Sculling Drills witrh Gordon Hamilton

[Charles Carroll]

Dear all,

Below is a link to a video that may be of interest to some of you. The video
is titled “Seven Secrets of Successful Sculling presents Drills with Gordon
Hamilton.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gChwVL4uXA

The video just conveys Gordon Hamilton at his best. Of course it helps to
have an accomplished sculler perform the drills. Notice that during second
pause in the Rock & Row Anne has all her forward angle and her legs are
still straight. It seems to me that this accomplishes three things:

(1) It shows that Anne has not moved her seat, and for this reason has
minimized any interference the seat might have with the bowards movement of
the boat and thereby has protected the run of the boat.

(2) It shows that Anne has lowered her Center of Gravity, which
stabilizes the boat.

(3) It shows that Anne has moved her Center of Gravity sternwards of the
seat. This takes weight off the seat and puts Anne in the perfect position
to use her heels to draw the shell underneath her.

Cordially,

Charles


---
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[Henry Law]

On 21/10/14 18:47, Charles Carroll wrote:

> (1) It shows that Anne has not moved her seat, and for this reason
> has minimized any interference the seat might have with the bowards
> movement of the boat

But when she does move the seat she will accelerate the boat, which
sounds to me like a fine kind of "interference with the run of the boat".

>
> (2) It shows that Anne has lowered her Center of Gravity, which
> stabilizes the boat.

I can't disagree with the mechanics. But if she was leaning slightly
backward at the finish and is then leaning forward only slightly more
when she has rocked over, the relative vertical displacement of her CofG
must be tiny and the stabilisation effect unmeasurably small.

>
> (3) It shows that Anne has moved her Center of Gravity sternwards of
> the seat. This takes weight off the seat and puts Anne in the perfect
> position to use her heels to draw the shell underneath her.

Yes again, from the mechanical point of view. But why does transferring
a little weight onto the feet (a very little, given the tiny horizontal
displacement of the CofG relative to the seat-to-heels distance) make
any difference at all to the way she draws her feet towards her?


--

Henry Law Manchester, England

[Carl]

On 21/10/2014 18:47, Charles Carroll wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Below is a link to a video that may be of interest to some of you. The
> video is titled “Seven Secrets of Successful Sculling presents Drills
> with Gordon Hamilton.”
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gChwVL4uXA
>
> The video just conveys Gordon Hamilton at his best. Of course it helps
> to have an accomplished sculler perform the drills. Notice that during
> second pause in the Rock & Row Anne has all her forward angle and her
> legs are still straight. It seems to me that this accomplishes three
> things:
>
> (1) It shows that Anne has not moved her seat, and for this reason
> has minimized any interference the seat might have with the bowards
> movement of the boat and thereby has protected the run of the boat.
>
> (2) It shows that Anne has lowered her Center of Gravity, which
> stabilizes the boat.
>
> (3) It shows that Anne has moved her Center of Gravity sternwards of
> the seat. This takes weight off the seat and puts Anne in the perfect
> position to use her heels to draw the shell underneath her.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Charles
>

May I take a parallel tack to Henry?

We say many things in coaching which will fail under rational analysis.
Analytical edifices are erected on seemingly sound foundations which,
sadly, are but clay. But your bringing this here is highly commendable,
Charles. We can dissect it, but what any of us says in no way
diminishes that.

1. Motion of the seat is tied to that of the your (dominating) mass WRT
to boat. The boat itself does not "run". It is light in weight &
suffers all of the liquid drag, which is usually the major drag force on
the system.
When a boat runs this is not a free ride. "Run" is due to the inertia
of the crew's mass carrying on moving towards the destination, as Newton
told us it would unless acted upon by an external force. That external
force is provided by the ever-present fluid drag on the moving hull.
That drag defeats run by absorbing energy, thus slowing the boat & you
upon it.
To move your body (& seat) astern requires physical effort (energy
expenditure) through the contraction of your legs against a pulling
force on the stretcher. That pull arises from the drag forces retarding
the boat while the body tries to obey Newton by keeping constant speed
over the water. If there were no such drag forces the boat really would
"run"!
You can either sit still in the boat, in which case you'll stay at
backstops &, with your boat, gradually approaching a halt, or you can
contract your legs, pulling the inertia of your body against the drag
force acting on the hull, in which case you're working against that drag
with the effect of pulling the boat forwards. If you are fast enough
off backstops that early pull on the stretcher may (briefly) exceed the
drag on the hull & the boat will then accelerate, which is not
desirable. More likely your sternwards motion will serve to moderate
the boats deceleration and thus somewhat sustain its "run".

2. I see no possibility of actual or useful reduction in height of CofG,
unless of course the rower is to slump. The best one can do on recovery
is to limit the extent to which CofG _rises_ - by maintaining a flexible
back which curves as you rock sternwards, not one which swings rigidly
as an inverted pendulum (which generates bow dip). Keeping hands low
also has the contrary effect - raising the overall CofG (or it would
take no force to keep blades off water.) And as your legs bend & knees
rise the CofG must also rise.

3. There's no advantage in taking weight "off the seat" as you move
astern. The seat is pretty frictionless & offers no rolling resistance
regardless of your load upon it.
This leads us to one of the older shibboleths of our sport - the notion
that we need our weight on our feet before the catch, or in order to
take the catch, or to be stable at the catch. Your weight will be
distributed always between seat & stretcher in inverse proportion to the
relative closeness (along the horizontal axis) of your own CofG to the
bones of your bum & the heels of your shoes.
Were we rowing vertically, obviously the seat would be irrelevant & we'd
drive vertically off the bottom of the boat. Our action is almost
entirely in the horizontal plane, our feet snug in bolt-on shoes
(sometimes too snug!), so vertical pressure, except as a comfort
blanket, serves no useful purpose & can't be contrived.
At the catch, having all your weight over the feet is impossible &
undesirable. Only that part of your weight acting down onto the seat
allows you to apply load to the handles. Once the horizontal force at
the handles times the vertical distance between hands & point of contact
with the stretcher exceeds the vertical force on the seat times
horizontal distance from seat to point of stretcher contact, you will
inevitably lift off your seat. You can pull no harder.

We row under a burden of irrational nostrums. Happily, how we do row
differs considerably from how we think we row ;)

Cheers -
Carl

--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing Low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey KT16 8RP, UK
Find: tinyurl.com/2tqujf
Email: ca...@carldouglasrowing.com Tel: +44(0)1932-570946 Fax: -563682
URLs: carldouglasrowing.com & now on Facebook @ CarlDouglasRacingShells

[Charles Carroll]

> But when she does move the seat

> She will accelerate the boat

Henry,

Are you sure?

I cannot see how moving the seat sternwards on the recovery will accelerate
the boat.

Of course this puts me in mind of Walter Martindale’s very familiar and very
famous chart, “Velocities in Sculling.” I have never understood how Walter
was able to separate the velocity of the boat from the velocity of the
sculler.

How did Walter measure the Sculler’s velocity?

Did he measure the speed of the hands on the handles?

Did he measure the speed of the seat?

Perhaps he measured the movement of the shoulders or trunk?

If he measured the movement of the feet, wouldn’t Walter have always gotten
the same velocity that the boat was traveling, inasmuch as the feet for all
intents and purposes are permanently connected to the boat?

And at what point on the chart after the finish does the seat begin to move?
After the hands are sent away? After the sculler begins to pivot his trunk
sternwards? After all or most of the forward lean has been attained?

So many questions! And by the way, I begged the very first statement. How do
we even know that the seat of Walter’s sculler moved sternwards? Why couldn’t
the seat have remained mostly stationary as the sculler drew the boat
underneath her? And isn’t this only another way of asking, how do we know
that the sculler moved into the stern? As opposed to her having moved the
stern to her?

[Carl]

Butting in, as ever:

Charles - Newton tells us that every action has an equal & opposite
reaction. In fact, Isaac Newton, strange bird that he might have been,
perfectly encapsulated everything relevant to this discussion in 3
simple laws, on which a quick trip to the Internet will enlighten (or
confuse) the enquiring mind faster than can my feeble pen & brain.

Newton's 3 laws are proven & inviolable for normal terrestrial (&
aquatic) interactions - unless you move at speeds significantly close to
that of light, where Einstein offers handy refinements/redefinitions of
Newton's laws of motion which are beyond most of us & irrelevant to mere
scullers ;) So good are Newton's laws that they allow very accurate
determinations & predictions of planetary motions, & of the movements of
microsopic particles alike. We lie comfortably between those extremes &
the inertial interactions of all of our actions (which are what you're
discussing here) are susceptible to precise analysis.

What Walter & others (Volke Nolte's another luminary in this field) have
done is (relatively) straightforward. As is what Magnus Burbanks has
also done & reported to RSR. IIRC, the first two analysed film
sequences to determine the movements of the boat & rower relative to a
Newtonian constant-velocity (inertial) reference frame (i.e. from
something, such as a launch, moving in parallel with & at the average
speed of the boat). From these you can calculate velocities &
accelerations (which are the rates of change of those velocities) of
boat, rower & anything else moving within that reference frame. Magnus,
IIRC, achieved similarly meaningful & accurate results (as I'd expect)
through measuring actual relative accelerations, allowing him to work
back to velocities, etc., as necessary. The maths is fully reversible &
its results wholly valid either way.

In essence we're back to that old division between engineer/scientist
and lay person. The former has a discipline & training in which precise
definitions are developed & words are given immutable meanings within
that & a wider context. The latter sees words as somewhat malleable &
believes we're all on constantly shifting ground. And then there's the
shifty (does that word have an 'f' in it?) politician, whose words mean
whatever he wants them to mean at any particular moment, & something
else when cornered & challenged thereon.

I sense always that, as an earnest seeker after knowledge, you sense
that some things in the sculling firmament are somehow unknowable, &
that our hard definitions may be inadequate for what seems to be an
almost mystical topic. Mugs like me, & maybe Henry, Walter & Magnus,
take the simpleton scientist's view that, in rowing dynamics, everything
is knowable under the relatively simple rules of physics, mechanics, etc.

Did I add further confusion?

Good sculling, Charles, & hows that shoulder doing?

[John Greenly]

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 10:50:28 PM UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:
> > But when she does move the seat
> > She will accelerate the boat
>
> Henry,
>
> Are you sure?
>
> I cannot see how moving the seat sternwards on the recovery will accelerate
> the boat.

Hi Charles, I hope you are well and out sculling! I wonder, do you have the possibility of getting on a dynamic erg- Rowperfect, Oartec slider or C2 dynamic? I ask because I think maybe a few strokes on one of those could give you some useful insight into the questions you are asking. On the erg your average speed is of course zero- you're not travelling across the floor- and it is really easy to see and feel the relative motions of yourself and the "boat" (the moving part of the erg that your feet are attached to) with respect to the stationary floor. So, for instance, you can see immediately that as you raise your knees on the recovery, your feet and the "boat" do indeed accelerate forward much more than you and your seat accelerate backward. Newton tells us that those two motions are in inverse proportion to their masses-- you're heavier, so you move less.

If you can't get on one of these machines yourself, the next best thing is to look at a video taken from a side view. There are lots on Youtube.

all best,

John G

[James HS]

I think that old chestnut of "let the boat run" is one that coaches say as shortcut for "don't do anything to slow the boat down" and refers to a proper pull through of the arms at the end of the stroke, a clean extraction and an efficient hands away body rock before the slide portion of the recovery starts ..... I kind of link it to a 'follow through' instruction to a tennis player - certainly when I am in a crew boat, or coaching scullers we get extra length per stroke (on the water) when we incorporate all those elements from the call "let the boat run" as it reminds us of the follow thorough - and in that sense it is free distance - or rather - not distance that you have 'cost'.

so "let the boat run" can be a sound 'terminology' in my brain it is short hand for several efficient actions resulting in longer distance per stroke.

[Henry Law]

On 23/10/14 10:32, James HS wrote:
> I think that old chestnut of "let the boat run" is one that coaches say as shortcut for "don't do anything to slow the boat down"

Indeed. It exemplifies an important point: that coaches say all sorts
of stuff which is /effective/ in teaching the athletes to do the right
things, but is /inaccurate/ in respect of physics and mechanics. The
same is true in all sorts of teaching/coaching and it's essential.

But it's important that the students understand that what they're being
told is a /model/, useful as far as it goes but not to be pushed too far.

[Carl]

On 23/10/2014 11:22, Henry Law wrote:
> But it's important that the students understand that what they're being
> told is a /model/, useful as far as it goes but not to be pushed too far.

Aye, there's the rub! The necessary coaching con trick, his/her
smoke-n-mirrors presentation of a tricky problem passes through several
hands & emerges a "proven concrete fact". What's needed is a thorough
but comprehensible analysis, in accessible form, of the _real_ dynamic
interactions within the rowing action. Coaches could still use fairy
dust to inspire novices without confusing themselves. Rowers who cared
to know, & all would-be coaches, could then acquaint themselves with
what is actually going on, limiting the confusion & improving the sport.

Ask a bunch of rowers to tighten bolts & most will think that, if
tight=good, then tighter=better. Many fail to relate what they do to
what the job requires.

Sir Henry Royce had such a problem with Merlin engines at a stressful
time. Eager mechanics could over-tighten long, thin cylinder-head
bolts. Removing fractured bolt from deep in the engine block was
tricky, time-consuming & blocks were wasted.

Royce pondered & solved the problem by estimating the force, Fm, that a
mechanic might apply at the end of the spanner (wrench US). Knowing the
torque, Tmax, the bolt required, he shortened a set of spanners to
lengths, L, given by L = Tmax/Fm, so the mechanic could apply no more
than the required torque. Sets of "Royce" spanners became standard kit,
& treasured possessions of "Royce" mechanics.

It's hard to put rowing on its scientific feet while it remains so
science-averse & rowers savour an image of unfathomable ju-ju. When
some of us finally got the message across that, for much of the stroke,
blade slip is prevented by the easily-explicable phenomenon of
fluid-dynamic lift (which allows planes to fly), a fleet of numptie
coaches started telling their charges they could put the blades in &
wait to "feel the lift" before pulling. And some still do!

Cheers -

[Henry Law]

On 23/10/14 13:06, Carl wrote:
> he shortened a set of spanners to lengths, L, given by L = Tmax/Fm, so
> the mechanic could apply no more than the required torque.

Where can we find a manufacturer of 10mm AF rigging spanners an inch and
half long?

[Carl]

On 23/10/2014 13:27, Henry Law wrote:
> On 23/10/14 13:06, Carl wrote:
>> he shortened a set of spanners to lengths, L, given by L = Tmax/Fm, so
>> the mechanic could apply no more than the required torque.
>
> Where can we find a manufacturer of 10mm AF rigging spanners an inch and
> half long?
>

Perhaps we should return to the traditional model (of half a century
back). A long rod with a wooden handle at one end & a socket for the
nut at the other. The torque you could apply was strictly limited by
your hand-grip. But it only works where there is clear access to the bolt.

Otherwise it's out with the hacksaw. I tell rowers to use only index
finger pressure on a normal spanner, which allows you to apply more than
enough torque.

