Ride Along - Ken coaching a new athlete for the first time rowing on the water
|
Ken often takes athletes for a one-off coaching session at the request of their regular coach.
Warning: This video contains a stressful amount of information, but it's a good representation of Ken's approach when time is limited. Here we follow one of these sessions where Ken coaches a rower with four years of school rowing experience. Once he has assessed the athlete's technique, he decides to focus on the following aspects for best improvement:
|
|
Video Transcript
Get connected and pick up the load and then you start to accelerate and then you get faster and faster and faster okay the the better at the front so if you come into the catch again for me and then when you're sitting there just hold your body still and just put your arms hands further away so you want that stretch now the reason you want that so if you just watch me for a sec is if you think about hanging from a chin up bar you've done chin ups i'm sure so if you hang there with your arms bent like this you can't do it for very long whereas if you have it just hanging then you can hang there for quite a long time if you're hanging just like that then you're hanging from your tendons and bones you're not using your muscles really at all okay antennas and bones don't really use any energy so it's a lot easier way to do it the other thing that's really important is that it's really easy to be relaxed so you put your arms out come into the catch again put your arms out out as far as i can so stretch them out all right and so now uh doing it leaving it out there like that now try and tense your shoulders up for me it's pretty hard to do because and keep your hands nice and relaxed and try and tense your shoulders and just it's just not really possible now hang onto the handle really tight for me now and now feel what your shoulders have done they're automatically tense aren't they everything's tight all the way up okay so what i want you to do is i want you to row so that you've got no tenseness there at all and you've got that full length now when you so put them right out in front of you again and leave yours flat on the water then i want you to swim is now come forward a little bit more in your seat that's better now i want you to just hold your body there and just and your arms as far away from your body as you can and push back with your legs flat just flatten your legs okay and keep your arms right out there and come back in and come back out again just do that a few times so what i want you to do so when i talk so relax for a minute so when i'm talking about using your legs what you want to do is you want to have your arms fully extended and not being used at all they're just they're just hanging that's what they're doing and you've probably heard people talk about hang having good hang in a boat that's what that means is you just hang and you don't grab and you don't tense and you don't use your shoulders and you don't lift up you do you just hang you turn your lower core on and just hang there and then all you've got to do then is push well got to put the blade in the wood and all that sort of rubbish that goes with it but essentially from a body movement all we're looking to do is to just push straight back so when we're trying to demonstrate having good hang at the catch an interesting exercise you can do with athletes on an ergo is to get them to really understand what it means to have their arms fully extended so if we just come into the catch here and uh so i think that's a normal sort of catch position and so here we have good catch position so if you could just push against me and i'll hold on to the handle so you can't go anywhere now push harder now what i want to do is let you put your hands closer to me and still push hard and do it again and sit up tall again and let them go again about as far as they can go and so if we think about what's happened here is that's our full reach position where we want to be hanging off our tendons and bones now if we put the shock shoulders back over there and so if we like that and so then put them back in again now push really hard so what does he have to do is ask the athlete to push really hard by hanging onto the handle like really hard push push now ask them to just let their push their hands away from him there's a huge difference in length and a major difference in hangs it's important when taking the catch to make sure the initial part of the drive phase is done with the core turned on very solidly so that you don't get any slippage here you can see annabelle taking the first part of the catch correctly see the blade's buried as she undertakes the first part of the drive phase
here we see it again and this time with pause you can see here as the blades entered the water and the shins are vertical the back's on that nice sharp angle without a big curve in the lower part of the back and the arms are straight now it's difficult to practice this drill in a stationary boat with beginners and so what i suggest you do is have them practice their body positions at this initial part of the drive phase with the blade flat on the water as you can see here whilst it's not the same because there's no weight on the blade it's certainly enough for them to demonstrate how the body should move here you can see annabelle demonstrating how she doesn't have a core turned on then the seat shoots out and the oars don't really move much at all leading to that very slump position at the catch see the angle in the back as it curves outside the red line and the shins are way past vertical and a lot of the leg drives been used without the blade even being in the water or connected and certainly even if it was in the water then it wouldn't have been connected through the body because the body is in such a weak position turning the core on at the beginning here is vital to having a good stroke if you watch the handle here compared to where