Training Boat Acceleration into the Catch
|
In this video, Ken looks at the final acceleration into the catch at the three-quarter slide mark when racing. Unfortunately, the muscles used for this movement aren't used much during steady-state rowing. As a result, when it comes to race time, many athletes are not trained for this extra acceleration.
Ken and Joel run through a series of exercises that can help significantly in this part of the rowing cycle during racing. |
|
Video Transcript
How do you train for acceleration into the catch i.e that acceleration the boat has just before the catch let's have a look here you can see just Joel rowing along and see the graph in the bottom corner of the screen and you can see that there's the normal looking graph there's the peak at the beginning of the acceleration curve and then there's a small bump just coming into the catch now that's small bump coming into the catch what that is that's when the boat is pulled towards you because if you think about it with an athlete weighing 80 kilos 90 kilos and the boat only weighs 14 when you move the legs towards you move your feet towards the body then what happens is that the boat moves mostly towards the athlete rather than the athlete moving towards the feet which means that you get an acceleration in the boat the trick of course is to be able to capture that acceleration and when you start to push make sure that you're not just reversing that movement of the boat towards you in that last part of the recovery so what we're looking to demonstrate here is how the best way to go about that here we're demonstrating a drill that's designed to help you get used to that concept of pulling the boat towards you at the catch so the concept is to come into the catch quite quickly pulling the boat towards you then have a quick placement of the blade to make sure that you don't miss the catch and then have a very slow drive phase out of that here we're doing the same thing again but a much more aggressive pulling into the catch more like what you would have if you're rating say 30 strokes a minute 34 strokes a minute in a race a really good way to practice that technique of pulling the boat towards you of course it's absolutely critical that you get the catch in on time so that you don't actually end up losing that acceleration by pushing one of the issues that we face is that there's not very many areas of human activity where you exercise those muscles the ones that pull the boat towards you as you're coming into the catch it's an unusual motion so what we suggest you do is train your body to be able to do that so that when you get to a race situation you're not tiring out those muscles too soon if you find if you don't undertake exercises for it then the only time you use those muscles to any extent is when you're racing which means that you need to train them if you can some other way here we have some drills that are useful for training it first one we demonstrate here is having an elastic band a resistance band around a post and just use it to strengthen your ankles because that's an important part of the same process then the next part of the technique here in the gym is to actually strengthen the muscles in your leg where you're pulling yourself towards pulling the boat towards you as you're racing so with this same deal resistance strap and then just pull put it around your foot maybe you need a shoe there sometimes too so they don't cut into you and then just try and strengthen those muscles by doing these series of exercises start off quite close to the post and then as you get stronger you can of course move yourself further away in order to make the exercise more difficult
there's another way you can do this drill as well and that's by using an ergo now if you have a stationary ergo it doesn't work on a dynamic ergo or a concept on sliders so you have a stationary ergo and what you want to do is to put a piece of wood under the front of the ergo now you can start off with something very small like a thin piece of wood that you see demonstrated here and that will make it a little bit harder because normally what happens with an ergo is the seat sort of slopes towards the the wheel but if you lift it up at the front then you'll find that you have to pull yourself up the slide here you can make it higher at the front you can see a couple of extra blocks under the front of the ergo and then if you want to you can make it even steeper again another way to make it so that it exercises those muscles more is to aggressively pull yourself up the slide so as you can see here what's happening is joel is demonstrating how you put the front of the ergo quite a long way up in the air so that it's definitely an upward incline and then pull yourself into the catch and as i say if you want to make it a bit harder then pull yourself in quite firmly quite fast with your legs to simulate what happens in a race so if you're in a race rating 30 34 then you'll find that that you're going to have to push the boat towards you quite quickly at that point and it's useful to be able to train the muscle so that you're better able to do that critical of course when you pull the boat towards you you need to make sure that you get the catch in well connected before you push in order to make sure that you don't just undo the good work that you did in accelerating the boat towards you so a really useful set of drills to use to strengthen those muscles and get them ready to race and remember when you pull the boat towards you make sure that you get the blade in connected well don't push too hard in that first part of the stroke in a single get the blade in get connected so then you can just row along normally and you'll find you get acceleration coming into the catch and then get connected and then accelerate out of the catch a good way to go faster
there's another way you can do this drill as well and that's by using an ergo now if you have a stationary ergo it doesn't work on a dynamic ergo or a concept on sliders so you have a stationary ergo and what you want to do is to put a piece of wood under the front of the ergo now you can start off with something very small like a thin piece of wood that you see demonstrated here and that will make it a little bit harder because normally what happens with an ergo is the seat sort of slopes towards the the wheel but if you lift it up at the front then you'll find that you have to pull yourself up the slide here you can make it higher at the front you can see a couple of extra blocks under the front of the ergo and then if you want to you can make it even steeper again another way to make it so that it exercises those muscles more is to aggressively pull yourself up the slide so as you can see here what's happening is joel is demonstrating how you put the front of the ergo quite a long way up in the air so that it's definitely an upward incline and then pull yourself into the catch and as i say if you want to make it a bit harder then pull yourself in quite firmly quite fast with your legs to simulate what happens in a race so if you're in a race rating 30 34 then you'll find that that you're going to have to push the boat towards you quite quickly at that point and it's useful to be able to train the muscle so that you're better able to do that critical of course when you pull the boat towards you you need to make sure that you get the catch in well connected before you push in order to make sure that you don't just undo the good work that you did in accelerating the boat towards you so a really useful set of drills to use to strengthen those muscles and get them ready to race and remember when you pull the boat towards you make sure that you get the blade in connected well don't push too hard in that first part of the stroke in a single get the blade in get connected so then you can just row along normally and you'll find you get acceleration coming into the catch and then get connected and then accelerate out of the catch a good way to go faster