[James HS]

Henry,

Funny you should say that as I carry this one on every outing

TRIDENT T211210 - 10mm SHORT STUBBY COMBINATION SPANNER

And it is a good point as I have seen over tightened rigger plates where they have pulled the weld apart!

My old empy has wooden shoulders and I have to stop people rigging it after regattas tightening it to a point where it splits the plywood!

D'oh!

James

[Charles Carroll]

> The boat itself does not "run"

But Carl,

Who said it did?

Let’s slow down a bit and go to the Web Page of someone I consider one of my
closest and dearest friends. On this Web Page you will find the following
sentence:

“With computer-assisted hydrodynamic design, our racing boats are
out-and-out racing machines … Our boats do less than any other boat to slow
you down.”

All I meant by the word “run” was let the boat do what it was designed to
do. Or in slightly different words: Don’t do anything during the recovery to
slow the boat down.

I know I am probably getting it all wrong, but it why can’t I define “run”
as the speed and distance with which a shell travels per unit of applied
force? To be a bit more specific, given the same sculler, same water, and
same application of force — will some hull geometries slow you down faster
and travel less distance than others? And I can’t quite see anything wrong
with saying that the hull geometry which does less to slow you down has the
greatest “run.”

It has been my experience that the answer is yes.

When I first got my shell I had a lesson with a coach who has been teaching
at my Club for years. The water in the channel that day was maybe Force 3
(large wavelets, crests beginning to break, scattered whitecaps). And the
wind wasn’t exactly agreeable either, maybe Force 4 (11 to 16 knots). So for
these reasons we decided to move to an area between two piers, where the
water was much more protected and friendly.

“No hard pulls,” said the coach. “I want you to row smoothly and stay
relaxed. Just try to do everything we have been practicing. Don’t worry. You’ll
get about seven strokes before we have to stop and turn around.”

Since he was watching I didn’t have to think about anything except what we
were working on. I tried to follow his instructions exactly.

I had taken my fifth stroke when he shouted, “Stop!”

I looked up, our eyes met, and we both started laughing. He told me that it
was the first time in years of coaching that anyone had traveled that
distance between the piers in just five strokes.

And I assure tell you, Carl, the sculler had nothing to do with this. It was
all the boat.

When we got back to the dock he told me that I probably had “the best boat
in California — and maybe the whole country.”

We were just talking about this lesson two weeks ago. I am having a lot of
trouble sculling and occasionally find myself feeling guilty over having
such a fine shell. I would love to see what someone really skillful and
strong could do with it.

The coach said that he was coaching someone in the East Bay who fit both
that description and the boat. Maybe he could persuade this sculler to come
over to Sausalito and give the shell a try. It turns out that I have traded
posts on RSR with the sculler he is coaching. But this is another story.

In any event, my question is why is it so terrible to say, “Don’t do
anything to spoil the “run” of the boat? Basically isn’t this just a way of
saying, “Don’t do anything to slow the boat down?”

As always warmest regards,

[Carol Dailey]

I have Gordon Hamilton's book, Sculling in a Nutshell. I think I've read it ten times already, no, maybe twenty. Some of what he writes is definitely different from what a lot of others write regarding technique (and as a complete noob, I have zero expertise :>) One example is that the stroke is over as soon as the legs have finished driving. I'm not sure other coaches take this approach. Another is that one should not use their feet to pull the shell underneath on the recovery. He advocates using outward pressure from the arms against the pins to draw oneself forward (imagine sitting on a skateboard and pulling yourself through a doorway). I'm definitely struggling with trying to find the "right" way to learn to scull. I do love his "eyeballs on the elbows" visualization theory. I'm hoping to go to the Florida Rowing Center this spring where he is the head coach. It should be interesting and fun!

[Carl]

On 23/10/2014 21:29, Carol Dailey wrote:
> I have Gordon Hamilton's book, Sculling in a Nutshell. I think I've read it ten times already, no, maybe twenty. Some of what he writes is definitely different from what a lot of others write regarding technique (and as a complete noob, I have zero expertise :>) One example is that the stroke is over as soon as the legs have finished driving. I'm not sure other coaches take this approach. Another is that one should not use their feet to pull the shell underneath on the recovery. He advocates using outward pressure from the arms against the pins to draw oneself forward (imagine sitting on a skateboard and pulling yourself through a doorway). I'm definitely struggling with trying to find the "right" way to learn to scull. I do love his "eyeballs on the elbows" visualization theory. I'm hoping to go to the Florida Rowing Center this spring where he is the head coach. It should be interesting and fun!
>

Carol -

You've been reading the work of one of the finest of coaches. What he
says works, but that doesn't have to mean it's the literal truth. I
hope that doesn't sound cocky or contrarian?

On my side of the table we're after the literal truth, the underlying facts.

Let's take the 'legs end the stroke' bit: what isn't said (& I've not
read it, so admit not knowing) is where the hands are when the leg-work
ends, nor what load they carry at that point, nor whether they could
usefully continue to draw the finish. So let's consider where the
leg-action ends?

There's a crushing machine which uses a linkage much like our legs. It
generates its greatest force right at the point where its knee-joint
falls close to the line between ankle & hip. That knee is driven
downwards by another link, unlike ours which is pulled down using fibres
acting over the patella, so at its near-level position the mechanical
advantage (effectively its gearing) is huge - an inch of vertical motion
producing but thousands of an inch of lateral extension.

So the force we might be able to exert or withstand with the knees down
is great, despite the indicated difference between man & machine. But
what about the speed of that action?

Due to the high gearing ratio as the knees reach their lowest point, the
speed at which our legs can move the pelvis is tiny. At the finish our
legs become, in effect, non-extensible props. So if we propose that
'legs moving pelvis' propels the boat in the instants before the finish,
clearly that proposition fails. So, shouldn't we stop the stroke before
the leg action has slowed the pelvis's motion (WRT the boat) to zero?
In which case, how much before that?

All of which ignores what the body & arms are doing! So let's go there
next?

If the arms can still move the hands WRT the body then, since all the
load was already travelling through them & they were drawing back WRT
the body (we don't finish with arms straight out in front of us), why
can't they continue moving a little further under that same load once
the pelvis has ground to its complete halt?

And what about the body, & how does that coordinate with legs & arms at
the finish?

A rational interpretation of what Gordon says might presume that you've
already drawn arms as far as they can usefully go, & your body has swung
to its useful limit, as the legs finish their movement. I don't know if
that's what he means so I can't comment further. Yet many fine crews
seem to leave a lot of body & arm work for _after_ their legs are down,
so it can't be the world's worst crime. My preference comes much closer
to working all muscle groups simultaneously - which drops us into that
discussion of "How can arms work against legs in mid-drive?", but there
are valid answers which can find it hard to gain a hearing among those
who can't see how the gearings of different joint/muscle systems vary
throughout their ranges of extension.

Now to the use of feet to come forward:
I fully understand Gordon's desire for the rower to assist part of the
recovery by pressing the handles outward. However, you'll get no useful
sternwards force by that means until oars are some way past mid-recovery
- the force vectors work entirely against you before that.

I can, however, imagine that Gordon might not want rowers to think all
they must do to recover is to pull with the feet - he may have to deal
with such muddled notions & we don't want to see hints, even, of rowers
coming forward while leaning back. What we do know is that rowers can't
help pulling on the stretcher to come forward, because otherwise they'll
stay at backstops as the boat decelerates under fluid drag. I'm not
saying that we pull consciously, but the body has ways of doing what it
must while the mind puts its own (sometimes quaint) interpretations on
what happens.

I wonder if that is any help?

[Carl]

On 23/10/2014 20:01, Charles Carroll wrote:
>> The boat itself does not "run"
>
> But Carl,
>
> Who said it did?
>
> Let’s slow down a bit and go to the Web Page of someone I consider one
> of my closest and dearest friends. On this Web Page you will find the
> following sentence:
>
> “With computer-assisted hydrodynamic design, our racing boats are
> out-and-out racing machines … Our boats do less than any other boat to
> slow you down.”
>
> All I meant by the word “run” was let the boat do what it was designed
> to do. Or in slightly different words: Don’t do anything during the
> recovery to slow the boat down.

Charles - I know and you know what you meant, but we have to remember
that what we write here is public. That's why I try, officiously no
doubt, to head off at the gulch interpretations which might then take
wing upon a breeze of honest misapprehension.

>
> I know I am probably getting it all wrong, but it why can’t I define
> “run” as the speed and distance with which a shell travels per unit of
> applied force? To be a bit more specific, given the same sculler, same
> water, and same application of force — will some hull geometries slow
> you down faster and travel less distance than others? And I can’t quite
> see anything wrong with saying that the hull geometry which does less to
> slow you down has the greatest “run.”
>
> It has been my experience that the answer is yes.

Yes! Except that what propels the boat at any instant is a force, but
what gives it the energy to travel that far & that fast is what we call
work. That work is the sum of an infinitely large number of slices of
"force x distance", summed up over the full length of the stroke _&_ the
recovery. When I write "distance" I mean the infinitely small distance
through which that force, for an infinitely small duration, acts. What
maths allows us to do is to measure or calculate, & then add together,
those impossibly brief slices in to a full-stroke result. Force is not
constant through the stroke, & just to make life even more tricky, some
of the work that moves the boat is not done in the water. Talk about
opening up a can of worms!

Getting back to boat run:
My sole problem with this is that, yes, the boat's hull is your main
source of resistance to having everlasting run &, yes, its design,
including riggers, fin & everything else, does determine how much
resistance there is, but how you use your boat is also important. Given
a good boat (such as yours!) you have to know that your technique has
the power not only to affect how much useful work you can do but also
how much energy is needlessly wasted by the way your actions affect your
boat's motion & thus its interactions with the water. The same boat can
have more or less drag, depending on how you choose to use it. Looking
at it in another way, the boat is a minor party in the overall system of
which you are the biggest part, & what runs is the sum of all the parts.

In '93 I gave a lecture in Delft Technical University at a symposium the
students ran. The title of the meeting was "Blame it on the boat!", & I
began my spiel by explaining that we boatbuilders were the reason why
you rowers went slowly - because what we made we provided all that drag.
So perhaps I ought to slightly re-write that intro?

>
> When I first got my shell I had a lesson with a coach who has been
> teaching at my Club for years. The water in the channel that day was
> maybe Force 3 (large wavelets, crests beginning to break, scattered
> whitecaps). And the wind wasn’t exactly agreeable either, maybe Force 4
> (11 to 16 knots). So for these reasons we decided to move to an area
> between two piers, where the water was much more protected and friendly.
>
> “No hard pulls,” said the coach. “I want you to row smoothly and stay
> relaxed. Just try to do everything we have been practicing. Don’t worry.
> You’ll get about seven strokes before we have to stop and turn around.”
>
> Since he was watching I didn’t have to think about anything except what
> we were working on. I tried to follow his instructions exactly.
>
> I had taken my fifth stroke when he shouted, “Stop!”
>
> I looked up, our eyes met, and we both started laughing. He told me that
> it was the first time in years of coaching that anyone had traveled that
> distance between the piers in just five strokes.
>
> And I assure tell you, Carl, the sculler had nothing to do with this. It
> was all the boat.

And there we might differ, ever so slightly. What I would suggest is
that we gave you the tool & you were just the person to use it. That's
not flattery, Charles, just realism. Had you sculled like a
woodchopper, then however good the boat you'd not have moved it as far.
I'm glad you did stop!

>
> When we got back to the dock he told me that I probably had “the best
> boat in California — and maybe the whole country.”

Aw, shucks!

>
> We were just talking about this lesson two weeks ago. I am having a lot
> of trouble sculling and occasionally find myself feeling guilty over
> having such a fine shell. I would love to see what someone really
> skillful and strong could do with it.
>
> The coach said that he was coaching someone in the East Bay who fit both
> that description and the boat. Maybe he could persuade this sculler to
> come over to Sausalito and give the shell a try. It turns out that I
> have traded posts on RSR with the sculler he is coaching. But this is
> another story.

There are a few Youtube vids of some quite tasty scullers in our boats,
not excluding a certain "Kaiser of the Amstel" himself. And there's that
smooth sculler out in the Bay.

>
> In any event, my question is why is it so terrible to say, “Don’t do
> anything to spoil the “run” of the boat? Basically isn’t this just a way
> of saying, “Don’t do anything to slow the boat down?”

And a pedant would say .... no, what the heck, let's leave it there ;)

>
> As always warmest regards,
>
> Charles
>

And ours to you & to Sandy, Charles. BTW, apropos a recent RSR
discussion on joints, arthritis, etc: Jan had one rickety old knee
injected with cortisone 3 days ago & it's so much better as a result
that she can't wait to have the other one fixed. The only sticky bit
for her was when the medic announced, "Ah, that's good! The needle's
right in behind your kneecap now." Makes my eyes water just to think
about it.

[Charles Carroll]

> > I cannot see how moving the seat sternwards on the recovery will
> > accelerate
> > the boat.

> do you have the possibility of getting on a dynamic
> erg- Rowperfect, Oartec slider or C2 dynamic?
> I ask because I think maybe a few strokes on one
> of those could give you some useful insight into
> the questions you are asking
>

> you can see immediately that as you raise
> your knees on the recovery, your feet and
> the "boat" do indeed accelerate forward much
> more than you and your seat accelerate backward.

Hi John,

Such a clear, simple illustration of what Henry, Carl and now you have been
trying to get me to see! What a gift you have!

I believe I was one of the first private scullers to order slides from
Concept2. I have been using them on my old model C almost from the moment
they became available. But I did not have to rush downstairs to my dynamic
erg to see what you were suggesting. I saw it immediately in my imagination,
and then saw it seconds later on a video on YouTube, which clearly
demonstrates that a shell is accelerated on the recovery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR1P_twQfuo

So I am wrong. Once again by posting on RSR I find myself relieved of the
burden of ignorance.

By the way, I just have to say again what a gift you have! Your example is
so clear that it could almost be described as axiomatic. I have been
thinking a bit lately about the relationship between proof and knowing. Can
we claim to know something if we cannot prove it? And if we answer yes to
that question, then where do axioms fit in? I’ll give you a very simple
example of an axiom: Equals subtracted from equals produce equals. Is proof
required to know this?

But I am rambling! And I also strongly suspect that you are much more versed
in this subject than I will ever be.

So back to sculling!

Why did I miss something so obvious as a shell accelerates on the recovery?

I think the answer is that I have recently become obsessed with not slowing
down the shell, and I am reasonably sure that where I slow it down is during
the recovery.

And I believe that I have proven this to myself. It began a month or two ago
with my goal of getting 10 meters-per-stroke. I won’t go through the whole
process, except to say that after a lot of trial and effort I discovered
that the only way I could achieve this goal was to insert 3 pauses into the
recovery. I paused at the finish, then the crossover, and then the catch.
And if I was patient I could get 10 meter-per-stroke stroke after stroke.

And for weeks that was my exclusive goal. I focused on nothing else.

Then one day after an outing I decided it was cowardly not to look at my
speed and stroke rate, etc. So I cycled through and studied the recall on
the SpeedCoach. And what I discovered was shocking.

