Lyall McCarthy - Formula for speed in rowing, Sweep and Sculling Technique, Rigging and what makes a Successful Coach
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To say Lyall knows his stuff is an understatement. Hold onto your hats as he covers 100s of key rowing topics in this 1hr and 19min session in full high definition video 1080P.
Lyall has coached crews at the last 6 Olympics for Australia and has won 4 medals, including a Gold with Kim Brennan at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the single scull. He also has a further 14 World Championship medals to his name. Now, after 24 years as a high-performance senior coach, Lyall is pouring his vast knowledge into developing athletes and coaches. In this video he covers:
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Video Transcript
we get so tangled up in the fingers and toes and the ins and outs of everything that we we lose sight of the the real basics of it and and that one there is is pretty important um looking at the session this morning i think we've all do that a little bit better row with um early length have the preparation uh the right way round have the sequencing right both ways on the recovery and on on the drive i think we we can really simplify everything and keep that that those basics in the in the front of your mind that's a formula for speed effective length power and rates really derivative of the other two to be honest and we'll probably um see through this uh presentation of how important that actually is it's not too fancy and i've got a couple of little um video clips there that i think are appropriate but hopefully we get down to something that's easy to understand and applicable for you my observations there's a need to focus on early length and that's important if we think about everything in life it it revolves around good preparation so if you're going to be successful in something you need to have good preparation right um so if we're looking at early length that means i kind of used it over time i used to talk about it make sure by half slide your set for the catch i went back to quarter slice no if that paddling we can get set before you leave back chocks that's probably something that will rub off and uh and you know sure sure as hell at race pace it's going to be there but you need to practice that all the time and if we can have early length we'll also mean that we've probably developed the sequencing the right way around so when all you guys were taught to write what was the first thing that you learned it's probably the same as me way way way back which was hands body slide right it's still the same it's nothing's changed it is that um so anyway i think that's a really important one what's the role of the pelvis all those things are really really important and hopefully hopefully we can touch on some of that during this presentation i think really easy one and again looking at this morning session and how we all go about our up in the boat differently i think the easiest drill and the most effective drill that i've ever used is just a simple one called rock and row so here's here's an analogy inside a drill what we do what we do we go off arms only right then we go arms and body who does that everyone just about arms and body so now we're putting your in the water with the body then we go to quarter slide still putting the oil in the water with the body we spend the rest of the session saying don't put the oil in the water with the body okay so really important so i think if you went to quarter slide and we went straight on to this drill which is stationary and back shocks with your arms extended on your command coach's command is rock on the coaches command isro obviously you're going to demand timing proper timing and coordination coming into the front connect finishing and back chocks finish position arms extended rock row decreasing the pause so at the end of that little process you're going to be going rock row so it's continuous and then lead on to um you know that being a continuous cycle with the rower saying those words to themselves in their mind at quarter slide so now we're in a position where at quarter slide we might be able to go out to half slide and and maintain that sequencing from the back you get it maintain that sequencing from the back so for the rest of the session hopefully we're not going to be saying don't put the oil in the water with the body we have the sequence correct because at the end of the day this little section this leverage sec section of the stroke happens middle to finish of the stroke it doesn't happen off the front so you connect with the hands isolated from the body if we can drill that in it's easy and it's not something you need to be you need to be really experienced with to do it's a simple exercise that i encourage you to exercise with all of your athletes from when they start that's something you can do with beginners give me a long presentation is that we haven't got the first pass the first point um the second observation is what we tend to do is to work on fingers and toes and disregard pressure so at the end of the day if that was all you had who are the kids that you're going to back the kids that row with pressure or the kids that grow nicely but have no pressure you need length you need power and you need to be able to move the boat and those two things are key so i think that uh and it's easy to say just row harder what does that mean you could be practicing the wrong technique so more intense important but it has to be the right way around for the same reason we have hands body slide we need to have the opposite of driven leg driven rhythm so legs leverage finish it off with the arms
timing and slide control there's a little difference slide control can mean let's see how much we can control the slide so we've almost stopped no no you need to be rowing with rhythm my sort of thoughts on that are you you need to be thinking about it a little bit more like you don't want to stop the boat
you don't want the slide to arrive before the handle you need to be working with the boat so if you're sliding over over the boat at the speed no faster than that speed that it's going in the opposite direction you're probably about right and so you may at race pace be moving a little bit quicker at some part of the recovery but it's not outside the rhythm of the boat you're not going to arrive at the front before the handle the handle needs to be set and you need to coordinate it so the hands hands and the seat arrive at identically the same time so the seat doesn't actually stop as the blade's going in and out of the water the seat is returning the other way like that is that clear so i think if you can you know start developing that you can do lots of drills you can't do it at fast speed but it's probably not worth doing it at really really really slow speed and stilting the rhythm so the rhythm which is another key word that we probably don't use enough legs rhythm legs sometimes helps create the rhythm so it's about what where what effect we're having on the boat and the boat run at no stage do we want to stop the boat and lack of slide control and timing we'll do that hand skills i always promised myself that if my daughter ever rode first thing i was going to teach her was how to hold the handles and just be nice and relaxed when she got into the boat the first time she gripped those handles like this and that that's the lifeline i'm not letting these go that's my lifeline i'm i've got to stay balanced yeah okay learned that really quickly and so it wasn't until we got you know into a crew boat i suppose and and got a little bit more confident with balance that um you know we could start to work on that but really important and it's something if we don't get that right earlier in someone's group you'll be battling that for their whole career and grip affects everything i'm not going to be able to get forward if my if my wrist is down here like this i'm just not physically going to be able to rock over or reach out and how far forward what difference does that make so the sooner you can have your hands organized you don't really need to be doing you don't need to be too busy with hands around the back you need to know what the role of each hand is in sweep and you need to know what the role of each hand is in scaling though they're kind of both the same in sculling aren't they but not one's got to get over the other one
we're off the first page oh we're back to that um
that's it sweet ryan
oh i just finished with that one i need to understand the role of both hands athletes need to know what pelvic rock is and so this is this is length from the back
you got any of them and this is length from the back it's still relaxed but um
i think your pelvis is underestimated so we can row like this but your pelvis is the small small cog because if that's your pelvis what is it about that high something like that if your pelvis rocks that far then your body is rocking this far
if you've got pelvis rock slightly forward from the back that creates the opportunity for the spine to be engaged and have a lever create a lever that's super effective because it's a small small cog down here everything attached to the power junction means at the right time and if we've got that effectively linked to all the other massive levers in your body at the right time which is i i think probably coming up through square off 15 degrees either side of square off is the only time we've got the blade pushing the boat in the direction that you actually want it to go so if we think about where square off is then if the blades are let's say it's 45 degrees 50 degrees then moving through that section through square off is going to be going to be super important that we've not affected the body length from the front by poor preparation or poor sequencing that you're still in that strong position and allowing the pelvis to affect that lever through the most important part of the stroke to provide power
any questions
inside leg you will see this every day too and especially with inexperienced rowers but if we don't if we don't work on it if we don't think it's important then something it'll be maintained and it's an injury risk throughout the whole careers so i think that symmetry is something that's really important it's much easier to access that in the skull so in a skull you you should be moving straight up and down the center line of the boat you're going to be working around the riggers naturally so it's a it's a lot a lot more friendly on the body in sweep if you're rotating around the rigger it's easy to have the inside leg move out to the side of the boat the the lumbar spines compromised you're not going to be able to get into that position and yes in sweep it's different because you're working around the rigger when you think about leverage it's a little different but leverage comes from the lumbar spine not the upper spine so it's this connection down here through core and lumbar spine connected to pelvis that creates the lever that's going to have the effect on the blade through the boat through the most effective part of the stroke so when you think of it in those terms it's critical that you stay central and you can work around the rigger if i'm rowing stroke side in sweep but i'm not out to the side of the boat and having to come back in what's going to happen in that movement be over onto this leg this one move to the side i'm not on this leg i'm going to come back into the center of the boat now i can start pushing and all that you can call that slip so we're not connected to anything yet that's slip so it's important that we're balanced on both feet evenly inside leg straight up and down outside leg would be brushing your outside armpit and you'd be able to reach around the rigger and and in return you will work around the rigger through the drive
we good with that one
i think that the uh i'll just follow up on that one a little bit more
right not not exactly because i'm this at the catch i'm on this far away from the angle of the handle and so that the handle is going to be in a slightly different angle to what i will be
neither locked out would mean locked out would mean like that that that's rigid i think that's loosely relaxed and if this is my inside arm for you to be able to roll the handle to square and feathered which you should be able to do without this action if you're going to do that if you think about i actually think that if you keep the elbow uh in line with or above the handle there's a much better way to think about it this is bent and so is that and so you can you can roll it to square like this but you're going to turn it and be risky like this and and in doing so what will happen if your your wrist isn't above the handle then you you've got weight pulling it down you can't manage uh or you can't control how much weight that actually is you can't feel it if you if you um if you have your elbows above the handle watch your forearm weigh no no four kilos um five kilos i don't know but the weight the weight should be you should be able to put minimal weight down on the blade to have it off the water and be balanced but you can't pull it if you're pulling here's an interesting one for you if you if you think that if you think that your inside arm think about your inside arm at the finish that is on the rig your rigger side of the boat you pull that down it's so close to the rigger to the pin you're pulling your side of the boat down and wonder why the boat's down on you you blame everyone else firstly whatever you do but you're pulling the boat down on you then you're hoping the guy next to you behind you sorry or in front of you is pulling down the same as you you don't need to do that if you do that with your outside hand the outside hand's normally not going to be doing that it's probably going to be behaving more like this though you do that with the outside hand you notice the difference when they row outside hand only that you don't have that if you have inside hand off on the recovery the boat comes back to level so not pulling the boat down on them this one is the closest to the rigger you're pulling your side of the boat down so that challenge is big and better reason to teach to roll not to not to turn so roll it in hands it's good um
stay connected through the foot stretcher
if you who does feet out as an exercise do you know why talked about that already
