Do you know how to Analyze your Rowing Catch?
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You know the catch isn't quite right, but you don't know what to change first or how to go about it. In this video, Ken steps through his process of analyzing and improving a crew's catch.
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Video Transcript
When coaching yourself or coaching a crew i suggest the best way to start is to first have a look at the crew when they're rowing this is a masters women's crew that are rowing quite well and i find actually the better a crew is rowing the harder it is to try and identify items to fix but the simple way to go about this is to get someone to film yourself rowing or film the crew rowing from alongside like this from a bike path or a boat it's best if you can to have footage at a high quality so that you can slow it down i suggest if you're filming with an iphone or similar this footage was filmed with an iphone and i suggest make the settings so 60 frames per second and 4k if the camera in the device is capable of it this gives you a really good vision of the footage that you can slow down then the next thing i look for is what are we going to try and change now essentially if you ask a crew or an athlete to change more than one thing at a time then you'll find that it's quite difficult to have them focus on that two is possible any more than that and i think that it's makes it harder to change than easier so i suggest pick something to focus on and one item for each crew member the first thing i look for is how the boat's moving you can easiest way to do this in my experience is to focus on on part of the boat that you can see quite clearly in relation to the water and the background the easiest part i find usually is to focus on something in this region on a boat either the label on the boat or the stroke coach or just something in that area and then watch how that moves during the running stroke you can see a couple of things if the crew's racing uh rowing at quite a fast pace then you'll find that the boat will tend to be drawn towards the athletes uh coming into the catch uh but if they're rowing at a steady pace like these athletes are then you'll find that the boat tends to check a little bit at the catch some strokes it doesn't and some strokes it does and so the easiest thing to get better speed out of a boat in most cases is to have a look and see what's going on at the catch so if we have a look here at the catch and we slow it right down i'm using coach's eye here as the as a program to to analyze the video and so what i suggest we look at is let's look at the blades so let's look at these blades as they go into the water
now when we're connected here not a bad connection and you can see that that essentially at this point bow, two and stroke are well-connected three's slightly behind but but not a lot so pretty good connection so our catch is is reasonably good here what can we do to improve it well let's go back a little bit and see what happened just before the stroke now if I look at the stroke person first as we're coming into the catch here you see the blade is squared up nice and early and then as the blade goes into the water there's a fair element of shoulder lift there so what i suggest is let's watch the athlete here as we go through the catch connection process so the blade's starting to go in and as the blade's going in the shoulders are coming up yes the leg drive is underway and and yes the shins are vertical at this point so very good catch really but what happens after the catch is there's the shoulder muscles are engaged quite early
if we look at the person in the three seat what happens here coming to the catch i'd suggest watch the blade first and you can see that the blade here as it goes into the water starting to go into the water now watch the legs here and there's quite a lot of leg drive as the blades going into the water compared to the other athletes and so what i'd suggest with the three person would be that we should encourage squaring up earlier so that it's easy to get the blade into the catch and then at the catch just hold the leg drive and put the blade in with a quick movement of the hands and wait for the feel for the connection before the drive
if we look at the person in the two seat and same deal let's watch the blade going into the water and watch what's happening with the body then the blades going in could go in a little quicker but again similar to the stroke person you can see there's quite a lot of shoulder lift there in that early part of the of the drive phase and if we look at the bow person same principles so we're looking at the oar going into the water and at the athlete then you can see that that this is actually pretty tidy as far as the blade going in there's very minimal seat movement as the blade goes into the water which is excellent but then again as in for two and four the first real movement of the shoulders happens very early on
and so what i'd suggest is we try to get everyone the same now by that what i mean is let's choose what we want to have and then ask each athlete to make small changes to get it the same so they're all applying power at the same time and they've got their blades in the water and connected at the same time so i'd suggest the best catch here would be the bow person's catch because the amount of movement on the seat there is very small and it's just what's required in order to get the blade into the water if we watch it again bear in mind your seat has to move so your seat has to move as the blade enters the water because the boat's moving but you can see here that there's very little movement on the seat there and i'd say that that's an excellent catch now
if we look at the other athletes in that same process you can see that their seats tend to move a lot more than the person in bow so i'd suggest i'd ask the person in the two seat and three seat and stroke seat to delay that leg drive completely they're starting to push before the blades in the water the bow person is is not really pushing they're letting the blade push them so what i suggest with three two three and four in this boat is to ask them to delay that leg drive until they're fully connected and they've picked up the load then i'd suggest for uh bow two and four i'd suggested that they focus on
that first movement of the shoulders being delayed a little bit so hold their core on really tight and just push straight back with their legs holding their body in the catch position until they've used about the first third of the slide or a little bit more and then open up against the legs so essentially i'd suggest waiting until they're connected to the water and they've got the full picked up the full load and started the drive phase with their legs before they start to open up the person in the three seats body
posture is she holds it better you can see here the legs go down a fair way before the body opens up and so i'd like her to maintain that characteristic but in her case what i'd like to see is having the blade squared earlier and then holding her position at the catch as the blade goes into the water so if i put a little bit simply i would like the catch to everyone to do their catch the same as the bow person does the catch and then i would like
