Ranger's training thread

[ranger]

Muppet.

Here's Basalini when he's probably actually got his blades in the water:



The lower back is at an angle of 76 degrees, i.e. is still rocked over 14 degrees shy of vertical and towards the bow

And here he is at the absolute end of the finish, per the animation:



The lower back is at an angle of 40 degrees, i.e. rocked over 50 degrees shy of vertical and towards the bow.

It has traversed an arc of all of 36 degrees, or roughly 40% of the 90 degrees you somehow think you see.

O.K.

How about the chest and abdominal wall?

They are parallel to the lower back at the finish and therefore rocked back 40 degrees, by your own admission.

To my eye, they looks rocked forward at a similar angle at the catch.

Balalini's stroke really swings!

ranger

[PaulH]

I would have thought the best measure for the back would be a measure of the angle a fixed point on the upper body (e.g. the shoulder) makes with respect to a fixed point on the seat. Something like what the green dots indicate:

angles.jpg (65.98 KiB) Viewed 4583 times

That would compensate for the fact that he's rounding his back quite a lot in place of pivoting at the hips - I'm making no judgement about which is more effective, just that the amount of handle movement attributable to the back can be achieved either way.

Now if I had a protractor I could tell you how big an angle that was! Using duct tape and bungy cord I make it about 50 degrees, somewhat more than Nav's estimate, but still way short of ranger's guess.

[macroth]

The best young lightweights like Basalini open and close their hips (and therefore rotate their lower backs) through an arc of 90 degrees.

ranger

How about the chest and abdominal wall?

They are parallel to the lower back at the finish and therefore rocked back 40 degrees, by your own admission.

To my eye, they looks rocked forward at a similar angle at the catch.



ranger

Why are you attempting to measure hip extension by looking at chest position?
How do you propose the abdominal wall form an angle of 54° with the lower back at the catch?

Why are you so incurably stupid and ignorant?

[ranger]

There are 30 clicks through Bassalini's drive.

During this drive, he drives with the legs exclusively for 6 clicks, or about .2 seconds, holding his back steady.

Then he adds the back for 18 clicks, pulling with the arms somewhere in the middle of the drive, after about 15 clicks.

Then he pulls with the arms exclusively for the last six clicks, after the back has finished.

This is the division of labor that I have been discovering recently rowing on the erg at 118 df.

Sure.

The stroke begins with quick legs pushing straight back, with shoulders and back relaxed, and the handles loosely held, like hooks.

But in the center of the drive, the swing of the back is _huge_, covering 60% of the stroke, as it overlaps with the legs, as they finish, and the arms, as they begin.

When I am rowing, the overlaps tend to blur, but I tend to feel, as some sort of pulsing rhythm, the isolated legs at the catch, the big swing of the back in the center of the drive, and the isolated arms at the finish.

The proportions, to this (admittedly distorted) perception, is 1-3-1, legs-back-arms.

Temporally, the isolated legs and arms are mirror images on the peripheries.

The big swing of the back dominates the center.

Counting on the pulses: legs-back-back-back-arms.

Including the overlap, I suppose these five pulses could be these:

legs, legs & back, back, back & arms, arms.

ranger

[NavigationHazard]

His chest most certainly is NOT parallel with his lower back at the nominal finish. And it's impossible to tell where his abdominal wall might actually be under a shirt that's doing some billowing.

If you measure the amount of shoulder-joint traverse, which is what counts most in terms of trunk leverage vis-a-vis the oars, at the catch the midpoint of his shoulder joint is about 20 degrees forward of a vertical line above the likely midpoint of his hip socket. At the nominal finish the shoulder joint is about 35 degrees past the vertical. That makes the total arc about 55 degrees. Not anywhere close to 90.

[macroth]

There are 30 clicks through Bassalini's drive.

During this drive, he drives with the legs exclusively for 6 clicks, or about .2 seconds, holding his back steady.

Then he adds the back for 18 clicks.

Then he pulls with the arms exclusively for the last six clicks, after the back has finished.

This is the division of labor that I have been discovering recently rowing on the erg at 118 df.

Sure.

The stroke begins with quick legs pushing straight back.

But in the center of the drive, the swing of the back is _huge_, covering 60% of the stroke, as it overlaps with the legs, as they finish and the arms, as they begin.

Where are you finding 6+18+6=30 clicks in the drive, you moron? Even the full 0 to 100% is only 27 clicks.

Keep looking, soon you'll be telling us he's hauling an actual anchor.

[ranger]

I certainly don't know for sure, but I suspect that the difference between 2:00 @ 20 spm (10 SPI, 12.5 MPS) at 118 df., as performed by most 60s lwts in their UT2 rowing, and 1:48 @ 20 spm (14 SPI, 14 MPS) at 118 df., as I am doing it now, is just the omission of the huge swing of the back in the middle of the stroke--entirely.