to stay in connection with the boat you need to be you need to be on your feet so i think about it a little bit more like you're that's your only contact to the boat really you're sitting on the seat yet but your connection to the boat to move the boat to lever the boat past the blade is through your feet and that'll give you a lot of information and if you come off your feet before the finish how are you going to balance the boat you've probably done this one actually probably underneath it and now we've got to get back up somehow and get forward somehow and pull forward with the feet pretty hard get to the front out of time and all that stuff if you stay in contact with your feet pelvis you're probably going to be up out of your pelvis if you're pulling against your feet at the back you will stay in contact with the foot stretcher and the next thing that happens is the weight on the blade so it's around 10 kilograms on the blade we'll bend the ore around 10 centimeters believe it or not 20 20 something like that if you've got a little bit of weight on that blade and i'm in back chocks if i'm pulling weight on that ore against the foot stretcher and i let the handle go it's going to go forward and so the rhythm is almost created through the pressure it's going to allow me to come forward have shoulders in front of him now i'm almost ready for the for the uh the catch again and that all that feeling is it's like it's automated but it comes through pressure little drill we did it this morning and i reckon it worked that where's jamie did it work it's um i i think the difference was that uh immediately they went to full full slide after this and it comes down to pressure again is um it's tricking athletes a little bit but if you can put the oar in the water with this much of an arm drawer if you can put the oil in the water and feel connection to your feet with that the only focus just try and feel connection to your feet and with a balanced boat so you know if you can do it in a as a pair in a four but if you can feel that connection to your feet through the back just with a little tiny arm draw like this it'll take a bit of time to get the oil in and out of the water it's it's it's not a normal pattern and and athletes can look at the ore they can play around with how they're putting your in the water with that small time frame that's good too but if you can get that all in the water and feel some pressure against your feet come straight out the full slide and maintaining that feeling that you're going to be on your feet the connection to the boat that's actually allowing you to move the boat past the blade moment that blade starts to come out of the water that slip too so we've had to slip either end now that slip too so if you can maintain that horizontal line all the way through to the finish we're going to be moving the boat for longer so there's power yeah but there's effective power too effective length so this in that out that curve ain't moving the boat that much we need the boat to be running in a horizontal direction without this one you can support your body weight out of the boat for the whole stroke cycle for the whole drive cycle by being supported by the water if you're using the water to support you between the handle and the feet you can do that release the handle and the rhythm draws you forward
questions
and females
which one
either i guess i'm thinking in terms of um i guess relating to what phil was asking before where as you come down from the catch if you're working with six foot five and then you've got much longer leveraging they're able to keep their weight in the center of the boat and reach out are you
is there more of an imperative for them to keep their upper body in the center of the boat as opposed to females who are possibly able to reach out a little bit further because they carry more weight in the center of the boat no there's six foot five females too um but uh i mean that that's a that's a question that relates to what would you do with it a taller person or a shorter person the slide lengths did you watch ollie's idler at the world championships single scalar that won uh he looked like he's rowing like this slide length like that and the guy little guy beside him had to get up to here but he rose at hunt i know the big guy rows at 114 degrees you don't need to row longer than that and that's an advantage to him but the little guy needs to needs to use more slide length and stay in the center of the boat i think the different we'll get to the difference between men and women a little bit but um it's important to understand well how would you just rig that person up you know which is another uh something we'll be going on to before we get on to technique um did that answer your question at all yeah um
ah wrote with intent every stroke yeah left in front of right now this is important this is important because after coaching sculling for a little while it dawned on me one day that the most you're trying to figure out the puzzle you know as you go through your coaching career and learn as much as you can but you're learning it through experience more than anything but the most important part of the stroke to me is this before the crossover on the drive so if i've got this if i've got my left behind my right well let that might be fine we might be able to get in into here but but but somehow
left on top or right how far is that with my little hands that's seven centimeters i measured it so between there and the center of the handle there is seven centimeters we're rigged to have one where where is it is it is it like that maybe but even then we're going to compromise the catch if we've got to go like this to to square up ideally in my mind i'd think that from the finish you'd like to finish evenly with the hands right that doesn't happen if this one goes over that one so if we're through the drive coming through the driving we get to the crossover and this one now we've already had the balance change in doing that what's that 20 centimeters um if that's changed how are you pushing off both legs impossible you're not pushing off both legs evenly if the boat's like that so through the drive and if it's not like that you're you've got another pressure applied left or right to maintain stability and balance so if this one comes up like this where's it going at the back i've seen it come straight through what's the boat doing but typically that one's going to go below that one this one's going to come through and go down to there and right here now we've got a problem so this one distorts the sequence and timing of the recovery because now i've got to get this one back over that one and this one by the way just went like that to get in the water and it's going to be on that side of the finish this is going to go like this and on the recovery now i've got to get back over to there and i'm already here now i'm not there the most important part of the drive and left in front or right is that bit this little part that
instigates the direction from catch all the way through to finish and so if this is the crossover then this little bit here is really important the first part of the arm draw to go through the crossover with a little bit of intent to say it's coming this way straight through and if you can have that then you've got balance you've got stability you've got power even power on both feet and the recovery will be the recovery will be reliable and consistent every time that's a really really hard thing to work on if if your athletes are taught to do this and i get it you know that physiology means a hell of a lot but if we've got people that can race well let's call it 6 30. 6 30 in a men's single rowing rowing this way but maybe we could get a half a second a quarter of a second a bow ball out of doing it slightly different and a little bit more effective would we take it see everybody nodding you would so it can't be your only focus and and with technique you're never going to get everything perfect of course we're going to strive to get it as close as we possibly can but you're not going to get it perfect physiology means a hell of a lot you can go very fast with that but you can improve a hell of a lot more i think all the time with technique
and the second two points there
ah no it's not third point bend it did we see something with that this morning too i've just described you know what that might look like and how much pressure it takes to actually do it so you should be able to bend that or and keep it bent all the way through the stroke and the return of energy who uses
low inertia blades
low inertia blades means the blade bends there's a bit of flexibility in that too so we've got a shaft that bends it's lighter much lighter low inertia blade um the shaft bends the blade bends so we've got bend bend all the way through the stroke we want it and like i said you try it you support the blade through the under the sleeve both under the sleeve and on the handle and put 10 kilograms on the end just interesting to see how far that bends it'll be 10 centimeters ish 9 10. put 20 on it's 20. put 30 it's 30 40 it's 40. didn't put 50 on um and so a really interesting stuff and when you realize what that takes to bend the ore and think about the return of energy from that if you can hold it through to the finish it feels good it feels good and because you get that return of energy creates a better rhythm it should feel again automated i'm certainly not taking away from the length and the power in saying anything like this i think that it's really important that you understand those other two points if you've got slip you can't bend the or
i might go back to that one
i was in the speed boat with jamie this morning whoops and talking about is there a rowing tank somewhere is there a swingy later this is in varazy
awesome tool um in this particular day we're working on working on something around the back working on being clean around the back
but one thing you can practice all the time is that sequencing from the back and it's unlikely unlikely you're going to have an effective catch you're not going to be able to to apply the pressure that you'd like to pro to put into each stroke if we're not balanced if we're not set from the back it's just uh i thought i'd show you that one and secondly um the person in the background there had never sat behind this purse that little person in the background had never sat behind this person before but just copying and what what a great tool it is um for you guys to have you got some good role models in in the squads here to be able to put um maybe not as an experienced person in behind experienced people to be able to feel and the only way you're going to get better as an athlete is to row with people that are better than you and um there's coaching we can we can help we can guide we can write programs we can drive athletes all those things but you're going to learn athletes learn so much more from each other as well oh look he must have made a mistake i must have i think it's a glitch in the computer just kept putting it just kept putting it on there
with intent was that you do it in one and not the other or do you do it in both or yeah i i think i might have copied it over by um mistake firstly but then i realized that it was probably it wasn't a typo no okay now here's what i'd like to talk to you about
before we get on to technique um i i reckon this is a really important one and and something that i i put into every presentation or talk is that so um do you know how to rig a boat you know it's it's really important and if you don't you need to ask because it's no point talking about you know this little part of the stroke or even pressure if you've got pitch out on one side compared to the other you're not going to row even pressure um if you can't operate because you rigged down here and you know you can't actually pull on that line if you've got left rigged over right i rigged a boat recently that had been rowed by somebody quite experienced the seat was over one side one centimeter and it was rigged right over left they were running left over right and wondering why they're having trouble
okay you've got to check it i don't check it every day but um sorry i didn't used to coach it uh check it every day but i would check it every few weeks or every month or so and if i ever thought that there was something in the rowing that was different to if you could notice something different about the rowing or a a a pattern creeping in i'd check the pitch first i'd check the rig first so you know i think it's it's critical that we have that set up what do you guys think absolutely
there you go it's come from the best 100 and um i think i heard noel say there that within a hundredth of a millimeter actually i can tell you a true story of uh 2016 olympic games uh hamish bond we had a very tiny rope doing the pitching and so you're measuring the number of millimeters from the bottom of the blade to the uh to the string line dropping down and we had to measure one side of the string line to the other and the string line must have been something like half a millimeter that was the position in which it had to be height changes were one metal washer which would be a quarter of a millimeter yep yep that's what it comes down to well when you get down to that level of feeling you can tell those things an athlete can tell those things are different um but it's it's totally got to do with you know that that line the angle down to the water the angle down to the water is critical um which is what's uh
what's the standard height to the water do we know that one
has anybody got it so the gate height to the water so we've got a 90 kilo boat with 90 kilogram people sitting in it and the gate was at the mid range around about what height should it be
26 27 yep so um and and that's that's about right so when you look at it this is a lot so regardless of the the um
size of the boat in some ways that that angle is critical because we measured it one day we measured it with that
tell them how you would measure it okay with the with the guys sitting in the boat i'd make sure that the boat was level both ways and so they won't be sitting in back chocks and they won't be at front shocks they'll be sitting where the boat's leveled probably about the middle um so the boat is level longitudinally and across and um take this or if it's a sweep boat i'll take this all out of the gate rest it on the gunnel if it's rougher water you put a sponge or ice cream container or something in the water so it's level with the water sponge is better and i'd measure from the center of the gate to the sponge and that should be around 27 centimeters so regardless of the rig that you've set up in the boat if that's a lot different you might have this angle down to the water you might have that angle oh i can't get the oil out of the water the height changed because of the relativity to the water so 10 kilograms of weight puts the boat into the water one centimeter each 10 kilograms puts it in the boat it puts it down in the water one centimeter so if the boat's built for 70 kilogram people and you've got 90 kilogram people in it then the the gate height at the mid range is going to be much lower
so what you're actually saying you've got you've got you're talking about average weight so aren't you so you're saying that a kilo times eight people
look i think you need to start asking questions about that because what is pitch and what influence does it have on the boat i think an interesting one is lay i've got an opinion on this but what's lay lateral pitch means you're leaning the pin out it also means that the the pitch at the catch is going to be greater let's say i want to have four degrees i want the athlete to hold it in the water better so four degrees at the catch two degrees at the finish okay why would i do that to help hold it under the water is that technical is it where you set up in the boat but the one that that got me for a long time i couldn't understand it is typically let's call it a single scale there's the pin straight up and down there's the boat level in the water okay at the catch the stern is normally down a bit at the finish the bow is down a little bit that's less pitching it why would you have decreasing pitch if you've already got decreasing pitch