I was absolutely certain that my stroke rate would be low and that
accordingly my speed would also be low. Really low!

I was right about the stroke rate. I was averaging 15 spm.

But here came the surprise. Sculling at 15 spm with 3 pauses in the recovery
I was sculling faster than I scull at 25 spm. The StrokeCoach showed that I
was consistently seeing an increase in speed of 0.4 to 0.6 meters-per
second. I couldn’t believe. But week after week for a month now I have been
getting the same result.

But how can this be?

The only thing I can think of — aside from the fact that I am a very poor
sculler — is that I must be doing something to slow the boat down during the
recovery. I also decided that I know nothing about sculling. Absolutely
nothing!

But enough of this drivel! I’m going to Sausalito.

Warmest regards,

[Charles Carroll]

> Some of what [Gordon] writes is definitely
> different from what a lot of others write …

> One example is that the stroke is over
> as soon as the legs have finished driving

Hi Carol,

I can clear this up quickly. Gordon is a student of Steve Fairbairn. One of
Fairbairn’s oft-quoted admonishments is “Find out how to use your weight and
you will have solved the problem of how to move a boat.” Gordon thinks of
this as one of the essential truths of good sculling.

A more modern translation of Fairbairn’s famous admonishment might be,
“Recruit all your muscles and use them through the whole stroke.” Hands,
arms, lats, abdominal muscles, thighs, hamstrings, feet, etc. etc. etc. —
every muscle should be in its place and used together at the start of the
stroke and should stay together at the end of the stroke. (But remember, a
proper stroke doesn’t really have a beginning or end — it is just a
continuous flow.)

The shortened form of this might be, “…the propulsive phase becomes the
recovery as soon as the legs are down.” This is in direct opposition to the
idea of a segmented drive — that is, the legs go down, after which the back
finishes pivoting, and then the arms pull into the ribcage.

Gordon believes that if you get the drive right you become a fortress of
stability as you uninterruptedly flow into the recovery.

Ha!

But watch Xeno in the last 500 meters of the men’s final in the 1996
Olympics. Gordon has told me that he thinks this is a very good example of
what Fairbairn means when he says, “Find out how to use your weight and you
will have solved the problem of how to move a boat.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwYbZkSlsQw&list=UUqox_JHnRozM76faCCLP1xg

Cordially,

[Carol Dailey]

Carl:

And yes, it helps, but only a little :> First let me say that I absolutely love reading your posts! I can't tell you how much I appreciate that you are looking for "the literal truth, the underlying facts" :> I was laughing out loud at some of your writing and the way you describe some of the coaching "ju-ju" that goes on when someone has a notion of something and that little chestnut gets repeated as if it were gospel truth, or gets distorted and repeated as if it were truth.

On to Gordon's book...

I have to start with the use of the feet to come forward since that's an easier topic. I wish you had a copy of Gordon's book because a lot of what he writes does seem to be meant to be taken literally. His "Nutshell" ( and I'm paraphrasing) is really that we should all forget about balance and instead concentrate on stability... stability of our body with regard to our boat, thus making our boat and our body "one." He advocates constant pressure on the pins in the direction the blades are moving and suspending one's bodyweight onto the riggers to create stability. Regarding NOT using the feet to pull oneself forward he says this (and I hope it's okay to quote here.... if it isn't, let me know and I'll delete this post.)

"This should be accomplished without pulling yourself forward with your legs. Your movement into the stern comes from the continuous separation of the handles from your core as you continue to apply pressure backwards to-wards the bow against the pins through the elbows. Imagine you are sitting on a giant skateboard with your hands on the sides of pocket doors that slide into the doorframe. In our construct, these doors are the riggers/pins. Now propel yourself through the doorway by pushing out and back towards the blades (which are moving further and further behind you) by separating the elbows/arms. The legs are not necessary for this, and, in fact, any tension in them will only create difficulties at the Entry."

This seems pretty specific in terms of technique and I don't know how one would take this to mean anything but don't pull yourself forward with your legs. In fact, he writes a lot more about this and there's a very nifty jpeg graphic that I can look at when I'm reading my kindle copy and connected to the web that shows exactly the movement he describes.

Now, with regard to the stroke ending when the knees are down, I think you're right. It's hard for me to get an exact understanding of where Gordon wants everything to end up. You asked, "If the arms can still move the hands WRT the body then, since all the load was already travelling through them & they were drawing back WRT the body (we don't finish with arms straight out in front of us), why can't they continue moving a little further under that same load once the pelvis has ground to its complete halt?" I sure don't know the answer to that question, but Gordon, in advocating that legs, back, and arms complete the drive "at as close to the same time as is possible," writes that "proper function of the arms it to sustain suspension and execute transition to recovery, NOT to accelerate the boat." Again, probably not a "literal" translation to be made here because he's a little unclear.

One other chestnut that I can't figure out and I bet you have a whole whopping lot to say on the matter given your understanding of fluid dynamics (HUGE SMILEY FACE HERE) is a great discussion in the book about Bernoulli's Principal and how it affects what the sculler should be doing at the beginning of the drive. I can't say that I understand the fluid dynamics Gordon describes about water and oar blades, because I don't, but he advocates, "The period of time between when the blade drops into the water and be -gins to get pulled by Bernoulli towards the bow and when the blade reverses direction and begins to arc around toward the stern is very brief, about as long as the snap of one's fingers. To the rower, however, it should feel like "Dead Time" (something almost unthinkable under all our past models of "the catch").However, it is not wasted time. We need to occupy this time by holding our pressure against the pins (connected through our core/elbows), which will allow the water to firmly grab our blades and hence pull the blades toward the bow and the handles toward the stern. Of course, this requires enormous patience, relaxed legs, soft hands and Stability. We must allow the blades to do what they want to do, nothing more or less . In other words, we must simply stay out of the way!" Now I know I've read somewhere else that people discount this theory of blade lift and whether or not a sculler can feel it, or can react in time appropriately to allow the oars to be pulled into his or her fingertips before suspending bodyweight onto the foot stretchers/oar handles.

See, one of the greatest difficulties in being an athlete who loves to learn by the total immersion method, is that there's just too much conflicting information out there! I AM SO CONFUSED :> Hence my greatest appreciation for your posts and the funny way you have of describing how/why information (or lack thereof) gets transmitted to the learning athlete.

I'm definitely going to the Florida Rowing Center come spring to learn all of this first hand. Besides, it will be a good reason to escape the snow here in Pennsylvania :>

I wish a whole bunch of people would get this book and we could talk about it. I feel like a lonely soul pouring over ancient manuscripts by candlelight trying to divine the truth.

Cat

[Carl]

Hi Cat -

As I said before, I greatly respect Gordon Hamilton's coaching skills &
achievements. But that does not mean I accept as gospel all he might
say. Coaching is a complex mix of art, science & charisma, & great
coaches have a sufficient mix of those attributes to be greater than
other coaches, with perfection an impossible aim. As in every other
activity, he who never made a mistake never made anything worthwhile.

Due to time pressure, I'll comment as briefly as I can on the points
you've raised.

Balance is a physical skill, requiring sensitivity & adversely affected
by tension or anxiety. Soothing words & concepts are invaluable aides
to learning balance, & once you have it you'll wonder why it was ever a
concern. Words which work for you may not help others, but great
coaches know this & adapt to person & situation.

Pressure on pins can only act along the oar's axis. The force against
the pin WRT you can be sternwards (keeping you at backstops) until the
oar passes the perpendicular to the boat. Thereafter it exerts an
increasing forward force on the boat equal to hand pressure times sine
of the angle past the perpendicular. How hard can you sustainably push
out on each handle? Say it's 1kg force (1kgf or 2.2lbf)? With handles
at 10 degrees (~15cm/6") past the perpendicular the total forward force
on the boat is only 0.347kgf or 3/4lbf. But fluid drag on your boat is
~10kgf, so how can you leave backstops, even if you reach that far
before moving up the slides. Even at the catch (oars ~60 degrees from
the perpendicular), a 1kgf push along each shaft gives only 1.73kgf
forward force. It's all in the maths: outward pressure can't move you
off back-stops against the drag force & you must pull on your feet.

Bernoulli/lift: there is no "free" energy & nothing to pull your blades
towards the bow. "Lift" doesn't work that way. If you drop your blades
into the water they will always swing sternwards. Lift is the
short-hand term for the fluid dynamic processes which allow birds &
planes to fly, yachts to sail into the wind, wind-turbines to function &
fish to swim. But it's never for free.

Lift is that force, for a wing-like object (foil) moving edgewise
through a fluid, which develops _in direct response_ to your _applying_
load perpendicular to its direction of motion. You can visualise this
well enough for the wing of a plane, & feel it well enough when trying
to carry a board on a windy day. It can be a bit harder to visualise
for an oarblade, & before you can do that you need to know that the
blade's direction of motion is the vector sum of the pin's forward
motion & the oar's rotation about the pin:

pin Pin Velocity
o--------------------a
- /
- /blade rotational
blade - / velocity
tip-first - /
velocity -x


The above is a triangle of velocities showing how this sum is
calculated. Line o-a represents the direction, & its length represents
the size, of the forward speed of the pin (& boat). Line a-x does the
same for the speed & direction of the blade WRT to pin as it rotates
sternwards. Line x-o represents the speed & direction of the water as it
flows from tip to root of the blade (& its reverse, o-x, represents the
direction & speed of the blade's motion through the water).

The blade, if flat & unloaded, rotates around the pin at an easily
calculated rate - slowly when well ahead of the pin, rising to boat
speed when square with the pin, then falling towards the finish. The
blade being curved from tip (leading edge) to root, like a sail or a
wing of the Wright brothers' "Flyer", means that if not loaded rotates a
little slower than this, due to how its curvature affects the local
flows. But under rowing load it rotates slightly faster again, so my
sketch is a fair representation.

What matters is that, near the catch, the resulting flow _is_ from tip
to root & fairly speedy too. So the curved blade functions just like
any other "foil" to resist stall (face-first motion through the water),
through the curving of that flow over its convex surface which reduces
the pressure in the water over that surface. If there is no load on the
blade that flow will self-adjust so there's no "lift". But as you load
the blade the lift force increases to match that load.

For those happy with such concepts: as you load the blade its effective
angle of attack (inclination to that oncoming flow) increases; & the
lift develops in direct proportion to that angle of attack. In the same
way a lightly-laden aircraft, at constant altitude & speed will have a
less nose-up angle (smaller AoA) than one full of fuel & cargo.

I hope that waffle slightly clarifies that confusion? To suppose that
lift can a) develop on an unloaded blade & b) work to pull the blade
towards the bow is a fluid-dynamic impossibility, tantamount to claiming
ownership of a perpetual motion machine. It can't happen.

[John Greenly]

> The only thing I can think of -- aside from the fact that I am a very poor
> sculler -- is that I must be doing something to slow the boat down during the

> recovery. I also decided that I know nothing about sculling. Absolutely
> nothing!
>
> But enough of this drivel! I'm going to Sausalito.
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> Charles
>
>
> ---
> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
> http://www.avast.com

Hi Charles,

I'm glad my suggestion was useful! And, it would be fun to get together and talk philosophy- axioms, proofs and such- sometime. I need to have a conference happen out your way so I could come by. There was one in the Napa valley this summer, but I was not able to go.

Meanwhile, about your experience of going faster at lower rate, the coaches around here can address that much better than I can and it's guesswork anyway without seeing you scull, but l do have a thought- see what you think. I remember that there was a frustrating time when I didn't seem to be able to go much faster by increasing the rate above a certain number- for quite a while it was maybe 22 or 24. In my case, although my recovery was certainly far from ideal, what was happening was mainly that as rate went up I was not maintaining the working length of my drive. Especially, I wasn't getting as much out of the first part of the drive: my catch was not quick and sure enough to get the blades in and loaded fast enough to deal with higher rates, and I was both checking the boat by driving with my feet before the blades were properly loaded, and also wasting that first part of the arc of the oars by not producing useful work: rowing them in.
A lot of work on the catch at low rate has gradually improved that for me, and now my top speed at higher rate has gone way up and I don't seem to be working nearly so hard to do it.

As to slowing the boat on the recovery, we have established that basically two things are going on. First, the boat is always feeling drag as it moves through the water. That slows you down. Second, your movements during the recovery all have to do with getting properly to frontstops, and our erg example shows that those movements mainly accelerate the boat- make it go faster than it would if you just sat there and did nothing.

So how can your movement during the recovery slow you down? The answer is, as usual, basic physics. You remember that the drag on the hull goes up with about the square of its speed through the water. So if, for instance, you lunge sternward right after the release, that accelerates the boat a lot so the drag force goes way up. Force times distance traveled is work- you're going to have to do more work next drive to make up for that loss. To minimize that loss you want to have the boat go at as nearly a constant speed as possible, and smooth, non-lurching motion all through the recovery definitely helps.

But, I remember someone- was it Magnus?- showing the results of some very nice calculations of how much you lose by moving in various ways during the recovery, and he found that the differences were not really very big. It sounds as if you are having very large loss as rate goes up, so I have to suspect you're having a problem more like mine was: losing useful work during the drive, at the beginning, the end or both.

What do you think?

all best,
John G

[Charles Carroll]

Cat,

One of the great tutors in my undergraduate years defined friendship as an
unfinished conversation. I have always loved that definition.

I tell you this because Gordon Hamilton and I have been conversing for ten
years now, and one of the recurring topics in this conversation has been
whether a sculler should try to draw the shell underneath him during the
recovery. I think he should, Gordon thinks he shouldn’t, and we have argued
the point endlessly.

The reason that Gordon says the recovery “should be accomplished without
pulling yourself forward with your legs” is that he thinks that to draw the
shell underneath you requires the skill and confidence of an elite sculler
and that for those of us of lesser ability it is an unnecessary distraction.

You are learning to scull and you are obviously trying to do it with a
degree of guiding intelligence. Who would not admire that? But I want to
quote the opening sentences of Gilbert C. Bourne’s famous “A Textbook of
Oarsmanship.”

“It was one of the Duke of Wellington’s generals who, when importuned by a
young officer for advice as to how he might best learn the duites of a
soldier, answered: ‘By fighting, sir, and plenty of it.’ Similarly I would
answer to the aspiring oarsman who asks how he may best learn the art of
oarsmanship: ‘By rowing, sir, and plenty of it.’”

Cordially,

[Carol Dailey]

Carl:

You have no idea how much you've clarified more than a few things for me. I am eternally grateful (and I mean that sincerely). Thank you for taking the time to explain those three points to me. I thought I read an old post of yours regarding Bernoulli's principal which is why I added it to the mix. Try as I might, I couldn't seem to draw myself through the recovery just on force against the riggers. Similarly, I couldn't feel that moment of the oars being pulled into bow before swinging back. That's one of the reasons I posted here. I'm a novice and it drives me crazy wondering if I "should" be able to feel these things.

