Rock and Row Drill for Rowing
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In this video, Lyall McCarthy introduces his favourite drill to use with crews to improve their technique, the Rock and Row Drill. This exercise is an evolution of the classic rowing pauses.
After Lyall's explanation, Lachlan demonstrates the drill with his crew. |
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Video Transcript
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 the oar in the water with the body then we go to quarter slide still putting the oar in the water with the body we spend the rest of the session saying don't put the oar 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 coach's command is row obviously you're going to demand timing proper timing and coordination coming into the front connect finishing in 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 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 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 oar in the water with the body we have the sequence correct because at the end of the day this little section this leverage 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 that 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 so this is a bit of baseline footage that i've got that's before the athletes started the rock and row exercise as you can see here's a few timing issues but the main thing we want to focus on with this exercise is the body position so just have a quick look at the body position we want to essentially when we pivot over we want it to be say this is the body at the finish we want to rock over at the finish before the legs break so we'll just have a look here we want the pivot over
so the main things we want to be looking at is a pivot up and over from the pelvis so basically a rock over like this with the shoulders trying to keep the head at a similar height so instead of dropping away from that parallel line with the boat we want to be pretty much in line with it pivoting over from the hips so you can see here this three seat is starting to slump a little bit so the shoulders are coming down low in the boat not a strong catch position on the other hand here in the two seat she's sitting very upright so she doesn't really rock over much at all so still very vertical there so we want to get her to rock over so pivot over a little bit more
if we have a look in bow
so the body position of bow is pretty good she's just working on her timing working on a blade work there her main focuses just getting that blade in at the right time
but a rock over is relatively good
so let's have a little bit of a look at the exercise
so to start with i introduced a pause at the finish and then a rock over the reason why i would pour the finish instead of the hands away is because the athletes are used to doing that as an exercise to help them get their timing together but as you can see it's quite difficult for them to coordinate this movement it's very hard for them to get it right on every stroke do it together and the timing is the biggest issue so if you have a look at this from a timing point of view it's significantly worse with practice they can get this right you can see every now and then they'll miss a stroke someone will do something that they're not meant to and fall out of sequence
but if you have a look at the body positions they're typically much better
here in three sitting up a little bit more here in two a little bit more over so pivot it over a bit more and everyone in general is sitting up just that little bit taller and rocking over which is one of the goals of this exercise
as you can see it's very taxing trying to stay in time knowing when to pause knowing when to rock over and as Lyall said here what we're doing is getting them to do the pauses but just a micro pause each time so a small pause at the finish small pause at the rock over and then come forward and you can see here the timing is actually a little bit better than it was but it's still hard for these athletes to progress through the sequence without getting out of time maybe they think they should pause and then when they shouldn't and vice versa so you can see here it's quite a hard habit to get out of this pausing at the finish and pausing at the rock over just like it would be rowing with arms only as Lyall talks about some people doing in their warm ups so if you just look at this exercise purely for making this individual boat go faster you can see that it's really played havoc with their timing the body positions are much better they're rocking over better and getting better length but the timing is so far out because of all those pauses they've really struggled to to get that right and and with practice they'll definitely get better at this but if we compare this little bit of footage here
especially the timing of the catch
that was a bit of a messy stroke but we'll go to the next one so if you compare the timing of the catch here coming into the catch we've got some real problems with getting that blade in the water compared to at the start of the session so i'll just go back to the start so this is how they're rowing at the start of the session if you have a look
the timing is actually a lot better just naturally i mean like we said earlier there's got some problems with the body position you know bits and pieces like that but you know arguably they're rowing a lot better before the exercise
than they were after the exercise but i couldn't help but think that i'd made my if a few problems for myself by getting to do this rock and row exercise it's really broke them out of sequence and yeah we got some of the desired outcomes but the timing just went to hell and i was trying to coach them to to work on the timing but it was very hard for them to focus on the timing of the pauses and then also on rowing well and there's something to be said for letting them fall into a rhythm um and then coaching small pieces like that so you have to be careful with these exercises you can often have some quite unintended consequences when it comes to rowing and doing specific drills also you find some people handle these drills better than others some people like being the stroke being stopped and broken down and done step by step and other people respond better to continuous rowing and small micro adjustments here and there and so it's um yeah it's important to see that some drills can make certain aspects of the rowing stroke worse and some and some bits better so be careful when you when you're using drills like this even you know great drills like this rock and row drill can have unintended consequences that you'll have to fix later on and here by the end of the session you can see that their timings improved quite a lot they're back into that rhythm and unfortunately i've got some side on footage here but some of that some of that uh that that technique that was developed with the rock and row exercise definitely carried on until this part of the session but it started to fade a little bit towards the end but so it's important to strike a balance between doing exercise letting the athletes work out their rowing style and and not being too dogmatic either way uh let it happen a bit naturally also a bit artificially and um i think that's in my experience the best combination to to use when you're working this out and i find that particularly useful combination when you're trying a new drill or a new coaching strategy