bow two and stroke to hold the body in the catch position for a bit longer whilst the leg drive gets underway till they've got the full load on the blade and only then start to open up and with the three person if she can square up earlier and get that blade in the water earlier and then we'll find that that her body movement is going to automatically be correct i'd suggest so they're the things that i would focus on with this particular crew every crew is different of course and as i said earlier i suggest focus on just one aspect each maybe two so in this case i'd say the entire crew should try and get their catch in quickly as per as as is the bow person and then for the bow two and stroke ask them to hold their body position longer into the drive phase until they've really picked up the full load before opening up and then in the three seat i'd suggest square earlier to make it easy to get that blade in quickly and just once the blades in and connected make sure that there's no leg drive before that blade's connected and then just row as she normally is so i think you'll find that those changes if you can implement them will make a significant difference to the boat speed
you
now when we're connected here not a bad connection and you can see that that essentially at this point bow, two and stroke are well-connected three's slightly behind but but not a lot so pretty good connection so our catch is is reasonably good here what can we do to improve it well let's go back a little bit and see what happened just before the stroke now if I look at the stroke person first as we're coming into the catch here you see the blade is squared up nice and early and then as the blade goes into the water there's a fair element of shoulder lift there so what i suggest is let's watch the athlete here as we go through the catch connection process so the blade's starting to go in and as the blade's going in the shoulders are coming up yes the leg drive is underway and and yes the shins are vertical at this point so very good catch really but what happens after the catch is there's the shoulder muscles are engaged quite early
if we look at the person in the three seat what happens here coming to the catch i'd suggest watch the blade first and you can see that the blade here as it goes into the water starting to go into the water now watch the legs here and there's quite a lot of leg drive as the blades going into the water compared to the other athletes and so what i'd suggest with the three person would be that we should encourage squaring up earlier so that it's easy to get the blade into the catch and then at the catch just hold the leg drive and put the blade in with a quick movement of the hands and wait for the feel for the connection before the drive
if we look at the person in the two seat and same deal let's watch the blade going into the water and watch what's happening with the body then the blades going in could go in a little quicker but again similar to the stroke person you can see there's quite a lot of shoulder lift there in that early part of the of the drive phase and if we look at the bow person same principles so we're looking at the oar going into the water and at the athlete then you can see that that this is actually pretty tidy as far as the blade going in there's very minimal seat movement as the blade goes into the water which is excellent but then again as in for two and four the first real movement of the shoulders happens very early on
and so what i'd suggest is we try to get everyone the same now by that what i mean is let's choose what we want to have and then ask each athlete to make small changes to get it the same so they're all applying power at the same time and they've got their blades in the water and connected at the same time so i'd suggest the best catch here would be the bow person's catch because the amount of movement on the seat there is very small and it's just what's required in order to get the blade into the water if we watch it again bear in mind your seat has to move so your seat has to move as the blade enters the water because the boat's moving but you can see here that there's very little movement on the seat there and i'd say that that's an excellent catch now
if we look at the other athletes in that same process you can see that their seats tend to move a lot more than the person in bow so i'd suggest i'd ask the person in the two seat and three seat and stroke seat to delay that leg drive completely they're starting to push before the blades in the water the bow person is is not really pushing they're letting the blade push them so what i suggest with three two three and four in this boat is to ask them to delay that leg drive until they're fully connected and they've picked up the load then i'd suggest for uh bow two and four i'd suggested that they focus on
that first movement of the shoulders being delayed a little bit so hold their core on really tight and just push straight back with their legs holding their body in the catch position until they've used about the first third of the slide or a little bit more and then open up against the legs so essentially i'd suggest waiting until they're connected to the water and they've got the full picked up the full load and started the drive phase with their legs before they start to open up the person in the three seats body
posture is she holds it better you can see here the legs go down a fair way before the body opens up and so i'd like her to maintain that characteristic but in her case what i'd like to see is having the blade squared earlier and then holding her position at the catch as the blade goes into the water so if i put a little bit simply i would like the catch to everyone to do their catch the same as the bow person does the catch and then i would like
bow two and stroke to hold the body in the catch position for a bit longer whilst the leg drive gets underway till they've got the full load on the blade and only then start to open up and with the three person if she can square up earlier and get that blade in the water earlier and then we'll find that that her body movement is going to automatically be correct i'd suggest so they're the things that i would focus on with this particular crew every crew is different of course and as i said earlier i suggest focus on just one aspect each maybe two so in this case i'd say the entire crew should try and get their catch in quickly as per as as is the bow person and then for the bow two and stroke ask them to hold their body position longer into the drive phase until they've really picked up the full load before opening up and then in the three seat i'd suggest square earlier to make it easy to get that blade in quickly and just once the blades in and connected make sure that there's no leg drive before that blade's connected and then just row as she normally is so i think you'll find that those changes if you can implement them will make a significant difference to the boat speed
you