Prudence at the finish
Carl Douglas
free to contribute - or not.
;)
Carl
--
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Richard du P
> I just felt that Patience might be lonely and in need of company. Feel
> free to contribute - or not.
Sat on that monument, probably she is. If she's still smiling at
grief, she may be getting some funny looks by now.
Shakespeare-themed coaching conference, anybody? - I'm sure there's a
lesson to be drawn from greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the
start [or is that for another sport, and Pakistan's close catchers?]
Richard du P
Mike De Petris
suppose you are at a 38spm rate pace, for most of the race, and start/
finish/sprints are at 40 or more, how would you try to manage a
"prudent" finish?
My idea would be just to try to avoid breaking legs before having
recovered with arms and body, i.e. avoid this:
http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image57.html
that may lead to this:
http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image68.html
Carl Douglas
You are being far, far too serious for the month of August, Mike!
But, to be serious for just a moment - I'm not sure that guy nearest the
camera could be folded up any more than he is in that shot?
However, I'm not to impressed by the next shot:
http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image58.html
in which he has to do a large part of the stroke with arms & body,
having already shot his slide to backstops. Might than not be a better
explanation for your 2nd picture?
Cheers -
Mike De Petris
> Mike De Petris wrote:
> > On Aug 17, 5:23 pm, Richard du P <rdupa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Aug 17, 2:33 pm, Carl Douglas <c...@carldouglas.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >>> I just felt that Patience might be lonely and in need of company. Feel
> >>> free to contribute - or not.
> >> Sat on that monument, probably she is. If she's still smiling at
> >> grief, she may be getting some funny looks by now.
>
> >> Shakespeare-themed coaching conference, anybody? - I'm sure there's a
> >> lesson to be drawn from greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the
> >> start [or is that for another sport, and Pakistan's close catchers?]
>
> >> Richard du P
>
> > suppose you are at a 38spm rate pace, for most of the race, and start/
> > finish/sprints are at 40 or more, how would you try to manage a
> > "prudent" finish?
>
> > My idea would be just to try to avoid breaking legs before having
> > recovered with arms and body, i.e. avoid this:
> >http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image57.html
> > that may lead to this:
> >http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image68.html
>
> You are being far, far too serious for the month of August, Mike!
>
> But, to be serious for just a moment - I'm not sure that guy nearest the
> camera could be folded up any more than he is in that shot?
no, but you know what I mean, I just sent pictures of last regatta
where a friend won :)
> However, I'm not to impressed by the next shot:http://www.canottaggio.org/foto2010/1_W_Univ/100815/image58.html
> in which he has to do a large part of the stroke with arms & body,
> having already shot his slide to backstops. Might than not be a better
> explanation for your 2nd picture?
it can't be as it seems to be the actual more common style as you can
see in this and the following:
http://www.anacc.org/new/foto/1_world_univ/100815/index.html
Mike De Petris
sorry Carl, that race starts at:
http://www.anacc.org/new/foto/1_world_univ/100815/image101.html
IPS
espoused a deliberate pause at the finish. I believe your theory was
that the muscles needed that time to adapt to the change in direction
or contraction/extension. I wonder if you still have that belief, or
if you've changed. In my experience, I've found that junior crews
seem to perform better if they "sit" patiently on the finish, whereas
many elite crews seem to perform better with more active finishes.
Tinus
How would I be able to determine the amount of sitting or prudence?
Although many have a certain gut feeling about what it entails I would
like to have these terms more explicitly defined. My first
associations with "to sit patiently" is it's literal meaning "having
zero movement and acceleration". I don't believe this can be the
correct way of rowing. Prudence allows many different views of the
rowing stroke. It would be interesting to get a more close description
of which forms of prudence would be good and which would be bad.
I myself believe there is an important difference between the motion
of the trunk and the motion of the arms and hands. The former needs to
be stable, quite and prudent, the latter must be swift and rapid.
Maybe it is the stepwise learning of this finish' bilateral nature,
first development of stability in the core and then development of a
swift finishing motion, which explains the perceived difference
between junior and senior crews?
Tinus
> It would be interesting to get a more close description
> of which forms of prudence would be good and which would be bad.
Or prudence could be seen to be good by definition. I mean which forms
of patience or slowness are good and which are bad.
