During their first few outings, it is not uncommon for novices of any age to smash their knuckles into their knees. Worse than the bruises, however, is what this does to the run of the boat and the timing of the recovery.

Hands should always lead away from the release, with the back following as the arms extend. When the hands are over the knees, the back should be in an upright position, with the arms partially extended and the knees down. The speed at which the hands move to the knees from the catch sets the speed of the recovery. As a general rule, the hands should move away from the body as quickly as they came in during the drive. When the hands pass just beyond the knees, the knees begin to rise. Their speed sets the speed of the seat as it slides toward the catch. The combined movements of the hands, arms, and knees should blend together so that the blade travels to the catch at a consistent speed and the boat moves smoothly beneath the rower(s). You can practice recovery timing and knee speed on the ergometer. Just remember to always row the way you would on the water.

Keep these points in mind:

* The hands should be behind the knees at the beginning of the recovery.

* The hands should lead the recovery.

* When the back has just begun to come from the layback position, the arms are still moving toward full extension. 

* When the hands are over knees, the back should be over the hips.

* After the hands pass beyond the knees, they should begin to rise.

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Drills are one of the most effective ways to engrain a new habit, particularly those that overemphasize a certain movement so its normal application feels easy. Rowing on the square teaches the correct hand path during the release and balance on the recovery.

There are numerous variations of this seemingly simple drill. Coaches may choose starting the drill in a balanced boat at low speed. Increasing the pressure, speed of the boat, stroke rate, and the number of rowers involved adds to the difficulty of the drill.

Pausing is another popular drill, which helps with balance, sequencing, and crew coordination. This drill also has varying levels of difficulty, with the “easy” starting point consisting of a short pause with fully-stretched legs, the hands in front of the knees, and blades feathered.

The so-called “wide-grip” drill increases the catch angle and, for sweep rowers, emphasizes proper rotation while also stressing balance. Increasing the width of the grip makes this drill more difficult and changing the hand position every stroke adds to the complexity.

The variety of drills becomes literally endless when we start combining them.

In general, beginners or athletes with poor skill levels need to start with more straightforward drills. Experts can be challenged with the most difficult combination of exercises administered with minimal feedback from the coach. 

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A feeling of lightness is one of the hallmarks of good suspension on the drive. When sculling, think about shifting your weight to your feet as you come forward for the catch. Then press your legs against the foot stretchers as your blades drop down to the water and simultaneously engage the lower back, shoulders, and arms. 

 In the early part of the drive, your legs should be driving down while your back remains in a forward body angle, arms extended. At this point in the stroke, it is as though you are standing on your feet and hanging off the oar handles with your arms. This creates a feeling of lightness on the seat and is one of the hallmarks of good suspension on the drive. Always avoid initiating the drive with your back. This reduces the effectiveness of your leg drive and can lead you to dig at the catch.

Here are some other tips:

* As you approach the catch, the weight of your body should shift to your feet as if you were standing up. Maintaining pressure on the foot stretcher sets you up for a solid leg drive.

* Keep your head up and eyes fixed on a point on the horizon as a way to keep your back in the proper position. Tighten the muscles in your lower back to support your legs as you transfer power to the end of the oar.

* When you are properly suspended at the catch, you should feel as though you could lift yourself off the seat. While that’s a sign that you are doing it right, stay in contact with the seat to keep your movements horizontal.

The feeling of hanging on your arms will give you the sense that you are driving the boat forward properly and efficiently.

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One of my greatest worries as a coach was that my rowers would lose their ratio during the throes of battle. The ratio naturally changes as the rates increase, but it’s still important to maintain it, even if the difference between the drive and recovery is reduced at full speed. In a low-rate endurance workout, for example, the ratio between the drive and the recovery may be as much as three to one. At race pace or higher, it may come closer to one to one. But it’s still important to be aware of it. There are several other cues you can focus on. Pay close attention to what proper timing feels like. Try to feel when the backs of your calves touch the ends of the slides, which indicates whether or not you are driving evenly. Keeping the head up on a level plane will help increase awareness of lunging at the catch. By focusing on the horizon you will also be increasingly aware if you are moving horizontally or if there is excessive vertical motion. Paying attention to the oarlocks on your side and on the seat of the rower in front of you are useful tricks to focus on timing. But the most important cue, the one that trumps all others, is whether or not you are in front of your competition during a race. 