Cat

[Carol Dailey]

Charles:

For now I have to satisfy myself with about two hours of sculling every day. I think I posted elsewhere that I am a total immersion athlete. It is simply not in my makeup to *just row*. I need to read, watch, study, practice, and most of all, comprehend. I do almost 100% of my rowing alone and uncoached. I must have the ability to self coach or my water time is wasted. Every single thing I read, watch, study, analyze, and apply will only make me better faster. I've already read Gordon's book multiple times, the newly published Fairbairn book, Boyne's book, websites, all of the technical posts on this group (LOVE Carl!!!!). I've been reading about boats, watching every YouTube video (got a lot out of all of the Calm Waters ones with Charlotte and John even though I think a lot of coaches disagree with their hands and body out of bow together approach). I even watched all of your videos before I ran into you here ;). The way I learn: read, watch, hit the water and do drills and just row and try to apply. Go back and re-read and re-watch then practice some more. It's funny...read something once; practice a ton and think you've improved. Go back and re-read the same thing and you'll get more out of it.

Trust me, if I was a soldier, my approach would be no different ;). And I can't wait to go to Florida camp so I can personally pick Gordon's brain ;)

And thank you for all of this great discussion!

Cat who is currently immersed in Fairbairn

[s...@ku.edu]

Cat,

When you go to FRC, may I recommend the Southern Palms B&B? Nice folks, great location.

As someone to tends to overthink most things, may I offer a word of caution? As in most sport, feel is perhaps more important than understanding. (Unless, of course, you are designing and building equipment or coaching. And understanding is a good thing.) I suspect you will progress quickly but expect to take 3-5 years before you feel natural in a racing shell. One of the joys of our sport is you will then spend a lifetime refining your feel for good sculling. Posture, poise, and relaxation are more important than any specific detail.

Generally it is good to focus first on clean releases, which are surprisingly easy if you don't worry too much about "textbook" square exits and your grip is relaxed. If you are stable at the release and early part of the recovery, all else falls into place.

Don't go out of your comfort zone. If you are comfortable--that is relaxed, stable, poised--at 3/4 slide, then do your entry/catch then and eventually work up to full compression.

And don't allow yourself to spend too many rows skimming the blade as that is a hard habit to break. If you need to skim for balance, try 1/4 feather rowing when the bottom edge of the slightly feathered blade skims the water. This way you are almost carrying your blade the proper distance off the water, you have some training wheels helping you stabilize your shell, and you don't have the balance disturbing chip-chip-chip common with square blade rowing.

Try to keep your hands on the same plane. Better to flop to one side with your hands together with one oar on the water and the other skying, than to separate your hands to "balance" the shell. Find stability and balance will come.

Steven M-M

[Charles Carroll]

Cat,

I don’t know anyone who knows more about how to move boats than Magnus
Burbanks — maybe as much, but not more.

Here is the reply to a question I asked Magnus a little over a year ago. I
think you can find it in an old RSR thread titled “Square early.”

Magnus wrote:

“I've been lucky enough to spend the larger part of my sculling racing
career with a 2x partner who, when I rigged him up with my
double-accelerometer set-up (one on seat, one on shell) in his 1x, showed a
seat-direction-reversal and start of the shell's acceleration within
hundredths of a second of each other: which no other scullers I tested came
anywhere near even very good ones.”

And I asked:

“How does you 2x partner do that? Whenever I try I just end up hammering the
catch and shoveling water.”

And Magnus replied:

“I don't know. I very strongly suspect his extraordinary speed, especially
over sprint distances and when he was in his full-training prime (we're both
now over 50), is not unrelated to his catch-timing ability.

“The fact he could only beat the national team hopefuls on the water and not
on the erg, and never weighed more than 85kg ensured he never really got a
look in to the Team Process. But if you ask him how he achieves his catch,
he just answers "dunno, it's just what I do". Also worth noting is that he's
extremely relaxed when sculling, and seems not to notice waves that have
most others, including me, tensing up and slowing down.”

I am sure you have looked at Magnus’s Web Pages on rowing. If not, they are
very much worth looking at.

[Carol Dailey]

Thank you Charles and Steven! Yes, I've read Magnus already...and that exact quote you posted, too ;). And I've checked out the B&B, too. Looks like a very nice place. Thanks for confirming that. One of the things that makes me so excited about Florida in addition to Gordon is the thought of trying some boats!

And I demoted myself back to the Maas aero from the peinert x25 because I didn't feel I had that hand control to keep my hands on an even plane. I have that much much better now but still a lot of work to do. I'm very relaxed in that big tub. Probably a little too relaxed ;). I can row square blades, feathered blades, all off the water no problem. 1/4 slide, 1/2 slide, full slide, stopped and buried at full front stops at the catch, off the water at the catch... I'm working hard on releases right now. Yesterday I had an epiphany relating to my body position that helped with that tremendously, so I think I'm on the right track. Can't wait to get out there today to see if I can replicate that position. Going down to the river at 6:30 am because we're supposed to have 20+mph winds later in the day. I wanted to get back out in the Peinert this weekend, but alas, my club took it off to the Head of the Schuylkill. It's still supposed to be warm here early next week, so I'm going for it then ;)

Thank you both for the great suggestions!

Cat

[James HS]

Charles,

Your note on the 10 metre stroke is an interesting one.

It is oft stated ambition to achieve 10 metres per stroke - and on its own it is fairly meaningless - so by dramatically slowing down the stroke rate you can achieve some great metres per stroke distances.

My understanding (could be wrong) is that the 10 metres per stroke metric is at a rate capped 20 strokes per second (you could as easily choose a speed or a pace as they are of course connected.

Looking at this metres per stroke is good because to achieve it you must have a good power application, but you must also have good extraction and a good sequence that does as little to disturb the boat as possible.

Now to the issue of a higher rate giving you more speed - I was always taught that there is not point in raising the rate if you do not get a consequent increase in speed. We can drop the distance per stroke as the simple maths does not work - but I think that the error that I used to make was to think that increasing a rate meant more of a rush. - Now I try to find the 'time' in the stroke.

For me this starts with the move from 20 to say 26 - before I increase the rate, I push harder on the legs for 2 strokes (to increase the speed of the boat) and then move up to the new rate over 3 strokes - in my simple brain I reason now that what I need to do is add one stroke at the point when it is most useful to maintain the speed of the and it just happens to be at a 'rate' - i.e. I do not chase the rate I chase the pace. AND I make sure that my hands away and rock over are still smooth, I still squeeze on the power and increase the application in the last 30% of the stroke, I take the blades out (yes I feather out :)) as 'quietly' as I can and then at the catch I place them - rather than just letting them place themselves. I make sure they are properly placed so I get a good drive - after all I am chasing pace which can only come from a connection rather than rate which can only come from a mechanical process.

When I am less concious about all of this (adding the effect of one stroke to the end of another) I just end up chasing rate and the benefit of each stroke drops away - so I am rating for the point of it rather than rating for the increase in pace.

As a strokecoach gives immediate feedback I know whether I am wasting my time quite soon and call a mental 'reset'

I think that working at rate is a very specific task - reminding myself of what i am intending to do with this metric, and that high rate can increase speed OR produce froth .... I aim for one, and often produce the other!

James

[s...@ku.edu]

Cat -- I have some additional thoughts that I would be glad to share but would prefer not to post. (Nothing scandalous.) My e-mail is s...@ku.edu if you wish to go "off line." SMM

[Steve S]

Cat,

Your trip to the Florida Rowing Center will be graced by the presence of Coach Larry Gluckman, who is joining the staff this year for the first time.

Larry draws on 50 years of experience both as an Olympic oarsman and a coach at Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Trinity, and he was the coach of the "Great (Rowing) Eight" at this years HOCR.

Though Larry is the Yoda of rowing in the USA, he is reserved off the water and devoid of cant. So I'll pass along some advice I was given a couple of years ago: "Larry Gluckman knows a lot, and he will tell you, if you ask him."

- Steve Schaffran

[Carol Dailey]

Steve S:

That sounds awesome! And no worries... I ask a lot of questions :> I sure hope that the novices get coached by some of these renowned coaches. I'd be bummed if I went and was passed off to the high school crew coach. LOL!

Cat

[s...@ku.edu]

On Sunday, October 26, 2014 1:11:53 PM UTC-5, Carol Dailey wrote:
> Steven:
>
> That would be awesome! I will take all of the help I can get. One teeny problem... i don't know what letters to use to fill in your email address. You can email me: catdailey at gmail dot com.

Cat my e-mail address is in the earlier post. s...@ku.edu SMM

[Charles Carroll]

Magnus,

If by chance you come across this, I was thinking about your 2x partner —
specifically, how your partner is able to show “a seat-direction-reversal

and start of the shell’s acceleration within hundredths of a second of each

other: which no other scullers I tested came anywhere near even the very
good ones.”

Doesn’t this corroborate another of Steve Fairbairn’s very famous
assertions?

“…as the oarsman pushes his weight off the stretcher, instantly he must pull
it on to the rowing pin. Coupling the drive and draw is about the most
difficult art of timing in rowing. Once it has been got correctly, the
oarsman will be able to row truly his full weight the length which the
condition of his muscles will allow him to row.” (“Steve Fairbairn on
Rowing,” p. 440)

This puts me in mind of one of my favorite analogies. Certainly we know more
about wave theory than Bach ever did. But can we say we know more about
music?

Warmest regards,

[Henning Lippke]

> The only thing I can think of — aside from the fact that I am a very
> poor sculler — is that I must be doing something to slow the boat down
> during the recovery. I also decided that I know nothing about sculling.
> Absolutely nothing!

Charles -
do you have access to a couple of "sensitive" (& sensible) scullers you
can go out with on a regular basis? Well you would probably be very
lucky if you find even one, but I think exposing yourself to someone who
learned it properly and is willing to share some of this experience may
help a lot.

I just recently discovered a few new sculling tricks, but still struggle
to explain what it is...

[Ellen Braithwaite]

Some high school crew coaches know a lot. Don't discount them out of hand.
Ellen

[Charles Carroll]

> I'd be bummed if I went and was passed off
> to the high school crew coach. LOL!

Cat,

Sorry I missed this.

One of the finest coaches I know coaches the Berkeley High School Crew. I
would recommend Chris Dadd to anyone.

And don’t forget old Dr. Rowing himself, Andy Anderson. You may have read
his column in the Rowing News. He coaches at Groton.

And while we are on the subject, Gordon Hamilton, himself, has coached high
school crews.

[Charles Carroll]

Magnus,

A further thought on your 2x partner’s seat-direction-reversal and start of
the shell's acceleration being within hundredths of a second of each other:

Gordon Hamilton once told me that he tried to take the essence of rowing and
reduce it to a single, simple all-inclusive precept. But when he used this
precept he couldn’t find anyone who seemed interested or indicated that they
even knew what he was talking about, so he gave up.

Thinking of your 2x partner’s catch, it seems to me that it illustrates
perfectly that in rowing timing is everything. The more exact the timing,
the more exquisite the rowing!

Or as Gordon expressed it in his single, simple all-inconclusive instruction
to his crews: “Be on time.”

Cordially,

[Carol Dailey]

Charles and Ellen, I think you both missed the lol. I'm sure there are many fine high school coaches.

Cat

[Carl]

On 26/10/2014 11:53, James HS wrote:
> I think that working at rate is a very specific task - reminding myself of what i am intending to do with this metric, and that high rate can increase speed OR produce froth .... I aim for one, and often produce the other!

Learning to raise rate hinges on smoothing everything & eliminating
unnecessary actions. If it is hard to raise rate, then review what
you're doing at the lower rate. I'll try to explain.

First, how is rate raised: in the water, or in the air? I'll cut
straight to the chase, at risk of being a tad too contentious for some?
We _cannot_ raise the rate in the water: if we try to do so we'll
either blow up by pulling too hard, tear the blade through the water by
rowing it shallow (with big energy wastage) or have to row short (which
is pointless).

Rate is determined by the time between the end of one stroke & the
actual catch of the next, which depends largely on how smoothly we pass
from finish to loaded blade entry. This requires eliminating all
actions which may be decorative or stylistic but are also useless &
impose pointless speed changes which disrupt continuity. Sudden
accelerations off the finish (the supposedly essential 'fast hands'),
pressure to 'get weight out of the bows', 'slide control', &
gathering/slowing for the catch - all interrupt the recovery.

Do I hear faint shouts of "Anathema!" & "Burn the Heretic!"? Let's analyse.

First, dispel the notion that we rowers are moving up & down the boat.
What!? Please refer back to that constant velocity reference frame:
It's an inconvenient but undeniable fact that we move over the water at
near-constant velocity while the boat oscillates beneath us with greatly
varying speed.

When we think we're moving up the slide, the slide is actually "moving
up us" - to coin a phrase. We have no way to "control" & curb our own
motion when it's hardly us that's moving & the moving mass is mainly
that of the boat.

So what's really happening when we think we're sliding back & forth in
the boat? Just this: we alternately contract & expand our body form,
increasing the distance between handles & feet for the stroke & reducing
it for recovery. Attached to our feet, the boat simply moves where it must.

As no big masses are reciprocating, the concept of slide control goes
out of the window. It is vital on a fixed ergometer but irrelevant in
the boat. We should instead evolve the smoothest, least fussy way to
move from the fully extended (finish) position to fully contracted
(catch). And we need to eliminate any hint of "poise", "gather" or
delay over the catch as that simply postpones your next stroke. 1/10th
second spent poising costs 5% or more of the rating we'd otherwise achieve.

The difference in average speed between a firm paddle (~25spm) & racing
at >36spm is rather small - maybe 10%. To go 10% faster does take more
work - around 35% more - but with that 44% rate increase this should be
doable. Based on those numbers, we can pull 6% less hard at 36spm yet
easily achieve that 10% speed increase. Again, it's all in the maths!
But that's not how we're usually told to understand rate increases.

I keep hearing about "release" but have never seen it defined & can't
see where or what it is. Water does not cling to the blade at the
finish, so what's it all about? I see the notion of "release" as an
action to perform as a redundant complication - giving us something
imaginary to worry over. At the finish a well-buried blade extracts
cleanly, without fuss - or it should. If it doesn't, that wastes
energy, making you slower. Perhaps the problem arises from a common
belief that the blade must extract square & that you should accomplish
this by a square tap-down? Unfortunately, if we do that the blade will
drag water & won't work so well. In general, good scullers part-feather
while the blade is still submerged. This extracts cleanly &, coupled
with the rising blade, actually sustains the stroke's impulse for sound
fluid-dynamic reasons which I won't address right now.

If we agree that we're not sliding back & forth, just curling up &
uncurling with a lightweight boat attached to our feet, why have we all
learned to see it so very differently? I see 2 reasons: perception &
tradition. The sense of moving within a dominant boat comes from an
optical illusion - the boat is your reference & you perceive yourself as
moving within it, both from within & from outside. And this notion was
cemented into the beliefs of the sport from the days when boats weighed
more than you did.

That misapprehension feeds the fallacious idea that we can react against
the boat's mass to compress for the catch. Well, we can't - it's a
mechanical impossibility & a bad idea. Having pulled the boat towards
us, to try then to push against it without the blades working in the
water kicks that backwards. We can only compress to the extent that our
brain makes it happen, which it does subconsciously, & we're kidding
ourselves if we think otherwise. But 99% of rowers do make that
mistake. Fortunately our brain ignores this misapprehension: "You need
to compress", it says, "so I'll ensure that your muscles receive the
instructions to meet that expectation, but I won't tell you how you did it."