the seat goes you can see that the handle in relation to the boat doesn't actually move very much even though the leg drives been substantially used so be careful with that here andrew demonstrates the opposite where there's too much lift in the body at the catch so essentially trying to row the blade into the water lifting shoulders at the catch here we see in slow motion very clear lift and you can see here that a lot of the body swing is used in that early part of the stroke which is a very inefficient way to take the catch you can see here that the back's pretty much vertical and the shins have lost a little bit of their vertical position tends to load up the back as well and the chest which is not good from an injury perspective critical step really is to make sure the core is turned on and the body is locked solid in the position as you can see here so turn the core on at the catch that nice angle on the back shins vertical core turned on and then commence the leg drive make sure of course the blade's in the water when you're rowing normally you can see here that the body angle in relation to the to the seat doesn't change much at all during this initial part of the drive phase and that's important and so it's important to get that connection first and then drive out with the legs holding the body in the right position until about half slide and then the body can open up to finish the stroke off in a powerful way exercise is about teaching athletes to turn their core on right at the catch before they put the blade in before they commence a leg drive keep their upper body stationary most common issue we find with beginner athletes is one of these two issues
and sit tall put your hands away rock over come to about half slide and there i want you to stop there now put your hands further away from your body feel that difference that's what you want to be doing it there you don't want to do it at the catch because when you talk about diving into the catch diving into the catch is in your case i reckon what you're doing is you're getting to the catch and you're saying i'm going to get a bit more links and so what you want to do is get off the back full extension half slide check am i up right out there yes i'm right out there hold that body position because your body position is fine and then just come into the catch and then all you do is put the blade in and push sounds really simple when i put it later doesn't it but it is a bit and so just right down there i want you to really focus on just leaving everything right out there so get off the back put your arms right out so you feel that stretch up here and then come into the catch and then just put the blade in and then just don't do anything different up here just turn your lower core on push okay here we have vanderbilt demonstrating how to approach the catch correctly with the body in a strong position as you can see from the side view the body is in a strong position with minimal curvature in the lower part of the back conversely here annabelle is coming into the catch and slumping when she gets there this is usually caused by the athletes not having control of their core well enough and holding a strong position in the lower back it's important to not slump into the catch as you can see in the slow motion footage it tends to limit how far you can get the seat forward i annabelle shins here are not vertical and it puts the back into a weak position meaning that the drive phase is not going to be as powerful additionally it puts significant load on the lower part of the back and can lead to back injuries so very important to get this fixed commonly caused by two things firstly a core that's not strong enough to hold the athlete in the correct position and secondly not understanding that as they come into the catch they want to be in a strong upright position the easiest way to fix this is with a series of drills particularly about making sure that the athlete gets the body into the catch position before they come down the slide or soon after they've broken their legs if we do that then you'll find that they come into the catch in a much strong position remember don't use your shoulders at all just push that's it just like that and if you think about it uh and this is not fact okay this is fiction made up by ken but i think it's sort of right okay if you if you think about your arms bent like that and then you try and push hard with your legs then that muscle is competing with this muscle well that's stupid that's not gonna work is it and so what i think happens in internally somewhere is if you've got your arms bent like this this is a bit that's just fiction by can if you've got your arms bent like that and then you tell your legs to push as hard as they can then you would expect your arm to do that but it never does it stays like that now i think what happens is i i think it's not good technique but aside from that as a way of it's and this is more the reason why it's i'm making it up is because it's a way of uh you might be able to use it to imagine something and therefore get a different answer if you imagine that your legs are trying to straighten your arms and if they push hard enough they would then don't have your arms bent because then you're not trying to trick your body and you can push as hard as you like because you're not worrying about that does that make some sort of sense yeah okay cool yeah oh it is it is you think about these little muscles here and all the stuff in the shoulder and all these and and you're asking them to take the load of your legs well mate excuse me just hang off your frame just let it hang out okay all right let's go back up and come back down again we want to get this one for this bit first and if you can get this bit right because what happens to a few a couple of things that we'll get to in a minute but i'll run just quickly now is that uh these muscles are really small therefore they can be really quick you can do