Placement and Drive in Rowing
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Placement and drive encompass a sizeable chunk of potential rowing speed. In this video, hear from Lyall McCarthy and Noel Donaldson about blade placement, hand position, blade depth and power application.
Lyall shows us some near-perfect rowing technique from Kim Brennan, who went on to win the Gold medal a the Rio Olympics in the single scull. |
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Video Transcript
The hardest skill is how to put the oar in the water does anyone know how to do that let the weight of the blade drop itself in 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 um 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 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 yep elbow around like that and his inside arm is going to be like that too knuckles stay square to 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 there 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
um without losing connection right there right through to the release um you start doing this one pushing the handle away before we finish pulling with the outside hand we've got a problem maintaining even blade depth now noel 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 oar 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 after he 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 that 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 7:28 7:28 7:28 so that'd 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
and if that's the catch position and you get connected there well you probably know pretty much know the outcome of that stroke
um without losing connection right there right through to the release um you start doing this one pushing the handle away before we finish pulling with the outside hand we've got a problem maintaining even blade depth now noel 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 oar 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 after he 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 that 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 7:28 7:28 7:28 so that'd 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
and if that's the catch position and you get connected there well you probably know pretty much know the outcome of that stroke