You compress by pulling on the stretcher & have no other way to do it.
Yes, some say get your feet low to "get over them", but that still
doesn't do it. Only our brain's kidology tells us otherwise &, as
already noted, brains are good at that.

We're not actually moving much mass & have only to find the slickest way
to fold up between finish & catch. Nothing stressed or sudden, or
you'll get wasteful (& slower) bucketing effect. The best way is the
smoothest.

At the catch you will, without any interruption, perform a hooking &
reversing action which seems, externally, like an instant of stasis but
is really something swift & 3-dimensional which you'd already planned &
enacted in your mind. And that anticipation will make it both automatic
& perfectly blended - with practice. At which point you'll wonder why
rating high was ever difficult.

Finally, as indicated earlier, increased rate really can come with
reduced pressure. If we're pulling hard at a lower rate & then increase
rate at the same pressure we'll be doing much more work - perhaps much
more than we can sustain. But if we reduce the pressure & raise the
rate our work capacity may greatly increase - the converse of the dire
effect that small increases in weight on a bar have on the number of
lifting reps we can do. So rating can be seen as a form of gearing,
allowing us to raise rate, slightly reduce loading, yet go faster while
sustaining or enhancing endurance. Too often we lock ourselves into the
false idea that more rate means more pressure & that a lower rate is
more economical when, really, a higher rate, accomplished without fuss,
can make our rowing both faster & easier.

As long as we stop thinking that the rate goes up in the water!

That's for more than I'd meant to write, a sort of brain-dump! With
more time I might have condensed it, but time I don't have. There's
stuff in there which many may at first find indigestible, but I'd
recommend chewing long & hard. And then I'll welcome all
well-considered reactions.

[andymck...@gmail.com]

I hardly ever enter discussions on technique (not having any to talk about) - but I think saying that you can't raise rate in the water assumes that you are talking about already rowing at high pressure. One of my favourite drills with recreational crews is to have them row light pressure, then ask them to move the blade through the water faster, without changing pressure! It almost always results in a satisfying notch up in boat speed without the rating going up significantly. I interpret this as making the rower think about loading the blade all through the stroke, there is otherwise a tendency to lighten up in the latter part of the draw, perhaps through fear of 'tugging' the blade or just switching the brain off after the stress of getting the blade squared and into the water!

Andy

[Charles Carroll]

Carl,

I owe several private emails, as well as replies to John and James among
other contributors to RSR, but what you write raises a question that I find
myself unable to resist.

In the past, if I have understood you, haven’t you emphasized many times
that we cannot escape physics? So does physics apply to any moving object,
or does it apply exclusively to moving boats? I ask because I am going to
make an observation about moving cars.

Say you are going to be the best man at a wedding 100 miles away and you
have only an hour to get to the chapel. Well, that’s no problem. The
autobahn is clear and you can set the cruise control on your Mercedes
station wagon for 100 mph. At that speed the wagon will redline, but it will
get you to the chapel on time.

Now say you really screwed things up. You are the same best man for the same
wedding at that same chapel, only this time you have overslept. Say you only
have a half hour to get there. Well again you smile and think that’s no
problem, you’ll just use your Mercedes McLaren Formula 1 and set the cruise
control for 200 mph. It will redline, but the rpms won’t really be much more
than the wagon’s at 100 mph. The McLaren can take it.

Now obviously I am not a physicist; however to my lay person’s mind this
suggests that if I want to get to the chapel in 30 minutes, I have to use a
car that can supply more power per rpm.

I wonder if this works the same way for moving a racing shell. Will there be
a time when to produce the speed we want will require not just a smoother,
more relaxed, more efficient, less decorative and stylistic recovery, but
more power?

Cordially,

[James HS]

Charles,

My basic brain - not power - work

You rate higher, less power, but more total work - therefore faster.

I'll end there while I think I'm ahead :)

James

[Carl]

You're definitely ahead James. But I'm slightly unsure about Charles's
question.

So if I may address Charles through you:
With a lower energy investment _per stroke_ can still be faster provided
that your rate has increased by more than the reduction in work per
stroke. The trick is to raise the total work done per unit of time
(power output). All that requires is that the multiple of work
done/stroke by the rating rises. If I increase rating by 10% and reduce
work done _per stroke_ by 8%, then my work rate overall (my power
output) rises by 1.1 x 0.92 = 1.012 or by 1.2%. That will give me a
speed increase of 0.4%, gaining me 24 metres per 2k, even though I
didn't pull so hard.

Of course, I was pulling for longer, because I was taking 10% more
strokes every minute & the duration of each of those strokes was only
reduced by ~0.4% (by my increased speed over the water), but it is less
stressful to pull that bit less hard. In effect by raising my rate I
changed to a slightly easier gear - which is a concept which might have
a few minds boggling for a bit.

[Carl]

On 27/10/2014 15:54, andymck...@gmail.com wrote:
> I hardly ever enter discussions on technique (not having any to talk about) - but I think saying that you can't raise rate in the water assumes that you are talking about already rowing at high pressure. One of my favourite drills with recreational crews is to have them row light pressure, then ask them to move the blade through the water faster, without changing pressure! It almost always results in a satisfying notch up in boat speed without the rating going up significantly. I interpret this as making the rower think about loading the blade all through the stroke, there is otherwise a tendency to lighten up in the latter part of the draw, perhaps through fear of 'tugging' the blade or just switching the brain off after the stress of getting the blade squared and into the water!
>
> Andy

I'll ignore the disclaimer!

I think you've answered your own question by saying you start the crew
off paddling light & then, if I understand you, you asked them put the
blades through faster & found them going significantly faster at a
similar rate.

But isn't that what we'd all expect? Although you told them to pull no
harder, you also told then to move the blades faster. How do you move a
blade faster unless you either wash out or pull harder? The only way to
resolve the fundamental conflict between those 2 instructions was to
pull harder (the brain took over). When pulling harder they do more
work per stroke, so the boat goes faster. For that reason the blades
will spend slightly less time in the water, in inverse relation to the
increase in boat speed.

Now consider the components of your rating:
1. If the boat goes 5% faster the stroke time will fall from say 0.9 sec
to 0.857sec, saving your crew 0.043sec/stroke.
2. The work rate has had to rise not by 5% but by 15.8% (due to fluid
drag on the hull)
3. If your initial rating was 20, then the time in the air when paddling
light would have been 2.1 sec to give the total cycle time of 3 sec.
4. Now with the boat going 5% faster, & assuming no reduction in
recovery duration, your total cycle time has fallen by 0.043 sec from 3
sec to 2.957 sec.
5. That cycle time of 2.957 sec gives a rating of, wait for it, 20.29 spm.
6. But the load per stroke has had to rise by slightly over 14%.

So your argument & your experience both make my point - that while
raising the pressure will increase your boat's speed it barely alters
your stroke rate.

If, instead, you shorten your recovery time by 0.5 sec, then your rate
at that very low pressure will rise by 20% to 24spm & your boat speed
will rise by 6.3%. That speed increase will reduce stroke time to 0.847
sec, further increasing your rate from 24 to nearly 25.6 spm. But you
won't be pulling any harder than in the initial light paddle.

Finally, ask them to row flat out at 20 & try to cover 2k faster than
they can at 36. Unless they tend to fall apart at the higher rating (a
technique issue), they'll blow themselves up in trying to do the
impossible at the lower rating.

Provided you have the technique, which is an absolute must, rating
9within reason!) is the way to speed.

[Berend van wachem]

Dear Carl,

Obviously I agree with 99% of what you are saying.

However, there is one thing which is really important, which you do not mention. The drag on the boat (even on yours, unfortunately!) scales, roughly, as the velocity squared. Therefore, to achieve a certain average velocity, it is much more economical to keep the difference between the highest and the lowest velocity of the boat during the stroke as small as possible.

The lower one rates, the harder the stroke must be - because you give it more time to decelerate during the "recovery", and therefore the larger the difference between the maximum and minimum velocity.

Therefore, I disagree with your statement of

> or have to row short (which is pointless)

I think it can make sense to shorten the stroke near the finish at higher rate, to gain a further increase in rate. At the end of the stroke the last bit of the arms do not deliver that much more power. This shortening is not pointless. It is to increase the rate and therefore further minimize the difference between the extrema of velocity during a stroke.

Best wishes,

Berend.

[Carol Dailey]

This post is so incredibly helpful...

Thank you Carl!

Cat

[John Greenly]

On Monday, October 27, 2014 12:54:34 PM UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:

> I wonder if this works the same way for moving a racing shell. Will there be
> a time when to produce the speed we want will require not just a smoother,
> more relaxed, more efficient, less decorative and stylistic recovery, but
> more power?
>
> Cordially,
>
> Charles
>

Carl and others have said it in much more detail, but the answer to your question is, simply, yes, there is such a time, and it is: always. To go faster you must apply more average power to propel the boat against the increased drag that comes with increased speed. It's as simple as that, no way around it.
You can't escape physics, in a car, in a boat or even on foot!
best,
John

[Carl]

Hi Berend -

I'll gladly accept your 99% approval!

And I do entirely agree with you on the potential of a high rating, if
well executed, to diminish the amplitude of speed fluctuations.

We might differ on possibly curtailing finishes to facilitate that
higher rating, but let's explore:

My posting was spurred by ongoing discussion of difficulties some felt
in raising their rates from quite low values. We both know that there's
an upper rate limit which can't be exceeded, where all the available
time is taken the strokes leaving none for the recoveries. (For those
who might be puzzled by this: my earlier post showed how dependent
rating is on recovery time & how relatively insensitive it is to boat
speed. As rate rises the recovery time must fall much faster than the
stroke time - until there is none.)

If we were to explore super-high rates, then it could well be that we
should start getting picky over which parts of the full stroke length to
use & which to discard. That would, I suppose, be in a perfect world
with superbly dexterous athletes able to trim & adjust stroke lengths at
>50spm, but maybe it could extend down to rates around 40spm? However,
I'd be wary of just chopping the last several % as that part of the
stroke is more efficient (I think) than the bits before it.

What I see as a snag in your suggestion is that the bit of the stroke
which I, at least, might prefer to chop out would be the stalled middle
third. Volke Nolte made a good efficiency case for lopping off the last
half of the stroke, so you barely engage with the stalled middle, & one
can modify oarlocks to facilitate that. In a sense that matches what
single-paddle marathon racers do, extracting the blade at or just before
the point of significant stall, & it works OK there. But is this
applicable with anything like the current boats, blades & techniques?

Maybe this is a sub-topic to cover over a beer or 3? A good postgrad
project?

[Steve S]

It may be instructive to see what a systematic dedication to high rating looks like.

This link shows Joe Burk winning Henley in 1938, breaking by 21 seconds a record that had stood since 1904.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/henley-regatta-finals/query/Joe+Burk+henley

Burk explored the high-rating environment with a laser focus probably unmatched in sculling history. I think this video is in the 40+ range. He kept upping it, and he reported his race rating was 50 spm at the end of his competitive career at the outset of WW2,.

Since he was going substantially slower through the water than current elite scullers, he had to be both cutting the drive length and minimizing the recovery time to reach those ratings.

If my recall of rowing history serves, Burk was frequently behind at 250 or 500m, but subsequently motored through the competition.

[wmar...@gmail.com]

Only just today became aware of this thread (not looking at RSR on a daily basis).. Later today or tomorrow I'll outline how I teased out the velocities.

Stationary camera. 16 mm cine-film (it WAS 1981)
projector, mirror, digitising equipment, computer, time - lots of time...
Gotta go..


On Tuesday, 21 October 2014 22:50:28 UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:
> > But when she does move the seat
> > She will accelerate the boat
>
> Henry,
>
> Are you sure?
>
> I cannot see how moving the seat sternwards on the recovery will accelerate
> the boat.
>
> Of course this puts me in mind of Walter Martindale's very familiar and very
> famous chart, "Velocities in Sculling." I have never understood how Walter
> was able to separate the velocity of the boat from the velocity of the
> sculler.
>
> How did Walter measure the Sculler's velocity?
>
> Did he measure the speed of the hands on the handles?
>
> Did he measure the speed of the seat?
>
> Perhaps he measured the movement of the shoulders or trunk?
>
> If he measured the movement of the feet, wouldn't Walter have always gotten
> the same velocity that the boat was traveling, inasmuch as the feet for all
> intents and purposes are permanently connected to the boat?
>
> And at what point on the chart after the finish does the seat begin to move?
> After the hands are sent away? After the sculler begins to pivot his trunk
> sternwards? After all or most of the forward lean has been attained?
>
> So many questions! And by the way, I begged the very first statement. How do
> we even know that the seat of Walter's sculler moved sternwards? Why couldn't
> the seat have remained mostly stationary as the sculler drew the boat
> underneath her? And isn't this only another way of asking, how do we know
> that the sculler moved into the stern? As opposed to her having moved the
> stern to her?

[Carl]

Thanks Steve!

I recall substantially-built E. Bloc women's 2x crews starting at 50+spm
when I was coaching our W2x in '79. Their technique was consolidated by
miles at much lower rating & I never saw them exceed a steady paddle at
regattas, except in the races, but their technique was rock-solid when
they ventured into what some today might consider extreme ratings.

While it's evident that Joe Burk rated high & short in that final
sprint, just as Berend advocates, so too did both crews in the
accompanying eights race. We didn't see him at mid-race & it would be
instructive to do so ..... It's worth remembering that in those days
slides were much shorter & you adjusted to backstops, making the stroke
correspondingly shorter. Where some crews strove for greater length
they often did so through what was, by some, considered an exaggerated
layback (e.g. Lady Margaret).

Short slides were just one of many long-running doctrinal arguments,
flogged to death without rhyme or much reason through the end of the
C19th & first half of C20th by nostalgic style pundits - the same folk
no doubt who argued for slide control, bell-notes & maximising effort
"at the orthogonal". But rowing has evolved, despite their input, &
still despite what seems (to me) a marked lack of scientific insight
into the rowing process.

We know of Joe Burk that his technique was all his own & that he had
considerable arm strength. Maybe he was right to major on that, maybe
not, but everyone is different. High ratings, well employed, have
always been the way to pass crews which seemed unbeatable. When I was
at school we had a coach who'd tell us: "If you're down, raise the rate
because you're losing. If you're level, raise the rate because you need
to be ahead. If you're ahead, still raise the rate 'cos they might come
back!" It was inspiring for youngsters & seemed to bring results, then
& since. One possible advantage, of course, being that the surge of
adrenaline from going slightly berserk suppressed the pain - for the
time being.

But how this might help those sculling around at 20-25spm & having
difficulty rating higher, I'm unsure. IMO most rating problems result
from the feeling that the recovery is one thing, the catch another & the
stroke something else, so perhaps the most useful suggestion I can make
is to learn that the recovery is an integral part of the next stroke, &
the catch merely part of that uninterrupted flow. Once you leave
backstops, any interruption or change of pace disrupts that flow.