Carl Douglas
Hi Ian -
Sometimes nothing changes, except that the term "deliberate pause" would
be an exaggeration. I do understand the description: at that time (late
'70s) there was doctrinal insistence on rapid hand/arm movement "around
the turn", whereas in the early '70s some outstanding crews (e.g
Wallingford's four of Cusacks, Purchase & Morris) had a relaxed, no
haste "scullers' finish".
For me it's about allowing time enough for the arm & upper body muscles
that made the pull to relax before other muscles try to re-extend them.
I'd learned the value of this earlier. For many years I'd laboured
against lower arm cramping, which crept up on me under pressure & too
often meant I'd finish races rowing exceptionally badly, or reduced to
what felt like 3/4 pressure. Others with this problem, often identified
as tenosynovitis, would undergo surgery. By good fortune I got to see a
surgeon who understood that using the knife always carried risks, while
the brain might find a way around a seemingly insuperable problem.
This surgeon admitted ignorance of rowing (I warm to folk who know what
they don't know) & wanted to know more. We spent a remarkable amount of
time in the hospital gym (no ergs at that time), extemporising with all
manner of odds & ends to get realistic (if static) simulations of the
the rowing stroke. I'm sure he knew more than he was letting on, he was
watching my actions and checking my pulse. The he said, "Hold it there"
as I was in mid pull. "In that position & load, you have no pulse at
the wrist". He then explained the consequences, and demonstrated by
applying a tourniquet to my upper arm. Yes, the same symptoms of
forearm cramp, loss of grip & flexibility, & pain with which as a
sculler I'd become so familiar. Yes, he said, that's ischaemic cramp.
More probing showed that, under load & according to posture, circulation
terminated within my shoulder area but returned as the load came off.
Apparently this is a not uncommon structural problem, where internal
stresses can compress blood vessels enough to close them.
What, I asked, should I do? More probing & he found that, if I took a
tiny moment at the finish to consciously relax, then the circulation
came straight back, but if I remained under tension on recovery it only
returned later in the cycle. He felt that at the finish I was pushing
away while still pulling, which kept the clamp on my circulation long
enough to cause my symptoms. He asked why I needed to move so fast
around the finish as that might be the root of the problem. Good
question! And he explained that tense muscles do not immediately relax,
so in the rowing finish you would be working against yourself too -
pushing while still pulling.
As I said, he wasn't keen to cut, saying all surgery carries a risk of
morbidity (I went home & looked that one up). He reckoned I could work
around it - the period of unavoidable (i.e. under necessary load)
circulation stoppage seemed quite short &, if I found a way to reduce
the unnecessary interruption by changing technique, I'd get enough
circulation to solve my problem.
Shortly afterwards, I got an outing in a 2x with an outstanding sculler,
I found that his finish was soooo relaxed, yet his catch was
corresponding faster. I did my best to fit in, & I enjoyed it. can't
have been too bad for either of us as only a month or 2 back he still
had favourable recollection that outing. Doing the same in the single I
went faster, & I never had lower arm cramp again.
After all of which, I slowly pieced together the evidence, & over years
I assembled a model of the dynamics of the rowing stroke which seemed
internally consistent, and seemed helpful to others.
But, to return from so far off to where you began, Ian:
It was not funny, with an international W2x that was beating a good
international MLWt2x in set pieces, to be told even so that the girls'
finishes were "too slow". I want to learn, so I look at fast crews to
try to see what makes them so fast, & I ask all I can about the
underlying philosophy. In this case it escalated to a damagingly
disruptive level. People close to the crew & others, all with better
things to do, in the last couple of weeks chose to meddle & challenge.
They did not ask, try to understand, or wait & watch. The result was
that the person most vulnerable to such pressures chose, in a fit of
pique, to make a pyrrhic point by easing up in the semi, thus just
missing the final. Her partner was not best pleased. My thoughts need
no repetition.
Cheers -
Walter Martindale
Everything's in proportion to how fast you're going - if you're at a
real high stroke rate, you move a little faster, if at a low stroke
rate, a little more slowly. I've generally ended up coaching groups
of people who have had different coaches, and have had to get them to
learn in short order how to row together - usually it works best if I
advocate patience getting the oar handle(s) to the finish and then
being relaxed about getting ready for the next one.
