How much does the oar bend when rowing? Easy vs Race Pace
|
In this in-depth video, Lachlan shows how much the oar bends when rowing easy vs. race pace. He uses slow motion and angle measurement to show how the oar loads up at different parts of the stroke. It's essential to understand when the oar bends (stores elastic energy) and when it straightens (releases that stored energy). Once you know this, you can use these high tech oars to maximal effect.
Looking at the rowing stroke from this angle gives you a lot of information about the drive phase's effectiveness, what the athlete is getting right, and what needs improvement. |
|
Video Transcript
so people know that the oar bends a little bit when you're rowing along but I wanted to make this video to show you just how much it bends uh when it bends and when it straightens back out
so the idea is that you place the blade at catch it's got a little bit of give in it so it doesn't put too much pressure through your lower back and then you get some elastic energy stored towards the catch when you're engaging your really powerful leg and back muscles and you get that returned as elastic energy towards the finish so let's just have a look at a stroke and see what it looks like
so that was quite quick i just do it nice and slowly so you can see here blade squares up go-to place, and as soon as you start placing the blade you can see the oar starts to bend these are a set of soft wintech rds's so they're probably going to bend more than others so be good for this video to show you as you come through the stroke you can see it's got quite a bend on the oar there and it almost looks like it's going to break but obviously they don't and then you can see it's starting to straighten up right at the end there so this is me just rowing along probably about sixty percent effort so not trying not trying particularly hard just trying to focus on technique so I'll have a look so we can look at measure the angles here so
i go from so we'll go from here measure straight down the oar
and you see basically lined up with the the top of the oar in the middle so it curves around a bit so we'll just look at the back of the oar you've got 180 degrees so the oar is perfectly straight before it enters the water so it gives us a starting point all right so we'll go go through the stroke a little bit place
this is probably where I've got my the blade fully engaged so probably where the maximum load is going to be so my legs are going down as hard as they can pretty much you know for the effort and my body's opening up so I really got the big muscles engaged so let's have a look again
so you can see that's a 180 degree mark bring it back try and line it up with that same point
and we're looking at about 168 degrees i mean there'll be some distortion with the the water and the light refracting through there so so there'll be some distortion with the water but that's about what it is so we go a bit further through the stroke
this is about the square off position so when the handle is at 90 degrees to the direction of the boat and so this is where you got the most effective use so you're pretty much all the force on the oar on the blade is pushing the boat the oar back that way which means the boat is going forward by the same amount and it's where it's most effective so let's have a look this is where we'd ideally like to be you know getting most of the elastic energy back let's see if we have released any energy by looking at the angle
so again there's our 180 degrees
and you can see there that we're actually at 165 so we've actually increased the bend on the oar
increased the bend on the oar from what it was let's go a little bit further through the stroke
this is really towards the end of the finish so you can see that between here where we just measured and here we're releasing a lot of that elastic energy so it's not perfectly at the perpendicular, but it's pretty close so all that so that extra energy that we couldn't get into the stroke here because the force we were starting to pinch the boat so the force was you know I thought the blade was going out this way which meant you know we were trying to squeeze the boat
um that would create a bit of a lift force but essentially we're storing the energy in this oar so go back to
the finish so this is so the difference between here and here this is probably the hands about i don't know maybe 15 centimeters away from the body this is the hands at the body so you can see hold holding it all the way through let's have a look here and see what the uh the angle is
so there's a 180 degrees
169 so we started to release a little bit of the energy through this part of the stroke so just before this point so we're starting to release that energy that we've got stored up go a little bit further
and this is the tap this is basically the tap out you can see I've done pretty well at holding the blade in the water there, so I've only got a very small amount of air caught so you've got a really large amount of air caught behind the blade if you draw the hands down into down towards the the pelvis sort of area instead of drawing them up towards the chest you really want to hold the blade in the water for as long as possible so let's have a look and see what we've got with the angle there
now so there's a 180 degrees
basically got probably 177 degrees so the oarhttps://www.decentrowing.com/616-heights-how-to-know-if-you-should-change-yours.html is pretty much perfectly straight all that elastic energy has been released and most importantly it's been released in the water
go a little bit further and this is the tap this is what i'm starting to tap out you can see my blade's starting to come out of the water go for the tap out let's have a look at the angle there
and you can see it's right at that 180 degrees just as it was before it was placed in the water