i don't know any thoughts
yeah no it's not an easier extraction it's it's harder if you put lay on the on the gate so it's going from more pitch to less pitch and now at the finish we've got less pitch if the bow's down think of that then that should be harder to get out if you've got more pitch at the finish i i think the answer to it is i'll give you i think the answer is that um once you get past square off okay the blade is passed square off on the shallow end of the boat if the bow's going down and the stern's coming up the blade is on the shallow end
so where the boat's coming up it's on that end that's the only thing i could think of any thoughts it would probably be a little bit boat class specific because you'll get less pitching with an eight than you will on a single so maybe there is an implication where you might do it in one boat class and less in another boat class agreed i i think it at the end of the day what you need to do is fix the problem first if there's a problem so if we're coming out of the water for all the reasons that we described earlier if that slip do we want to cover up the problem no you want to fix the problem so if you can do that i think that that rigging and applying those principles to an individual rower is important that if we find that that helps the pattern and we can't identify a fault as to why that might be happening i i would prefer to think let's just decrease the pitch to start with if you can go do you all understand what pitch is though if absolutely vertical is zero pitch then rowing with zero pitch it's really hard to you would need to get that pressure on the face of the blade accurately from the front the horizontal force and be able to hold it there now we've raced with one degree pitch to practice that and and it was really good but it's a load also believe it or not so that loading of one degree pitch it's genuine horizontal force so zero is genuine horizontal force you won't have too much up and down and so even that analogy paints a picture in your mind if i've got a lot of pitch at the front and i'm really getting on it i'm probably going to lift the boat up out of the water a little bit and what goes up has got to come down but i reckon if you practice it and you've got this picture in your mind of being horizontal you can also apply horizontal force in a way that the boat can stay still so ideally in my mind i would like to think the boat can pop us up it doesn't need to port this down as much that you can make that boat run flat
it would be really good and i meant to do this actually it would be really good if you just wrote those questions down or we'd give you a copy of that and just give yourself a little quiz and if you don't know the answer to it find out so that you understand it better if you don't know what it means or um um you'd like to know more about it find out because i i think that every one of those questions needs to be answered you need to have an understanding of it that last little question there what length how do you get your lengths and why would you want somebody to row that long so this kind of i think there's an optimum arc ish and we could probably say there's an optimum effective arc so you might roll a little bit longer than that um
and in fact there's a there's an arc that you might race at that's a little bit shorter than that if it's really effective but there's kind of a an idea around the optimal mark and it and what it is is is you're not pinching the boat so you've got hydrodynamic lift from the catch you you need to use that but you're probably going to have more of a flat spot if it's around at 80 degrees at the catch in a skull so when you think about that what's the what's the optimum arc and and what can you what can you expect to to rig your boat out and have your athletes um rowing effectively because that affects how they're going to row too so how you set them up in the boat is seriously going to affect how they're going to apply power um or not um we talk about core stability it's going to seriously going to affect that
any ideas on scaling length
overall scaling length
about 110 degrees we'll call it and now i'll use kimian as example because i know it well but i'll probably race the olympics at about 108 107 i'd reckon she could train at 120 and has has trained at 130 degrees but not looking like it was over leaning over too far sitting back too far it's just the reach around the rigger you can get and the amount of compression i wouldn't suggest it but if you're trying to get stronger and working through the range of um range of movement than being a little bit longer than we'll call it the optima mark so i used to work on 66 44 66 degrees forward 44 back and in sweep it would be around 90 degrees no 58 32 something like that maybe i'll just tell them why community would train longer apart from the fact that it's getting her into weaker position and she comes back to racing but what happens from paddling to racing lengthwise it would get shorter very shorter when they race so you need to make sure they're not short when they paddle because it gets shorter agreed so the better you can get at it to practice the skill of no slip either end the better you can get at that the more predictable it will be now for rhett's comment there uh is exactly right and please don't think i'm saying go on row at 130 degrees or even 120 degrees go and practice it trying to roll 110 properly and if you can squeeze it out a little bit more great but i'll show you a little bit of video here of rowing probably closer to 116 degrees 120 degrees and it doesn't look overly long but she's not going to race like that what was you yeah i was going to ask a similar question but even going back to early stuff about sequential movement how much exaggeration would you recommend to ensure that when you come back to racing so an example would be how well you can not cluster over your knees with hands body slide in racing at 40 strokes a minute and four or five degrees less length versus what training is do you do you train to put that buffer in in terms of your movement pattern your length to cater for the change in structure in racing absolutely absolutely so even at race pace the the bat movement in particular um the movement off the back if you have you seen it in your own cruise at all if you get caught on your knees if the handles i mean i use a little call which is just move the hands over the shins so continue to moving the hands over the shins because even doing our little drill there the rock and row drill you can get stuck at your knees and and what can happen as you go up in in um right and we we get that progression you can have that little pause there and still get caught it's really important i think that you have that continuity of movement and to make sure that that can continuous movement out over the shins and i'm certainly not saying overreaching i reckon antonia had a great little analogy that was still used for a long time and and maybe a lot of you guys have heard it but imagine rowing in the tunnel and you're touching your head's touching the tunnel the top of the tunnel the whole time good analogy if i go down like that i'm going to hit my head on the tunnel so stay touching the top of the tunnel the whole time if you can think about it like that then the forward and back movement is not down it's forward only forward and back and we have the transfer of weight isn't up and down pick it up put it down it's along horizontal the way we're trying to move the boat the direction we want to move the boat
how do you get the balance between span and uh
yeah um well i'll i'll start with maybe having an image of what standard rig is so if i use women um we use 75 kilos as a as the mid-range for women's testing so you know if you're looking at the zero point it's the average is 75 kilos uh 178 centimeters tall so if you can imagine that athlete 178 tall 75 kilos now expand that not just out not just up expand that so if i use make it simple and say well i used to rig all the boats the same though our singles our doubles our quads would be rigged the same 158 okay span 288 inboard oh sorry yeah
288 yeah um 88 158 288 88 inboard and the only thing that changed when we went up in size boat was the all length so the span was the same the whole time and it was the same pretty much the same for everybody now moving on from that to be more individualized that um the person in the single skull who is 187 centimeters tall is a little bit different to that mold so we rode with um and as far as the power and the leverage went was different also so for somebody like kim brennan she had um 158 287 88 so you'd say that's a much lighter rig um and even in the double would set that lighter because the person could actually naturally row so much longer
yeah which is the the effective length though connected to it the other thing that matters with that what is gearing blade depth is gearing so when you when you talk about gearing if you if you've got people that are washing along just blade heart that's not gearing we can't do much with gearing there it's just moving water if we can teach to assume that the blade in the water is the fulcrum and we're moving the boat past the blade in the water then we've got a fair chance of being able to adjust the gearing from something that's quite standard i think what you're getting at there is what is what is standard for men women different sizes and how you adjust the gearing and yeah i adjusted the gearing the loading by the length and the span stayed the same however you do need to individualize for people that are um you know expanded from that
normal length but
so um what i sort of got down to with with scaling single sculling i kind of thought that it was really important for me to know in the end where the middle of the boat was i could measure the middle of the boat i suppose but the middle of balance so when the boat was if if we sat in the bow then the bow is going to be slightly down if we sat in the stern the stern's going to be slightly down so where is it level where he's sitting when it's level and trying to um the reason we did this in the beginning was to put a second fin on it knowing that we were going to go into really rough water and i wanted this i got a yacht guy to come down and show me where he would put a second fin and we put it smack in the middle of the boat which happened to be right underneath the bung in the impact and it was really important to understand where the center was um with the setup of the boat then to know where the maximum force was applied
i know that i was talking about this in terms of blade work and getting the force on but it's really important also where would that be with your body so if your shoulders are still in front of your hips even a little bit and you've got that little bit of leverage and the strokes over and i don't know what 0.6 of a second or whatever um if if that's that section of the stroke then that's really critical to understand that where the middle of the boat is and where the middle of the force is applied if you like or that critical point in time when we've got this affected it's extremely powerful so yeah you need to you need to be able to observe those things and i look if we're stuck in the bush and we didn't have a tape measure or a level or anything else how would you set your crew up i'd get them to sit bolt upright with their legs down bolt upright with their arms out straight and if that was square off that's where i'd set them all now if they're all sitting bolt upright legs down or at 90 degrees to the boat that's where i'd set them up and then we might be able to adjust so that we've got you know angles a little bit more aligned at the back so i'm kind of a finnish man but i'm only a finnish man because i think that's where you get the preparation set to have a great catch so the front-end man too but i think it's i personally sort of look at it being more in the preparation than the action
loading and gearing and stuff like that where do you get where does drive time versus recovery time come into play especially as you go up in rate yeah i kind of like to think that it's it's probably more two to one at right 20ish um i i would like to think that you've got a you've got to arrange to work on at a particular time of the season early early i'd like to think it's more like three to one but you can't get stuck with three to one and it's for the same reason we were talking about what is slide control and what is timing because at some stage you don't want to race if it's stilted so the rhythm is important and rhythm doesn't mean creeping and then driving the hell out of it it means working with the speed of the boat so i think that two to one is about about right at right 20ish and i think in about oh race base is going to be one to one that right in my talk i'll show you why that's the case but i i don't think but i don't think you definitely can't have it the other way around so i think it is important to teach slide control because you don't want the seat to arrive before the handle so you need to teach the sequence from the back the right way around and to be able to move with the speed of the boat and be competent to apply the blade to the water the feet to the stretcher and and create that that impulse at exactly the same time um and we can't do it if we're rushing we sort of can't do it it needs to be predictable
okay
that's a good little bit of information
so at 60 degrees
the loading is twice as heavy as what it is at square off we'll call that zero at 70 degrees it's three times heavier and 80 degrees six times well we know where 90 degrees is we're around at the bow ball that's a sculling boat that's a scaling boat they're really important really important where's the most effective part of the stroke and he said well i said we're always taught that it's 15 degrees either side to square off he said no that's just where it's geared the lightest and because the handle is the furthest away from the pin and 45 degrees is the most effective part of the stroke do tell um so if we've got the blade in the water if we're in a scaling boat got the blade in the water at 60 degrees there's an element of hydrodynamic lift that you still have at 45 degrees
if this is this is the foot stretcher and this is my foot at the catch i'm probably going to be up on the balls of my feet so my heels will be off the foot stretcher and my shins will be on that angle right angle this is my thigh so in initial drive there is an element of vertical force okay there's an element of vertical force and it's not until your shin thigh is a right angle that we have true horizontal force at the same time your foot has become more inco has now come more in contact with the foot stretcher and so it's just like standing up that now from here that now i've got true horizontal force and if i was lifting a heavy weight you can only imagine that the same so that is why 45 degrees would be the most effective part of the stroke and when you start thinking about that and looking at it and even in an acceleration profile what's it look like i'll sure i'll show
um nolan i worked with this one long long time ago and there's nothing nothing really i don't think there's anything new or too wrong with that any thoughts
