Bent Arms

[[old] fergie]

First i'll make it clear, i've never had any sort of training for my technique on the machines - just what i've read and saw.<br />BUt i've always thought that your arms are supposed to be dead straight at the catch, and not bend until the end of the stroke.<br /><br />so what i currently do, is at the catch, my arms are locked straight, and i keep it this way until my legs are fully straight - so i'm pretty much at the back of my slide, then at this point i pull the handle into my stomach.<br />This way, during the first part of the stroke none of my arm muscles are tense or anything.<br />I always thought this was perfect.<br /><br />BUt i'v ejust been to the NZ skools indoor rowing champs, and i watched the U19 2k final (i'm U19 LW) and i noticed that the 2 fastest guys (pulled a 6.04!) bend there arms during the stroke.<br />Not just at the start, but the whole race, and both of them did it.<br />there arms looked about 15 degrees bent at the start of the stroke, and they helf this during the slide then pulled it into there body.<br /><br />you could also see there arm muscles were extremely tense.<br /><br />So i went to the gym today and tried it, and after about 15 strokes my arms were tired!!<br /><br />So the question is, should the arms be bent or straight? or - Am i doing it right?<br /><br />i'll also point out another fact, i'm lightwieght, and my arms are tiny (i'm all legs!) and these guys would have been 90kg+ with huge arms

[[old] PaulS]

<!--QuoteBegin-fergie+Oct 19 2005, 02:48 AM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(fergie @ Oct 19 2005, 02:48 AM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->First i'll make it clear, i've never had any sort of training for my technique on the machines - just what i've read and saw.<br />BUt i've always thought that your arms are supposed to be dead straight at the catch, and not bend until the end of the stroke.<br /><br />so what i currently do, is at the catch, my arms are locked straight, and i keep it this way until my legs are fully straight - so i'm pretty much at the back of my slide, then at this point i pull the handle into my stomach.<br />This way, during the first part of the stroke none of my arm muscles are tense or anything.<br />I always thought this was perfect.<br /><br />BUt i'v ejust been to the NZ skools indoor rowing champs, and i watched the U19 2k final (i'm U19 LW) and i noticed that the 2 fastest guys (pulled a 6.04!) bend there arms during the stroke.<br />Not just at the start, but the whole race, and both of them did it.<br />there arms looked about 15 degrees bent at the start of the stroke, and they helf this during the slide then pulled it into there body.<br /><br />you could also see there arm muscles were extremely tense.<br /><br />So i went to the gym today and tried it, and after about 15 strokes my arms were tired!!<br /><br />So the question is, should the arms be bent or straight? or - Am i doing it right?<br /><br />i'll also point out another fact, i'm lightwieght, and my arms are tiny (i'm all legs!) and these guys would have been 90kg+ with huge arms <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />You may be taking the whole thing a bit too litterally. You should not be "locking" your arms straight. Don't worry, they will be held pretty much straight by the force of your legs driving, right? It's also likely that what you are seeing as "bending" is not the joint, but the surrounding muscles changing shape. It's certainly possible that they do bend the arms a bit at the beginning, but as you say, they have huge arms and can do this for the whole race and pull a 6:04 (non-trivial time for a U19). I'd suspect that they were not exactly midgets either... <br /><br />The three stroke components, Legs, Torso, Arms will each overlap the neighboring component, but not all three. So the legs will be completely done before the Arms begin, with the Torso providing a connecting movement between them. There will be tension in your arms and across your back. The silly mantra of "Let your arms feel like they are going to be pulled from their sockets" is just that, silly, and can only lead to a weak stroke or shoulder injury.<br /><br />So how did it go for you? "All legs", can't be a bad thing in rowing. I had a Friend that we called "T-Rex" back in college, a footbal player that I convinced to come out and row, hopefully that is self-explanatory.<br /><br />Cheers!

[[old] John Rupp]

Here's an article by 3 time world champion Peter Haining.<br /><br /><a href='http://www.dreheroars.co.uk/liveupdater ... 1043876156' target='_blank'>http://www.dreheroars.co.uk/liveupdater ... 156</a><br /><br />"I watched Frans (previous world champion Frans Göbel) scull – his feet were high and steep. I started edging my feet up and my leg power became more horizontal."<br /><br />"I met Frans again at regattas – and noticed that he was warming up on the machine before races for 40 minutes at 26 – 28 rate. I went over to him and looked at his technique and the thing that stuck out – his arms are straight for ever.<br /><br /><img src='http://www.rowperfect.com/images/hainin_g.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />