Please critique my form - New to rowing

[Cyclist2]

In another thread, I mentioned that the leg part of the drive should be like pulling stumps. You definitely use your legs for the most power doing that. Review that technique video - you'll see that during the leg drive the guy is holding his core very strongly with extended arms. As a drill, put the damper up at 10 and do just the leg drive, without moving your back or arms, just push with the legs concentrating on transferring ALL the power from your legs through your core and arms to the handle. You'll see that if you start opening up or pulling with the arms that you won't get the power from your legs.

Are you having fun? Rome wasn't built in a day.

[michaelb]

You are getting the benefit of personal video analysis by Nav, which is really a treat and often the best threads here. But I don't see Nav suggest what I think is the easiest and most direct way to address your (and mine and everyone else's) balance and body position at the finish: unstrap your feet. You mention that you feel the straps on your feet at the finish already. if you row strapless (don't strap your feet down at all), that will force you to balance at the finish, and should help you get your hands away and rotate at the hips, before you start the recovery with your legs. It may seem very hard or impossible to do, and if so, that is a strong suggestion that it is just the thing to learn.

[jamesg]

Right, what he needs is strapless, back straight at all times (ie not that suicidal slump), arms and lots of swing only (no slide) but reaching over his feet: all for quite some time. Just like in the triremes. Only then add a little leg, after the swing, gradually increasing until he reaches the chain guard.

The progression should be: arms, rating 60, 50W; arms and swing, rating 30-40, 100-130W; legs added, rating 20 200W. Adjust to size. Anything else is not rowing.

[rykertest]

Strapless huh? hhmm....I have come across that topic a few times when searching on this forum, but didn't realize it is something a new rower would/should do.

My first question is where would I find some info (ideally a video tutorial) showing me how to do this, specifically with my feet? I have no idea at all on how to proceed with no straps.

My next question is, is rowing supposed to be done without straps? If so, why are they on the rower to begin with?

I'm not into this for competition, for fitness only but if it will help I'll do it.

Thank you both for your reply.

[Citroen]

My first question is where would I find some info (ideally a video tutorial) showing me how to do this, specifically with my feet? I have no idea at all on how to proceed with no straps.

Er what? Just simply don't bother tying your feet down. Loosen the straps put your feet on top of them. Don't worry you're not going off the back. Start slowly doing the normal 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full slide then gradually pick up the pace until you're comfortable. You will have to slow down the recovery which is one of the things strapless is good for.

My next question is, is rowing supposed to be done without straps? If so, why are they on the rower to begin with?

No. Training is done strapless so that you can fix the flaws in your technique. Rowing and ergo racing is done with your feet tied down (fairly tight) at much higher rates and power than training. If you do lots of strapless training you'll find your stroke rate comes down and you can get more power into each stroke.

The ultimate workout is 30minutes at 20spm with or without straps.

[rykertest]

My first question is where would I find some info (ideally a video tutorial) showing me how to do this, specifically with my feet? I have no idea at all on how to proceed with no straps.

Er what? Just simply don't bother tying your feet down. Loosen the straps put your feet on top of them. Don't worry you're not going off the back. Start slowly doing the normal 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full slide then gradually pick up the pace until you're comfortable. You will have to slow down the recovery which is one of the things strapless is good for.

My next question is, is rowing supposed to be done without straps? If so, why are they on the rower to begin with?

No. Training is done strapless so that you can fix the flaws in your technique. Rowing and ergo racing is done with your feet tied down (fairly tight) at much higher rates and power than training. If you do lots of strapless training you'll find your stroke rate comes down and you can get more power into each stroke.

The ultimate workout is 30minutes at 20spm with or without straps.

Fair enough, I will give it a shot this afternoon and see how it goes. Thank you for the reply.

[rykertest]

OK so below is a new video from this evening. I'm hoping to see some improvement in my technique.

The things I noticed that I consider to be improvements are the chain seems to be more stable and has much less sag or "chatter". The other is that I am getting my knees down before I lean/pull. I am really trying to remember with each stroke to push my legs/butt back first before worrying about the arms/back. Am I correct?

I know there are a few bad habits that rear their ugly head in this video but I hope I'm at least making some positive changes.

Helpful feedback is appreciated. Thank you and have a good day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4PBR7r_1qw

[rykertest]

Oh yeah and ignore my dirty sock close up at the end. lol

[Nosmo]

I am really trying to remember with each stroke to push my legs/butt back first before worrying about the arms/back. Am I correct?

Lots of improvement.
You are engaging the legs first but not keeping the upper body firm. As a result your but goes back but the handle doesn't move at the start of the drive. You can see in the video that you are leaning more forward when you start the drive with the legs. the body angle should stay the same at the start of the drive and the handle should move the same distance as the seat.

[rykertest]

I am really trying to remember with each stroke to push my legs/butt back first before worrying about the arms/back. Am I correct?

Lots of improvement.
You are engaging the legs first but not keeping the upper body firm. As a result your but goes back but the handle doesn't move at the start of the drive. You can see in the video that you are leaning more forward when you start the drive with the legs. the body angle should stay the same at the start of the drive and the handle should move the same distance as the seat.