basic technique what about the lollies for anyone who can guess the hands on the bottom right hand side whose are they
anyone know who the hands are why do you
kim there you go
one slide that i'd i'd sort of question
is that one
i reckon that's good i reckon that's good
but if i look at the height of the head there he's touching the tunnel there he's touching the tunnel there so through those middle sections of the drive he's touching the tunnel and here he's uh to me i would say just underneath it a little bit and so i'd prefer to see that i think he's this is great or good maybe it's a little bit too much there i'd even maybe suggest that he's rigged a bit tight because he's you rig a little bit too tight athlete's going to do this one to get out of the way of the handle so they can get into the comfortable position they want to they want to have around the back so setting that up that individualization i like to think that if you if you can get it right then here would be the finish and if you set back a little bit too far you get past your body but how we're going to get the left hand in front of the right hand if you're here you can't you're going to go away like that or you're going to do this so i get that maybe setting it up like this a couple of things can happen you're going to rate higher that might be good you're also going to be able to row longer at the front that's not so good because just changing the span
doesn't do that much to the gearing except if i change the span and go i'm going to have it really tight at the back or what happens i would probably want to move back if i rig it really tight at the front is that so i'm going to try and get out the way the handles i've got really tight at the back then i'm probably going to be very long so i'm around 75 80 degree i'm not going to do that body says no i want to touch the tunnel so i'm just going to row shorter so you're going to row shorter both ends so you can get the beat up yep got that you've got to find the balance of length power if you want to use rate in a another
another space in that formula i think it's length power rate in that order no question it's not over long yep it's as much power as you can provide under the water connected but the rates are derivative it's not a go-to you've got to be very careful with that if you look at the the trends in racing at the world championships a lot of high rate crews and there's a reason for that sometimes a lot of those guys that race like that have amazing motors and they can they can actually manage that load i don't know any kids or developing athletes that can do that so you've got to be able to get the basics right first you've got to be able to put the oil in the water first and you've got to be able to expect that that load is going to be significant and be able to hold it before we move on to that we okay with that beauty correct sequence hands body slide so i just put slide body hands we can make it as complicated as you like it's um it is that though from the front it's leg driven rhythm it's levering through the middle of the finish your job as coaches to demand excellence with with technique and sequence and the water you should be able to support your body weight all the way through to the right to the end of the drive and release cleanly supporting your body weight not up out of the boat but being slightly suspended if we said um weight off the seat we'd call it a quarter of a millimeter
practice your rate race technique and pressure at low rate i think that's important unless it's a tech session unless it's a very low intensity session which you do need to have in your programs if you've got the time you need to have those low intensity sessions to be able to teach proper skill
but at the end of the day i don't know that there's many boats that i would look at on on the water as as being smack on everything that we're trying to teach and the pressure is a big one so trying to develop that idea of the length the sequencing from the back the power down low is something we need to keep driving towards balance now seeing a lot of boats most people go to doubles for the first time after rowing singles does it you ever noticed it goes around one way
a lot of them do but and mostly because of this to be honest it's mostly because of that and the boat goes around one way i reckon because if you've got a rudder in the water that keeps doing that is the boat going to move one way it is so it's going to go around that way actually so you keep doing that with the fin it'll keep pushing the boat around that way balance is really important for all the reasons that we've explained so far you need to be able it's just like doing a full squad or standing up to being balanced on both legs to be able to push and move your own body weight effectively you need to have balance why would we check the boat on the way forward running yours along the water you've got to be clean you've got to think balance is really important well just maybe explain to people how you create balance
yeah i've got in my notes there somewhere um yeah pressure and again i thought it was really exciting this morning just watching jamie's crew once they found the ability to be able to hold hold that connection to the foot stretcher under the water the balance comment was wow look at the black the bow girls blade it was off the water and it was working effectively there was room there was space so it's got to be how you how you improve and thinking of improving the boat speed from the catch to the finish and it's so simple feet out yeah we do feed out did this little drill this morning where it goes take one stroke feet out so from the front in the catch position take one stroke feed out pull really hard did you come off your feet no okay that's because the boat was stationary so we've we've taken the boat from being stationary up to a speed and you still connected the foot stretcher now if we took another stroke the boat's going faster now how do we apply that same skill the boat's moving fast the water escaping underneath the blade you must have that sequence correct and be able to apply the pressure with something that's moving now so be able to lock push and lever you've got to stay in front of the pressure in front of the speed with pressure so the weight on your feet at the end of the stroke represents the pressure on the blade
there it is again um i will play this a little bit because i actually thought this bit of paddling was okay this day and there's one thing not so great with it but that's just me
but i looked at the hands around the back especially the left hand for what we were talking about where is the most important part
and the other one was
how little the bow was going down and how little the stern was going down now in my mind that was because we had the sequence right
not because and she had good
pressure but it was more about getting the sequence right and having the pressure at the right time because if if we were we were here when we should have been here in the drive well now the recovery is distorted and we can't get under the water where we need to so the length is good and she's picking it up where she reaches and the blade stays fairly consistent under the water right through to the end
but that's all cause and effect so you can't have an effective catch or row that effective length unless you're balanced and you've got the sequence right from the back and secondly it doesn't run like that unless you've got that bend on the or all the way through the stroke and you reconnect can release it clean to let the boat go and do some work too you know i'm rushing right along here harder skills how to put the air in the water does anyone know how to do that
that might do it to a certain speed but at race pace it's hard to do so to be that loose and relaxed and i agree with you that that is the level of relaxation you need to have to be able to be skillful and agile through the front to get it on but you do need to guide it and so in sweep i reckon outside hand if you could all get a box of nails on the way home drive it through that center knuckle in all your athletes outside hand when they got the handle um and and the handle i didn't mean that um the handle will rotate around that inside knuckle so coming forward knuckles stay at right angle to the boat all the time if we go around like that you've seen that one yeah elbow around like that and his inside arm is going to be like that too knuckles stay square of the boat at the catch you could have the handle that's an extreme length but the handle would be more like that okay at the finish you'd want your elbow to come through as soon as the elbow stops well so does the pressure and so to have that continuous movement around the back i think that little knuckle air would be more in contact with the handle right at the back than anywhere else that one you get that from the front that's going to be shouldery seeing that one from the front that's pressure on the inside knuckle if you keep that handle rotating around the inside that middle knuckle and being connected to little finger at the end fantastic and that is where the obvious lever is isn't it on the end of the handle inside hand needs to be able to roll the blade square and feathered without
without losing connection right there right through to the release you start doing this one pushing the handle away before we finish pulling with the outside hand we've got a problem i'm coming bree
maintaining even blade depth now knoll would know a lot about this coach some crews that have been very very effective and one thing one thing that i've noticed about a lot of his crews is that that blade depth from the front and being consistent all the way through the stroke releasing clean the boat does the work am i right yeah hamish bond when i first met him he made the statement to me he said what you'll see is you'll see my all goes in very deep at the catch halfway up the shaft he said other coaches have tried to fix that you can too if you like and that was alfred won 35 races in a row so i thought we'll leave it deep in the water very wise very wise and and uh and likewise kimmy i mean i got criticized for that that it's too deep as i'm sure as hell i'd rather that way than the other way and the key to it was i don't mind it it's a bit deep as long as we apply horizontal force from the top of the front turn top bottom i don't know from where the hands reach it at the catch that it stays connected from there horizontally
and this is this is a little bit of video showing last night i'm not going to run through too much i've run out of time but um this this day was extraordinary and it was two days after doing some extremely hard work 4.2 k pieces at race pace in really rough water and you know it wasn't comfortable or nice to be around for a little while but two days later we did three 2k pieces in this water which wasn't perfect um and she did 728 728 728 so that put her on the podium in lucerne every every piece rating 28 by the way so extremely effective in this water and i look back on that now and go it was the cause and effect again so having to work really hard to get the blade under the water in really rough conditions not my call that was the natural human instinct to get the blade under and here we have now in better water that same pattern evolving into something that was really well connected from the front minimal minimal slip all the way through the stroke and at rate 28 to be able to produce speeds that you know um we probably look for it at race pace most times i'll see if i can just play that little bit you might be able to see
what stands out to me is where the hands go to
that damn it
and if that's the catch position and you get connected there well you pretty know pretty much know the outcome of that stroke
uh sequence simple but complicatable drill sequence do that do that that drill sequence with the rock and row grip affects everything know what each hand is meant to do pelvis and we talked about that leverage and that's a power junction i'm just going to finish up in a minute leverage we talk about foot push the heels down fast get the heels down well i think you've got to think about the feet a little bit more feet connection is really important but think about it this way talk about the pelvis being a massive lever what about the feet foot connection from the front i'm not saying be up on your toes not saying have vertical force what i am saying is if you're on the bottom on the balls of your feet think about getting the pressure from let's say on the balls of your feet that's where that would be let's call that the bottom of the the ball of your foot to underneath the bottom of the ball of your foot so get the pressure lower than the ball of your foot and push push as much weight through that so your heels are going to go down but this is a lever so from the ball of your foot to your heel is probably about that far now that little lever going down think about it has every other massive lever in your body connected to it so when i talked about the pelvis being a lever it is but every lever in your body is connected to that and so your feet your foot pushing down and you levering against the foot stretcher can be a weapon i'm certainly not saying delay it or use it and you'll manipulate it any other unnatural way than what is natural so it's like standing up if you do a full squat you stand up your foot goes down you're connected to the ground if i was doing a high pull i reckon i'd be back on the balls of my feet i like that idea because i feel that that's extension and you can hold the seat firm in back chocks i think that if we can get a little bit more out of the stroke stay connected to the foot stretcher through pressure that way then i reckon that's an advantage any thoughts quickly because i'll run out of time
well i i think it's more natural i i don't teach anything i i don't think it's natural so i think you need to think about it i mean it's not something we get to the end of the stroke then we do this i think that if we're going to lift lift a weight for instance you would be you would be on the balls of your feet more i think keep the pressure through the balls of your feet more would be a better better scenario i think about it like this like yeah if i was to draw a line threw my shin bone at the bottom of my foot where would it be and i reckon cyclists have their pedals here for a reason i don't know
this was the night before
the rio final and if there's one thing i can tell you about that that's sitting up and that would be 108 degrees and even though it's not the prettiest rowing and there's things there i'd look at and go it's a little bit like this at the finish what we set out to do was exactly what she did and came in off the water and to me that was the most important and satisfying part of the whole process with her in that campaign
more you can do it