quick movements okay these muscles aren't aren't so quick they're big and so when you take the catch though you it's easy to say i've got the catch i've got the water because you've done this sort of a movement or this sort of you know quick muscle say i'm connected when you like to be connected because well that's what rowing is about isn't it putting the blade in the water and getting connected but you want to get connected with your legs and so to get connected with your legs you've got to make sure that you're not doing it with the arms and and so what'll happen is when you start to row it'll probably feel like your catch is gone but that's great okay uh i was coaching here i don't know 10 years ago when she was at uni up here i got rid of her arm grab because she was grabbing like that you see and she says but ken i don't have a catch anymore because my catcher's gone because i can't feel the catch and then she sent me a text from hobart later in the week that said i still haven't got a catch but i'm going faster okay so that's what you want to do you've got we've got to focus on what we want to do the work and initially we want the legs to do the work and really focus on just leaving it out there and as far away from your body as you can get it you're actually using your shoulders a little bit when you take the catch so push them further away from hands further away from you and make sure you don't use them at all okay they just they all they're doing is they're just a piece of string connecting the handle to your body okay all right let's go again so so the concept really is that when you do that it looks so much more powerful what you were doing coming back to start with you're attending to when you started to take the catch i could see your shoulder do this sort of a movement yeah you've just got to maintain that distance okay so try and keep your hands away from your body as far as you can through the until your legs are down pretty much leave your shoulders really loose really loose when you push that's better like that but i now try and do it with yours off the water so now what i'd like you to do is i want you to tell me what the wrong describe the rowing stroke to me okay start off the finish loud i can't hear you yeah i'll say it in my words the same thing no pretty much and there's little differences but only that's more about emphasis sitting at the back sitting tall always important hands away fully stretched like field stretch fully stretched and half slide you can check if you're stretched so you don't have to wait the half side to be stretched it's really just just confirm and you come into the catch nice and relaxed and then this is the critical bit i think is you put the blade in and you feel for the load and you take your time and then when you feel when you've got the load then you push and so you've got to take time at the catch now let's just do a little weird thing i don't know if you've done it before can you sit at the half slide a bit further and put the oars under your arms that's it all right now i want you to just just push with your feet a bit push about about on about that far okay now come in and push really quickly about that far okay now look at what look at the water and the rigor next to the boat and push hard with your legs what happens to the boat yeah you knew that really but it's good to see it because you feel it okay what happens if you haven't got the blade in the water and you push hard with your legs what happens to the boat way are we trying to go
so so it's really important to get that connection now even if you put the blade in the water and you can still hear me right yeah even if you put the blade in the water and you haven't yet connected with the load and you push hard what's going to happen to the boat it's going to go backwards so in a single scale in particular uh if you put the power on too early you're going to push the boat backwards okay you've got to get connected and pick up the load and then you start to accelerate and then you get faster and faster and faster okay here we'd like to demonstrate how an athlete can slow a boat down by pushing with their legs before the blades fully connected to the water as you can see here the orange line is held stationary same speed as the boat on average because it's being filmed from a speed boat next door and if you watch carefully you can see that when the before the blade actually gets connected with the water the boat is pushed back a long way in this case and so watching it in slow motion you can see again the line turns up at the start of the leg drive and the boat goes looks like it's going backwards in fact it's just being slowed down significantly because we need to have the athlete wait until the blade is well connected with the water here we have an example of the same athlete executing it correctly in fact i think very well and so you see here the boat really doesn't move very much at all indicating the athletes well connected to the water before the drive phase commences requires patience of the catch to get that blade in well connected before the drive so lift the hands up put the blade in get it deep and buried and then commence the drive without essentially kicking the boat backwards unfortunately it's very difficult to do consistently and here we have the same athlete undertaking a number of strokes with the line appearing for each of them as you can see some of them are a lot better than others when it comes to the level of check that's in the boat of the catch so i suggest work on it and watch it very carefully watch a part of the boat for example like in this case the straight coach or the where the riggers are on the boat watch it against an external object and see how it moves if you need to just hold your finger up and watch it by putting your finger up and watching the boat move against your finger if you can get the strokes like this one so it's well connected early on and do that consistently you'll get a really good outcome now here we've got the same footage but without the line so i suggest just watch it and now your mind is attuned to what we're looking for watch what's happening to the boat and watch it at every stroke and you'll see some strokes are good strokes some strokes are less good simply by how far that boat checks at the catch so i'd suggest watch it carefully watch it all the time and tell the athlete when they've got it right each time and so they can make the change remember the critical step is to get the blade in and well connected before the drive phase and if you can achieve that you'll achieve a fast boat