The post Got Rhythm? appeared first on Rowing News.

Coordination is the integration of the central nervous system’s processes of speed, strength, endurance, and flexibility. To improve your rowing, you must learn to perform the stroke in consistent patterns. Adapting to higher stroke rates and being able to make subtle adjustments in your stroke to stabilize the hull or clean up bladework can be improved with specific drills.

There are several methods for developing coordination. One way is to perform a skill with the opposite limb or in an unusual position. If we apply this to sweep rowing, this means having athletes regularly switch sides to become competent on port and starboard or practicing drills that alternate hands on the sweep oar, such as outside hand only, inside hand only, or outside hand on the drive/inside hand on the recovery. For scullers, there is a challenging drill I refer to as the Swinford Switch. Scull with the port blade squared and the starboard blade feathered for 10 strokes, and then in one stroke, switch to the port blade feathered and the starboard blade squared for 10 strokes. This is a first-rate drill for right-left integration.

Altering the speed or tempo of performing a movement is another way to improve synchronization of body parts. Exercises that increase the stroke rate progressively or with variations in rate accomplish this. Example: 40-stroke pieces in which you row at full pressure for 20 strokes at a base rate then raise the rate two strokes per minute every two strokes for 20 strokes. If your base rate is 30 strokes per minute, in the second 20 strokes, your rate will increase to 32-34-36-38-40. Another drill for high-speed coordinated reactions is rowing half slide at maximum tempo, increasing the pace every five strokes. Once bladework deteriorates, the drill ends. 

Technical challenges combined with complicated performance conditions better a rower’s ability to cope and react efficiently. Practices designated for rowing in various boat classes, such as changing from an eight to a pair, a sweep boat to a sculling boat, a single to a double challenge the body’s sensitivity. Being exposed to different boats, wavy water, windy conditions, and currents adds another layer of difficulty to building skill. 

Games of all sorts or practicing unrelated sports will also help develop a repertoire of movements and body knowledge that will be incorporated into your stroke in subtle ways, so cross-country skiing, tennis, or rock climbing can all take their place in your training plan.

Marlene Royle is the author of Tip of the Blade: Notes on Rowing. She specializes in training for masters rowers. Her coaching service, Roylerow Performance Training Programs, provides the program and the support you need to improve your competitive edge. For information, email Marlene at roylerow@aol.com or visit www.roylerow.com.

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When it comes to rigging changes, remember that rowing fast depends on two things: force on the blade and the time that force acts on the blade.  Blade force is the only force that can propel the overall system—rower and boat—and together with the length of time it’s applied changes velocity. Rowers strive to generate high blade force over a sustained period of time.

Blade force is a function of the interaction of blade and water. Blade force can be generated only if the blade moves relative to the water, and its magnitude is directly correlated to the velocity of that movement. So if rowers want to increase blade force, they need to move the blade faster through the water, which in turn reduces the time that the blade interacts with the water.

This means rowers must have the equipment to create good blade speed in the water while generating the necessary force on the handle. To accomplish this, we make the inboard short enough so that handle velocity translates to blade velocity while keeping it long enough for rowers to produce the necessary handle force to counteract blade force.

Another factor in determining the best inboard length is the geometry created by the inboard rotating around the pin. It must fit the anatomy of the rower so he or she can muster large handle forces over a long path. This is achieved by choosing an appropriate span for a given inboard, which is why inboard and span are always closely related. For example, the inboard is typically 30 centimeters longer than the spread in sweep, and in sculling the length of the two inboards together is regularly 16 centimeters larger than the span. So if you change one of these measures, you must change the other, too.

Selecting the best rigging measurements is a complex undertaking, and there is no simple formula that can be applied universally. All the following factors have to be recognized: blade shape and size; boat class; size and power of the rowers; technical skill of the rowers; wind and water conditions; length of the race, and more. No wonder coaches hesitate to change rigging measurements after they’ve found a set of numbers that seems to work.

For example, the numbers 88/288/160 centimeters for inboard/total scull length/span are very common for single rowers, and you find them all over the world. Weren’t these the numbers that Mahé Drysdale used to win an Olympic gold medal? 