with that the more you do the more you can do that's adaptation recovery really important with adaptation pathways athletes need to master those basic skills before you dive into that don't don't rush it you need coaches need to challenge successful coach understanding event pushes boundaries has a growth mindset and listens doesn't mean we ask the athlete every second stroke what they feel or how you going it means be aware observe respects instinct so uh respects instinct not everybody's going to be like you or the athlete that you exactly want them to be but sometimes our best races are a little bit different and you've got to identify and respect what the instinct is of the athlete might might be able to produce the goods and sometimes that just takes time you've got to follow up has balance and set standards and lives by them challenges the athletes physical technical and psychological capacities and always has an and which means you're a problem solver
all right we talked about that do we talk about that can we talk about about the it and intensity fourth and fifth points
um men can there's more muscle mass men can withstand more intensity that doesn't mean we've got to go out and quickly load everybody up and do a hell of a lot more intensity you need the 80 20 rule i think 80 of the program would be under threshold you could do 20 above that's kind of what i think we're about right there um and and make sure that you're firm on that i think there's low end bottom in t2 i think there's t2 speed i don't think you need to be able to i don't think you need to go out there and look oh my heart rate's a bit higher no you need to be able to work on target boat speed in good water you need to row with intensity every stroke i think that your t2 sessions can be you you have almost recovery sessions that you could work off t2 heart rate or t1 heart rate but there's there is a boat speed you need to acknowledge um women can tolerate and and our endurance people women can do a lot more endurance i'm only mentioning this because i think they're strengths that we need to to work with um it's not something to say oh that's that and that's that no no i think women are endurance and you've got to be careful with because um understanding that we've been talking about injury a lot lately stress fracture is like this it's an aluminium ring pull you keep doing that and what's going to happen goes grey goes white the next thing it just snaps you've got to make sure that symmetry is important we're moving up and down the center line of the boat you're not getting outside the line of the boat you can see an injury coming tendonitis back rib there's lots of things we can do i think poor technique causes injury
great athletes right coach good training environment no injury or illness 10 000 hours of quality training if you've got that you've got a chance summary do the basics the best sequence blade skills intent set set standards and challenge athletes train with intent demand technical excellence knowing that it's never going to be perfect that when we get to racing no it's not going to be perfect
and training must be harder than racing and lastly we're on the rough makes you tough that's it for me i'm sorry i went over time
timing and slide control there's a little difference slide control can mean let's see how much we can control the slide so we've almost stopped no no you need to be rowing with rhythm my sort of thoughts on that are you you need to be thinking about it a little bit more like you don't want to stop the boat
you don't want the slide to arrive before the handle you need to be working with the boat so if you're sliding over over the boat at the speed no faster than that speed that it's going in the opposite direction you're probably about right and so you may at race pace be moving a little bit quicker at some part of the recovery but it's not outside the rhythm of the boat you're not going to arrive at the front before the handle the handle needs to be set and you need to coordinate it so the hands hands and the seat arrive at identically the same time so the seat doesn't actually stop as the blade's going in and out of the water the seat is returning the other way like that is that clear so i think if you can you know start developing that you can do lots of drills you can't do it at fast speed but it's probably not worth doing it at really really really slow speed and stilting the rhythm so the rhythm which is another key word that we probably don't use enough legs rhythm legs sometimes helps create the rhythm so it's about what where what effect we're having on the boat and the boat run at no stage do we want to stop the boat and lack of slide control and timing we'll do that hand skills i always promised myself that if my daughter ever rode first thing i was going to teach her was how to hold the handles and just be nice and relaxed when she got into the boat the first time she gripped those handles like this and that that's the lifeline i'm not letting these go that's my lifeline i'm i've got to stay balanced yeah okay learned that really quickly and so it wasn't until we got you know into a crew boat i suppose and and got a little bit more confident with balance that um you know we could start to work on that but really important and it's something if we don't get that right earlier in someone's group you'll be battling that for their whole career and grip affects everything i'm not going to be able to get forward if my if my wrist is down here like this i'm just not physically going to be able to rock over or reach out and how far forward what difference does that make so the sooner you can have your hands organized you don't really need to be doing you don't need to be too busy with hands around the back you need to know what the role of each hand is in sweep and you need to know what the role of each hand is in scaling though they're kind of both the same in sculling aren't they but not one's got to get over the other one
we're off the first page oh we're back to that um
that's it sweet ryan
oh i just finished with that one i need to understand the role of both hands athletes need to know what pelvic rock is and so this is this is length from the back
you got any of them and this is length from the back it's still relaxed but um
i think your pelvis is underestimated so we can row like this but your pelvis is the small small cog because if that's your pelvis what is it about that high something like that if your pelvis rocks that far then your body is rocking this far
if you've got pelvis rock slightly forward from the back that creates the opportunity for the spine to be engaged and have a lever create a lever that's super effective because it's a small small cog down here everything attached to the power junction means at the right time and if we've got that effectively linked to all the other massive levers in your body at the right time which is i i think probably coming up through square off 15 degrees either side of square off is the only time we've got the blade pushing the boat in the direction that you actually want it to go so if we think about where square off is then if the blades are let's say it's 45 degrees 50 degrees then moving through that section through square off is going to be going to be super important that we've not affected the body length from the front by poor preparation or poor sequencing that you're still in that strong position and allowing the pelvis to affect that lever through the most important part of the stroke to provide power
any questions
inside leg you will see this every day too and especially with inexperienced rowers but if we don't if we don't work on it if we don't think it's important then something it'll be maintained and it's an injury risk throughout the whole careers so i think that symmetry is something that's really important it's much easier to access that in the skull so in a skull you you should be moving straight up and down the center line of the boat you're going to be working around the riggers naturally so it's a it's a lot a lot more friendly on the body in sweep if you're rotating around the rigger it's easy to have the inside leg move out to the side of the boat the the lumbar spines compromised you're not going to be able to get into that position and yes in sweep it's different because you're working around the rigger when you think about leverage it's a little different but leverage comes from the lumbar spine not the upper spine so it's this connection down here through core and lumbar spine connected to pelvis that creates the lever that's going to have the effect on the blade through the boat through the most effective part of the stroke so when you think of it in those terms it's critical that you stay central and you can work around the rigger if i'm rowing stroke side in sweep but i'm not out to the side of the boat and having to come back in what's going to happen in that movement be over onto this leg this one move to the side i'm not on this leg i'm going to come back into the center of the boat now i can start pushing and all that you can call that slip so we're not connected to anything yet that's slip so it's important that we're balanced on both feet evenly inside leg straight up and down outside leg would be brushing your outside armpit and you'd be able to reach around the rigger and and in return you will work around the rigger through the drive
we good with that one
i think that the uh i'll just follow up on that one a little bit more
right not not exactly because i'm this at the catch i'm on this far away from the angle of the handle and so that the handle is going to be in a slightly different angle to what i will be
neither locked out would mean locked out would mean like that that that's rigid i think that's loosely relaxed and if this is my inside arm for you to be able to roll the handle to square and feathered which you should be able to do without this action if you're going to do that if you think about i actually think that if you keep the elbow uh in line with or above the handle there's a much better way to think about it this is bent and so is that and so you can you can roll it to square like this but you're going to turn it and be risky like this and and in doing so what will happen if your your wrist isn't above the handle then you you've got weight pulling it down you can't manage uh or you can't control how much weight that actually is you can't feel it if you if you um if you have your elbows above the handle watch your forearm weigh no no four kilos um five kilos i don't know but the weight the weight should be you should be able to put minimal weight down on the blade to have it off the water and be balanced but you can't pull it if you're pulling here's an interesting one for you if you if you think that if you think that your inside arm think about your inside arm at the finish that is on the rig your rigger side of the boat you pull that down it's so close to the rigger to the pin you're pulling your side of the boat down and wonder why the boat's down on you you blame everyone else firstly whatever you do but you're pulling the boat down on you then you're hoping the guy next to you behind you sorry or in front of you is pulling down the same as you you don't need to do that if you do that with your outside hand the outside hand's normally not going to be doing that it's probably going to be behaving more like this though you do that with the outside hand you notice the difference when they row outside hand only that you don't have that if you have inside hand off on the recovery the boat comes back to level so not pulling the boat down on them this one is the closest to the rigger you're pulling your side of the boat down so that challenge is big and better reason to teach to roll not to not to turn so roll it in hands it's good um
stay connected through the foot stretcher
if you who does feet out as an exercise do you know why talked about that already
to stay in connection with the boat you need to be you need to be on your feet so i think about it a little bit more like you're that's your only contact to the boat really you're sitting on the seat yet but your connection to the boat to move the boat to lever the boat past the blade is through your feet and that'll give you a lot of information and if you come off your feet before the finish how are you going to balance the boat you've probably done this one actually probably underneath it and now we've got to get back up somehow and get forward somehow and pull forward with the feet pretty hard get to the front out of time and all that stuff if you stay in contact with your feet pelvis you're probably going to be up out of your pelvis if you're pulling against your feet at the back you will stay in contact with the foot stretcher and the next thing that happens is the weight on the blade so it's around 10 kilograms on the blade we'll bend the ore around 10 centimeters believe it or not 20 20 something like that if you've got a little bit of weight on that blade and i'm in back chocks if i'm pulling weight on that ore against the foot stretcher and i let the handle go it's going to go forward and so the rhythm is almost created through the pressure it's going to allow me to come forward have shoulders in front of him now i'm almost ready for the for the uh the catch again and that all that feeling is it's like it's automated but it comes through pressure little drill we did it this morning and i reckon it worked that where's jamie did it work it's um i i think the difference was that uh immediately they went to full full slide after this and it comes down to pressure again is um it's tricking athletes a little bit but if you can put the oar in the water with this much of an arm drawer if you can put the oil in the water and feel connection to your feet with that the only focus just try and feel connection to your feet and with a balanced boat so you know if you can do it in a as a pair in a four but if you can feel that connection to your feet through the back just with a little tiny arm draw like this it'll take a bit of time to get the oil in and out of the water it's it's it's not a normal pattern and and athletes can look at the ore they can play around with how they're putting your in the water with that small time frame that's good too but if you can get that all in the water and feel some pressure against your feet come straight out the full slide and maintaining that feeling that you're going to be on your feet the connection to the boat that's actually allowing you to move the boat past the blade moment that blade starts to come out of the water that slip too so we've had to slip either end now that slip too so if you can maintain that horizontal line all the way through to the finish we're going to be moving the boat for longer so there's power yeah but there's effective power too effective length so this in that out that curve ain't moving the boat that much we need the boat to be running in a horizontal direction without this one you can support your body weight out of the boat for the whole stroke cycle for the whole drive cycle by being supported by the water if you're using the water to support you between the handle and the feet you can do that release the handle and the rhythm draws you forward
questions
and females
which one
either i guess i'm thinking in terms of um i guess relating to what phil was asking before where as you come down from the catch if you're working with six foot five and then you've got much longer leveraging they're able to keep their weight in the center of the boat and reach out are you