That would explain why I feel it is too easy from a leg standpoint right? Would relocating my feet help, maybe move them higher? The rail is inline with my ankle bone which is where I though it needed to be. I would assume that having my feet our more in front of me and not down and in front of me would help with my drive?

Thank you for the reply.

[Bob S.]

I know there are a few bad habits that rear their ugly head in this video but I hope I'm at least making some positive changes.

Helpful feedback is appreciated. Thank you and have a good day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4PBR7r_1qw

The slide-shooting (bum shoving in Brit-speak) is very clearly evident in this video. Your legs straighten and your seat goes back, but your handle hardly moves at all, so that all that strong leg power has done almost nothing to spin the wheel, but has just bent your back into much too sharp an angle get a strong pull as well as setting you up for back injury.

I don't know how to select individual frames like NavHaz does, but it is easily seen that your back is just about vertical ("12:00 o'clock") at the catch and it is at about 11:00 o'clock when your legs are straight.

In regard to rowing without having your feet strapped in, driving with the legs and swinging the torso back builds up momentum of the body moving away from the flywheel. The pull of the arms cancels that momentum so that the body mass neatly comes to a stop at the end of the drive and is ready to move back up on the recovery. If this sequence is off balance, the rower can cancel the momentum by pulling the feet against the straps. If the feet are not strapped in, and the momentum is not cancelled properly with the arm pull, the feet come off the foot boards and the rower can go flying off the back of the seat. Rowing with the straps loose across the footboards and the feet on top of them forces the rower to use the arms properly.

Strapless rowing is usually not too difficult at low stroke rates that are generally used for just training to build up endurance, but gets more and more difficult as the stroke rate goes up. Under 24spm should not be too difficult; over 30spm it is tough for most rowers.

Bob S.

[azuroff]

I'm still pretty new at this myself, and I was just about to post a similar question (legs don't feel like they're doing any work) when I saw this thread.



As you start the stroke, I noticed that the slider has moved a lot further back than the handle. For the more experienced rowers out there, is this a problem? If the slider moves back a foot, should the handle move back a foot as well if you're doing it right?

[Bob S.]

As you start the stroke, I noticed that the slider has moved a lot further back than the handle. For the more experienced rowers out there, is this a problem? If the slider moves back a foot, should the handle move back a foot as well if you're doing it right?

Definitely the handle should move at least as far as the slide, and, as you start to add in back swing, the handle should be moving faster than the slide.

Shooting the slide (or shoving the bum, as the Brits say) is simply wasted effort.

Bob S.

[michaelb]

As Bob notes, the bum shoving is very noticeable. As a firm adherent to strapless rowing, I don't know if strapless will help with that (since I think it focuses on the finish, not the catch). But everything is interrelated.

Bum shoving is described as a problem with "engagement". You want your body balanced at the finish (rowing strapless) and your hands away and your body rotated forward, before you come up the slide with your legs. This means you want to be in your drive position with your upper body and arms right after the start of the recovery. As you come into the catch, still with your body angle set, you want to explode with your legs, holding your body angle set and keeping your arms reasonably relaxed. This is often described as hanging off the handle, and there was some drill that I can't remember as to how to feel that.

Handle speed is one of the main things I focus on. The other obvious thing I see now as you work on getting your hands away, is that your handle speed is full of starts and stops and pauses. Instead, you want your handle be as smooth and fluid and effortless as possible (and of course to move as fast or faster than the seat, and never ever slower). Done properly, the actual speed of the handle should start slow in the drive and then accelerate fast; the recovery is the mirror opposite: fast at the start and then slow as you come into the catch. Like you, I have a hard time not pausing the handle speed after getting the hands away, while my body tries to catch up, but I do work on that. Smoothing out the handle speed should take care of what Nav was seeing in the chain.

You also asked about not feeling work in your legs, it being too easy. I would encourage you think about that the other way around, and think about being too slow instead. Because you are slow to catch the flywheel at the start of the catch, you are wasting your legs and that power. Lowering the damper and the drag, makes this even more difficult: think about this as going "fast" relatively. The lower the damper/drag setting, the faster/better you have to be at the catch, to instantly explode and catch that flywheel, which is going very fast already. So now as you focus on technique, you probably should lower your drag to 110-120 (set the damper on 1-3 or so), and force yourself to learn to row "fast" or "light". Using a high damper has maybe been masking some of your problems at the start of the drive, by making the flywheel too easy to catch, and the handle to heavy to start. I should be clear here that what I am referring to is relative "speed" or how it feels here, not the pace displayed on the PM, which adjusts for drag.

[Bob S.]

As Bob notes, the bum shoving is very noticeable. As a firm adherent to strapless rowing, I don't know if strapless will help with that (since I think it focuses on the finish, not the catch). But everything is interrelated.

Michael,

I agree that strapless rowing probably would not help with the bum shoving and, at the time I wrote that post, I was a bit worried that my words would be taken that way. They are two separate topics and I should probably have covered them with separate posts. The bum shoving was the obvious problem that needed covering and I just made the comments about strapless rowing because a question or two had been brought up about it in an earlier post and I didn't think that it had been covered in enough depth. A bit of my usual pedantry, I suppose, but as I mentioned before that is an old occupational hazard.

Bob S.