I'm playing devils advocate here Travis and would appreciate your thoughts . I've never really understood why people do this on the ergo. In a boat, it's important to accelerate into your body by pivoting backwards with your body whilst pulling in hard with your arms and shoulders in the last half of the stroke in order to maintain the speed you have generated from the catch. By leaning right back, rowing up high at the finish, dropping your elbows and forearms and bending your wrists, you have no option but to drop off power / strength and speed resulting in a slow down of the flywheel...it's just not a strong position / technique. In addition, by lying backwards a lot at the finish, it takes a lot of unnecessary energy in order to pull yourself back up. By minimizing layback, keeping your hands level with your sternum, keeping elbows above the hands, keeping wrists and forearms level in a strong position, and generally working on accelerating into your sternum, it's a good way to improve strength in the second half of the stroke and optimize flywheel speed. Otherwise, it's necessary to pick a slowing flywheel up again every time at the catch. Finally, additional length at the finish seems to be a waste of time in terms of generating flywheel speed. The only effective length is where it can be combined with leg drive (in first half of the stroke), as the legs are where we generate all our speed and power. Past 'square off,' it's simply a matter of trying to maintain that speed as much as is possible through to the finish. In a rowing shell, we are trying to hold the boat up out of the water for as long as possible, so it doesn't drop back down in the water, having lifted it up out of the water in the first half of the stroke from the catch. I dunno...I've pondered this issue for a long time.
Again. More great advice here.
Tall, heavyweight, male water rower here. Thank you for the insight regarding bodyweight, and static vs dynamic rowers.
ThanksTravis.
I'm playing devils advocate here Travis and would appreciate your thoughts .
I've never really understood why people do this on the ergo. In a boat, it's important to accelerate into your body by pivoting backwards with your body whilst pulling in hard with your arms and shoulders in the last half of the stroke in order to maintain the speed you have generated from the catch.
By leaning right back, rowing up high at the finish, dropping your elbows and forearms and bending your wrists, you have no option but to drop off power / strength and speed resulting in a slow down of the flywheel...it's just not a strong position / technique.
In addition, by lying backwards a lot at the finish, it takes a lot of unnecessary energy in order to pull yourself back up. By minimizing layback, keeping your hands level with your sternum, keeping elbows above the hands, keeping wrists and forearms level in a strong position, and generally working on accelerating into your sternum, it's a good way to improve strength in the second half of the stroke and optimize flywheel speed.
Otherwise, it's necessary to pick a slowing flywheel up again every time at the catch. Finally, additional length at the finish seems to be a waste of time in terms of generating flywheel speed. The only effective length is where it can be combined with leg drive (in first half of the stroke), as the legs are where we generate all our speed and power. Past 'square off,' it's simply a matter of trying to maintain that speed as much as is possible through to the finish. In a rowing shell, we are trying to hold the boat up out of the water for as long as possible, so it doesn't drop back down in the water, having lifted it up out of the water in the first half of the stroke from the catch. I dunno...I've pondered this issue for a long time.
Too much to go through here in a typed response. Feel free to reach out through gtsrowing.com if you want to discuss.
Thanks Travis.