is there more of an imperative for them to keep their upper body in the center of the boat as opposed to females who are possibly able to reach out a little bit further because they carry more weight in the center of the boat no there's six foot five females too um but uh i mean that that's a that's a question that relates to what would you do with it a taller person or a shorter person the slide lengths did you watch ollie's idler at the world championships single scalar that won uh he looked like he's rowing like this slide length like that and the guy little guy beside him had to get up to here but he rose at hunt i know the big guy rows at 114 degrees you don't need to row longer than that and that's an advantage to him but the little guy needs to needs to use more slide length and stay in the center of the boat i think the different we'll get to the difference between men and women a little bit but um it's important to understand well how would you just rig that person up you know which is another uh something we'll be going on to before we get on to technique um did that answer your question at all yeah um
ah wrote with intent every stroke yeah left in front of right now this is important this is important because after coaching sculling for a little while it dawned on me one day that the most you're trying to figure out the puzzle you know as you go through your coaching career and learn as much as you can but you're learning it through experience more than anything but the most important part of the stroke to me is this before the crossover on the drive so if i've got this if i've got my left behind my right well let that might be fine we might be able to get in into here but but but somehow
left on top or right how far is that with my little hands that's seven centimeters i measured it so between there and the center of the handle there is seven centimeters we're rigged to have one where where is it is it is it like that maybe but even then we're going to compromise the catch if we've got to go like this to to square up ideally in my mind i'd think that from the finish you'd like to finish evenly with the hands right that doesn't happen if this one goes over that one so if we're through the drive coming through the driving we get to the crossover and this one now we've already had the balance change in doing that what's that 20 centimeters um if that's changed how are you pushing off both legs impossible you're not pushing off both legs evenly if the boat's like that so through the drive and if it's not like that you're you've got another pressure applied left or right to maintain stability and balance so if this one comes up like this where's it going at the back i've seen it come straight through what's the boat doing but typically that one's going to go below that one this one's going to come through and go down to there and right here now we've got a problem so this one distorts the sequence and timing of the recovery because now i've got to get this one back over that one and this one by the way just went like that to get in the water and it's going to be on that side of the finish this is going to go like this and on the recovery now i've got to get back over to there and i'm already here now i'm not there the most important part of the drive and left in front or right is that bit this little part that
instigates the direction from catch all the way through to finish and so if this is the crossover then this little bit here is really important the first part of the arm draw to go through the crossover with a little bit of intent to say it's coming this way straight through and if you can have that then you've got balance you've got stability you've got power even power on both feet and the recovery will be the recovery will be reliable and consistent every time that's a really really hard thing to work on if if your athletes are taught to do this and i get it you know that physiology means a hell of a lot but if we've got people that can race well let's call it 6 30. 6 30 in a men's single rowing rowing this way but maybe we could get a half a second a quarter of a second a bow ball out of doing it slightly different and a little bit more effective would we take it see everybody nodding you would so it can't be your only focus and and with technique you're never going to get everything perfect of course we're going to strive to get it as close as we possibly can but you're not going to get it perfect physiology means a hell of a lot you can go very fast with that but you can improve a hell of a lot more i think all the time with technique
and the second two points there
ah no it's not third point bend it did we see something with that this morning too i've just described you know what that might look like and how much pressure it takes to actually do it so you should be able to bend that or and keep it bent all the way through the stroke and the return of energy who uses
low inertia blades
low inertia blades means the blade bends there's a bit of flexibility in that too so we've got a shaft that bends it's lighter much lighter low inertia blade um the shaft bends the blade bends so we've got bend bend all the way through the stroke we want it and like i said you try it you support the blade through the under the sleeve both under the sleeve and on the handle and put 10 kilograms on the end just interesting to see how far that bends it'll be 10 centimeters ish 9 10. put 20 on it's 20. put 30 it's 30 40 it's 40. didn't put 50 on um and so a really interesting stuff and when you realize what that takes to bend the ore and think about the return of energy from that if you can hold it through to the finish it feels good it feels good and because you get that return of energy creates a better rhythm it should feel again automated i'm certainly not taking away from the length and the power in saying anything like this i think that it's really important that you understand those other two points if you've got slip you can't bend the or
i might go back to that one
i was in the speed boat with jamie this morning whoops and talking about is there a rowing tank somewhere is there a swingy later this is in varazy
awesome tool um in this particular day we're working on working on something around the back working on being clean around the back
but one thing you can practice all the time is that sequencing from the back and it's unlikely unlikely you're going to have an effective catch you're not going to be able to to apply the pressure that you'd like to pro to put into each stroke if we're not balanced if we're not set from the back it's just uh i thought i'd show you that one and secondly um the person in the background there had never sat behind this purse that little person in the background had never sat behind this person before but just copying and what what a great tool it is um for you guys to have you got some good role models in in the squads here to be able to put um maybe not as an experienced person in behind experienced people to be able to feel and the only way you're going to get better as an athlete is to row with people that are better than you and um there's coaching we can we can help we can guide we can write programs we can drive athletes all those things but you're going to learn athletes learn so much more from each other as well oh look he must have made a mistake i must have i think it's a glitch in the computer just kept putting it just kept putting it on there
with intent was that you do it in one and not the other or do you do it in both or yeah i i think i might have copied it over by um mistake firstly but then i realized that it was probably it wasn't a typo no okay now here's what i'd like to talk to you about
before we get on to technique um i i reckon this is a really important one and and something that i i put into every presentation or talk is that so um do you know how to rig a boat you know it's it's really important and if you don't you need to ask because it's no point talking about you know this little part of the stroke or even pressure if you've got pitch out on one side compared to the other you're not going to row even pressure um if you can't operate because you rigged down here and you know you can't actually pull on that line if you've got left rigged over right i rigged a boat recently that had been rowed by somebody quite experienced the seat was over one side one centimeter and it was rigged right over left they were running left over right and wondering why they're having trouble
okay you've got to check it i don't check it every day but um sorry i didn't used to coach it uh check it every day but i would check it every few weeks or every month or so and if i ever thought that there was something in the rowing that was different to if you could notice something different about the rowing or a a a pattern creeping in i'd check the pitch first i'd check the rig first so you know i think it's it's critical that we have that set up what do you guys think absolutely
there you go it's come from the best 100 and um i think i heard noel say there that within a hundredth of a millimeter actually i can tell you a true story of uh 2016 olympic games uh hamish bond we had a very tiny rope doing the pitching and so you're measuring the number of millimeters from the bottom of the blade to the uh to the string line dropping down and we had to measure one side of the string line to the other and the string line must have been something like half a millimeter that was the position in which it had to be height changes were one metal washer which would be a quarter of a millimeter yep yep that's what it comes down to well when you get down to that level of feeling you can tell those things an athlete can tell those things are different um but it's it's totally got to do with you know that that line the angle down to the water the angle down to the water is critical um which is what's uh
what's the standard height to the water do we know that one
has anybody got it so the gate height to the water so we've got a 90 kilo boat with 90 kilogram people sitting in it and the gate was at the mid range around about what height should it be
26 27 yep so um and and that's that's about right so when you look at it this is a lot so regardless of the the um
size of the boat in some ways that that angle is critical because we measured it one day we measured it with that
tell them how you would measure it okay with the with the guys sitting in the boat i'd make sure that the boat was level both ways and so they won't be sitting in back chocks and they won't be at front shocks they'll be sitting where the boat's leveled probably about the middle um so the boat is level longitudinally and across and um take this or if it's a sweep boat i'll take this all out of the gate rest it on the gunnel if it's rougher water you put a sponge or ice cream container or something in the water so it's level with the water sponge is better and i'd measure from the center of the gate to the sponge and that should be around 27 centimeters so regardless of the rig that you've set up in the boat if that's a lot different you might have this angle down to the water you might have that angle oh i can't get the oil out of the water the height changed because of the relativity to the water so 10 kilograms of weight puts the boat into the water one centimeter each 10 kilograms puts it in the boat it puts it down in the water one centimeter so if the boat's built for 70 kilogram people and you've got 90 kilogram people in it then the the gate height at the mid range is going to be much lower
so what you're actually saying you've got you've got you're talking about average weight so aren't you so you're saying that a kilo times eight people
look i think you need to start asking questions about that because what is pitch and what influence does it have on the boat i think an interesting one is lay i've got an opinion on this but what's lay lateral pitch means you're leaning the pin out it also means that the the pitch at the catch is going to be greater let's say i want to have four degrees i want the athlete to hold it in the water better so four degrees at the catch two degrees at the finish okay why would i do that to help hold it under the water is that technical is it where you set up in the boat but the one that that got me for a long time i couldn't understand it is typically let's call it a single scale there's the pin straight up and down there's the boat level in the water okay at the catch the stern is normally down a bit at the finish the bow is down a little bit that's less pitching it why would you have decreasing pitch if you've already got decreasing pitch
i don't know any thoughts
yeah no it's not an easier extraction it's it's harder if you put lay on the on the gate so it's going from more pitch to less pitch and now at the finish we've got less pitch if the bow's down think of that then that should be harder to get out if you've got more pitch at the finish i i think the answer to it is i'll give you i think the answer is that um once you get past square off okay the blade is passed square off on the shallow end of the boat if the bow's going down and the stern's coming up the blade is on the shallow end
so where the boat's coming up it's on that end that's the only thing i could think of any thoughts it would probably be a little bit boat class specific because you'll get less pitching with an eight than you will on a single so maybe there is an implication where you might do it in one boat class and less in another boat class agreed i i think it at the end of the day what you need to do is fix the problem first if there's a problem so if we're coming out of the water for all the reasons that we described earlier if that slip do we want to cover up the problem no you want to fix the problem so if you can do that i think that that rigging and applying those principles to an individual rower is important that if we find that that helps the pattern and we can't identify a fault as to why that might be happening i i would prefer to think let's just decrease the pitch to start with if you can go do you all understand what pitch is though if absolutely vertical is zero pitch then rowing with zero pitch it's really hard to you would need to get that pressure on the face of the blade accurately from the front the horizontal force and be able to hold it there now we've raced with one degree pitch to practice that and and it was really good but it's a load also believe it or not so that loading of one degree pitch it's genuine horizontal force so zero is genuine horizontal force you won't have too much up and down and so even that analogy paints a picture in your mind if i've got a lot of pitch at the front and i'm really getting on it i'm probably going to lift the boat up out of the water a little bit and what goes up has got to come down but i reckon if you practice it and you've got this picture in your mind of being horizontal you can also apply horizontal force in a way that the boat can stay still so ideally in my mind i would like to think the boat can pop us up it doesn't need to port this down as much that you can make that boat run flat
