Which is best? Fixed vs Sliders vs RowPerfect, rowing machines compared
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In this video, Olympic rowing coach Brett Crow compares fixed, sliders, and RowPerfect ergos. Yes, he does describe the differences, but as you can see from the list below, this 18-minute video includes so much more.
You will learn:
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Video Transcript
What i'm seeing is that Ciona is missing the first most important part of the stroke right on the catch she's missing that much at the start of a stroke and is not connected to the wheel with it can anybody else see that
so once again like um what i'll do with a slider I'll Ciona just stop here and when you come in and you come in here and you all i want you to do is squeeze on the feet here there we go squeeze yeah and squeeze all right now you've got to try and do that very first the seat goes and then it connects to the wheel oh just the first thing you want me to do yeah so you can actually still not bad no no connection right little things you can do right take one foot out now
yeah just come in and do it with the
now there's a timing issue there between the seat stopping and the handle moving or the connection with the stop the connection now as soon as you come into here you got to know where your catch is you've got to get pressure on here soon
right here slightly better and again
can you feel that yeah yeah now it's still slightly out now that's the difference between being a good catch on the water and not it's that little bit of and the catch here is exactly the same as what it's going to be on the water you want the blade to go in you want i suppose one thing is i've always asked my athletes what is a fast catch they look at me and go oh how quick you get the blade in yeah right yeah but a fast catch is this thing here it's the cover of the blade and it's the pressure against the blade with the legs is what a quick catche is so as soon as that blade covers it either sometimes it takes a long time or you push before the blades and it's the cover and the pressure against it only with locking the whole thing in so some of them get up there and they go oh i've got a fast catch but it's not that at all it's just and generally the weight of the blade will be a what a quick catch is anyway because if you sit there and hold your hands down here and let the blade go it just goes drops through the water anyway so that's the difference between a good catch and a bad one can you feel the difference here yeah a little bit now just see if you can recreate that
That's better
can anybody see the difference now it is slightly better but it's the athlete's brain that has to change you can see it so you've got to actually find ways of how do i get here to change that
And i guarantee if she picked that up there she'd get a far better send on it a far better easier release if you miss it here you will add it to the other end somewhere so we're trying to get them to get it what you're actually doing is when you get to the front you're actually connecting the handle to the wheel to the feet so when you move with your feet pressure it takes the wheel with it straight away but you can have a period of time where there's a delay like it starts starting to happen again now the seat moves the handle goes and then the blade handle connects about there
now you've got to pick that out with your eye and then you're going to go right okay now how am i going to change that as a coach and there's no right way or wrong way of doing that you've just got to decide how you're going to try and do that and then what's the quickest way to do that and generally the quickest way to do that is getting the athlete to feel it if the athlete can't feel it you're going to have a battle you've got it's going to be a process to go through but as soon as you get the athlete to understand what's happening and they go oh there it is there that's when you'll start getting the change it's a bit harder to feel because it takes a while
no no not at all
out of um performance i am i can get on there and do it straight away it's a feel thing you've got to be able to feel the connection and take the load
Ciona there is starting to get better at it she's starting to understand it a little bit better but understand if you miss it here where are you going to try and catch it up so you start working it harder there so you've got to get that part right there so they can get the right release on that end so the other thing is too that we want good posture just sit on the back so yeah now just rock over to a good position that's good you never want it facing back the other way like if i got on it that's what would be happening
but anybody's back set out here when you get to the front just just drop your back down so you just rub with bad posture like that what do you do when you get to the catch
come forward you grab with these but if you're sitting nice and tall that's locked in these can be loose and then you're just in a position to just push it away
now the only thing other than that i would like to see from Ciona is i'd like to see the back connect it to the legs a bit better
How do I do that?