so you know that's pretty good, but this is this is like rowing along nice and calmly it's beautiful conditions you know everything seems to be working well and you know we're releasing most of that energy between here and here basically holding it from the catch as the blade goes in the water you can see it starts to bend immediately grabbing that water levering the boat past you can see i'm not catching any air through the stroke until about here i probably should be holding it a little bit deeper just in this last little bit of the stroke so just keep it under the water so it doesn't pick up that that air
and then onto the feather so let's have a look at what it looks like at race pace now so here i'm doing rating 35 i'm having a go it's just after i did that uh lower piece so we can measure the oar angles again and see see what has happened when the rating goes up
so there's a 180 degrees
straight before it goes in the water
okay so as I take the catch you can see that the bend starts before the blade you know maybe a halfway down down the blade the oar starts to bend
and so
let's have a look-see if i can find where this spot is okay so i can just see the top of the blade just see the top of the blade here so we'll try and line that bit up
and get an angle
there's 180
and so we're probably right back
and 162 163
as we come through
as we reach square off about here to be about square off so 90 degrees
to the run of the boat measure the angle again
180
and so you can see you've got even a little bit more so between
between those two points so just as the body and legs are engaged starting to open up and square off position we've actually put a little bit more elastic energy into the oar through through this part of the stroke through this part of the arc
and so at the moment we've got maximum force on the blade going this way and the boat will therefore be maximally going forwards which is what we want
come through see if we can work out where it starts to straighten so looks like start to straighten just after the square off
going through straightening
and there it is the finish so let's have a look here
so this is just probably about the same spot about 10 20 centimeters before the hands are into the body about here let's have a look-see if we've lost it convert any of that elastic energy
so we're looking at very similar numbers so pretty much the same so when i'm on high rating holds 160 pretty much all the way through towards the finish just before the tap out so starting to straighten about here so it's all happening right at the end just before the tap out
so you can see I've stopped applying the power about here and therefore the blade is straightening out
and let's measure that that should be about straight there
yeah so pretty much right on that 180 degrees
so one thing you can see here is I've caught a fair bit of air, so I've actually not held it through high enough so not drawing the hands up towards the chest they've more come down and drawn down into the towards the pelvis a bit more which means I'll catch a bit of air and it all means I'll have quite a big puddle let's see if we can see it as I tap out sort of hard to see because when the blade feathers it blocks the view you can see mostly we've stayed well connected all the way towards the finish so the blade's really only releasing that that elastic energy right at the tap tap down so
place the blade bends to about 160 degrees here stays at 160 all the way until just his last finish part so through the square off so basically it means that as you come through the stroke it's got a little bit of give in the oar here so when you're at the catch you can see by bending just that little bit as you apply the power it's really taking a lot of the strain off your lower back and your legs just at that initiation so you can really get on quickly with the legs with these soft oars and it doesn't feel unforgiving you hold pretty much hold the same bend through the oar throughout and then it gets released right before the finish so especially with these soft oars it's important that you hold the blades in the water all the way to the tap out otherwise if you say i started tapping out here i'd be wasting all that elastic energy that I had in the oar
having said that though is probably not too much force that's stored in that oar in the bend that is because it bends so quickly i mean yeah there's some power at the catch here but it bends extraordinarily quickly before i've had a chance to apply maximal force to that foot stretcher so the oar bends to a point will hold its bend there it won't bend anymore and then i'll release it so that's probably one of the main reasons why you don't see a lot of difference in performance between soft oars and stiffer oars is because they only bend a certain amount and it's only for a small part of the stroke so i really like the way these feel at the catch i think the the stiffer oars are a lot harder on my back i don't like the way it feels i feel like really really loaded up
okay so I'm just going to play play a bit of this video at the high rate so you can get a feeling for how hard it would be to see how this bends and you know what the oar is doing in the water as you're rowing along without slowing it down
yes you can see the bend but it's not ideal
so I hope that gives you a good idea of how much you're oars are bending when they they're in the water how the bend is held in the oar and when it's released so stiffer oar bend in exactly the same way it just won't bend by as much
so i'll have to get a set of stiffer oars go for a row with them see if the bend see what the bend looks like try and get a day as nice as this and i'll make another video on that yeah if you've got a gopro mounting it on the hand on the handle of the oar like i have here looking down the shaft is extremely useful you can see i get a perfect view of the catch i can see how well buried my blade is i can see if any water has been i mean any air has been caught behind the blade which will reduce the efficiency of it and the effectiveness of it and you can see the extraction really well so for me i just want to be holding it in a little bit longer so drawing it up a little bit more and not be so keen to get on to the next stroke a lot of rowers are in this boat and you don't want to be catching all that air at the finish but all in all pretty well connected you know the catch could be a little bit cleaner you can see there is quite messy but you know getting the blade buried quite quickly and more importantly engaged quite quickly
