Concept2 Forum

Hi, everyone -
I'm new to rowing, having just started a month or so ago - 61 and trying to get into shape again after an Achilles injury curtailed my training for a half-marathon (running). I'm interested in improving my rowing technique, endurance and strength, and I'd like to get a better quantitative understanding of the relative contribution of the legs, body, and arms when erging. Relative to most my age who are in shape, I would say that my upper body is relatively weak and my legs are relatively strong, but my erg scores so far are not that impressive. I'm in the 38th percentile for HW/60-65 group after a month of rowing, and I'd like to work my way up to the 50% percentile at least. I'm trying to be patient, keeping the damper setting at 5 and concentrating on improving my technique. My stroke rate is about 23-25.

Here's my question: I know that a fast leg drive is a very important part of the stroke, but how much difference does a strong arm finish make to the overall power of the stroke? And how much improvement can one expect by having stronger back muscles? I can tire myself out rather quickly by trying to have a fast finish with my arms - would having stronger arms significantly lower my times, or should I concentrate on form and increasing leg strength, and let the arm strength develop over time?

A related question - should my arms come in close to my side, slightly elevated, or even more elevated?

Thanks for any suggestions you might have. I'd be especially interested in any quantitative studies of the biomechanics of the legs/body/arms contributions to erging/rowing.

You can see the arms-back-legs work yourself by doing a back stop drill.

Start by setting the monitor to Watts, and the damper very low. Then pull arms only, sitting erect with your back straight. You might see rating 60, 60 Watts; so arms pull at around 1 Watt minute (W') per stroke. This is the work done by the arms in each stroke.

Then add swing; you may see rating 30-40, 80-100 Watts; so arms+back provide 2.5-3 W-minutes.

A Watt-minute has the same dimensions as a kWh, Work Done (= Length x Force), but the size is a lot smaller.

After a minute or so, add some slide travel, after the swing forward, then gradually adding increased slide travel. You'll see the Watts increasing and the rating drop. When you reach full slide, with weight well forward, shins vertical and hands at the chainguard for the catch, you'll see something like 200W, rating 20, according to your shape and size.

So the respective contributions are roughly 1-2-7.

The arms provide the smallest contribution, as the action is short and the muscles used are small. So long as you relax all the muscles that are not actually pulling, it doesn't matter much what you do with your elbows. Rowing uses a lot of muscle, so it's important to relax everything else as much as possible.

Needless to say, if you're unfit, 200W at 20 won't be easy to maintain for long. But doing just that is what gets us fit, and moves the boat, or flywheel. It's called rowing and if you don't do it, you won't get fit.

Low damper, possibly zero or slightly above, lets you reach full length without too much slam at the catch and with a fast stroke and slow recovery. You can see such full-length strokes during the racing at Bled this weekend; unfortunately the TV usually shows only racing strokes at 36-40, when the recovery is not slow at all, but they all keep to full length whatever the rating. From an oarsman's point of view, seeing boats paddle at 20 to the start can be more interesting than the race.. Anyway, and unusually, Slovenian TV seems to know what rowing is about, so they do show blade action as well as bodies.

Literature I have read at the sports institute for OTW has the following breakdown for your overall contribution.

Legs - 65%
Back - 25%
Arms - 10%