so you want to in other words looking at you won't back load the stroke would you put the power on on the back end of the stroke it doesn't mean you don't push at the beginning of course and doesn't mean you're only using your body it just means that you've got to get connected to the water first before you push and when you push you don't try and kill that foot plate in the first flap that far otherwise the boat's going to go backwards and so it's a totally different feel and you've got it i think i think you've felt it coming back along there is it put the blade in i get connected and then i put it on a wheelie you're with me that's the way i'd describe it okay so let's head back again this way what i want you to do going back here is is focus on that be relaxed sure you've already got that that's easy when you come in and you can do it with yours on the water or close to the water i don't think it matters um and then when you come into the catch i want you to put it in and put it in deep like aggressive deep you want to put it in quick there's a bit of a danger that because you're coming into the catch nice and relaxed and and gentle then there's a bit of a danger to be relaxed and gentle about putting the blade in the water we don't want to do that what we want to do is we want to put the blade in really quick so come in nice and gentle don't upset the boat put the blade in really quick and then you wait for the load and then actually what you want to do if you can is you want to have a little quick movement of the legs to just get to feel the water and then get the connection and then you accelerate from there so it's it's really a slow movement fast movement slow movement and so you just got to remember that you put the blade in quick all the time okay then let's just practice that now so remember nice and relaxed put the blade in deep and quick and feel for the load get connected to it and then accelerate it through from there
and once you've got the load connected and you've started to accelerate then you can really accelerate there's no you have to hold back but that first little bit you've got to pick it up first before you push you want to stop for a sec
two things that might help one is that in your mind i found often it's handy for people to think about it the catcher's two movements up push so when you come into the catch you can go and you can say you say to yourself call it out up push up push as they're two separate things okay it's not push up or or pushing up it's up then push okay second thing is your balance is a bit and i reckon the reason why is because you look at the boat too much your balance is fine seriously your balance is fine when the blades are in the water the balance is cool when you take it out of the water the balance is cool when you come into the catch it tends to go to gas just before you get there and that's because you look at the boat and so i want you to look out here somewhere so here's a pretty good spot for it because that it's all sort of flat if you're with me so just keep your eyes up all the time and forget about balance just don't even think about balance okay and i reckon you'll find your balance will be like that all right let's try that so two things up push and keep your eyes out there relax the shoulders relax relax that's better try to stop again i'd like you to really think it's pretty good i like it i'd like to think more about the relaxed shoulders a bit and so it's really about they're fully out there and it's just pushed back and then it gets you build the stroke from the catch okay how does it feel that concept of putting it in and before you push drive gig it makes sense how do you do it properly remember you've got to teach me how to do it then do you feel the load how does what's the load feel like okay yeah and then as soon as you feel that movement then you can start to push and probably by the time you tell yourself if you feel that movement i'd start pushing straight away because it's a bit like uh driving a car you're coming into a set of lights and they go red how long does it take you to get your foot on the pedal to stop there's a time frame that by the time you think about it get it happening so if you put the blade in and you feel you move start pushing okay and you'll be right on time all right let's try it again
relax relax relax eyes up you want to stop there tell me about your balance it was better when you weren't looking at the boat yeah a lot better because what you're tending to do is you tend to look down on that side for some reason don't do it if you have a stroke coach in the boat don't look at it just avoid it because all it does is upset your balance uh it's uh if you're looking into the boat then you have no reference point for balance if you're with me because you you know you're just there because if you look out there that's not moving and so do that that's looking pretty good really got to focus on it the catch there just just leave your shoulders behind leave them behind one thing you're tending to do and it's not big but it's a little bit is your tendineae has to put the blade in you're tending to then you have a little bit of this sort of a movement and so i want you and just different words that might work is if you try to leave your shoulders behind when you push then i think that'll probably stop it okay so just focus on those few things as we go back down here and i'll tend to shut up for a while you want to stop for a sec but i want to do the same thing but this time i want you to put more power on okay but i want to remember really relaxed super important get that connection get connected first and then i want you to put more power and i want you to sort of really try and drive that boat hard from that point okay but feel for that connection first all right see if we make it go fast remember it's about the legs look up