Easy to say, harder to implement. It's all about finding the key to
unlock each individual's unique inhibitions & banish their embedded
misconceptions. But the longer they persist in techniques which limits
their abilities to switch rating at will, the harder it can be to
overcome those learned responses.

What often works, IME, is to tell the candidate to take the catch short,
early, before they are "ready".

[LakeGator]

Carl's reply about rate being controlled mostly through recovery speed is a most wonderful narrative. Thanks VERY much for that, Carl.

At the end of my row this morning as I was doing 10 on and 20 off I varied my rating and pressure and observed what Carl was explaining in response to Charles. I did one power 10 at full pressure and a rating of 20 and the next power ten at a rating of 30 at roughly 75% pressure. The first ten resulted in a boat speed of 3.2 m/s (2:36 split) and a run of 9.3 m. The second ten with less oar pressure resulted with a speed of 3.7 m/s (2:15 split) with a run of 7.4 m.

The bottom line of this unscientific experiment was that I went faster by pulling less hard by rowing at a higher rating.

Hope that helps a little,
don Vickers

[magnus....@gmail.com]

Another way of experiencing this point is to do the same rate-raising exercise at light pressure. Start off by paddling light at, say, 18, note your boat-speed or pace. Then, without increasing the pressure in the water but by getting to the next stroke as fast as you can, up the rate as high as it'll go. Even knowing what to expect, you'll be surprised at two things (I was):
1. that you'll be going much faster than you expect;
2. you'll actually be getting quite tired quite quickly! at light pressure!

[Charles Carroll]

Magnus,

It seems to me that you have re-introduced the original question which is
what is the relationship between speed and rate?

Did you happen to note your distance-per-stroke?

If you still have access to your data, you can of course go back and compute
it.

Here are several statements for the Rowing Biomechanical Newsletter that may
have some relevance to the discussion.

Did You Know That … longer Distance-Per-Stroke is more preferable for
increasing of boat speed than higher Stroke Rate, especially in sculling. In
Sydney Olympic Games six gold medals were won using longer DPS (W1x, M2x,
W2x, M2x, LM2x, W4x) and three by means of higher SR (W2-, M2-, LM4-). RBN
April 2001

——-
crews from the main rowing countries perform differently in terms of
rate/distance-per-stroke (DPS) ratio. GER, CAN and AUS usually have a stroke
rate below the trend line, with longer DPS. ITA, USA and ROM, especially,
emphasized a higher stroke rate by means of a shorter DPS. RBN January 2003

——
…distance-per-stroke (DPS) had an opposite distribution over the race: A
2.5% shorter DPS was observed over the initial 500m, 2.6% and 1.8% longer
during mid race, whilst 1.8% shorter at finish. This means that rowers
sacrifice DPS in favor of stroke rate to achieve higher speeds at the start
and finish sections of a race, but use longer DPS at cruising speed during
the middle of a race RBN February 2003

——
cf Appendix 1 to the Rowing Biomechanics Newsletter 2(3), February 2002.

[Carl]

I think this great - we have rowers experimenting! I'd be happier if it
was not just the usual suspects ;)

On your 2nd point, Magnus, a new activity takes a bit of adjustment:
1. Going faster does inevitably mean doing more work. How easy is it to
know you're not also slightly upping your work per stroke?
2. Rating higher at low pressure (an unfamiliar mix) may, in initial
experiments, impair coordination & smoothness, the body knowing how to
perform well in one way might not immediately adapt to doing the less
familiar, introducing some tension.
3. How does the higher rate interact with your breathing pattern,
perhaps producing more aeration than would be normal at that work rate &
thus leaning slightly towards hyperventilation?

Only questions, not answers, please note.

[Charles Carroll]

Just to add one more little thought to the conversation, the relationship
between speed and rate has been a time-honored discussion for decades. From
what I understand George Pocock tried very hard to persuade Joe Burke to
reduce his rate and get more distance-per-stroke. He argued that if Burke
did this he would go faster. But Burke persisted in raising his rate.

It is worth noting that towards the end of Joe Burke’s life he told Stan
Pocock that he had come to think that Stan's father had been right all along
and that he would have gone faster had sculled at a lower rate.

It is also worth noting that Burke was a gifted athlete and a very strong
man. Could it be that what seemed like sculling at light pressure to Burke
might have been full pressure to lesser mortals?

[Charles Carroll]

And here is yet another question:

Is distance-per-stroke solely dependent on the propulsive phase?

My answer, from my simple experiments and observations, is No. The
distance-per-stroke has some relationship to the recovery. At 15 spm I can
consistently get 10 meters-per-stroke. But I have so far not been able to do
that at 25 spm.

[Henry Law]

On 28/10/14 16:41, magnus....@gmail.com wrote:
> you'll actually be getting quite tired quite quickly!

I find that as the rate goes up I (seem) to be spending more energy on
just going backwards and forwards, and get b*****ed no matter how gently
I pull.

--

Henry Law Manchester, England

[Carl]

On 28/10/2014 17:56, Charles Carroll wrote:
> And here is yet another question:
>
> Is distance-per-stroke solely dependent on the propulsive phase?
>
> My answer, from my simple experiments and observations, is No. The
> distance-per-stroke has some relationship to the recovery. At 15 spm I
> can consistently get 10 meters-per-stroke. But I have so far not been
> able to do that at 25 spm.
>

Which is exactly what you should expect, Charles.

To get the same cover at 25 as at 15spm you'd have to be moving 1.67
times as fast. That means you'd have to be delivering a time-averaged
power output 4.63 times as great, which in turn means pulling
same-length strokes 2.78 times as hard, all without loss of efficiency.

I think that might be too demanding, don't you?

[Carl]

On 28/10/2014 19:07, Henry Law wrote:
> On 28/10/14 16:41, magnus....@gmail.com wrote:
>> you'll actually be getting quite tired quite quickly!
>
> I find that as the rate goes up I (seem) to be spending more energy on
> just going backwards and forwards, and get b*****ed no matter how gently
> I pull.
>

But Henry, weren't you paying attention?

I went to inordinate lengths to explain that _you_ are not moving
backwards & forwards, yet you sail past that as if it had never been
said. How cruel!

[wmar...@gmail.com]

Yeah... The curves Charles referred to way back in this thread, about the velocity of the sculler vs the boat velocity, indicate that at the slowest, in this case, the sculler moves in the same direction as the boat, at a positive velocity. (I forget the numbers, but it's well above zero velocity and definitely not negative - the person does not move toward the start line during the recovery. If your eyes don't tell you that you're still moving toward the finish line during the recovery (watch the water go past - which way does it go relative to you?) then that head wind must be REALLY nasty. From a logical perspective - if you are still travelling toward the finish line when your blades are in the air, and your boat is getting "ahead" of you so you can take the next stroke, you are not moving sternward on the boat - it is moving bow-ward under you. - you do not move back and forth.. (that's to bolster what Carl's saying).

How did I get the velocities? Well... I filmed scullers, and had markers on various joints for digitising. Got the film developed, and projected it onto a table using a special projector that had a strong cooling fan to keep the lamp from burning the film. On the table was a digitising arm that worked in 2D, X and Y cartesian coordinates. I digitised 11 points on each frame, from 5 frames before a catch to 5 frames after the next catch... (note, I'm not using the language of the journal - 11 points per frame were digitised).
The x-y coordinates of each joint - end were stored in an array, and a computer program was set up with each of the markers assigned a name. The named markers were then assigned a "segment" - e.g., the "knee" marker and the "hip" marker were assigned to be the "thigh" segment.
The segments of the body were then assigned an estimated mass portion of the total body mass of the research subject - e.g., a thigh has a mass that is about 10 pct of the mass of the person (that was taken from Clauser and Dempster's work, IIRC, where cadavers were studied for inertial characteristics as total bodies and then as sectioned parts - the initial research was done in fighter aircraft seating position design...
After all these segments' mass characteristics (centre of gravity, radius of gyration, for example) the software package computed the x and y velocities of the body segments. Add them up and divide by the number of segments, and you get the velocity of the CG of the body. Add the velocity of a marker on the boat (and divide by that new number) and you get the "total system" velocity. Plot the body, the boat, and the "system" velocity curves, and you get that curve that I posted oh-so-long ago.

The original study didn't look at the velocities. Had I done that I probably would have tried to go back in and re-digitize some or all of the trials because the data were pretty noisy. I've seen plots generated by people using modern equipment (it's in some of the research coming out of the U of Western Ontario, I think) and the curves don't have that "hick-up" in the early recovery. But the general trends of the velocities of the sculler and the boat are there, and they're still there (actually a little cleaner) in some of the other trials from one of the male scullers I studied.

HTH.
W

[John Greenly]

A while back I tried a variant of this experiment. Instead of trying to keep the pressure constant and up the rate, I chose a certain pace and then rowed that pace at various rates, trying to find what rate would be the easiest (least tiring) to maintain that given pace. As I remember, it seemed to me that at low speed, very low rate was easier than higher rates. So, for instance, at a 2:40 pace something like 15 spm rate seemed to be easier than 24 spm.

On the other hand, at high speed (for me, that is), say 2:05 pace, it definitely seemed easier at higher rate, let's say 30, than at 24.

I think maybe it worked like this. At low speed I could comfortably pull hard enough at low rate to go that fast, and that gives lots of time to "rest" during the long recovery time. And, as Henry pointed out, at the lower rate I was wasting less power on the accelerations of my own body parts. But at my highest speed, the pressure required at low rate was too much for my feeble muscles to produce comfortably, and it was less tiring to up the rate and pull less hard, despite the expense of the higher bodily accelerations required. (I mean the relative accelerations of the extending and bending of all the various joints and their associated masses- my internal motions, so to speak, not my net forward motion.)

does that make sense?

-John

[Carl]

It makes perfect sense.

On a rowing simulator which really does make the body move around - i.e.
any fixed ergometer - a typical rower may expend around 130 watts in
simply accelerating & decelerating their body's parts up & down the
slide at a rate of 35spm (approximate figures, but in the right parish).

On a good dynamic erg this cause of energy dissipation is absent. But,
as John says, even our actions of coiling & uncoiling the body must
consume energy. And they'll consume increasing amounts of energy as the
rate rises (due both to more strokes per minute & to faster movements).
So whatever we do in rowing carries a parasitic energy cost on top of
that needed to overcome hull drag. In short, our own body is itself an
inefficient machine, but the losses due to higher ratings can now be
seen to relate to movements within the body about its inertial centre
rather than to those popularly-supposed but almost entirely illusory
movements of the body up & down the slide.

It is interesting to see how this conversation has sifted popularly
presumed from actual sources of energy wastage within the rowing stroke.
We've demolished the near-universal belief that rating high is hard
work "because of all that sliding to & fro", but identified a smaller,
still relevant, cause of rate-related energy dissipation.

To summarise, as I see it:
1. Rate increases do impose their own penalty on performance, but it is
far less than is popularly supposed & from a different cause.
2. The case appears sound for combining rate increase with load
reduction as a way of changing gear to increase both speed & endurance.

Discuss!

[Henry Law]

On 28/10/14 19:21, Carl wrote:
> I went to inordinate lengths to explain that _you_ are not moving
> backwards & forwards, yet you sail past that as if it had never been said.

I was about to compose a witty and caustic retort, because you know that
I know how the mechanics work. But then I realised that, despite
knowing it, I hadn't really internalised it.

I've been saying that "going backwards and forwards" was tiring me out
and I know that's not the case. But when I think of it again, what I'm
actually doing is attaching an 8m boat to my feet and then shoving it
backwards and forwards; now /that/ sounds as if it would tire anyone out!

[RunDMC]

There is certainly work expended in flexing and extending body parts, even in zero gravity, so I fully agree that parasitic losses increase with the stroke rate. As previously noted, one advantage of rating higher is decreased variance in boat speed, which is a very good thing given the dependence of drag on the square of velocity. And as previously noted there is a definite upper limit on stroke rating given the stroke length, overall drag and available power. Therefore there must be an optimum stroke rating for a given stroke length. assuming no change in power applied, gearing, etc. -- a rating at which the increasing internal losses from body parts flexing/extending starts to exceed the decrease in friction drag effected by the decreasing delta between maximum and minimum sculler/boat velocity. Actually this isn't quite right, because as boat speed increases the min/max speed delta increases at a given SR, but the trend is correct. In any case, this analysis suggests that:

a) rowing with very high power at a very low SR is inefficient due to excessive variance in sculler/boat velocity increasing water/wind drag and the physical limitations on peak power.
b) rowing at very high SR is inefficient due to internal parasitic losses and technical problems in sculling related to blade entry and extraction leading to further power loss.

Calculating the optimum SR (and gearing) is probably very dependent on the athlete - I suspect it is difficult if not impossible to calculate, but observational testing is quite feasible.

As an aside, since (I believe) sliding rigger boats increase efficiency primarily by decreasing the speed variance of the shell during a stroke at a given SR (with a smaller contribution from better boat trim), this would suggest that there is less to gain by rowing at high SR in a sliding rigger boat. Is there observational data on SR in that boat class relative to a fixed-rigger design?

-Dan C Saratoga Springs NY

[James HS]

Charles,

You are right - it cannot be dependent on propulsive ONLY but it cut short by the fact that, at a higher rate you put the blade in sooner - effectively defining the length per stroke.

So, at 15 strokes per minute you just happen to achieve 10 metres per stroke. A stroke sequence is 4 seconds. raise the rate - say to 30 strokes per minute and the stroke sequence is 2 seconds.

Let's say at 15 spm that you are achieving a speed of 9kmh (10 metres per strokes, 150 metres a minute, 9K per hour)
Let's say at 30 spm you are achieving 15 kmh (pace 2:00 = 4 mins per 1K = 15K in an hour)

so at 30spm you are actually covering ONLY 8.33 metres - you can't physically cover more because you need to put the blade in for the next stroke.

I have arbitrarily chosen 2:00 for the maths - but in realty you could go faster or slower - slower you would be doing less distance per stroke, faster more distance per stroke - but to get to 10 metres per stroke at a rate of 30 you would be having to achieve a heck of a pace!

[Charles Carroll]

Walter,

How good it is to see you join the discussion!

I now realize that so much of my struggle to understand and improve the
recovery and so many of the questions that arise from this struggle come
from your extraordinarily insightful paper titled “Control of Momentum in
2007.”

Would you mind if I quoted from this paper?

Hope everything goes well. Are you still in Canada? If so, it must be
starting to get cold.

So warmest regards,

Charles

[John Greenly]

On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 1:56:54 PM UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:
> And here is yet another question:
>
> Is distance-per-stroke solely dependent on the propulsive phase?
>
> My answer, from my simple experiments and observations, is No. The
> distance-per-stroke has some relationship to the recovery. At 15 spm I can
> consistently get 10 meters-per-stroke. But I have so far not been able to do
> that at 25 spm.

Not to beat a dead horse, this has been answered nicely already... but we are all adults here, we can have an equation or two once in a while:

speed = (distance per stroke) x (rate),
or: V=dr

and, Power = (some constant) x (speed cubed) ...(approximately)
or: P=CV^3

so then:
P= C(dr)^3

also, (work per stroke) = Power/rate
or: W=P/r

And finally (work per stroke) = (pulling force) x (stroke length)
or W=FL

(well not exactly. Actually W= integral (FdL) from catch to finish, but this gives the spirit of it).