Indeed, those were the measurements used by one of the best scullers ever. What coaches often forget is that this rower has been an outstanding specimen in size and fitness, and we don’t usually find such rowers in our clubs. Should we not think twice about using the same numbers for a lightweight junior?

Rigging measurements should be customized to the individual, just as bicyclists change gearing depending on speed, grade, wind, etc. Compared to bicycling, do we change enough gears in rowing, and how many centimeters do we have to move measures so that they have a significant impact? 

Let’s focus for now only on changes to inboard and span and discuss specifically the rigging changes in sculling. All the information presented applies to sweep rowing as well, though certain things (e.g., overlap of inboards) are different. 

If you lengthen the inboard by one centimeter and leave everything else the same—that is, you keep the length of the outboard and span the same—you shrink the catch angle of the oar  by a minimal half a degree, but you lengthen the lever by 1.1 percent, so you reduce the handle force accordingly. The increased overlap of the handles requires a little more technical skill, and the lighter handle force is just noticeable. Such a change is appropriate at a regatta with some headwind as long as the water is not so rough that the increased handle overlap becomes a problem. Changes more minor than one centimeter would have a scarcely noticeable impact on stroke length and handle force. Larger changes of the inboard would necessitate appropriate changes in the span.

Changing only the span is advisable solely for technical reasons: helping a rower manage the overlap, for example, or shifting a sculler’s arc more toward the catch (enlarging the span will necessitate moving the foot stretcher to the stern, which in turn will increase the catch angle while decreasing the finish angle) or the finish (reducing the span). Adjusting the span by only two centimeters will produce noticeable changes, but such a change affects only the so-called “dynamic gearing” while the “static gearing” remains the same. Changing only the span takes considerable time for rowers to get used to.

Changing the inboard and span in tandem while maintaining outboard length influences the load a sculler experiences dramatically. Changing the rigging from 88/288/160 centimeters to 86/286/156 centimeters increases handle force by 2.3 percent for the exact blade force and increases the oar arc by about two degrees, which makes the dynamic gearing heavier. To illustrate the difference, shortening the overall length of the sculls to 282 centimeters would be required to maintain the load of the original rigging.

Bottom line: There are many options for influencing the load a rower experiences. What measures should be taken depends on the individual situation. Is a short-term measure necessary, such as when the wind changes at a regatta? Or can we work with rowers over an extended period of time to improve their effectiveness? The goal of the rigging change should be identified clearly, while realizing that fiddling around by mere millimeters will not really help.

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Hanging around New England boathouses, you will eventually come across someone who carries out a beautiful mahogany single. Long and sleek, with a stern that comes to a sharp point, it will draw ooh’s and ah’s from anyone in the vicinity. “It’s a King,” bystanders will  murmur. “Look, Virginia,” an older sculler will say, “That is the Ferrari of boats, a Vermeer. The most amazing craftsmanship you can imagine went into it.”

“Yeah, but it must be heavy. It’s wood,” says the disbelieving youngster. “Otherwise, all boats would be wood, right?”

Actually, no. A well-made wood shell is no heavier than the minimum weight specified by the international rowing federation (FISA) for singles: 14 kilograms (about 30 pounds, 14 ounces). (A King weighs between 12.7 and 15.4 kgs., depending on its owner’s size.) Why, even with eights, a well-designed and well-built wooden eight isn’t necessarily heavier than a synthetic boat. It wasn’t carbon that killed the wooden boats; it was the dearth of skilled craftsmen and the difficulty of obtaining great wood.

And that’s where Graeme King comes into the picture. For the last 40 years, Graeme has been building boats in southern Vermont. People who are lucky enough to own a King count themselves extremely fortunate. “I feel like it’s a tremendous privilege to own one,” says Julia Shivers of Boston, who bought a 25-year-old King flyweight single last spring and had Graeme overhaul it. Her husband, James Cusack, adds, “It’s just the best ride that there is. The sound of the water coming off the hull, the feel of it through the water, it’s perfection.” He got his boat as a birthday present from Julia. A very fortunate couple indeed.

When I visited Graeme in his shop in July, we started by talking about wood. I admired the plywood that goes into the skin of his boats. “I had to start making my own plywood from sapele and mahogany from West Africa because the quality of what you can buy nowadays is a problem. Because I make my own plywood, I can match the grain so that, finished, it looks like one big piece of wood.” The outer skin that catches the light so beautifully is three layers of half-millimeter African mahogany.