i want to start i want to do exactly the same going back but every time you come into the catch i want you to look at the sky all right mike's up there somewhere um
yeah look at those clouds above the bridge i want you to look at them every time all right and put the power on did you get that concept though put the blade in first get connected and then build the power remember feel for the load relaxed and then push it like that yeah
you want to stop for a minute so how are we going to lock this in so you keep it forever
i guess so i think what would be a good idea is um is when you get home is to write it down just make it make a list this is what i need to do and then what i'll do is i'll have a we'll talk about when i get back but i'll have a look at a um i'll get some videos that i've got that reinforce what we talked about and then i'll send you some links to that so but it's a big improvement yeah if you do those three things all the time then you'll find it'll improve there's little things that we can tidy up but there always is of course but but that's pretty tidy cool but then i'll show you a bit of video back when we get here and i'll slow it down and you'll say oh could do better but that's okay no i think it's really good well done let's head back in and we'll um and then i want to do something on the erg before you go can i do a bit of work yeah right it's really important to make sure that what you're doing the erg isn't damaging what you do in the boat uh unless of course you're just an indoor rower and then they don't care and because you can make an erg go fast in a way that doesn't make a boat go fast so we've just got to and if the focus is the boat which it is i gather and then we've got to make sure the ergos the support for the boat uh not damaging it but we'll get to that
here we see it again and this time with pause you can see here as the blades entered the water and the shins are vertical the back's on that nice sharp angle without a big curve in the lower part of the back and the arms are straight now it's difficult to practice this drill in a stationary boat with beginners and so what i suggest you do is have them practice their body positions at this initial part of the drive phase with the blade flat on the water as you can see here whilst it's not the same because there's no weight on the blade it's certainly enough for them to demonstrate how the body should move here you can see annabelle demonstrating how she doesn't have a core turned on then the seat shoots out and the oars don't really move much at all leading to that very slump position at the catch see the angle in the back as it curves outside the red line and the shins are way past vertical and a lot of the leg drives been used without the blade even being in the water or connected and certainly even if it was in the water then it wouldn't have been connected through the body because the body is in such a weak position turning the core on at the beginning here is vital to having a good stroke if you watch the handle here compared to where the seat goes you can see that the handle in relation to the boat doesn't actually move very much even though the leg drives been substantially used so be careful with that here andrew demonstrates the opposite where there's too much lift in the body at the catch so essentially trying to row the blade into the water lifting shoulders at the catch here we see in slow motion very clear lift and you can see here that a lot of the body swing is used in that early part of the stroke which is a very inefficient way to take the catch you can see here that the back's pretty much vertical and the shins have lost a little bit of their vertical position tends to load up the back as well and the chest which is not good from an injury perspective critical step really is to make sure the core is turned on and the body is locked solid in the position as you can see here so turn the core on at the catch that nice angle on the back shins vertical core turned on and then commence the leg drive make sure of course the blade's in the water when you're rowing normally you can see here that the body angle in relation to the to the seat doesn't change much at all during this initial part of the drive phase and that's important and so it's important to get that connection first and then drive out with the legs holding the body in the right position until about half slide and then the body can open up to finish the stroke off in a powerful way exercise is about teaching athletes to turn their core on right at the catch before they put the blade in before they commence a leg drive keep their upper body stationary most common issue we find with beginner athletes is one of these two issues