Oh well - Pity people thought they'd interfere with the crew - I hate
that - when other coaches come in and (without first clearing it)
attempt to make the athletes with whom one is working go through a
major change to do something not supported by evidence...
W
IPS
It was a little more complicated than that. One of the crew members
was married to a fledgling coach with high aspirations. I probably
shouldn't say more, and this is getting way off topic.
Carl Douglas
>
> It was a little more complicated than that. One of the crew members
> was married to a fledgling coach with high aspirations. I probably
> shouldn't say more, and this is getting way off topic.
Yep! It was long ago & we can let it pass.
More interesting is how political infighting & self-interest infests any
organised sport. For some coaches & officials the manoeuvring seems to
matter more than the results. It is a favoured ploy to complain that
the other guy, if he/she does it differently, is doing it wrong. Point
out that difference from the norm & you put the other guy at a
disadvantage in the game, regardless of whether that difference helps
performance or that crew.
To respond to such a challenge by explaining what you're doing & why
usually elicits a pitying, uncomprehending response. That may be
because we all have blind spots, & coaches who have fought their way up
on the strength of their personality & motivational skills are no
different. It's a bit like the Emperor's New Clothes - they will not
wish to engage in discussion of matters in which they may be shown to be
technically naive. In a macho set-up it will usually be better not to
show ignorance to your peers, who may also share your blind belief &
resentment of anyone questioning that belief, so a pitying dismissal of
matters you can't comprehend is the politically astute way to stay on top.
Not once at that time (& rarely since, I'm afraid) did I hear any
reasoned explanation as to why anything other than fast finishes must be
wrong. If we cling to an orthodoxy as to a tablet of stone, deride any
deviations & refuse to allow it to be challenged by competent analysis,
then we harm the interests of those we coach, of those who invest in our
sport & of the rising generations of athletes.
As we see in so many other areas, rowing resists the application of
science. There are limits to how much power you can get a rower to
generate, but we have barely scratched the surface of the performance
benefits that the application of science might bring. If rowing adopts
a more scientific route, there may be fewer jobs for those with more
limited grasp of the relevant sciences, so don't expect any welcome for
unfamiliar concepts.
To put this into perspective, just imagine if motor racing teams were
run by your typical rowing establishments - I don't think it bears
thinking about.
RobP
> URLs: www.carldouglas.co.uk(boats) &www.aerowing.co.uk(riggers)
I have been struggling to get my finishes "right" for some time. Over
the summer I was lucky enough to get some good coaching that has made
a big difference to how I time the finish and so has made a big
difference to my overall sculling stroke. Here's what I have learned,
as I understand it. I hope it might help others and would be
interested in any comment / thoughts from a physics perspective.
Lets assume that you initiate the stroke with a well connected leg
drive (i.e. no bum shoving / shooting the slide). You can feel the
pressure of that drive through your feet against the foot-stretcher.
The simple point is that you need to time the finish so that the blade
is extracted from the water at the moment that pressure comes off your
feet. The stroke still has the traditional three components - legs,
body, arms, but instead of being strictly sequential, they overlap, so
that all end at the moment the pressure comes off your feet.
At first, this feels like finishing early, but the finish is very much
easier, cleaner and quicker. In my case it means I avoid a nasty roll
from side to side as I get caught in at the finish. The boat stays
level. There is plenty of time for the "relaxed sculler's finish"
mentioned in posts above, but that does not mean that your hands are
slow at the finish - its just much easier to get your hands neatly and
quickly away into the stern. There's no frantic rush, but no point in
hanging around either. Because you are finishing "earlier" it is also
harder to have a lot of lay-back and to slump into the bow (another
unattractive habit of mine). That makes it easier to get the body
over for the next stroke.
Once you become sensitised to it, the end of pressure on the feet is a
nice clear signal thats easy to detect and to respond to. My
experiments at home on the RowPerfect seem to confirm that timing the
finish in this way does not in fact produce a shorter stroke. Or more
importantly, the measured stroke length does not increase by trying to
lengthen the stroke with the lots of layback and arms, once the leg
drive is over. I guess there really is difference between perceived
stroke length (longer with lots of layback) and effective stroke
length, which depends on a quick catch and a good leg drive.
Comments please!
Rob