I wondered how his path had led him here. He’s an Australian, from Adelaide. In his last year of high school, he saw some guys rowing in singles and tried rowing. On leaving school, he started a metal apprenticeship with the Australian Railways. To his delight, he discovered they had a rowing club, where he saw two brand-new racing singles hanging from the ceiling. “I bet I could build one of those.” And he did. He began making boats for rowing clubs, and, before long, one of the Australian boatbuilders began to chafe at the competition. “He wanted me out of Australia,” King said. Not long after, in 1972, after the Olympics, he received an invitation to become the boatman at Harvard.

Making repairs and rigging and truing twisted oars were all good work, but he knew in his heart that building boats was what he really wanted to do. After returning to Australia for a few years, he set up shop in Vermont. His word-of-mouth reputation ensured that he soon had more than enough customers. In 1983, he was talked into placing an advertisement in American Rowing magazine, and “I was swamped with orders; it was pointless; too many inquiries.” That was his only foray into advertising.

As a trained engineer, he has quite a lot of ideas about boat design. One of his pet peeves is that FISA set minimum boat weights by weighing all the boats at a world championship. One third were average weight, one third were lighter, and one third were heavier. The aim was to keep the cost of the boats down. The lighter the boat, the more expensive it is to build and repair. Instead of using the average weight, officials took the average and subtracted 15 percent for each boat class. The result, King says, is boats that are too light and not durable enough.

“There’s a lot that is still not known about shells,” he says. “It’s not clear what’s actually happening in the boundary layer of water and how the hull-shape variation affects the variation of waves.” King puts a lot of work and thought into his hull shapes (he worked with the head of Bell Labs on his designs), “but the balance between boat weight and hull shape is still not something that can be solved definitively. There’s a lot to test and learn. Boat design is a jigsaw puzzle, and every piece affects other pieces.”

One of his most interesting designs was an eight with a 45-degree fin on port and starboard to provide stability for a more efficient hull shape. It worked well, but the fins were constantly getting smacked against the dock when the boat was lifted in or out of the water. He built 10 of these eights but abandoned them after a few years. The course record at the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association championships is still held by a St. Paul’s School boys’ crew in their wooden King winged eight.

The boats hold their value. Indeed, in the Covid era, there is a hunger for outdoor exercise, and sales of rowing equipment have surged. If you happen to find a used boat for sale, it will not be a bargain. People search for years for lightly-used King singles.

Fifteen years ago, he decided to draw plans for some of his sturdier singles for people who wanted to build their own. There are more people who love the feel of working with wood than I had realized. He has not completed the plans, although some people have made boats anyway with incomplete plans. “I have to flee to Australia for my retirement so that I can have time to complete those plans. I’ve got to get away from so many repairs and requests for new boats.”

It’s common to hear people say that “a King is a work of art.” And it is. But it is also a superb piece of design and engineering. As Graeme says, “To make a simple design, there is a lot of engineering expertise that goes into it.”

Graeme is leaving the States and the business he built this fall to return to his native land. He’s turning the repair business over to two skilled craftsmen, Wade Smith and Jim Lauderdale. His legacy will live on in the elegant simplicity of the 500 boats he has built. To see a King–to sit in it, to row it–is to feel it is alive, that it breathes, that it was built with love. “It’s easy to design a bad boat,” Graeme says, “but it’s hard to come up with a better boat.”

 Graeme King has devoted his life to building those better boats. Come back to the States often, Graeme, even if it’s only to sit on the porch of the Cambridge Boat Club and listen to people admiring those “beautiful wooden boats.”

The post The King of Singles appeared first on Rowing News.

The time has come for current college rowers to decide whether they’re all in for a bid to race at the 2024 Paris Games. 

“This early-summer selection camp is like the penultimate, and then the [fall] speed order is the final entry point for people who want to be considered,” said USRowing Chief High Performance Officer Josy Verdonkschot from California, where he’s preparing non-collegiate athletes for World Rowing Cup II, which will take place in Varese, Italy, from June 16 to 18. They’ll head to Europe to train for a couple of weeks before the World Cup, stay a week afterward to continue training, and then return to Princeton and Lake Mercer for selection camp and trials July 27 to 30 on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J.