and sit tall put your hands away rock over come to about half slide and there i want you to stop there now put your hands further away from your body feel that difference that's what you want to be doing it there you don't want to do it at the catch because when you talk about diving into the catch diving into the catch is in your case i reckon what you're doing is you're getting to the catch and you're saying i'm going to get a bit more links and so what you want to do is get off the back full extension half slide check am i up right out there yes i'm right out there hold that body position because your body position is fine and then just come into the catch and then all you do is put the blade in and push sounds really simple when i put it later doesn't it but it is a bit and so just right down there i want you to really focus on just leaving everything right out there so get off the back put your arms right out so you feel that stretch up here and then come into the catch and then just put the blade in and then just don't do anything different up here just turn your lower core on push okay here we have vanderbilt demonstrating how to approach the catch correctly with the body in a strong position as you can see from the side view the body is in a strong position with minimal curvature in the lower part of the back conversely here annabelle is coming into the catch and slumping when she gets there this is usually caused by the athletes not having control of their core well enough and holding a strong position in the lower back it's important to not slump into the catch as you can see in the slow motion footage it tends to limit how far you can get the seat forward i annabelle shins here are not vertical and it puts the back into a weak position meaning that the drive phase is not going to be as powerful additionally it puts significant load on the lower part of the back and can lead to back injuries so very important to get this fixed commonly caused by two things firstly a core that's not strong enough to hold the athlete in the correct position and secondly not understanding that as they come into the catch they want to be in a strong upright position the easiest way to fix this is with a series of drills particularly about making sure that the athlete gets the body into the catch position before they come down the slide or soon after they've broken their legs if we do that then you'll find that they come into the catch in a much strong position remember don't use your shoulders at all just push that's it just like that and if you think about it uh and this is not fact okay this is fiction made up by ken but i think it's sort of right okay if you if you think about your arms bent like that and then you try and push hard with your legs then that muscle is competing with this muscle well that's stupid that's not gonna work is it and so what i think happens in internally somewhere is if you've got your arms bent like this this is a bit that's just fiction by can if you've got your arms bent like that and then you tell your legs to push as hard as they can then you would expect your arm to do that but it never does it stays like that now i think what happens is i i think it's not good technique but aside from that as a way of it's and this is more the reason why it's i'm making it up is because it's a way of uh you might be able to use it to imagine something and therefore get a different answer if you imagine that your legs are trying to straighten your arms and if they push hard enough they would then don't have your arms bent because then you're not trying to trick your body and you can push as hard as you like because you're not worrying about that does that make some sort of sense yeah okay cool yeah oh it is it is you think about these little muscles here and all the stuff in the shoulder and all these and and you're asking them to take the load of your legs well mate excuse me just hang off your frame just let it hang out okay all right let's go back up and come back down again we want to get this one for this bit first and if you can get this bit right because what happens to a few a couple of things that we'll get to in a minute but i'll run just quickly now is that uh these muscles are really small therefore they can be really quick you can do quick movements okay these muscles aren't aren't so quick they're big and so when you take the catch though you it's easy to say i've got the catch i've got the water because you've done this sort of a movement or this sort of you know quick muscle say i'm connected when you like to be connected because well that's what rowing is about isn't it putting the blade in the water and getting connected but you want to get connected with your legs and so to get connected with your legs you've got to make sure that you're not doing it with the arms and and so what'll happen is when you start to row it'll probably feel like your catch is gone but that's great okay uh i was coaching here i don't know 10 years ago when she was at uni up here i got rid of her arm grab because she was grabbing like that you see and she says but ken i don't have a catch anymore because my catcher's gone because i can't feel the catch and then she sent me a text from hobart later in the week that said i still haven't got a catch but i'm going faster okay so that's what you want to do you've got we've got to focus on what we want to do the work and initially we want the legs to do the work and really focus on just leaving it out there and as far away from your body as you can get it you're actually using your shoulders a little bit when you take the catch so push them further away from hands further away from you and make sure you don't use them at all okay they just they all they're doing is they're just a piece of string connecting the handle to your body okay all right let's go again so so the concept really is that when you do that it looks so much more powerful what you were doing coming back to start with you're attending to when you started to take the catch i could see your shoulder do this sort of a movement yeah you've just got to maintain that distance okay so try and keep your hands away from your body as far as you can through the until your legs are down pretty much leave your shoulders really loose really loose when you push that's better like that but i now try and do it with yours off the water so now what i'd like you to do is i want you to tell me what the wrong describe the rowing stroke to me okay start off the finish loud i can't hear you yeah i'll say it in my words the same thing no pretty much and there's little differences but only that's more about