Well unless, by some coincidence, someone else is blogging right now, it looks like it's up to me to kick of xmas blogging. Which is pretty awful because i myself have managed bugger all. I took the first week off to let my hand heal, sounds wimpish, but every time i erged my thumb split open and made a real mess. Then this week:
Sunday: Outing with Abingdon rowing club - cut short by a broken rudder and a flooding river
Tuesday: 5k - technique erg, didn't push it
Thursday: 10k - time unknown, the monitor froze up and stopped working, so i had to stop and start. Bit miffed cos it felt pretty good.
Saturday: Outing with Abingdon rowing club, good steady state outing with nooo traffic. Bliss.
Whilst on the river this morning, i was told that i was too upright, and should lean back further at the tap down. Like we always say i exaggerated the change, and was told i still needed to lean back further, despite being practically horizontal. I don't want to go too far, and it's what I'll concentrate on predominately when erging this week. So anyone, and particularly BRATHWAITE, what sort of angle are you aiming for at the tap down? How far back do you lean? Any advice would be welcome.
Anywho Merry Christmas Chaps,
Joe
4 comments:
watch a video of braithwaite and the irony of asking him about leaning back further at the finish will become apparent :D. cue advice from someone who already leans too far back ...
body lean varies from person to person, as i understand it (which is probably wrong/different to other people) too little body swing generally makes it harder to take a smooth stroke because you put a load of power on with the legs, which then run out and you have your feeble little arms trying to cling on to that power and it's much harder to release the blade cleanly. also, obviously, you get less length.
swinging through too far makes it harder to get the blade out (especially at square blades) because there is less room to tap down. also, you run the risk of not maintaining a strong body position throughout the power phase (collapsing/bending the back and falling back onto the flabby bit of your arse rather than the bones to accomodate the extra lean) and requires a lot more core strength to do properly.
lanky people generally suffer more from weak body positions and core strength than not getting enough length so tend to be more upright, whereas stocky people tend to lean further back to try and get enough length. for average sized people (i.e. you and me) about 11 o clock is usually alright, but you have to match the body swing to the people you are rowing with, so abingdon may row differently to us, it certainly sounds like they lean a lot further back than we do. in my opinion swinging back that far is fine for getting plenty of cover at low rate firm pressure but at race pace, it's harder to keep the rate up because you're swinging through so far (and having to pull your body forward a lot more on the recovery) and probably tires you out more than a slightly shorter, punchier, higher rate stroke would for the same boat speed.
hope that helps rather than confuses, essentially if your back is straight and you're sitting on the bones of your arse, while managing to take a smooth stroke with a clean finish and row in time with the rest of your crew, that's the right amount of body lean, but there is no standard amount you should definitely lean back to.
Magic, cheers paul
The other thing is that if you are used to rowing upright and then you get told to put more lean in then you will feel like you are horizontal when in fact you are far from it. With you Joe I would say the main thing is to make sure that you keep it on the legs at the start of the stroke and then swing later on. If you don't then you will look like you are swinging less because when everyone else is sitting back at the end of the stroke you won't be able to because you did it at the front of the stroke.
Basically this is good:
http://www.invernessrowingclub.co.uk/personal/gin_tonic/gt.html
This is too far in my opinion compared with how we normally row:
http://www.invernessrowingclub.co.uk/personal/neykova/neykova.html
And a final example of how not to do it, check out the arm yanking (guess this is more one for John...):
http://www.invernessrowingclub.co.uk/personal/pinsentcracknell/pc.html
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