so the idea is that you place the blade at catch it's got a little bit of give in it so it doesn't put too much pressure through your lower back and then you get some elastic energy stored towards the catch when you're engaging your really powerful leg and back muscles and you get that returned as elastic energy towards the finish so let's just have a look at a stroke and see what it looks like
so that was quite quick i just do it nice and slowly so you can see here blade squares up go-to place, and as soon as you start placing the blade you can see the oar starts to bend these are a set of soft wintech rds's so they're probably going to bend more than others so be good for this video to show you as you come through the stroke you can see it's got quite a bend on the oar there and it almost looks like it's going to break but obviously they don't and then you can see it's starting to straighten up right at the end there so this is me just rowing along probably about sixty percent effort so not trying not trying particularly hard just trying to focus on technique so I'll have a look so we can look at measure the angles here so
i go from so we'll go from here measure straight down the oar
and you see basically lined up with the the top of the oar in the middle so it curves around a bit so we'll just look at the back of the oar you've got 180 degrees so the oar is perfectly straight before it enters the water so it gives us a starting point all right so we'll go go through the stroke a little bit place
this is probably where I've got my the blade fully engaged so probably where the maximum load is going to be so my legs are going down as hard as they can pretty much you know for the effort and my body's opening up so I really got the big muscles engaged so let's have a look again
so you can see that's a 180 degree mark bring it back try and line it up with that same point
and we're looking at about 168 degrees i mean there'll be some distortion with the the water and the light refracting through there so so there'll be some distortion with the water but that's about what it is so we go a bit further through the stroke
this is about the square off position so when the handle is at 90 degrees to the direction of the boat and so this is where you got the most effective use so you're pretty much all the force on the oar on the blade is pushing the boat the oar back that way which means the boat is going forward by the same amount and it's where it's most effective so let's have a look this is where we'd ideally like to be you know getting most of the elastic energy back let's see if we have released any energy by looking at the angle
so again there's our 180 degrees
and you can see there that we're actually at 165 so we've actually increased the bend on the oar
increased the bend on the oar from what it was let's go a little bit further through the stroke
this is really towards the end of the finish so you can see that between here where we just measured and here we're releasing a lot of that elastic energy so it's not perfectly at the perpendicular, but it's pretty close so all that so that extra energy that we couldn't get into the stroke here because the force we were starting to pinch the boat so the force was you know I thought the blade was going out this way which meant you know we were trying to squeeze the boat
um that would create a bit of a lift force but essentially we're storing the energy in this oar so go back to
the finish so this is so the difference between here and here this is probably the hands about i don't know maybe 15 centimeters away from the body this is the hands at the body so you can see hold holding it all the way through let's have a look here and see what the uh the angle is
so there's a 180 degrees
169 so we started to release a little bit of the energy through this part of the stroke so just before this point so we're starting to release that energy that we've got stored up go a little bit further
and this is the tap this is basically the tap out you can see I've done pretty well at holding the blade in the water there, so I've only got a very small amount of air caught so you've got a really large amount of air caught behind the blade if you draw the hands down into down towards the the pelvis sort of area instead of drawing them up towards the chest you really want to hold the blade in the water for as long as possible so let's have a look and see what we've got with the angle there
now so there's a 180 degrees
basically got probably 177 degrees so the oarhttps://www.decentrowing.com/616-heights-how-to-know-if-you-should-change-yours.html is pretty much perfectly straight all that elastic energy has been released and most importantly it's been released in the water
go a little bit further and this is the tap this is what i'm starting to tap out you can see my blade's starting to come out of the water go for the tap out let's have a look at the angle there
and you can see it's right at that 180 degrees just as it was before it was placed in the water
so you know that's pretty good, but this is this is like rowing along nice and calmly it's beautiful conditions you know everything seems to be working well and you know we're releasing most of that energy between here and here basically holding it from the catch as the blade goes in the water you can see it starts to bend immediately grabbing that water levering the boat past you can see i'm not catching any air through the stroke until about here i probably should be holding it a little bit deeper just in this last little bit of the stroke so just keep it under the water so it doesn't pick up that that air