now righto row straight arms for a little bit
now we're trying to use the bigger muscles aren't we where are the bigger muscles but here the hips and the muscles at the side of the back
now to me boat speed is back speed but you've got back speed can only be generated from one thing there's connection and leg speed so if you're well connected and you drive you want your back speed to go like that so the boat's going to go like that but if your back just slowly falls open what's the boat going to do you're only going to have a boat that goes a certain speed but if you can add legs and back to it you're going to really send the boat off so therefore then you can just sit there roll around the back and quietly come forward if you haven't got any back speed
you're going to actually chase the boat to the front
Can i use my arms again? Only if you keep doing it like that
You'll get a lot of power out of doing it properly i know with the light weights that i've like with um being on sliders being light weights we had to try and generate as much force as possible with um with a long stroke so we could because what you're actually doing is a little bit like what mike sprackling's doing you're actually the longer you can make it the more revolutions that we're going to get so the better you go on sliders i had to get the lightweights to row technically as best as possible so you get good length down the front you had to really hang on to it so you could actually you're gathering momentum of the of the wheel and getting a better score out of it where the heavyweights started working out the harder you jam it off the front the better but they had physical power to do that lightweights don't so we have to row technically very good all the time that's why i suppose the world's best time is in the lightweight's favor because technically they're only 70 kilos but they they've got to do it extremely well all the time so i believe that the lightweights on the sliders were very very good at it but at the same time i still believe that sliders have made us slightly soft because on a slider you can go out fast you can settle down and you go home fast on a fixed if you try and do that you won't go home fast you've got to maintain it through the middle and that's one of the most important parts of race between the 500 and 1500 meters so you have to maintain good form and good power in the middle of a stroke or through a middle of a race so use them both use them all i like that one up there because you if you've got people that want to grab you've got to try and get them out of it the row perfect becomes very important on that side of it the sliders i believe if you're doing an hour like i do i like doing a lot of hour eggs so i get my light weight to sit on the egg for for an hour to pull in 150 splits and about 20 rating you know i like that but for an hour they'll reckon they're really good because they make you still keeping and patterning if you don't know if you lose the patterning your crash crash so they've still it keeps you thinking a little bit better these are probably a little bit different you can fall in and out of very much but i i like using these for um building a little bit of inner strength that and athletes a little bit so use them all if you've got the if you can have the opportunity but at the end of the day it's about what what you do out there to go fast this builds the engine reasonably well to put it away you can use it like that but there's still like i said you can still do them very well and still get a good score
one thing it does really teach is the connection around the front and looseness and just the push away and the core connection with the legs
when the seat moves too much it's a lot of it's to do with the pressure around here and possibly need to concentrate more on the connection and push through the hips
and then it's a machine that you've got to actually coordinate the whole thing and when you get to the back you can't be working too much it's got to be released and flow
generally if the seat goes astray it's a connection between the feet and the wheel at the catch that goes astray on it and you'll get some people that will shove it quite hard and then it will start rocking
quite badly at the end of the day the athlete has to work out how it works properly
therefore what's happening there lucy's pushing at the catch before she's got the connection on the handle at the same time so she's actually pushing the machine away from her rather than taking the whole thing together so therefore then you start you start to move moving the seat moving so very important about how you get the connection on the feet and the wheel at the same time right on the catch.