The rowers from the core group training under Verdonkschot are preparing for the Paris 2024 Olympics differently than previous U.S. National Teams. Verdonkschot has been very clear about his strategy of seeing which Olympic events present the best opportunity for the U.S. to medal, and putting his best rowers in those boats to qualify the U.S. in those events for the Olympics at this year’s world championships. Boats that don’t earn Olympic spots at the 2023 World Rowing Championships must go through the last-chance qualifying regatta in May 2024.

“Anybody who would want to go to the Olympics has to make the decision to take one year off of their studies, basically, because final qualification would be in May. Selection for the final lineups would be March and at the beginning of April,” said Verdonkschot. “So you cannot do that. You cannot wait until the end of the collegiate season.”

U.S. collegiate rowers have long been the staple feedstock of medal-winning Olympic crews—and most of those have been eights. Five of the eight oarsmen in the last U.S. men’s crew to win Olympic gold learned to row in college, and practically every member of the various U.S. women’s eights that won every world championship and Olympics for 11 years rowed in an NCAA program before representing the U.S.

Verdonkschot ruffled the feathers of some coaches during Zoom calls with the U.S. college community when the new boss of the U.S. National Team arrived in America. The Dutchman’s frank and blunt style irked some on those calls, who didn’t appreciate Verdonkschot’s observation that U.S. collegiate programs do little to prepare their athletes for sculling and small-boat rowing—which are 10 of the 14 Olympic events. Of course, that’s not a college coach’s job. Their athletic departments hire and pay them to coach and prepare student-athletes to compete in their school’s collegiate events, raced almost exclusively in eights and coxed fours.

U.S. college coaches are also used to the regular communication and collaboration of Verdonkschot’s predecessors, including Mike Teti, Tom Terhaar, and Kris Korzeniowski, all of whom coached U.S. collegiate programs before becoming U.S. National Team leaders. Verdonkschot has taken a different approach. “Never heard from him,” said one coach of a program that has produced dozens of recent national team and Olympic rowers, more than a year after Verdonkschot assumed his post at USRowing.

But Verdonkschot is not in the U.S. for the benefit of U.S. collegiate rowing—the top end of which is mostly bereft of U.S. citizens eligible to represent the U.S.—even if he alienates it to his disadvantage. He’s taken on the challenge of putting U.S. crews on the podium, not “all kinds of eighth places,” as he recently put it. “I’m the CEO for high performance. Simple as that. So I’m in charge of the plan,” he said in an exclusive Rowing News interview when he first came to the U.S.

So far, Verdonkschot seems to like how the plan is progressing, and the numbers support him. Numerous rowers posted significantly improved erg times leading up to the winter speed order in Florida at Nathan Benderson Park, where they also went fast on the water in small boats. California Rowing Club is responsible for the improvement of most of the top men, and Verdonkschot has made room for them in his plans and made accommodations for their West Coast schedules in the winter training camp at Benderson. At the most recent National Selection Regatta, April 24 to 28 in Chula Vista, Calif., “I was happy with the result. I was happy with the percentages,” said Verdonkschot. “For the rest, we’ll see what comes out of it, because we need to know what our best options would be. Looking at sculling—single, double, quad—what you would want to know is how to prioritize, and that’s a white canvas.”

It’s not that prior Olympic coaches haven’t aimed for the best opportunities for U.S. crews or that the eight has always been the priority boat—the four has been, in some recent Olympics—but never have sculling events and going to Europe to test them been the focus of Olympic preparation, as Verdonkschot is now making them.

The USRowing board and staff leadership set the bar low for success in Paris 2024 by bungling preparations for the last Olympics so badly that no medals were won by the U.S., with both eights finishing fourth, each less than one percent out of the medals. Their coaches had dealt with the concurrent challenges of preparing for the Olympics and being the subject of inquires by law firm Arent Fox, which was brought in to answer complaints about how selection and training were run—a distraction that USRowing CEO Amanda Kraus told Rowing News at the time “we welcome.”