With no overlap with the back, both the legs and arms slow down, and without the addition of the back at all in the middle of the drive, the peak pressure achieved by the stroke falls precipitously, by as much as 40 Newtons, from 135 to 95.

The back is vertical at the catch and vertical at the finish.

It is just used as a brace between the leg drive and the arm pull.

The hips don't close and open at all.

The stroke has _no_ "swing."

This loss is worth 4 SPI, right around 28% of the overall power (14 SPI) of a stroke with a big "swing," done in good order with the legs and arms, but with the back fully included, too.

ranger

P.S. On my PM4 force curve, I get about 95 Newtons of force with my isolated legs in the first .2 seconds of the drive. Then the overlap with my back lifts this pressure to 135 Newtons, the top of the graphic scale on the PM4, before it falls away again as the strongest part of the leg drive is concluded and the back has to work independently. I also get a smaller resurgence of force when the arms overlap with the back, before this falls away, too, as the back finishes, and the arms have to act independently.

[ranger]

This is a hilariously strange suggestion, but from a coaching standpoint, the most obvious cure for this ill might be to have 60s lwts row as I did when I first took up rowing back in 2001-2003, just as a drill, to get to used to what it means to row with your back.

"Hauling anchor"!

Forget your arms and legs.

Just row with your back.

At the catch, save your legs.

Don't push at all.

Just pull with your back.

At the finish, forget your arms.

Just finish with your back.



Of course, you wouldn't want to row like this is a 1x, though.

If you do, you'll do a lot of swimming.

As I did.

ranger

[jliddil]

pressure, force, newtons, oh my
pressure, force, newtons, oh my

[NavigationHazard]

How many times do you have to be told? The unmarked scale on the PM display evidently is in kgs-F, not newtons. One kg-F is roughly equivalent to 10 newtons (9.80665 to be precise). 135 newtons is about 13.8 kgF. If I had a six-year-old daughter with one good arm and a gammy leg she could produce 135 newtons of peak handle force without needing your warmup.

More importantly, the whole argument you're trying to make shows the fallacy of singlestrokeitis combined with a serious misapprehension of the value of peak force. The whole point of proper sequencing is to allow you to generate a well-shaped, efficient force curve that strikes a balance between peak and average force -- on a repetitive basis. It's NOT to fetishize peak force, which can be jacked up artificially for short periods as long as you're willing to mis-sequence yourself in ways that fairly quickly will overwhelm the muscle groups you're misusing.

[ranger]

This result is pretty funny, no?

Those who are critical of ergers who don't use proper OTW form but just "haul anchor" with their backs, forgetting their legs and arms, are just people in glass houses throwing stones.

It certainly isn't easy (it has taken me seven years), but someone who know how to "haul anchor" with their backs and therefore rows like an elite 20s rower can indeed learn to row with their legs and arms, too.

The question is: Can those who just row with their legs and arms learn how to row with their backs?

Doesn't seems so, at least, so far.

If you don't row with your back, you lose 30% of the power of your stroke.

You row like an old man.

ranger

[ranger]

The whole argument you're trying to make shows the fallacy of singlestrokeitis combined with a serious misapprehension of the value of peak force. The whole point of proper sequencing is to allow you to generate a well-shaped, efficient force curve that strikes a balance between peak and average force -- on a repetitive basis. It's NOT to fetishize peak force, which can be jacked up artificially for short periods as long as you're willing to mis-sequence yourself in ways that fairly quickly will overwhelm the muscle groups you're misusing.

No, it doesn't.

In a good rowing stroke, peak force is achieved naturally by the combination of the two strongest levers--legs & back--before they spend their force and yield to lesser levers--back and arms.

This force contour is not artificial at all.

Being entirely natural, it is both maximally effective, and maxmally efficient.

What is unnatural is to row without your back and core, like an old man who has turned to mush in the middle and therefore can only use their back and core to brace themselves for the damage each time they push and pull.

Nav.

When you do a 2K, you don't pull 16 SPI, like Graham Benton.

You pull 12 SPI, like me.

But you are _bigger_ than Benton, and, sheesh, seven inches and 100 lbs. bigger than me.

The loss in "easy power" by not using your back and core, by having a stroke with no "swing," is 4 SPI.

ranger

[KevJGK]

FWIW

[ranger]

FWIW

Indeed!

Thanks, Kev.

ranger

[NavigationHazard]

Sigh.




The issue is not where his head starts in relation to where the back side of his back ends up. The back is connected to the arms at the shoulder joints -- nowhere else. Depending on where you think the center of his hip joints might be, the arc the shoulders traverse is around 55-60 degrees. NOT 90.

And FWIW I think he's got too much layback.