So that's just the rowperfect they are very technical, lets jus sit on a slider and have a look at that for a bit
one thing though is everybody you'll have a look at uh a world championship final you've got six crews across there now you'll be able to sit there and say well that crew is different than that one and that one every the whole six of them will all be different about the way they approach it or slow you'll be slight subtle changes so there's no model fits everybody as a coach you're going to say well this is my patenting as johnny talked in there this is how i want the crew to row
you're gonna say that that's pretty good the only thing that i would probably
Posture is pretty good
Erg's moving pretty well
possibly a little bit of tightness in the lower back or the hamstrings when she's coming into the catch where her bum sort of tucking under a little bit rather than being nice and firm she comes forward it goes she just collapses a little bit
everybody can see that you know that's that's a posture thing very important to get right from the boat
the only thing i can see here a little bit to is and it's probably something that i would try and fix that probably there's a little bit too much seat drive and then body carrying when you've got to connect right off the catch and when you start pushing you know the body should naturally just start opening with the leg push because it's a natural thing if you're if you're strong in the core and you're connected to the catch does everybody get that a little bit
you know you'll get a lot of lots of different some people coach that they're looking to throw back like that and then push you know the way i look at a if you're in a single scull how does a single move
you put everything into the catch but it's not gonna you're not gonna get a response from the boat are you so the later the pressure the faster you're gonna get the boats moving it it's all about load at the catch you get you get up there you'll drop a blade in now the load you get on the catch should be what you hold all the way through the stroke shouldn't it everybody agree with that so with a single scull you get out there and you drop it in your new push and you relax and loading everything up but the boat's not going to really start moving it's a bit later on so if you get to the catch in the single and try getting everything going in the front
you're going to never quite pick the boat up right and you're going to come off with too much of the back now I suppose you think about the pair is just pretty much the same that you get into a four the pressure's gonna come on a little bit sooner and you get into an eight then the pressure is going to be a lot sooner again so it's just a difference of loading how you load different boats and the skill of the athlete to do that
see a lot of times a lot of exercises that i will do with athletes
I will actually come under the front and go right just come to the catch now what i want you to do is to feel it nice and loose if when you're driving about your arms should still be like there's no no doubt about it now what I want you to do is just squeeze against the handle
now you try and bend the arms now
you can't can you so it's a little bit of an exercise you get right you come in now push so and just make sure that they're pushing you don't want the bum to go like this you don't want the body to go like that you just want them to push this part here it's another exercise that i do is when they're in that position i sit here now it's going to catch now not not hard but just push
so rather than here pushing against my leg or here you want that part to push against your leg because that means the body's connected to it where through here the lower part of your back so instead of pushing the bum out against your leg or just a seat against your leg so just push again she's pushing here against me which is really really good because you know that that's going to be connected it's going to hold right through but if you just just do the other way just push his thumb like that no good because that's not there's nothing being held there and then just do the top front and then it becomes no leg not no hip driven difference that's important when you do that can you so just do it how i said before now push there see now that that's the whole thing's engaged so there shouldn't be any tension here it should be nice and loose but it's all locked and right through
well you can talk to your blue in the face unless the athlete can feel that part of it you're just actually going to be talking to a brick wall where so you've got to ask the questions that they're actually going to feel things happening in the right place
so once again like um what i'll do with a slider I'll Ciona just stop here and when you come in and you come in here and you all i want you to do is squeeze on the feet here there we go squeeze yeah and squeeze all right now you've got to try and do that very first the seat goes and then it connects to the wheel oh just the first thing you want me to do yeah so you can actually still not bad no no connection right little things you can do right take one foot out now
yeah just come in and do it with the
now there's a timing issue there between the seat stopping and the handle moving or the connection with the stop the connection now as soon as you come into here you got to know where your catch is you've got to get pressure on here soon
right here slightly better and again
can you feel that yeah yeah now it's still slightly out now that's the difference between being a good catch on the water and not it's that little bit of and the catch here is exactly the same as what it's going to be on the water you want the blade to go in you want i suppose one thing is i've always asked my athletes what is a fast catch they look at me and go oh how quick you get the blade in yeah right yeah but a fast catch is this thing here it's the cover of the blade and it's the pressure against the blade with the legs is what a quick catche is so as soon as that blade covers it either sometimes it takes a long time or you push before the blades and it's the cover and the pressure against it only with locking the whole thing in so some of them get up there and they go oh i've got a fast catch but it's not that at all it's just and generally the weight of the blade will be a what a quick catch is anyway because if you sit there and hold your hands down here and let the blade go it just goes drops through the water anyway so that's the difference between a good catch and a bad one can you feel the difference here yeah a little bit now just see if you can recreate that
That's better
can anybody see the difference now it is slightly better but it's the athlete's brain that has to change you can see it so you've got to actually find ways of how do i get here to change that
