Video critique of a 3 minute erg

csabour · Post by **csabour** » April 25th, 2008, 9:59 am

rates 16, 20, and 24 @1' each
strapless

Any critique is appreciated.

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

Thanks!

Andy Nield · Post by **Andy Nield** » April 25th, 2008, 10:51 am

Put your heels down at the start of the drive.

If you are training for on the water, draw in a bit lower, if not don't worry about it.

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » April 25th, 2008, 1:41 pm

As Andy suggests, just let your heels come down early in the drive rather than staying up on your toes to the finish, it noticably thros off your balance even on the grounded Erg, a CP1 would illustrate this possibly with dramatic effect.

As seen previously, your overall sequencing and technique is quite good, though I would suggest a better connection could be made by keeping the back of your hand and forearm flat with a combination of lowering the finish point a bit and raising the elbow so it travels a horizontal plane with the handle. The finish has the look of what I call "bunny rabbitting" (wrists cocked over forward), and that can not be a strong finish. You are slightly "over gripping" the handle (wrists above the handle), and that can also have dramatic effect at the blade, causing it to dive when the power comes on and gives a slight twist in an undesireable direction.

I'm going to point my rowers at your video as an overall good example, along with the comments above. Thanks for putting it up.

csabour · Post by **csabour** » April 25th, 2008, 9:54 pm

Paul,

I'd just like to thank you for all your help over the years.. You've always given me invaluable advice.

Sometimes I pull higher on certain erg workouts than others.... I think that by pulling in a few cm lower that would also fix the angle of my elbows coming back.

Yeah I'm aware of my wrist problem.. It's always plagued me, my coach has made fun of me a million times for it... Last summer I actually beat the habit but without noticing it came back.

marvy1 · Post by **marvy1** » April 28th, 2008, 12:20 pm

csabour,

I'm not an expert, but I have a question: I usually row at 25 SPM, but I see you go much slower. When you go slow, do you raise the damper up to a higher number, like 8 or 9?

Thanks! Marvin

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » April 28th, 2008, 3:28 pm

marvy1 wrote:csabour,

I'm not an expert, but I have a question: I usually row at 25 SPM, but I see you go much slower. When you go slow, do you raise the damper up to a higher number, like 8 or 9?

Thanks! Marvin

I hope you don't mind if I butt in here. Obviously I can't speak for csabour, but I just wanted to say that if you row at a low rate and a high drag factor, the flywheel is going to lose most of its momentum on the recovery and make it harder to keep up a decent pace. The common practice is to use high drag factors and high rates (by using a high damper setting) for short pieces (like 500m).

Bob S.

edit: added note. It is misleading to refer to low stroke rates as slow. A low rate with a fast drive and a gradual recovery can produce the same results as a high rate with a weak drive and a quick recovery.

csabour · Post by **csabour** » April 29th, 2008, 10:56 am

marvy1 wrote:csabour,

I'm not an expert, but I have a question: I usually row at 25 SPM, but I see you go much slower. When you go slow, do you raise the damper up to a higher number, like 8 or 9?

Thanks! Marvin

Hi Marvin

I row always at 125 drag factor That is the lightweight standard for rowing canada erg moitoring program... that around 3-4 on a decent model C.

In this piece i was pulling 2;05 for 16spm. 1:58 for 20spm and 1:52 at 24.

I make it a habit to keep the same pressure every stroke through out the rate spectrum (14-36).

I hope that answers your question.
Cam

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » April 29th, 2008, 2:49 pm

csabour wrote:
In this piece i was pulling 2:05 for 16spm. 1:58 for 20spm and 1:52 at 24.

I make it a habit to keep the same pressure every stroke through out the rate spectrum (14-36).

Cam

Cam,

SPI for the Rates above: 11.200, 10.651, 10.380 (SPI isn't a pressure figure, but it does tend to correlate through the rate ranges for a given athlete.)

Is this notion of keeping the pressure the same through the rate range something that you are getting out of the Rowing Canada Program?

I work with rowers quite a bit on the water with that goal in mind (to develop a feel for maintaining length as the rate/speed increase), but how do you monitor it on an Erg? (I suspect by using the Force Curve Feature, but perhaps you are doing it by feel.) It's not quite what will be happening when going after top speed, but it does allow for finding out what the max rate capability of a crew might be (when the rate goes up without a speed increase, there is no reason to rate higher). When the pressure increases it's likely that the max rate will decrease as the rowers technique breaks down under stress. The ultimate goal is to find the optimal combination of rate and pressure that will produce the best time over the course. I'm hypothesizing that the ability to bring the rate up and maintain good form over the course is more important than maximum force production capabilities. This pretty much takes us back to the base principle of keeping the Distance Per Stroke (DPS) more or less a constant, as a small fall in DPS will require a relatively large increase in rate to maintain speed, which also increases stroke count, and that will add up to failure before the finish line quite often.

Are you working toward getting on the National Team for CAN? That could be very exciting.