it would be really good and i meant to do this actually it would be really good if you just wrote those questions down or we'd give you a copy of that and just give yourself a little quiz and if you don't know the answer to it find out so that you understand it better if you don't know what it means or um um you'd like to know more about it find out because i i think that every one of those questions needs to be answered you need to have an understanding of it that last little question there what length how do you get your lengths and why would you want somebody to row that long so this kind of i think there's an optimum arc ish and we could probably say there's an optimum effective arc so you might roll a little bit longer than that um
and in fact there's a there's an arc that you might race at that's a little bit shorter than that if it's really effective but there's kind of a an idea around the optimal mark and it and what it is is is you're not pinching the boat so you've got hydrodynamic lift from the catch you you need to use that but you're probably going to have more of a flat spot if it's around at 80 degrees at the catch in a skull so when you think about that what's the what's the optimum arc and and what can you what can you expect to to rig your boat out and have your athletes um rowing effectively because that affects how they're going to row too so how you set them up in the boat is seriously going to affect how they're going to apply power um or not um we talk about core stability it's going to seriously going to affect that
any ideas on scaling length
overall scaling length
about 110 degrees we'll call it and now i'll use kimian as example because i know it well but i'll probably race the olympics at about 108 107 i'd reckon she could train at 120 and has has trained at 130 degrees but not looking like it was over leaning over too far sitting back too far it's just the reach around the rigger you can get and the amount of compression i wouldn't suggest it but if you're trying to get stronger and working through the range of um range of movement than being a little bit longer than we'll call it the optima mark so i used to work on 66 44 66 degrees forward 44 back and in sweep it would be around 90 degrees no 58 32 something like that maybe i'll just tell them why community would train longer apart from the fact that it's getting her into weaker position and she comes back to racing but what happens from paddling to racing lengthwise it would get shorter very shorter when they race so you need to make sure they're not short when they paddle because it gets shorter agreed so the better you can get at it to practice the skill of no slip either end the better you can get at that the more predictable it will be now for rhett's comment there uh is exactly right and please don't think i'm saying go on row at 130 degrees or even 120 degrees go and practice it trying to roll 110 properly and if you can squeeze it out a little bit more great but i'll show you a little bit of video here of rowing probably closer to 116 degrees 120 degrees and it doesn't look overly long but she's not going to race like that what was you yeah i was going to ask a similar question but even going back to early stuff about sequential movement how much exaggeration would you recommend to ensure that when you come back to racing so an example would be how well you can not cluster over your knees with hands body slide in racing at 40 strokes a minute and four or five degrees less length versus what training is do you do you train to put that buffer in in terms of your movement pattern your length to cater for the change in structure in racing absolutely absolutely so even at race pace the the bat movement in particular um the movement off the back if you have you seen it in your own cruise at all if you get caught on your knees if the handles i mean i use a little call which is just move the hands over the shins so continue to moving the hands over the shins because even doing our little drill there the rock and row drill you can get stuck at your knees and and what can happen as you go up in in um right and we we get that progression you can have that little pause there and still get caught it's really important i think that you have that continuity of movement and to make sure that that can continuous movement out over the shins and i'm certainly not saying overreaching i reckon antonia had a great little analogy that was still used for a long time and and maybe a lot of you guys have heard it but imagine rowing in the tunnel and you're touching your head's touching the tunnel the top of the tunnel the whole time good analogy if i go down like that i'm going to hit my head on the tunnel so stay touching the top of the tunnel the whole time if you can think about it like that then the forward and back movement is not down it's forward only forward and back and we have the transfer of weight isn't up and down pick it up put it down it's along horizontal the way we're trying to move the boat the direction we want to move the boat
how do you get the balance between span and uh
yeah um well i'll i'll start with maybe having an image of what standard rig is so if i use women um we use 75 kilos as a as the mid-range for women's testing so you know if you're looking at the zero point it's the average is 75 kilos uh 178 centimeters tall so if you can imagine that athlete 178 tall 75 kilos now expand that not just out not just up expand that so if i use make it simple and say well i used to rig all the boats the same though our singles our doubles our quads would be rigged the same 158 okay span 288 inboard oh sorry yeah
288 yeah um 88 158 288 88 inboard and the only thing that changed when we went up in size boat was the all length so the span was the same the whole time and it was the same pretty much the same for everybody now moving on from that to be more individualized that um the person in the single skull who is 187 centimeters tall is a little bit different to that mold so we rode with um and as far as the power and the leverage went was different also so for somebody like kim brennan she had um 158 287 88 so you'd say that's a much lighter rig um and even in the double would set that lighter because the person could actually naturally row so much longer
yeah which is the the effective length though connected to it the other thing that matters with that what is gearing blade depth is gearing so when you when you talk about gearing if you if you've got people that are washing along just blade heart that's not gearing we can't do much with gearing there it's just moving water if we can teach to assume that the blade in the water is the fulcrum and we're moving the boat past the blade in the water then we've got a fair chance of being able to adjust the gearing from something that's quite standard i think what you're getting at there is what is what is standard for men women different sizes and how you adjust the gearing and yeah i adjusted the gearing the loading by the length and the span stayed the same however you do need to individualize for people that are um you know expanded from that
normal length but
so um what i sort of got down to with with scaling single sculling i kind of thought that it was really important for me to know in the end where the middle of the boat was i could measure the middle of the boat i suppose but the middle of balance so when the boat was if if we sat in the bow then the bow is going to be slightly down if we sat in the stern the stern's going to be slightly down so where is it level where he's sitting when it's level and trying to um the reason we did this in the beginning was to put a second fin on it knowing that we were going to go into really rough water and i wanted this i got a yacht guy to come down and show me where he would put a second fin and we put it smack in the middle of the boat which happened to be right underneath the bung in the impact and it was really important to understand where the center was um with the setup of the boat then to know where the maximum force was applied
i know that i was talking about this in terms of blade work and getting the force on but it's really important also where would that be with your body so if your shoulders are still in front of your hips even a little bit and you've got that little bit of leverage and the strokes over and i don't know what 0.6 of a second or whatever um if if that's that section of the stroke then that's really critical to understand that where the middle of the boat is and where the middle of the force is applied if you like or that critical point in time when we've got this affected it's extremely powerful so yeah you need to you need to be able to observe those things and i look if we're stuck in the bush and we didn't have a tape measure or a level or anything else how would you set your crew up i'd get them to sit bolt upright with their legs down bolt upright with their arms out straight and if that was square off that's where i'd set them all now if they're all sitting bolt upright legs down or at 90 degrees to the boat that's where i'd set them up and then we might be able to adjust so that we've got you know angles a little bit more aligned at the back so i'm kind of a finnish man but i'm only a finnish man because i think that's where you get the preparation set to have a great catch so the front-end man too but i think it's i personally sort of look at it being more in the preparation than the action
loading and gearing and stuff like that where do you get where does drive time versus recovery time come into play especially as you go up in rate yeah i kind of like to think that it's it's probably more two to one at right 20ish um i i would like to think that you've got a you've got to arrange to work on at a particular time of the season early early i'd like to think it's more like three to one but you can't get stuck with three to one and it's for the same reason we were talking about what is slide control and what is timing because at some stage you don't want to race if it's stilted so the rhythm is important and rhythm doesn't mean creeping and then driving the hell out of it it means working with the speed of the boat so i think that two to one is about about right at right 20ish and i think in about oh race base is going to be one to one that right in my talk i'll show you why that's the case but i i don't think but i don't think you definitely can't have it the other way around so i think it is important to teach slide control because you don't want the seat to arrive before the handle so you need to teach the sequence from the back the right way around and to be able to move with the speed of the boat and be competent to apply the blade to the water the feet to the stretcher and and create that that impulse at exactly the same time um and we can't do it if we're rushing we sort of can't do it it needs to be predictable
okay
that's a good little bit of information
so at 60 degrees
the loading is twice as heavy as what it is at square off we'll call that zero at 70 degrees it's three times heavier and 80 degrees six times well we know where 90 degrees is we're around at the bow ball that's a sculling boat that's a scaling boat they're really important really important where's the most effective part of the stroke and he said well i said we're always taught that it's 15 degrees either side to square off he said no that's just where it's geared the lightest and because the handle is the furthest away from the pin and 45 degrees is the most effective part of the stroke do tell um so if we've got the blade in the water if we're in a scaling boat got the blade in the water at 60 degrees there's an element of hydrodynamic lift that you still have at 45 degrees
if this is this is the foot stretcher and this is my foot at the catch i'm probably going to be up on the balls of my feet so my heels will be off the foot stretcher and my shins will be on that angle right angle this is my thigh so in initial drive there is an element of vertical force okay there's an element of vertical force and it's not until your shin thigh is a right angle that we have true horizontal force at the same time your foot has become more inco has now come more in contact with the foot stretcher and so it's just like standing up that now from here that now i've got true horizontal force and if i was lifting a heavy weight you can only imagine that the same so that is why 45 degrees would be the most effective part of the stroke and when you start thinking about that and looking at it and even in an acceleration profile what's it look like i'll sure i'll show
um nolan i worked with this one long long time ago and there's nothing nothing really i don't think there's anything new or too wrong with that any thoughts
basic technique what about the lollies for anyone who can guess the hands on the bottom right hand side whose are they
anyone know who the hands are why do you
kim there you go
one slide that i'd i'd sort of question
is that one
i reckon that's good i reckon that's good
but if i look at the height of the head there he's touching the tunnel there he's touching the tunnel there so through those middle sections of the drive he's touching the tunnel and here he's uh to me i would say just underneath it a little bit and so i'd prefer to see that i think he's this is great or good maybe it's a little bit too much there i'd even maybe suggest that he's rigged a bit tight because he's you rig a little bit too tight athlete's going to do this one to get out of the way of the handle so they can get into the comfortable position they want to they want to have around the back so setting that up that individualization i like to think that if you if you can get it right then here would be the finish and if you set back a little bit too far you get past your body but how we're going to get the left hand in front of the right hand if you're here you can't you're going to go away like that or you're going to do this so i get that maybe setting it up like this a couple of things can happen you're going to rate higher that might be good you're also going to be able to row longer at the front that's not so good because just changing the span
doesn't do that much to the gearing except if i change the span and go i'm going to have it really tight at the back or what happens i would probably want to move back if i rig it really tight at the front is that so i'm going to try and get out the way the handles i've got really tight at the back then i'm probably going to be very long so i'm around 75 80 degree i'm not going to do that body says no i want to touch the tunnel so i'm just going to row shorter so you're going to row shorter both ends so you can get the beat up yep got that you've got to find the balance of length power if you want to use rate in a another
another space in that formula i think it's length power rate in that order no question it's not over long yep it's as much power as you can provide under the water connected but the rates are derivative it's not a go-to you've got to be very careful with that if you look at the the trends in racing at the world championships a lot of high rate crews and there's a reason for that sometimes a lot of those guys that race like that have amazing motors and they can they can actually manage that load i don't know any kids or developing athletes that can do that so you've got to be able to get the basics right first you've got to be able to put the oil in the water first and you've got to be able to expect that that load is going to be significant and be able to hold it before we move on to that we okay with that beauty correct sequence hands body slide so i just put slide body hands we can make it as complicated as you like it's um it is that though from the front it's leg driven rhythm it's levering through the middle of the finish your job as coaches to demand excellence with with technique and sequence and the water you should be able to support your body weight all the way through to the right to the end of the drive and release cleanly supporting your body weight not up out of the boat but being slightly suspended if we said um weight off the seat we'd call it a quarter of a millimeter