More recently, in her May letter to USRowing members, Kraus crowed about receiving a formal letter from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) stating that USRowing has addressed all the issues found in the yearlong assessment begun during preparations for the Tokyo Games. How many professionals, not just coaches, wouldn’t be at least one percent less effective with someone looking over their shoulder—the situation faced by the prior Olympic coaches?

Now, just winning a medal of any color in any of the 14 Olympic events will be a success for Verdonkschot, who was hired by Kraus relatively late in the current Olympic cycle, which was shortened by the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games.

In multiple conversations, both on and off the record, Verdonkschot has not once mentioned the compressed schedule as an excuse. He also won’t take the bait of inquiries implying that his program is underfunded. “I do not agree,” he responded flatly to a question about not having enough money. 

“USOPC has committed to the same number that they did in the past, and I have committed to a certain level of support for everybody. Not based upon the money we have, but based upon the level they perform. So there’s a group of about 50 athletes right now who receive direct athlete support based upon results at Worlds. This group—obviously there will be people who might drop out or who come in—those people get a level of support that is maybe not what you would want. But let’s say $2,000 a month for everybody who was in the finals last year or top seven or top eight last year in a smaller boat is better than it was in the past. That’s the level that we want to guarantee to the athletes. It’s performance-based and, yeah, I run into a deficit, and that’s why we work very hard to find funding.”

Verdonkschot puts the total cost of supporting an athlete this year at $50,000, half for costs like travel and equipment and half paid as direct athlete support. “That is quite a change compared to the past,” he said. “We are very happy that we’ve got the support of USOPC. We are very happy that we’ve got the support of NRF [the National Rowing Foundation] and the USRowing Foundation, which is also going to be a bigger player in how we can fund everything.

“We cannot pretend that we run a program and not have the means to provide for that program,” continued Verdonkschot. “We’ve got a spring grant from NRF, which was substantial, 400K. There might be a second part to that. Last year, I ran into a deficit with the athlete stipends. We knew that we would run into the deficit and I spoke with NRF to bridge the gap. 

“I do think that there’s a lot of good people out there who understand that we just do what we need to do, and they have got this dream, and we’ve got this dream, and you just do what you need to do. If we need to get the money, we’ll get the money.

“I do not make any compromises about the program.”

The post No Compromises appeared first on Rowing News.

A solid connection between the legs, lower back, and arms is essential to move the boat effectively and sustainably. Because the legs are the strongest muscle group, the arms and back move very little during the first half of the drive, with the arms remaining straight until the legs are down. The leg drive is initiated the moment the blade enters the water. The acceleration of the legs increases the speed of the shell, but the arms and back have to transfer the energy generated to the second half of the stroke. Veteran coach Larry Gluckman (Trinity, Dartmouth, Columbia, Princeton) suggests that athletes picture a “power rectangle” at this phase of the stroke, formed when the wrists pass over the knees and the rower’s back is in the upright position and the legs are down. Think about these points: 

* Keep your arms straight for the first part of the drive. If you can draw your arms toward your body at the catch, your legs are not fully engaged.

* A strong lower back and glutes will keep your back in the correct position when the knees are down. 

* Strive for a “power rectangle” when you row, with wrists over the knees, arms extended, and the back upright as the legs come down and you press off the foot stretcher. 

* Keep your head up and your eyes fixed on a point on the horizon to keep your back from lifting early.

* The arms and back pry the boat forward once the legs are down. 

The post The Perfectly Connected Stroke appeared first on Rowing News.

The final month before your peak race is a time to shave off every possible second and add to your boat speed. Start by maximizing your time on the water through careful planning and by putting extra emphasis on the weakest part of your race. Keep your technical work at 75 percent pressure. This allows you pay attention to detail and limits fatigue. It is also critical that you know your start. Practice the first five strokes of a start every time you begin to row. Doing so will teach you how to get off the line in all types of conditions with confidence. Also, try to incorporate half-slide rowing into your practices. These abbreviated strokes help to strengthen your rhythm and remove extra motions from your stroke. It is an effective way to improve your entry, not to miss the water, and learn to take the water on the move. You do not have the habits at half slide that you have at full slide so you can perfect the pick up of the boat speed and it allows you to do high rating work without the psychological stress. Finally, aim to increase your boat speed with every stroke in your taper week. Races are won by less than two seconds so this exercise could be your ticket to the podium.

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