And i guarantee if she picked that up there she'd get a far better send on it a far better easier release if you miss it here you will add it to the other end somewhere so we're trying to get them to get it what you're actually doing is when you get to the front you're actually connecting the handle to the wheel to the feet so when you move with your feet pressure it takes the wheel with it straight away but you can have a period of time where there's a delay like it starts starting to happen again now the seat moves the handle goes and then the blade handle connects about there
now you've got to pick that out with your eye and then you're going to go right okay now how am i going to change that as a coach and there's no right way or wrong way of doing that you've just got to decide how you're going to try and do that and then what's the quickest way to do that and generally the quickest way to do that is getting the athlete to feel it if the athlete can't feel it you're going to have a battle you've got it's going to be a process to go through but as soon as you get the athlete to understand what's happening and they go oh there it is there that's when you'll start getting the change it's a bit harder to feel because it takes a while
no no not at all
out of um performance i am i can get on there and do it straight away it's a feel thing you've got to be able to feel the connection and take the load
Ciona there is starting to get better at it she's starting to understand it a little bit better but understand if you miss it here where are you going to try and catch it up so you start working it harder there so you've got to get that part right there so they can get the right release on that end so the other thing is too that we want good posture just sit on the back so yeah now just rock over to a good position that's good you never want it facing back the other way like if i got on it that's what would be happening
but anybody's back set out here when you get to the front just just drop your back down so you just rub with bad posture like that what do you do when you get to the catch
come forward you grab with these but if you're sitting nice and tall that's locked in these can be loose and then you're just in a position to just push it away
now the only thing other than that i would like to see from Ciona is i'd like to see the back connect it to the legs a bit better
How do I do that?
now righto row straight arms for a little bit
now we're trying to use the bigger muscles aren't we where are the bigger muscles but here the hips and the muscles at the side of the back
now to me boat speed is back speed but you've got back speed can only be generated from one thing there's connection and leg speed so if you're well connected and you drive you want your back speed to go like that so the boat's going to go like that but if your back just slowly falls open what's the boat going to do you're only going to have a boat that goes a certain speed but if you can add legs and back to it you're going to really send the boat off so therefore then you can just sit there roll around the back and quietly come forward if you haven't got any back speed
you're going to actually chase the boat to the front
Can i use my arms again? Only if you keep doing it like that
You'll get a lot of power out of doing it properly i know with the light weights that i've like with um being on sliders being light weights we had to try and generate as much force as possible with um with a long stroke so we could because what you're actually doing is a little bit like what mike sprackling's doing you're actually the longer you can make it the more revolutions that we're going to get so the better you go on sliders i had to get the lightweights to row technically as best as possible so you get good length down the front you had to really hang on to it so you could actually you're gathering momentum of the of the wheel and getting a better score out of it where the heavyweights started working out the harder you jam it off the front the better but they had physical power to do that lightweights don't so we have to row technically very good all the time that's why i suppose the world's best time is in the lightweight's favor because technically they're only 70 kilos but they they've got to do it extremely well all the time so i believe that the lightweights on the sliders were very very good at it but at the same time i still believe that sliders have made us slightly soft because on a slider you can go out fast you can settle down and you go home fast on a fixed if you try and do that you won't go home fast you've got to maintain it through the middle and that's one of the most important parts of race between the 500 and 1500 meters so you have to maintain good form and good power in the middle of a stroke or through a middle of a race so use them both use them all i like that one up there because you if you've got people that want to grab you've got to try and get them out of it the row perfect becomes very important on that side of it the sliders i believe if you're doing an hour like i do i like doing a lot of hour eggs so i get my light weight to sit on the egg for for an hour to pull in 150 splits and about 20 rating you know i like that but for an hour they'll reckon they're really good because they make you still keeping and patterning if you don't know if you lose the patterning your crash crash so they've still it keeps you thinking a little bit better these are probably a little bit different you can fall in and out of very much but i i like using these for um building a little bit of inner strength that and athletes a little bit so use them all if you've got the if you can have the opportunity but at the end of the day it's about what what you do out there to go fast this builds the engine reasonably well to put it away you can use it like that but there's still like i said you can still do them very well and still get a good score
one thing it does really teach is the connection around the front and looseness and just the push away and the core connection with the legs
when the seat moves too much it's a lot of it's to do with the pressure around here and possibly need to concentrate more on the connection and push through the hips
and then it's a machine that you've got to actually coordinate the whole thing and when you get to the back you can't be working too much it's got to be released and flow
generally if the seat goes astray it's a connection between the feet and the wheel at the catch that goes astray on it and you'll get some people that will shove it quite hard and then it will start rocking
quite badly at the end of the day the athlete has to work out how it works properly
therefore what's happening there lucy's pushing at the catch before she's got the connection on the handle at the same time so she's actually pushing the machine away from her rather than taking the whole thing together so therefore then you start you start to move moving the seat moving so very important about how you get the connection on the feet and the wheel at the same time right on the catch.