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 the oar in the water with the body then we go to quarter slide still putting the oar in the water with the body we spend the rest of the session saying don't put the oar 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 coach's command is row obviously you're going to demand timing proper timing and coordination coming into the front connect finishing in 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 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 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 oar in the water with the body we have the sequence correct because at the end of the day this little section this leverage 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 that 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 so this is a bit of baseline footage that i've got that's before the athletes started the rock and row exercise as you can see here's a few timing issues but the main thing we want to focus on with this exercise is the body position so just have a quick look at the body position we want to essentially when we pivot over we want it to be say this is the body at the finish we want to rock over at the finish before the legs break so we'll just have a look here we want the pivot over
so the main things we want to be looking at is a pivot up and over from the pelvis so basically a rock over like this with the shoulders trying to keep the head at a similar height so instead of dropping away from that parallel line with the boat we want to be pretty much in line with it pivoting over from the hips so you can see here this three seat is starting to slump a little bit so the shoulders are coming down low in the boat not a strong catch position on the other hand here in the two seat she's sitting very upright so she doesn't really rock over much at all so still very vertical there so we want to get her to rock over so pivot over a little bit more
if we have a look in bow
so the body position of bow is pretty good she's just working on her timing working on a blade work there her main focuses just getting that blade in at the right time
but a rock over is relatively good
so let's have a little bit of a look at the exercise
so to start with i introduced a pause at the finish and then a rock over the reason why i would pour the finish instead of the hands away is because the athletes are used to doing that as an exercise to help them get their timing together but as you can see it's quite difficult for them to coordinate this movement it's very hard for them to get it right on every stroke do it together and the timing is the biggest issue so if you have a look at this from a timing point of view it's significantly worse with practice they can get this right you can see every now and then they'll miss a stroke someone will do something that they're not meant to and fall out of sequence
but if you have a look at the body positions they're typically much better
here in three sitting up a little bit more here in two a little bit more over so pivot it over a bit more and everyone in general is sitting up just that little bit taller and rocking over which is one of the goals of this exercise
as you can see it's very taxing trying to stay in time knowing when to pause knowing when to rock over and as Lyall said here what we're doing is getting them to do the pauses but just a micro pause each time so a small pause at the finish small pause at the rock over and then come forward and you can see here the timing is actually a little bit better than it was but it's still hard for these athletes to progress through the sequence without getting out of time maybe they think they should pause and then when they shouldn't and vice versa so you can see here it's quite a hard habit to get out of this pausing at the finish and pausing at the rock over just like it would be rowing with arms only as Lyall talks about some people doing in their warm ups so if you just look at this exercise purely for making this individual boat go faster you can see that it's really played havoc with their timing the body positions are much better they're rocking over better and getting better length but the timing is so far out because of all those pauses they've really struggled to to get that right and and with practice they'll definitely get better at this but if we compare this little bit of footage here
especially the timing of the catch
that was a bit of a messy stroke but we'll go to the next one so if you compare the timing of the catch here coming into the catch we've got some real problems with getting that blade in the water compared to at the start of the session so i'll just go back to the start so this is how they're rowing at the start of the session if you have a look
the timing is actually a lot better just naturally i mean like we said earlier there's got some problems with the body position you know bits and pieces like that but you know arguably they're rowing a lot better before the exercise
than they were after the exercise but i couldn't help but think that i'd made my if a few problems for myself by getting to do this rock and row exercise it's really broke them out of sequence and yeah we got some of the desired outcomes but the timing just went to hell and i was trying to coach them to to work on the timing but it was very hard for them to focus on the timing of the pauses and then also on rowing well and there's something to be said for letting them fall into a rhythm um and then coaching small pieces like that so you have to be careful with these exercises you can often have some quite unintended consequences when it comes to rowing and doing specific drills also you find some people handle these drills better than others some people like being the stroke being stopped and broken down and done step by step and other people respond better to continuous rowing and small micro adjustments here and there and so it's um yeah it's important to see that some drills can make certain aspects of the rowing stroke worse and some and some bits better so be careful when you when you're using drills like this even you know great drills like this rock and row drill can have unintended consequences that you'll have to fix later on and here by the end of the session you can see that their timings improved quite a lot they're back into that rhythm and unfortunately i've got some side on footage here but some of that some of that uh that that technique that was developed with the rock and row exercise definitely carried on until this part of the session but it started to fade a little bit towards the end but so it's important to strike a balance between doing exercise letting the athletes work out their rowing style and and not being too dogmatic either way uh let it happen a bit naturally also a bit artificially and um i think that's in my experience the best combination to to use when you're working this out and i find that particularly useful combination when you're trying a new drill or a new coaching strategy