So, if you want to keep your distance per stroke (d) the same as you double the rate (r) you will have to put out 8 times more power (P), do 4 times more work per stroke (W), and if you keep stroke length (L) the same you will have to pull with 4 times more force (F).

read it and weep!

--John

[Carl]

Aha! The almost-Ozymandias explanation! Look on my stroke cover & despair?

[John Greenly]

On Thursday, October 30, 2014 9:37:53 AM UTC-4, Carl wrote:

> Aha! The almost-Ozymandias explanation! Look on my stroke cover & despair?
>
> Cheers -
> Carl

Yup... abandon hope all ye who enter here....

Cheers
John

[wmar...@gmail.com]

Thanks Charles, Sure, but it's not that insightful, is it? I just looked at a bunch of data with a (moderately) open mind and had some "aha" moments...

[wmar...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, 29 October 2014 19:33:31 UTC-4, John Greenly wrote:
>
> So, if you want to keep your distance per stroke (d) the same as you double the rate (r) you will have to put out 8 times more power (P), do 4 times more work per stroke (W), and if you keep stroke length (L) the same you will have to pull with 4 times more force (F).
>
> read it and weep!
>
> --John

I usually say it's like driving a car - it costs a lot more fuel (and fines) to drive at 250 km/h than it does to drive at 100 km/h, and the biggest problem apart from a cranky constabulary and tires that aren't rated for the high speeds is that you have to push the air out of the way, and it gets harder to do the faster you go. In rowing and erging with air-damped flywheels my comment is along the lines of "the faster you go, the harder it is to go faster" (and then I encourage people to train on the wattage scale of their ergo, or if they're using a speed coach, the m/s function, instead of "splits", because they're linear).

[Charles Carroll]

James,

Your math, John’s math, Carl’s math seem indisputable. Shortening the
recovery time to raise the rate while applying only light pressure against
the oar handles can produce some very surprising results. But eventually, if
you want to go even faster, you are going to have to apply more pressure to
the oar handles.

Sometimes on r.s.r. I get the feeling that how to apply more pressure is the
one topic we want to avoid. We talk about how to apply pressure “more
quickly” or “more efficiently.” But when do we ever talk about how to apply
more pressure?

Take the 100+ posts in this thread. Can you think of one that has advised me
to keep the goal of getting 10 meters-per-stroke while trying to pull
harder?

All my life I have been seduced by the idea that if I can only find a way to
work smarter, I won’t have to work so hard. And all my life I have had to
relearn that replacing harder work with smarter work doesn’t always produce
the results I hope for. Eventually, if I want to continue to develop
whatever small gifts I may have, I am going to have to reconcile myself to
working harder. To sweating!

At the risk of sounding overly literary doesn’t this evoke the human
condition? In the sweat of our face we shall eat our bread. We cannot escape
having to work harder. Hard work is our fate.

Pulling harder is an unpleasant idea. But am I wrong to think that pulling
harder has to happen eventually? That it is inevitable?

Cordially,

Charles

[John Greenly]

On Thursday, October 30, 2014 3:57:50 PM UTC-4, Charles Carroll wrote:
> James,
>
> Your math, John's math, Carl's math seem indisputable. Shortening the
> recovery time to raise the rate while applying only light pressure against
> the oar handles can produce some very surprising results. But eventually, if
> you want to go even faster, you are going to have to apply more pressure to
> the oar handles.
>
> Sometimes on r.s.r. I get the feeling that how to apply more pressure is the
> one topic we want to avoid. We talk about how to apply pressure "more
> quickly" or "more efficiently." But when do we ever talk about how to apply
> more pressure?
>
> Take the 100+ posts in this thread. Can you think of one that has advised me
> to keep the goal of getting 10 meters-per-stroke while trying to pull
> harder?

> Pulling harder is an unpleasant idea. But am I wrong to think that pulling
> harder has to happen eventually? That it is inevitable?
>
> Cordially,
>
> Charles
>
>
> ---
> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
> http://www.avast.com

Hi Charles,

I can think of at least three such posts- all three of us did say exactly that! If you want to keep the distance per stroke the same while going faster... ya gotta pull!!

Yup, that's what I meant by "read it and weep"!!

In the example I gave: to go twice as fast you had to pull 4 times harder, even though you did double the rate as well.
-- yikes!!

Cheers,
--John

[I. M. Rowin]

I believe that these parasitic losses at high rates can be quite high and
variable from one individual to another. Long legged lanky guys like me
must be less efficient at high speed coiling/uncoiling than more compact
folks. Thus I think that it is possible that shortening the stroke at very
high rates can be and is effective for short sprints.

Over short distances of 100-200m during a race, I have found that I can gain
significant speed (and rate) by eliminating any layback and slightly
shorting the finish. I can not match that speed for that distance any other
way. Of course, I cannot maintain that power for a whole race, but have
determined that my best results are when I place these sprints at strategic
points in the race.

The nice thing about rowing a 1X with a Speed Coach is that you can easily
measure immediately the result of such experiments.

Good thread,
I. M.

"Carl" wrote in message news:m2qkl0$msr$1...@dont-email.me...

[Leo]

On Saturday, 1 November 2014 03:14:04 UTC+10:30, I. M. Rowin wrote:
> I believe that these parasitic losses at high rates can be quite high and
> variable from one individual to another. Long legged lanky guys like me
> must be less efficient at high speed coiling/uncoiling than more compact
> folks. Thus I think that it is possible that shortening the stroke at very
> high rates can be and is effective for short sprints.
>

Are there any detrimental effects on breathing patterns at these high rates
because the diaphragm is being compressed differently than at lower, perhaps more ideal, rates?
Would high rates reduce the longevity of the rower's career because of greater wear and tear on the joints?

Agreed: it's an interesting thread.

[Charles Carroll]

Leo,

A few years ago I posted data on that supports the argument that shortening
up at higher rates is unavoidable. We all do it! This is a topic that comes
up frequently on r.s.r.

—————-/

Can rowers increase the rate without shortening their stroke lengths?

Valery Kleshnev’s data says no. The longest stroke length comes with a
rating of 24 spm. After that stroke length decreases as rate increases.
Better rowers, however, have less shortening of the stroke length at higher
rates.

“When average data of two elite 2- was compared with the rest of the pair’s
sample, no difference was found in the shape of prognostic lines. However,
the only difference was that elite rowers had 10-12 cm longer length at any
rate. (RBN No. 4 Volume 3)”

Warmest regards,

[James HS]

Charles

I think there are several concepts going on here. Pushing harder per stroke (doing more work), pushing slightly softer but more often (i.e. doing more total work)

If one takes your favourite 15spm 10 metres per stroke - I could ask you to stay at 15 and achieve 11 metres per stroke and it is clear that you should push harder per stroke.

look at the speed.

I could also then ask you to increase your stoke rate but maintain the SAME speed (forget distance per stroke - it will go down) as there are MORE strokes per minute it is clear that you will have to push less hard per stroke to achieve that speed - you are doing the same amount of WORK (propelling the boat at a certain speed). but you are pushing LESS hard per stroke (because there are more of them)

Now few rowers want to increase their stroke rate to achieve the same speed, so if you increase the rate AND increase the pressure er stroke then you will go faster through two features - you are taking more strokes per minute, and you are pushing harder.

These are your two variables.

The point of working hard at low rates (one of the points) is to develop a feeling for what your top power per stroke is - i.e. what kind of power per stoke can you sustain at low stoke rate.

If one says then that you increase the stroke rate - then just doing the more strokes per minute means that your total power output (work) has gone up because you are at max power and increased number of strokes - and you can't do that because we agreed that you were at max power. - But the great thing is that to maintain the SPEED you don't have to push as hard because you are stroking more often -so imagine you don't come off the power per stroke quite so much - you can reduce it and actually go faster because you are taking more strokes and putting in less enough power to not be at your limit.

Posts have further shown the advantages of higher rate in terms of a steady boat speed taking less input to maintain so you also reap the efficiency of this in having to work less hard.

You are not pushing harder per stroke, but you ARE putting in more work.

I hope I have not confused!


James

[sully]

I have a number of anecdotes about effectiveness of higher or lower rates on various athletes. My first year of rowing we raced at a 40, the worst collegiate crew in the US I'm sure. Coach changed mind finally by last regatta, dropped rate to 32, we rowed much better and were at least in contention.

years ago I came in as a substitute coach for a season, the frosh crews I was taking over after a large regatta were just awful. In the heat of their race, they rowed at 35-36 and got crushed by every crew, and well behind.

The exiting coach left AFTER the heats (I wasn't to take over until the following week), and I was introduced to the crews before they were to take the water for consolation final. I had them drop the rate to 31, and they improved immensely, still not fast, but a bit more competitive. By the end of the spring, we'd moved into medal contention and were built up back to a 34.

A local nat'l teamer couldn't make the eight, because he just wasn't effective and quick enough at the 37-38 race ratings, he could move the boats really well at 32-33.

OTOH I tell the story of an athlete I coached for 4 years who never could make my varsity eight. Jay was tough, a superb person, but couldn't achieve the length in the water to beat out other athletes in my crew at our lower ratings.

He raced in our summer programs, and in the pairs was a bit behind the varsity group, not for lack of effort or focus.

One summer he paired up with a clever lightweight when I didn't have a lot of time to coach them (I was coaching a nat'l group). They decided to bump their rates way up. I was out watching them, commented that I thought they were too short, and didn't think their 39 rating was sustainable, to me they looked inefficient.

But the lightweight said they felt much more comfortable, and felt the boat moved better.

A pair from my varsity was rowing out of Penn after having been cut from nat'l camp. I was at Nat'ls, and the pair with Jay and the lightweight were there, as was this Penn pair. Jay and his partner won the Intermediate pair event, racing at 39 all the way down the course. they didn't look rushed or frantic, just clicked it along at that high rate.

The Int pair winner moved into the final of the Senior pair. In the senior pair, my former varsity guys were being coached by Nash and had them doing the same things I'd coached, raced at a body of about 33, long and effective.

In the final, Jay moved out front at 39 and led to 1000. A Vesper pair at 34 and the Penn pair at 33 were a length behind but with a lot of room to move. The Penn pair knew they would catch Jay, heck they'd been beating him for four years! They were mindful of Vesper, so kept to good rowing to stick the hammer down later in the race. Sure enough, 600 to go I saw them take an agressive 10 and the rate bumped to 35, moved on Vesper and put some distance on them and climbed well into Jay's boat, about 1/2 boat down. I thought it was over. Jay bumped rate to 40 and held on.

Last 300 Penn went to 38 and I thought they'd drive through, but Jay went to 42 and held them off to win senior pair at nat'ls.

Good rowing is good rowing, but the lesson was clear to me that this interplay between rates and length, between body swing and leg compression, the various inter-relationships of those factors is not a one size fits all.

An athlete with a short trunk and long legs vs an athlete with shorter legs and longer trunk aren't going to be equally effective rowing the same exact style of rowing. Further, it takes years to be effective at a deep compression and long length, for many you have to physiologically adapt to it, some are going to be naturally long.

For novices, I don't worry about length, my approach is to get them to be effective at the length they are at, and over time they can adapt to more length. Better to be a bit short with more effective catch than to stop the boat trying to get long in that first year or so.

[sully]

I think I said that years ago!

There are points in scullers developments where they become efficient at
the rates, the power, etc that they are employing at a particular time.
When they try to row harder, their blade work becomes sloppy, or they make clumsy movements effectively slowing the hull. OTOH, fine tuning aspects of the catch and finish are only going to incrementally improve the hull speed.

To make larger improvements in speed, you have to improve the engine. By rowing harder, you adapt to rowing harder. It's a yin/yang thing. Give up some effectiveness for a bit, then gradually improve your sculling skills at those harder pressures (or higher rates).

One workout I suggest for masters rowers who want to improve, do a little bit of racing here or there is to do on/off at low rates in place of long SS.

30 on 10 off for the mileage of work you're going to do, and a rating of between 18 and 24. Each 30 you can change a variable, row them harder, or focus finish on another, and on the 10, recover to keep HR at a lower rate. It's good for us older guys to keep at strength building, strength work is really important as we age.

In the 10s, with another sculler or two, you can keep a whole workout competitive and focused. "hey, on this one, I'm going to see if I can row even with the other sculler rowing lighter load, but trying to keep finishes deep, or longer front end". "on this one I'll row as hard as I possibly can at 19."

[Henry Law]

On 01/11/14 11:02, sully wrote:
> I have a number of anecdotes about effectiveness of higher or lower rates on various athletes.

What a great post. I'd rate that one at least 850mP (*)

This morning I spent the whole outing rowing half slide. Not because of
any discussion on here, mind; just that another guy and I decided to try
out the old wooden double that has just been donated to the club.
Lovely old boat, from a little local boatbuilder in Durham, and well
looked after. But it's narrow, and I had to row half slide because at
that point my hip bones literally banged into the shoulders!

* The Potts is the unit of measurement in rowing stories. For most
practical purposes the milliPotts (mP) will be appropriate.

[Carol Dailey]

Pouring buckets and cold here near Philadelphia. The husband is on a plane home from China, so I spent the morning reading Fairbairn's On Rowing. Going back to the very roots of this awesome thread, I think I have a greater understanding of Gordon's book and the foundations of his theories. I'd rather be on the water, mind you, but Fairbairn does teach that one should spend a lot of time thinking about rowing ;)

Cat

[Charles Carroll]

Cat,

In an earlier post in this thread I asked, “Certainly we know more about
wave theory than Bach ever did. But can we say we know more about music?”

Now consider the following paragraphs from Walter Martindale’s paper titled,
“Control the Momentum 2007.”

“——————-/
For your interest, I include a quote, the age of which may surprise you:

“It is important to come slowly forward because:
1. “You thereby take less effort on the forward swing and so have more
power to apply to the next stroke. A perfect forward swing should be what is
termed a recovery, and the body should be absolutely at rest and so get an
absolute recovery….
4. “The oarsman swinging slowly forward has his feet firmly on the
stretcher and is in a position to control the boat, whereas the oarsman
rushing forward makes the boat rock and cannot help to steady it.
5. “The oarsman swinging slowly forward allows the boat to run to its
full extent, whereas the oarsman rushing checks the run of the boat….
“…The oarsman does not really travel in the direction of the stern of the
boat at all, for the boat is travelling … in the opposite direction faster
than the oarsman’s body is coming forward, so what he should do is to try
and stay where he is. … That is, press the feet into the stretcher and let
the boat run out from under him.” Steve Fairbairn, “Notes on Rowing”, first
published 1904.

Referring to the first quoted bit of Fairbairn, the crew does not “come
forward”, but actually draws the boat “forward” in the nautical sense,
underneath. (Forward is the direction towards the bow of a boat, Aft is the
direction sternward, but our convention in rowing is to talk of the rower
“coming forward” during the recovery.

