Designing a Rowing Tank for Team

psucrewcronin · Post by **psucrewcronin** » May 14th, 2008, 5:27 pm

The club I row for does not have an indoor rowing tank. I have been doing research on the topic of possibly using the university's olympic size pool as the tank and putting a removable unit with slides and riggers on the side of the pool (for only one rowing side) or building a removable truss across the width of the pool and mounting slides and riggers to it (for both rowing sides).

My biggest question is whether or not a rowing tank can be effective without moving water. I know that one can drill holes in the blades or use slotted blades to lessen the drag in the water, but I didn't know if this idea was worthwhile. Knowing Penn State, there is not the possibility of building a new building for a moving water rowing tank, so I have to move forward with the swimming pool rowing tank or wait until we [ maybe ] build a boat house sometime in the next ten years.

Any advice or experience would be immensely appreciated.

I posted this topic in the On the Water forum, but I didn't get any responses. Hopefully the training forum is a little more fertile

ancho · Post by **ancho** » May 15th, 2008, 11:23 am

When I was younger, we used to row in a tank with non moving water. We used wooden oars with no blades (they were just an outlined wire structure).
Although the design of the tank considered water re-circulation, the feeling wasn't very otw-like

Regarding the 'rowing on both sides' matter, you can just put the rowers facing each other.

almostflipped · Post by **almostflipped** » May 15th, 2008, 7:30 pm

A program I used to work at had a set of tanks that were basically giant bath tubs. Only way the water moved was by people pulling. Primary adjustments were undersized blades. If you are using an Olympic size pool though I would suggest cutting significant holes in the blade, perhaps amounting to 50% (possibly more) of surface area. May be worth doing the geometry to build the rig with a greater than normal leverage for the rowers too. Given the conditions you describe, I'm not sure what physical value is to be found; but blade work can be developed in this manner while using x-training/erging for athletes not rowing at that moment.

As for the movable truss, you are probably better off just building two boxes, one for each side (I imagine your uni will have a better reaction to that idea too).