practice your rate race technique and pressure at low rate i think that's important unless it's a tech session unless it's a very low intensity session which you do need to have in your programs if you've got the time you need to have those low intensity sessions to be able to teach proper skill
but at the end of the day i don't know that there's many boats that i would look at on on the water as as being smack on everything that we're trying to teach and the pressure is a big one so trying to develop that idea of the length the sequencing from the back the power down low is something we need to keep driving towards balance now seeing a lot of boats most people go to doubles for the first time after rowing singles does it you ever noticed it goes around one way
a lot of them do but and mostly because of this to be honest it's mostly because of that and the boat goes around one way i reckon because if you've got a rudder in the water that keeps doing that is the boat going to move one way it is so it's going to go around that way actually so you keep doing that with the fin it'll keep pushing the boat around that way balance is really important for all the reasons that we've explained so far you need to be able it's just like doing a full squad or standing up to being balanced on both legs to be able to push and move your own body weight effectively you need to have balance why would we check the boat on the way forward running yours along the water you've got to be clean you've got to think balance is really important well just maybe explain to people how you create balance
yeah i've got in my notes there somewhere um yeah pressure and again i thought it was really exciting this morning just watching jamie's crew once they found the ability to be able to hold hold that connection to the foot stretcher under the water the balance comment was wow look at the black the bow girls blade it was off the water and it was working effectively there was room there was space so it's got to be how you how you improve and thinking of improving the boat speed from the catch to the finish and it's so simple feet out yeah we do feed out did this little drill this morning where it goes take one stroke feet out so from the front in the catch position take one stroke feed out pull really hard did you come off your feet no okay that's because the boat was stationary so we've we've taken the boat from being stationary up to a speed and you still connected the foot stretcher now if we took another stroke the boat's going faster now how do we apply that same skill the boat's moving fast the water escaping underneath the blade you must have that sequence correct and be able to apply the pressure with something that's moving now so be able to lock push and lever you've got to stay in front of the pressure in front of the speed with pressure so the weight on your feet at the end of the stroke represents the pressure on the blade
there it is again um i will play this a little bit because i actually thought this bit of paddling was okay this day and there's one thing not so great with it but that's just me
but i looked at the hands around the back especially the left hand for what we were talking about where is the most important part
and the other one was
how little the bow was going down and how little the stern was going down now in my mind that was because we had the sequence right
not because and she had good
pressure but it was more about getting the sequence right and having the pressure at the right time because if if we were we were here when we should have been here in the drive well now the recovery is distorted and we can't get under the water where we need to so the length is good and she's picking it up where she reaches and the blade stays fairly consistent under the water right through to the end
but that's all cause and effect so you can't have an effective catch or row that effective length unless you're balanced and you've got the sequence right from the back and secondly it doesn't run like that unless you've got that bend on the or all the way through the stroke and you reconnect can release it clean to let the boat go and do some work too you know i'm rushing right along here harder skills how to put the air in the water does anyone know how to do that
that might do it to a certain speed but at race pace it's hard to do so to be that loose and relaxed and i agree with you that that is the level of relaxation you need to have to be able to be skillful and agile through the front to get it on but you do need to guide it and so in sweep i reckon outside hand if you could all get a box of nails on the way home drive it through that center knuckle in all your athletes outside hand when they got the handle um and and the handle i didn't mean that um the handle will rotate around that inside knuckle so coming forward knuckles stay at right angle to the boat all the time if we go around like that you've seen that one yeah elbow around like that and his inside arm is going to be like that too knuckles stay square of the boat at the catch you could have the handle that's an extreme length but the handle would be more like that okay at the finish you'd want your elbow to come through as soon as the elbow stops well so does the pressure and so to have that continuous movement around the back i think that little knuckle air would be more in contact with the handle right at the back than anywhere else that one you get that from the front that's going to be shouldery seeing that one from the front that's pressure on the inside knuckle if you keep that handle rotating around the inside that middle knuckle and being connected to little finger at the end fantastic and that is where the obvious lever is isn't it on the end of the handle inside hand needs to be able to roll the blade square and feathered without
without losing connection right there right through to the release you start doing this one pushing the handle away before we finish pulling with the outside hand we've got a problem i'm coming bree
maintaining even blade depth now knoll would know a lot about this coach some crews that have been very very effective and one thing one thing that i've noticed about a lot of his crews is that that blade depth from the front and being consistent all the way through the stroke releasing clean the boat does the work am i right yeah hamish bond when i first met him he made the statement to me he said what you'll see is you'll see my all goes in very deep at the catch halfway up the shaft he said other coaches have tried to fix that you can too if you like and that was alfred won 35 races in a row so i thought we'll leave it deep in the water very wise very wise and and uh and likewise kimmy i mean i got criticized for that that it's too deep as i'm sure as hell i'd rather that way than the other way and the key to it was i don't mind it it's a bit deep as long as we apply horizontal force from the top of the front turn top bottom i don't know from where the hands reach it at the catch that it stays connected from there horizontally
and this is this is a little bit of video showing last night i'm not going to run through too much i've run out of time but um this this day was extraordinary and it was two days after doing some extremely hard work 4.2 k pieces at race pace in really rough water and you know it wasn't comfortable or nice to be around for a little while but two days later we did three 2k pieces in this water which wasn't perfect um and she did 728 728 728 so that put her on the podium in lucerne every every piece rating 28 by the way so extremely effective in this water and i look back on that now and go it was the cause and effect again so having to work really hard to get the blade under the water in really rough conditions not my call that was the natural human instinct to get the blade under and here we have now in better water that same pattern evolving into something that was really well connected from the front minimal minimal slip all the way through the stroke and at rate 28 to be able to produce speeds that you know um we probably look for it at race pace most times i'll see if i can just play that little bit you might be able to see
what stands out to me is where the hands go to
that damn it
and if that's the catch position and you get connected there well you pretty know pretty much know the outcome of that stroke
uh sequence simple but complicatable drill sequence do that do that that drill sequence with the rock and row grip affects everything know what each hand is meant to do pelvis and we talked about that leverage and that's a power junction i'm just going to finish up in a minute leverage we talk about foot push the heels down fast get the heels down well i think you've got to think about the feet a little bit more feet connection is really important but think about it this way talk about the pelvis being a massive lever what about the feet foot connection from the front i'm not saying be up on your toes not saying have vertical force what i am saying is if you're on the bottom on the balls of your feet think about getting the pressure from let's say on the balls of your feet that's where that would be let's call that the bottom of the the ball of your foot to underneath the bottom of the ball of your foot so get the pressure lower than the ball of your foot and push push as much weight through that so your heels are going to go down but this is a lever so from the ball of your foot to your heel is probably about that far now that little lever going down think about it has every other massive lever in your body connected to it so when i talked about the pelvis being a lever it is but every lever in your body is connected to that and so your feet your foot pushing down and you levering against the foot stretcher can be a weapon i'm certainly not saying delay it or use it and you'll manipulate it any other unnatural way than what is natural so it's like standing up if you do a full squat you stand up your foot goes down you're connected to the ground if i was doing a high pull i reckon i'd be back on the balls of my feet i like that idea because i feel that that's extension and you can hold the seat firm in back chocks i think that if we can get a little bit more out of the stroke stay connected to the foot stretcher through pressure that way then i reckon that's an advantage any thoughts quickly because i'll run out of time
well i i think it's more natural i i don't teach anything i i don't think it's natural so i think you need to think about it i mean it's not something we get to the end of the stroke then we do this i think that if we're going to lift lift a weight for instance you would be you would be on the balls of your feet more i think keep the pressure through the balls of your feet more would be a better better scenario i think about it like this like yeah if i was to draw a line threw my shin bone at the bottom of my foot where would it be and i reckon cyclists have their pedals here for a reason i don't know
this was the night before
the rio final and if there's one thing i can tell you about that that's sitting up and that would be 108 degrees and even though it's not the prettiest rowing and there's things there i'd look at and go it's a little bit like this at the finish what we set out to do was exactly what she did and came in off the water and to me that was the most important and satisfying part of the whole process with her in that campaign
more you can do it
with that the more you do the more you can do that's adaptation recovery really important with adaptation pathways athletes need to master those basic skills before you dive into that don't don't rush it you need coaches need to challenge successful coach understanding event pushes boundaries has a growth mindset and listens doesn't mean we ask the athlete every second stroke what they feel or how you going it means be aware observe respects instinct so uh respects instinct not everybody's going to be like you or the athlete that you exactly want them to be but sometimes our best races are a little bit different and you've got to identify and respect what the instinct is of the athlete might might be able to produce the goods and sometimes that just takes time you've got to follow up has balance and set standards and lives by them challenges the athletes physical technical and psychological capacities and always has an and which means you're a problem solver
all right we talked about that do we talk about that can we talk about about the it and intensity fourth and fifth points
um men can there's more muscle mass men can withstand more intensity that doesn't mean we've got to go out and quickly load everybody up and do a hell of a lot more intensity you need the 80 20 rule i think 80 of the program would be under threshold you could do 20 above that's kind of what i think we're about right there um and and make sure that you're firm on that i think there's low end bottom in t2 i think there's t2 speed i don't think you need to be able to i don't think you need to go out there and look oh my heart rate's a bit higher no you need to be able to work on target boat speed in good water you need to row with intensity every stroke i think that your t2 sessions can be you you have almost recovery sessions that you could work off t2 heart rate or t1 heart rate but there's there is a boat speed you need to acknowledge um women can tolerate and and our endurance people women can do a lot more endurance i'm only mentioning this because i think they're strengths that we need to to work with um it's not something to say oh that's that and that's that no no i think women are endurance and you've got to be careful with because um understanding that we've been talking about injury a lot lately stress fracture is like this it's an aluminium ring pull you keep doing that and what's going to happen goes grey goes white the next thing it just snaps you've got to make sure that symmetry is important we're moving up and down the center line of the boat you're not getting outside the line of the boat you can see an injury coming tendonitis back rib there's lots of things we can do i think poor technique causes injury
great athletes right coach good training environment no injury or illness 10 000 hours of quality training if you've got that you've got a chance summary do the basics the best sequence blade skills intent set set standards and challenge athletes train with intent demand technical excellence knowing that it's never going to be perfect that when we get to racing no it's not going to be perfect
and training must be harder than racing and lastly we're on the rough makes you tough that's it for me i'm sorry i went over time