Referring to Fairbairn’s point 4, above, we do need to ensure that the feet
are in good contact with the footstretcher, and also that the heel
attachments are in good shape so that the athlete may “draw” the boat
forward underneath, and pay attention to the kinaesthetic feedback from the
hips, knees, ankles and all the muscles and tendons that tell the crew their
position in space – and feel for the moment when the boat has been drawn as
far “forward” as a good catch position dictates.
——————/

Lastly, after having been reacquainted with this passage from Steve
Fairbairn, I ask: Similarly, we can say that know more about fluid dynamics
than Steve Fairbairn ever did. But can we say we know more about rowing?

[Carl]

On 01/11/2014 19:29, Charles Carroll wrote:
> 5. “The oarsman swinging slowly forward allows the boat to run to its
> full extent, whereas the oarsman rushing checks the run of the boat….

That does not logically follow, even though it be the (& long since
forgotten, I regret to say) words of a master. It seems Steve was right
on the edge of grasping the dynamic interactions between boat & crew,
then at the last minute drew back for fear of precipitating potential chaos.

It would not be "the oarsman rushing" that checked the boat. Rather,
the oarsman's bringing the boat faster towards him than necessary to
sustain its speed through the water would too easily end with not just a
wasteful boat-speed surge but also a delayed catch.

The Russian Krylya Sovetov crews at Henley RR in the 1950s showed that
there need be no conflict between a fast slide & an immediate catch.

[Kit Davies]

On 29/10/2014 13:29, RunDMC wrote:
> As an aside, since (I believe) sliding rigger boats increase efficiency primarily by decreasing the speed variance of the shell during a stroke at a given SR (with a smaller contribution from better boat trim), this would suggest that there is less to gain by rowing at high SR in a sliding rigger boat. Is there observational data on SR in that boat class relative to a fixed-rigger design?

I believed this as well up until a month ago when Carl pointed out that
there are benefits from the sliding seat design which may cancel out the
benefits of lower drag from the sliding rigger design. Namely (here
goes) a rower accelerating themselves past the hull during the drive
stores energy in the form increased momentum, which is then retrieved by
the boat when the feet pulls it forward during the recovery.

Have I explained that properly?

Kit

[Carl]

Spot on, Kit. I'm convinced I need a ghost writer to condense my
earnest verbal diarrhoea/stream of consciousness stuff into concise English.

Sliding seat rowing to some extent compensates for the intermittent
applications of power by storing & returning some of that energy, thus
reducing the hull velocity-cycle amplitude? No, I prefer your version!

[RunDMC]

On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 10:47:49 AM UTC-5, Carl wrote:
> On 04/11/2014 15:26, Kit Davies wrote:
> > On 29/10/2014 13:29, RunDMC wrote:
> >> As an aside, since (I believe) sliding rigger boats increase efficiency primarily by decreasing the speed variance of the shell during a stroke at a given SR (with a smaller contribution from better boat trim), this would suggest that there is less to gain by rowing at high SR in a sliding rigger boat. Is there observational data on SR in that boat class relative to a fixed-rigger design?
> >
> > I believed this as well up until a month ago when Carl pointed out that
> > there are benefits from the sliding seat design which may cancel out the
> > benefits of lower drag from the sliding rigger design. Namely (here
> > goes) a rower accelerating themselves past the hull during the drive
> > stores energy in the form increased momentum, which is then retrieved by
> > the boat when the feet pulls it forward during the recovery.
> >
> > Have I explained that properly?
> >
> > Kit
> >
>
> Spot on, Kit. I'm convinced I need a ghost writer to condense my
> earnest verbal diarrhoea/stream of consciousness stuff into concise English.
>
> Sliding seat rowing to some extent compensates for the intermittent
> applications of power by storing & returning some of that energy, thus
> reducing the hull velocity-cycle amplitude? No, I prefer your version!
>
> Cheers -
> Carl
>
> --

I understand what you are saying with regard to the sliding seat mitigating some of the negative effects of intermittent power application on hull speed variation, but are you claiming that the sliding seat boat is faster than a sliding rigger boat, all else being equal? That I would have a hard time believing. I don't have access to any hard data from the early 1980's when the sliding rigger made its brief appearance on the world stage, but my recollection is that it gave such an advantage once the sculler adapted to the requirements of the sliding rigger that FISA quickly banned them from competition rather than force a wholesale abandonment of the less complex/costly sliding seat/fixed rigger design.

Regards,
-Dan

[Carl]

Hi Dan -

Your view is very widely held these days, but it seems not to fit the
evidence from those times.

I've sought in vain for race timing evidence to show any benefit from
the sliding rigger during its period of use. It seemed to me that there
were those who adapted to it better than others - including
Peter-Michael Kolbe - but overall there seems to have been no trend. In
the last year of the sliding rigger, in the worlds at Duisburg, among
the women only 1 Canadian used it - he'd been fast the year before but
was beaten by several fixed-rigger singles. That may have meant any of
several things, including poorer funding for women's rowing or that the
women found no benefit, but I don't know the actual reasons.

The sliding rigger should have continued, had it shown material
advantage. There was no campaign for its retention when it was banned.
I believe that the lack of obvious performance advantage, plus the
cost of conversion, plus the greater difficulty of adapting it well to
sweep rowing amply justified dropping the sliding rigger.

To clarify my own position on this: had sliding riggers shown real
performance advantage then I think rowing should have adopted it, as
anything which genuinely makes us faster (except doping the crew or the
water!) ought to become part of our sport.

[Kit Davies]

On 04/11/2014 19:56, RunDMC wrote:

The results don't bear out any advantage. Kolbe won by 3 seconds in 1981
but conditions were very bad and times were slow. Hardly a domination.
But maybe the lack of pitching helped in the rough?

AIUI, the design was banned not because it DID make its users faster,
but because it MIGHT in time. FISA decided (for better or worse) not to
risk creating 2 tiers of equipment and nipped it in the bud.

I am happy to be corrected.
Kit

[Kit Davies]

This link takes you to the times for the 1981 world champs M1x results:
http://www.worldrowing.com/events/1981-world-championships/mens-single-sculls/

You can change the year in the URL to see other years, use
'olympic-games' instead of 'world-championships', or 'womens' instead of
'mens' to see other events.

Kit

[sully]

From this side of the pond, the perception was that the sliding riggers were a significant performance advantage, largely due to the success Biglow and Wood had in the singles from 81-83. Long time ago, and I can't even remember what years they were raced, was it one? two? three?

I do remember them saying that they got pretty nasty butt blisters. I never did get in one of them to try it out, I did have a chance at Hanover but I had chores to do before the next practice.

I didn't see the other boats, only the ones Van Deusen made. He raised a lip on the bow portion of the seat to help keep the butt from sliding off, seemed to me that could have been more pronounced and padded at the time.

[RunDMC]

Carl and Kit and Sully,

I thank the three of you for setting me straight on the sliding rigger business. I know Mssrs Biglow and Wood and although we've never had any extended discussion of the sliding rigger, I had assumed that their success with it, and Kolbe's success, was a generalizable phenomenon and that the physics explanation for improved efficiency was very persuasive. In fact my faulty memory recalls that Wood rowed the sliding rigger Van Deusen but I can't remember if Biglow ever did. With the data Kit has pointed me to now I am not so convinced that the data bears out a significant advantage, although it is very limited data indeed.
Great resources available on this RSR group!

[Charles Carroll]

> > “The oarsman swinging slowly
> > forward allows the boat to run to its
> > full extent, whereas the oarsman rushing
> > checks the run of the boat….

> That does not logically follow, even
> though it be the (& long since forgotten, I regret to say) words of a
> master.
> It seems Steve was right on the edge of grasping the dynamic
> interactions between boat & crew, then at the last minute drew back for
> fear of precipitating potential chaos.

> It would not be "the oarsman rushing"
> that checked the boat. Rather, the oarsman's bringing the boat faster
> towards him than necessary to sustain its speed through the water would
> too easily end with not just a wasteful boat-speed surge but also a
> delayed catch.

Hi Carl,

I was going through old posts from years ago and found the following. It
seems to me it clears things up a bit. It also seems to me that you and
Fairbairn may not have all that much to disagree about.

Warmest regards,

Charles

—————/
"I have used the terms 'slow' and 'slowly forward'; this is what it appears.
But it should be 'evenly' and 'steadily forward', for the oarsman coming
(what is called) slowly forward, comes forward further and faster than the
oarsman rushing (i.e. trying to get) forward. The oarsman does not really

travel in the direction of the stern of the boat at all, for the boat is

travelling (after the first few strokes) in the opposite direction faster

than the oarsman's body is coming forward, so what he should do is to try

and stay where he is. To do this he must utilize the run of the boat as much
as possible to bring him forward. That is, press the feet into the stretcher
and let the boat run out from under him. The old professional says, 'Hook
the boat up to you with the straps.' He has learnt how to do this after many
years. To try to teach a young oar to hook a heavy boat up would make him
jerk toes and heels off the stretcher and bucket worse than ever. The old
'pro' sticks his heels firmly into the stretcher as he hooks at his straps
with his toes; the young oar should be sure he is pressing his heels, at any
rate, into the stretcher on the forward swing. The forward swing cannot be
too quietly easy and the hands must hold the oar as lightly as possible.
Usually the crew that does the least work on the forward swing wins." (Steve
Fairbairn, "Rowing Notes," (1904),)

[Henry Law]

On 14/11/14 18:28, Charles Carroll wrote:
> To do this he must utilize the run of the boat as much as possible to
> bring him forward. That is, press the feet into the stretcher and let
> the boat run out from under him.

Forgive me, Charles, but this just isn't true: totally against the
dynamics of the system. To reiterate: at the finish the rower and the
boat are travelling at the same speed. A rower who waits for the boat
to catch up, who thinks that by sitting still the motion of the boat
will bring the stretcher towards the seat, will sit there all day,
because to narrow the gap between seat and stretcher requires a force,
and there isn't one.

If anything the forces act so as to press the rower towards the /bow/,
since the hull is slowing down as a result of friction at the hull-water
interface.

I had an (almost) stand-up row about this with a qualified instructor of
coaches: it's a common fallacy.

[Charles Carroll]

Henry,

You are so gentlemanly that is hard to imagine anyone’s having a row with
you. So let me assure you that there is nothing to forgive. Challenge and
response is how we learn. Or leastwise it is how I learn.

When I read this passage and quoted it to Carl it didn’t occur to me that
Fairbairn was suggesting that rowers should stop and wait for the boat to
catch up.

On the contrary, my reading of the passage is that Fairbairn is suggesting
that the rower should control his momentum. Fairbairn writes that the rower
should come “‘evenly’ and ‘steadily forward’, for the oarsman coming (what
is called) slowly forward, comes forward further and faster that the oarsman
rushing (i.e. trying to get) forward.”

He then goes on to say that “the oarsman does not really travel in the

direction of the stern of the boat at all, for the boat is travelling (after
the first few strokes) in the opposite direction faster than the oarsman’s

body is coming forward.”

And Fairbairn continues, “…so what [the oarsman] should do is to try and
stay where he is … [to] utilise the run of the boat as much as possible to
bring him forward.”

And Fairbairn ends by saying that the oarsman should ”… press the feet into

the stretcher and let the boat run out from under him. The old professional

says, ‘Hook the boat up to you with the straps.’”

To me all this suggests that Fairbairn is saying that the oarsman should
draw the boat underneath him.

Elsewhere Fairbairn writes:

"IN SPITE OF COACHING, TOE-HOOK COMES UNCONSCIOUSLY AS A TRUE MOVEMENt

"Professional scullers used to say in the old days, “We hook the boat past
us with our toes.” I always used to coach that, although professionals
advocated the hook with the toes, it was better for the amateur to trust to
swing alone, and I thought I was doing this myself. But one day towards the
end of my rowing career I noticed that I was drawing with my toes. The habit
had crept in quite unconsciously. My heels were well on the stretcher, but
the toes were drawing firmly, using the shin-muscles to control the swing.
That is what the beginner is doing in the rough, but it is better to get a
well-balanced swing first. In fact, a very good exercise is to row without
straps in a tub pair, although it makes the finish a little awkward.
Heel-stops should be abolished; they encourage the wrong idea; and worst of
all is the ring sometimes put on an oar to position the hands." (“Rowing
Notes,” 1926)

Does any of this make sense?

Warmest regards,

Charles

[Carl]

Steve Fairbairn's writing contain many acute observations. But, as a
charismatic coach, he could also get carried away.

So he saw that the boat moved under the crew, rather than the crew
moving over the boat - which was, I suspect, a major insight for those
times - but then got carried on into error. It happens to us all!

Henry's right in his analysis, & I share is frustration at those inanely
irrational bits of tripe & nonsense so blindly pumped out over trainee
coaches by the paid purveyors of conventional so-called wisdom. Unlike
Fairbairn, those supposed experts have failed to engage their brains
with the knotty dynamics of their sport, or simply lack the wit or
integrity to do so. And if what they are spouting comes by order from
the very top of the tree, then that's a whole lot worse.

Some of what passes for rowing theory is a set of articles of faith, not
the product of reason. For a short period after Cockroft & Walton
demonstrated atomic fission on 1932, exam students in schools had to
continue to say the atom was indivisible. Fallacies of rowing orthodoxy
persist for centuries & those who challenge them are sometimes seen as
mad heretics.

[Carl]

All I'd add is that you don't even have to hook the toe.

We get those who deny that you pull on the stretcher during recovery by
arguing that they can still row with feet out of their shoes, but they
speak in ignorance as they fail to see that without some downward
pressure at the heels they simply roll over backwards. That downward
force keeps the heel in the shoe & the cupped shape of the heel then
provides the purchase sufficient for their recovery. However, feet-out
rowing is not the same as proper rowing, always implies a restricted
body swing & can't be done with anything approaching a full swing or at
high rates.

So Fairbairn enlists the strap (we're talking of equipment of 100 years
back, when rowers wore their own shoes and had plain stretcher boards
with heel cups & straps) as the explanation for being able to pull on
the stretcher, & even builds a mini theory around it.

[James HS]

When I row feet out the heel is definitely firmly in the heel cup and using the action to pull the boat towards you.

IMO the only reason to do a small amount of foot out work is to feel this action and discourage the heavy tightening of shoes.

It encourages a thinking about heels during recovery.

However it should be treated with care - I recently discovered that feet out on a dynamic erg changes the emphasis of the muscle usage - overemphasising the hip flexor where I have a slight injury - feet out irritated it - feet in not at all .... but then the erg does not have quite such a pronounced heel cup.

The fact that the rower never moves forward is often the one that is tricky - as I do still find myself saying "as you move up the slide" rather than saying "draw the boat under you" - years of coaching(isms) to get rid of :)

James

[Carl]

And there's a very good reason to impose a blanket ban on all feet-out
rowing - it's like driving on the highway in a car with no brakes.
Anything dome to hold the boat in an emergency is likely to pluck the
crew from their seats.

Q: "What's your excuse for colliding with this other crew?"
A: "We were doing this fatuous feet-out exercise because it mattered
more to us at the time than the safety of others on the water."

Hmmmm?