and weighting
my right. right?"

Sorry sully, I wasn't addressing your post. You're correct, if you lean to port with your upper body your right cheek (with its sitzbone inside it)) will carry more of your upper body's weight than your left.

What I was saying is that you can accomplish a similar weight shift by tilting your hips (right down/left up) WITHOUT moving your upper body off center. But that it is probably best to feel the weight in your sitzbones and try to level your hips and keep the two equally weighted. The drill is simply to make novices aware that how they sit affects the set of the boat.

[A3aan]

Op dinsdag 5 maart 2013 19:49:17 UTC+1 schreef sully het volgende:

>
> > I'm not following this.   If the rower is leaning to port, he has his
>
> > weight on his right butt cheek, not his left.   (port= left
>
> > side of boat as facing to bow).
>
>
>
> I'm still confused folks, help me out. Is it so obvious that John
>
> meant
>
> weighting the opposite cheek than he states above me here?
>
>
>
> If I lean to port, I'm unweighting my left cheek, and weighting
>
> my right. right?
>
>
>
> I'm ROWING, not coxing! right?
>
>
>
> Am I having a major senior moment and have my port/stbd
>
> confused?

I had to do a double take as well after which I concluded he meant that to get your weight on the right asscheek you first create momentum by pressing down your left asscheek. Kind of like standing on one side of a raft and running running to the other side; the raft initially moves in the opposite direction of the run and after the running stops, drifts in the same the direction of the run. All a bit far fetched and judging by the post that just appeared whilst I was typing this it is in fact not what he meant. So now I am basically just as confused as you are.

I still stand by my previous point though: your body is not in an optimal position for rowing so it is per se a bad thing to lean.

cheers,

A3aan.

[johnf...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:45:03 PM UTC-6, A3aan wrote:
> I had to do a double take as well after which I concluded he meant that to get your weight on the right asscheek you first create momentum by pressing down your left asscheek. Kind of like standing on one side of a raft and running running to the other side; the raft initially moves in the opposite direction of the run and after the running stops, drifts in the same the direction of the run. All a bit far fetched and judging by the post that just appeared whilst I was typing this it is in fact not what he meant. So now I am basically just as confused as you are.
>
> I still stand by my previous point though: your body is not in an optimal position for rowing so it is per se a bad thing to lean.

I'm confused too. By "he" do you mean me? If so, my name is John.

I'm sorry I apparently am not explaining this clearly?

I'm not sure how we got to asscheeks. "Sitzbones" are the hard bony protuberances your butt rests on when you are sitting on a hard surface. Technically they are "ischial tuberosities" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberosity_of_the_ischium ). The holes in rowing seats are there to accommodate the sitzbones.

Sit upright on a wooden chair facing a wall. Hopefully you will feel your two sitzbones on the hard seat. Lean to the right. In this position you can feel more pressure on your right sitzbone than on the left. If you were in a 1x, it would tilt to port unless you resisted the tilt with your oars feathered on the water. Try it sometime.

Now try to tilt your pelvis laterally to get a similar increase in pressure on your right sitzbone. Without leaning your upper body. If you were in a 1x, it would lean to port, but you would be sitting upright. Try that sometime. Basically what you are doing is rearranging your bones (pelvis) to change the shape of your body so that it rests more on your right sitzbone. The right sitzbone is to port of the center line of the boat, so the increased pressure tilts the boat to port until increased buoyancy from the flare of the hull compensates.

We're just doing this statically, no momentum involved.

I agree completely that neither leaning the upper body nor tilting the pelvis is a good way to set the boat. The point is to experiment with how it feels so that you can avoid doing it.

Phew!! Is that clearer?

[sully]

Oh, I agree for sure, but the conversation had gotten pretty detailed
and technical, but the basic premise as stated seemed wrong.

It is almost universal that sweep rowers will have a lean away
from their riggers, even if it's visibly imperceptible, IE if you
look down from the stern of the boat and the heads seemed
lined up at the finish.

Rowers, for the most part, must be taught otherwise.

Learning how to finish properly, balance the boat with the
bladework and not the body is a long process, something
that a few sessions of work and some miles is going to
teach. In the meantime, I have an outing I recommend
that at the very least, helps rowers to not be defensive
in the sweep boat, and do things that interfere with
their or others' learning process - it's fun and effective.

I have a "lean contest". Pair, four, eight, doesn't matter
which boat.

Step 1. be able to row with a pause at the finish.
with others balancing boat for you, lean
radically into the rigger at the finish, make it
extreme. Row by pairs in a four/eight, or
circles in a pair.

Step 2. now try it rowing all. Pause at finish leaning
radically into your rigger. Make a contest of
it. Your side WINS if the boat is down to your
rigger. If the boat is leaning to port, portside
wins. Have fun with this exercise.
Step 3. make the lean less extreme, but make it
definite so that from the stern, you as coach
can tell. The heads should be split as you look
from stern to bow, where the head is on the side
of the keel as that rowers' rigger. If the boat
leans to that side, let it lean, don't try to
correct that stroke.
Step 4.
Coach the people that
if the boat leans to their side, finish a little
higher on the next stroke, but don't
compensate by leaning. The high
side after Step 2 should feel some
responsibility to bring the boat level.


This outing is very effective for a short term, the
natural pressure over time is that some rowers
will become defensive again, particularly if they've
been rowing defensively for a long time.

A great many other things go into a good
finish, but this step gives them a chance at
it, and gives other athletes a chance!

[Carl]

I'm not disagreeing with how it's done, John. Maybe it's more a matter
of when in the stroke cycle? To shift your weight to one side requires
you to shift your upper body's CofG that way, or else the weight ain't
shifted.

Let's consider what happens when you swivel your hips? Sit on a chair,
as I'm now doing, & rotate the pelvis (which happens at about the L5
vertebra. This moves your torso in the direction of that rotation as
the pelvis rolls, which does indeed plant the weight more onto the
buttock towards which the pelvis is rotated, but not without first
generating a reaction in the opposite to intended direction - that
providing the force to shift the torso sideways.

However, I think there's no real difference between us. The
counter-reaction matters most if the adjustment is made during the
recovery. The righting moment of the blades when they're immersed will
help to damp that counter-reaction over the space of 1 stroke,
whereafter the weight has indeed been displaced towards the one cheek.
But the price is a tilt in the spine at ~ L5, which would be best avoided.

What we often find (when making customised seats for the many rowers
pained by the obvious fact that no one seat can accommodate the wide
anatomical differences between individual rowers) is that many rowers &
scullers naturally sit with most of their weight over one or other of
the ischeal protuberances or sit-bones. No great surprise, since we're
all quite asymmetric everywhere from face down to feet, but I believe
this has significant consequences for individual & crew balance.

Thus, when I see a greater load under a sculler's right buttock than
their left, I'll ask if they find the boat runs level for them, or if
it's harder to keep that blade off the water. They often agree. But
this fact of life is not well understood within the sport. Thus I've
had scullers being told they need to re-rig with one rigger higher & the
other lower than makes sense - because it has been seen they've problems
clearing the water with one blade. That makes no sense if the boat is
already correctly rigged (e.g. level or with ~1cm differential in
height). But tilting the seat in the boat by the right amount - often
no more that 2-3mm under one or other slide track r seat bearer - can
instantly bring the boat onto an even keel.

We ought to think more carefully about what happens with oddly-shaped
folk in narrow boats. The potentially best rowers may well be deflected
from our sport by narrow attitudes which fail to grasp that individual
bodily imbalances can & should be addressed as an integral part of the
coaching process.