and then onto the feather so let's have a look at what it looks like at race pace now so here i'm doing rating 35 i'm having a go it's just after i did that uh lower piece so we can measure the oar angles again and see see what has happened when the rating goes up
so there's a 180 degrees
straight before it goes in the water
okay so as I take the catch you can see that the bend starts before the blade you know maybe a halfway down down the blade the oar starts to bend
and so
let's have a look-see if i can find where this spot is okay so i can just see the top of the blade just see the top of the blade here so we'll try and line that bit up
and get an angle
there's 180
and so we're probably right back
and 162 163
as we come through
as we reach square off about here to be about square off so 90 degrees
to the run of the boat measure the angle again
180
and so you can see you've got even a little bit more so between
between those two points so just as the body and legs are engaged starting to open up and square off position we've actually put a little bit more elastic energy into the oar through through this part of the stroke through this part of the arc
and so at the moment we've got maximum force on the blade going this way and the boat will therefore be maximally going forwards which is what we want
come through see if we can work out where it starts to straighten so looks like start to straighten just after the square off
going through straightening
and there it is the finish so let's have a look here
so this is just probably about the same spot about 10 20 centimeters before the hands are into the body about here let's have a look-see if we've lost it convert any of that elastic energy
so we're looking at very similar numbers so pretty much the same so when i'm on high rating holds 160 pretty much all the way through towards the finish just before the tap out so starting to straighten about here so it's all happening right at the end just before the tap out
so you can see I've stopped applying the power about here and therefore the blade is straightening out
and let's measure that that should be about straight there
yeah so pretty much right on that 180 degrees
so one thing you can see here is I've caught a fair bit of air, so I've actually not held it through high enough so not drawing the hands up towards the chest they've more come down and drawn down into the towards the pelvis a bit more which means I'll catch a bit of air and it all means I'll have quite a big puddle let's see if we can see it as I tap out sort of hard to see because when the blade feathers it blocks the view you can see mostly we've stayed well connected all the way towards the finish so the blade's really only releasing that that elastic energy right at the tap tap down so
place the blade bends to about 160 degrees here stays at 160 all the way until just his last finish part so through the square off so basically it means that as you come through the stroke it's got a little bit of give in the oar here so when you're at the catch you can see by bending just that little bit as you apply the power it's really taking a lot of the strain off your lower back and your legs just at that initiation so you can really get on quickly with the legs with these soft oars and it doesn't feel unforgiving you hold pretty much hold the same bend through the oar throughout and then it gets released right before the finish so especially with these soft oars it's important that you hold the blades in the water all the way to the tap out otherwise if you say i started tapping out here i'd be wasting all that elastic energy that I had in the oar
having said that though is probably not too much force that's stored in that oar in the bend that is because it bends so quickly i mean yeah there's some power at the catch here but it bends extraordinarily quickly before i've had a chance to apply maximal force to that foot stretcher so the oar bends to a point will hold its bend there it won't bend anymore and then i'll release it so that's probably one of the main reasons why you don't see a lot of difference in performance between soft oars and stiffer oars is because they only bend a certain amount and it's only for a small part of the stroke so i really like the way these feel at the catch i think the the stiffer oars are a lot harder on my back i don't like the way it feels i feel like really really loaded up
okay so I'm just going to play play a bit of this video at the high rate so you can get a feeling for how hard it would be to see how this bends and you know what the oar is doing in the water as you're rowing along without slowing it down
yes you can see the bend but it's not ideal
so I hope that gives you a good idea of how much you're oars are bending when they they're in the water how the bend is held in the oar and when it's released so stiffer oar bend in exactly the same way it just won't bend by as much
so i'll have to get a set of stiffer oars go for a row with them see if the bend see what the bend looks like try and get a day as nice as this and i'll make another video on that yeah if you've got a gopro mounting it on the hand on the handle of the oar like i have here looking down the shaft is extremely useful you can see i get a perfect view of the catch i can see how well buried my blade is i can see if any water has been i mean any air has been caught behind the blade which will reduce the efficiency of it and the effectiveness of it and you can see the extraction really well so for me i just want to be holding it in a little bit longer so drawing it up a little bit more and not be so keen to get on to the next stroke a lot of rowers are in this boat and you don't want to be catching all that air at the finish but all in all pretty well connected you know the catch could be a little bit cleaner you can see there is quite messy but you know getting the blade buried quite quickly and more importantly engaged quite quickly