emphasis sitting at the back sitting tall always important hands away fully stretched like field stretch fully stretched and half slide you can check if you're stretched so you don't have to wait the half side to be stretched it's really just just confirm and you come into the catch nice and relaxed and then this is the critical bit i think is you put the blade in and you feel for the load and you take your time and then when you feel when you've got the load then you push and so you've got to take time at the catch now let's just do a little weird thing i don't know if you've done it before can you sit at the half slide a bit further and put the oars under your arms that's it all right now i want you to just just push with your feet a bit push about about on about that far okay now come in and push really quickly about that far okay now look at what look at the water and the rigor next to the boat and push hard with your legs what happens to the boat yeah you knew that really but it's good to see it because you feel it okay what happens if you haven't got the blade in the water and you push hard with your legs what happens to the boat way are we trying to go
so so it's really important to get that connection now even if you put the blade in the water and you can still hear me right yeah even if you put the blade in the water and you haven't yet connected with the load and you push hard what's going to happen to the boat it's going to go backwards so in a single scale in particular uh if you put the power on too early you're going to push the boat backwards okay you've got to get connected and pick up the load and then you start to accelerate and then you get faster and faster and faster okay here we'd like to demonstrate how an athlete can slow a boat down by pushing with their legs before the blades fully connected to the water as you can see here the orange line is held stationary same speed as the boat on average because it's being filmed from a speed boat next door and if you watch carefully you can see that when the before the blade actually gets connected with the water the boat is pushed back a long way in this case and so watching it in slow motion you can see again the line turns up at the start of the leg drive and the boat goes looks like it's going backwards in fact it's just being slowed down significantly because we need to have the athlete wait until the blade is well connected with the water here we have an example of the same athlete executing it correctly in fact i think very well and so you see here the boat really doesn't move very much at all indicating the athletes well connected to the water before the drive phase commences requires patience of the catch to get that blade in well connected before the drive so lift the hands up put the blade in get it deep and buried and then commence the drive without essentially kicking the boat backwards unfortunately it's very difficult to do consistently and here we have the same athlete undertaking a number of strokes with the line appearing for each of them as you can see some of them are a lot better than others when it comes to the level of check that's in the boat of the catch so i suggest work on it and watch it very carefully watch a part of the boat for example like in this case the straight coach or the where the riggers are on the boat watch it against an external object and see how it moves if you need to just hold your finger up and watch it by putting your finger up and watching the boat move against your finger if you can get the strokes like this one so it's well connected early on and do that consistently you'll get a really good outcome now here we've got the same footage but without the line so i suggest just watch it and now your mind is attuned to what we're looking for watch what's happening to the boat and watch it at every stroke and you'll see some strokes are good strokes some strokes are less good simply by how far that boat checks at the catch so i'd suggest watch it carefully watch it all the time and tell the athlete when they've got it right each time and so they can make the change remember the critical step is to get the blade in and well connected before the drive phase and if you can achieve that you'll achieve a fast boat
so you want to in other words looking at you won't back load the stroke would you put the power on on the back end of the stroke it doesn't mean you don't push at the beginning of course and doesn't mean you're only using your body it just means that you've got to get connected to the water first before you push and when you push you don't try and kill that foot plate in the first flap that far otherwise the boat's going to go backwards and so it's a totally different feel and you've got it i think i think you've felt it coming back along there is it put the blade in i get connected and then i put it on a wheelie you're with me that's the way i'd describe it okay so let's head back again this way what i want you to do going back here is is focus on that be relaxed sure you've already got that that's easy when you come in and you can do it with yours on the water or close to the water i don't think it matters um and then when you come into the catch i want you to put it in and put it in deep like aggressive deep you want to put it in quick there's a bit of a danger that because you're coming into the catch nice and relaxed and and gentle then there's a bit of a danger to be relaxed and gentle about putting the blade in the water we don't want to do that what we want to do is we want to put the blade in really quick so come in nice and gentle don't upset the boat put the blade in really quick and then you wait for the load and then actually what you want to do if you can is you want to have a little quick movement of the legs to just get to feel the water and then get the connection and then you accelerate from there so it's it's really a slow movement fast movement slow movement and so you just got to remember that you put the blade in quick all the time okay then let's just practice that now so remember nice and relaxed put the blade in deep and quick and feel for the load get connected to it and then accelerate it through from there
