inventors technique

[Bob S.]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3085140658

I wonder if his knees come up that early in the recovery OTW.

Bob S.

[PaulS]

Probably a little later in a boat or on Slides, but it's not a particular problem since they don't get in the way of his hands on the recovery, it's just closer that you are used to seeing.

He does drop his hands after passing the knees, which I would suggest changing, but being as ingrained as it is I'd bet it would be difficult to unlearn, and to no great overall benefit.

[Bob S.]

Probably a little later in a boat or on Slides, but it's not a particular problem since they don't get in the way of his hands on the recovery, it's just closer that you are used to seeing.

He does drop his hands after passing the knees, which I would suggest changing, but being as ingrained as it is I'd bet it would be difficult to unlearn, and to no great overall benefit.

If you watch the whole video, you can see a number of occasions in which he has to raise his hands to get them over his knees, doing a real roller coaster hand bit (like DH's problem). It was 65 years ago that I learned the hard way to get my hands away really fast. The alternative was thumb nail gouges on the ends of my thighs, especially when there was a problem of the boat being down on the port side.

In rough water, a rower is much more likely to catch a crab if the hands away is too slow or the knee rise is too fast. I learned this the hard way in my first race when the bowman, a relatively experienced oarsman, caught a crab in the Lake Washington chop (Seattle Sprints, June, 1946). From my position on the 2 seat, I had this ghastly view of his blade, concave side out, caught against the hull of the boat as he fought to try to get it loose. After what seemed to be an eternity, the cox got it figured out, called a stop so the bowman could get it loose, and we resumed the race. By that time we had dropped from about third to last of the eight boats and had to work like hell to end up with a seventh place. To top it off, there was a string of yachts lining the 2k course and they all took off after the race in various directions, creating a real mess of confused seas. At this point, the wave tops were so high that we were shipping an alarming volume of water. Eventually, the weight of the water opened a long crack in the hull when the waves provided too much support for the bow and stern and not enough for the center. Water welled up through the crack and it sank to the gunwales. Meanwhile, we had been heading to the nearest point of the shore and were only about 50 yards from land when it was time to slip over the side and paddle on in. There was a tennis club there with a big lawn and stone steps leading down to the water. George Pocock was already there with some supports set up so that he could patch up any of the damaged boats. It looked like a guy with his ribs taped up after he got through and four of us rowed it back to the UW boathouse. After that, I made darn sure that I got my hands away on each stroke, especially in rough water. I didn't want to have the embarrassment that our bowman had from that incident. I did manage to avoid catching crabs in sweep boats, but it was a different story when I took up sculling 40 some years later.

Bob S.

[PaulS]

Probably a little later in a boat or on Slides, but it's not a particular problem since they don't get in the way of his hands on the recovery, it's just closer that you are used to seeing.

He does drop his hands after passing the knees, which I would suggest changing, but being as ingrained as it is I'd bet it would be difficult to unlearn, and to no great overall benefit.

If you watch the whole video, you can see a number of occasions in which he has to raise his hands to get them over his knees, doing a real roller coaster hand bit (like DH's problem). It was 65 years ago that I learned the hard way to get my hands away really fast. The alternative was thumb nail gouges on the ends of my thighs, especially when there was a problem of the boat being down on the port side.

In rough water, a rower is much more likely to catch a crab if the hands away is too slow or the knee rise is too fast. I learned this the hard way in my first race when the bowman, a relatively experienced oarsman, caught a crab in the Lake Washington chop (Seattle Sprints, June, 1946). From my position on the 2 seat, I had this ghastly view of his blade, concave side out, caught against the hull of the boat as he fought to try to get it loose. After what seemed to be an eternity, the cox got it figured out, called a stop so the bowman could get it loose, and we resumed the race. By that time we had dropped from about third to last of the eight boats and had to work like hell to end up with a seventh place. To top it off, there was a string of yachts lining the 2k course and they all took off after the race in various directions, creating a real mess of confused seas. At this point, the wave tops were so high that we were shipping an alarming volume of water. Eventually, the weight of the water opened a long crack in the hull when the waves provided too much support for the bow and stern and not enough for the center. Water welled up through the crack and it sank to the gunwales. Meanwhile, we had been heading to the nearest point of the shore and were only about 50 yards from land when it was time to slip over the side and paddle on in. There was a tennis club there with a big lawn and stone steps leading down to the water. George Pocock was already there with some supports set up so that he could patch up any of the damaged boats. It looked like a guy with his ribs taped up after he got through and four of us rowed it back to the UW boathouse. After that, I made darn sure that I got my hands away on each stroke, especially in rough water. I didn't want to have the embarrassment that our bowman had from that incident. I did manage to avoid catching crabs in sweep boats, but it was a different story when I took up sculling 40 some years later.

Bob S.

Excellent story, especially with Openning Day on the horizon. (Yacht Lined course and all.)

Now Bob, Peter is doing a rather strenuous 500m Time trial and in the heat of battle we can not all be perfect, small defects tend to become exaggerated under tough conditions.
I can't believe you assumed I did not watch the entire video, even though I had seen it quite some time ago, I still watched it again this time.

The teaching of "Fast hands away" may be the best thing to throw on the ash heap of "erroneous coaching mantras", as it nearly invariably leads to a herky-jerky exaggeration on the wrong side what is desireable. It sounds as if your bowman over-feathered (the true beginning of a crab), caught a wave top (probably in an effort to "get hands away fast") then dealt with the ensuing resistance in less than an optimal manner. A hard stroke, finished all the way to the body, ends with the blade virtually self-extracting from the water (especially in the days of 1946 when narrow blades were all the rage. I still prefer Macons quite strongly, though try out the latest advances if they make sense, i.e. NOT Fat Smoothies.) Then all that needs to be done is for there to be no pausing of the handle but a smooth and deliberate beginning of the motion to the stern, followed seamlessly by the recovery of the body, and eventual roll up of the slide.

Why I mention that it's less likely on Slides or in a boat is that unlike on the grounded Erg, where the bodies intertia provides resistance for the finish, both the boat and Movable Erg need to be held away by the legs. This has become very obvious to me after having gone to the grounded Erg for several months and recently returing to the Slides for alternating pieces. The legs can relax sooner on the grounded Erg and as the body is recovered the knees will be pulled up by the illiopsoas muscle group. Note that the knees are not being bent by any of the muscles in the legs at that point. The 0.1sec longer that the Sliding Erg/Boat must be held away would have Peters hands well beyond the knees, and a more aggressive "shoot of the hands forward" would only be a noticable check in the otherwise continuous smooth motion desired. You know I've never been shy about pointing out defects in any stroke, not even in my own. Which reminds me it's time for a new video review, it's been long enough that I'm sure to have developed something that I don't notice in the mirror. (almost scared to look though)

Did you know that there has been a workshop set up to build Cedar 1x's with all of the old Pocock tooling? Apparently Stan had been sitting on a warehouse full of bookended cedar planks and skins that he donated so that a for profit organization of craftsmen can produce the legendary boats for discerning folks of far greater wealth than I.

It's out on the peninsula somwhere and I'm going to have to make a trip just to see the factory at some point. You can probably remember taking good care of equipement simply due to a respect for the relative fragility and beauty of it, as I can. These days with the lifeless plastic hulls we've got to resort to letting the people know that they cost thousands of dollars to get them to pay attention and not damage them, which while a bit tougher to hurt can still be done in an instant and is never "minor" enough.