So that's just the rowperfect they are very technical, lets jus sit on a slider and have a look at that for a bit
one thing though is everybody you'll have a look at uh a world championship final you've got six crews across there now you'll be able to sit there and say well that crew is different than that one and that one every the whole six of them will all be different about the way they approach it or slow you'll be slight subtle changes so there's no model fits everybody as a coach you're going to say well this is my patenting as johnny talked in there this is how i want the crew to row
you're gonna say that that's pretty good the only thing that i would probably
Posture is pretty good
Erg's moving pretty well
possibly a little bit of tightness in the lower back or the hamstrings when she's coming into the catch where her bum sort of tucking under a little bit rather than being nice and firm she comes forward it goes she just collapses a little bit
everybody can see that you know that's that's a posture thing very important to get right from the boat
the only thing i can see here a little bit to is and it's probably something that i would try and fix that probably there's a little bit too much seat drive and then body carrying when you've got to connect right off the catch and when you start pushing you know the body should naturally just start opening with the leg push because it's a natural thing if you're if you're strong in the core and you're connected to the catch does everybody get that a little bit
you know you'll get a lot of lots of different some people coach that they're looking to throw back like that and then push you know the way i look at a if you're in a single scull how does a single move
you put everything into the catch but it's not gonna you're not gonna get a response from the boat are you so the later the pressure the faster you're gonna get the boats moving it it's all about load at the catch you get you get up there you'll drop a blade in now the load you get on the catch should be what you hold all the way through the stroke shouldn't it everybody agree with that so with a single scull you get out there and you drop it in your new push and you relax and loading everything up but the boat's not going to really start moving it's a bit later on so if you get to the catch in the single and try getting everything going in the front
you're going to never quite pick the boat up right and you're going to come off with too much of the back now I suppose you think about the pair is just pretty much the same that you get into a four the pressure's gonna come on a little bit sooner and you get into an eight then the pressure is going to be a lot sooner again so it's just a difference of loading how you load different boats and the skill of the athlete to do that
see a lot of times a lot of exercises that i will do with athletes
I will actually come under the front and go right just come to the catch now what i want you to do is to feel it nice and loose if when you're driving about your arms should still be like there's no no doubt about it now what I want you to do is just squeeze against the handle
now you try and bend the arms now
you can't can you so it's a little bit of an exercise you get right you come in now push so and just make sure that they're pushing you don't want the bum to go like this you don't want the body to go like that you just want them to push this part here it's another exercise that i do is when they're in that position i sit here now it's going to catch now not not hard but just push
so rather than here pushing against my leg or here you want that part to push against your leg because that means the body's connected to it where through here the lower part of your back so instead of pushing the bum out against your leg or just a seat against your leg so just push again she's pushing here against me which is really really good because you know that that's going to be connected it's going to hold right through but if you just just do the other way just push his thumb like that no good because that's not there's nothing being held there and then just do the top front and then it becomes no leg not no hip driven difference that's important when you do that can you so just do it how i said before now push there see now that that's the whole thing's engaged so there shouldn't be any tension here it should be nice and loose but it's all locked and right through
well you can talk to your blue in the face unless the athlete can feel that part of it you're just actually going to be talking to a brick wall where so you've got to ask the questions that they're actually going to feel things happening in the right place