and once you've got the load connected and you've started to accelerate then you can really accelerate there's no you have to hold back but that first little bit you've got to pick it up first before you push you want to stop for a sec
two things that might help one is that in your mind i found often it's handy for people to think about it the catcher's two movements up push so when you come into the catch you can go and you can say you say to yourself call it out up push up push as they're two separate things okay it's not push up or or pushing up it's up then push okay second thing is your balance is a bit and i reckon the reason why is because you look at the boat too much your balance is fine seriously your balance is fine when the blades are in the water the balance is cool when you take it out of the water the balance is cool when you come into the catch it tends to go to gas just before you get there and that's because you look at the boat and so i want you to look out here somewhere so here's a pretty good spot for it because that it's all sort of flat if you're with me so just keep your eyes up all the time and forget about balance just don't even think about balance okay and i reckon you'll find your balance will be like that all right let's try that so two things up push and keep your eyes out there relax the shoulders relax relax that's better try to stop again i'd like you to really think it's pretty good i like it i'd like to think more about the relaxed shoulders a bit and so it's really about they're fully out there and it's just pushed back and then it gets you build the stroke from the catch okay how does it feel that concept of putting it in and before you push drive gig it makes sense how do you do it properly remember you've got to teach me how to do it then do you feel the load how does what's the load feel like okay yeah and then as soon as you feel that movement then you can start to push and probably by the time you tell yourself if you feel that movement i'd start pushing straight away because it's a bit like uh driving a car you're coming into a set of lights and they go red how long does it take you to get your foot on the pedal to stop there's a time frame that by the time you think about it get it happening so if you put the blade in and you feel you move start pushing okay and you'll be right on time all right let's try it again
relax relax relax eyes up you want to stop there tell me about your balance it was better when you weren't looking at the boat yeah a lot better because what you're tending to do is you tend to look down on that side for some reason don't do it if you have a stroke coach in the boat don't look at it just avoid it because all it does is upset your balance uh it's uh if you're looking into the boat then you have no reference point for balance if you're with me because you you know you're just there because if you look out there that's not moving and so do that that's looking pretty good really got to focus on it the catch there just just leave your shoulders behind leave them behind one thing you're tending to do and it's not big but it's a little bit is your tendineae has to put the blade in you're tending to then you have a little bit of this sort of a movement and so i want you and just different words that might work is if you try to leave your shoulders behind when you push then i think that'll probably stop it okay so just focus on those few things as we go back down here and i'll tend to shut up for a while you want to stop for a sec but i want to do the same thing but this time i want you to put more power on okay but i want to remember really relaxed super important get that connection get connected first and then i want you to put more power and i want you to sort of really try and drive that boat hard from that point okay but feel for that connection first all right see if we make it go fast remember it's about the legs look up
i want to start i want to do exactly the same going back but every time you come into the catch i want you to look at the sky all right mike's up there somewhere um
yeah look at those clouds above the bridge i want you to look at them every time all right and put the power on did you get that concept though put the blade in first get connected and then build the power remember feel for the load relaxed and then push it like that yeah
you want to stop for a minute so how are we going to lock this in so you keep it forever
i guess so i think what would be a good idea is um is when you get home is to write it down just make it make a list this is what i need to do and then what i'll do is i'll have a we'll talk about when i get back but i'll have a look at a um i'll get some videos that i've got that reinforce what we talked about and then i'll send you some links to that so but it's a big improvement yeah if you do those three things all the time then you'll find it'll improve there's little things that we can tidy up but there always is of course but but that's pretty tidy cool but then i'll show you a bit of video back when we get here and i'll slow it down and you'll say oh could do better but that's okay no i think it's really good well done let's head back in and we'll um and then i want to do something on the erg before you go can i do a bit of work yeah right it's really important to make sure that what you're doing the erg isn't damaging what you do in the boat uh unless of course you're just an indoor rower and then they don't care and because you can make an erg go fast in a way that doesn't make a boat go fast so we've just got to and if the focus is the boat which it is i gather and then we've got to make sure the ergos the support for the boat uh not damaging it but we'll get to that