Concept2 technique video--Is that right?

[Byron Drachman]

The river is frozen and I confess I have too much time on my hands. I'm pretty sure you want to keep your wrists fairly flat and your forearms close to parallel with the ground during the drive. You would be in a position to give a better arm pull at the finish and you would be less likely to get sore elbows or wrists. In the frame shown before the video starts she looks pretty good, but once the video starts the rower takes lots of strokes with the arms at about 45 degrees at the finish. That doesn't look right to me. On the other hand, I'm not a coach. What do you think?

http://www.concept2.com/us/training/technique.asp

Here is a finish that I captured:

technique_video_capture.JPG (66.54 KiB) Viewed 5237 times

[ThatMoos3Guy]

Looks okay to me. She's not accelerating the finish a whole lot, and she's lunging at the catch, but those are both OTW issues. From a straight erg stand point looks fine. Certainly it's 100x better than just about anyone I've seen at a gym.

[BradL]

I do not lean that far back or bring my hands up like that, but my technique is so obviously a work in progress that I probably am the one doing it all wrong. I can honestly say that a video tape of me rowing would show a much more flawed stroke than anything you see in her rowing.

[luckylindy]

She goes WAY back in the "intensity" video:
http://www.concept2.com/us/training/tec ... #intensity

BTW - who is she? Must be really tall ...

[NavigationHazard]

bobkwan - you might want to browse this post and the followup. http://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=140715#p140715

Davies does have a lot of layback on the erg but is nowhere close to a 90 degree back swing. Ten seconds with a protractor will confirm that.

Caryn Davies won silver for the US in the 2004 Olympics and stroked the women's viii to gold in 2008. IMO the odds that she is doing something unsound are rather small (which is not to say that she could find microimprovements, though changing any one thing might actually have adverse effects somewhere else). She is 6' 4" tall and listed at 174 lbs.

[Byron Drachman]

bobkwan - you might want to browse this post and the followup. http://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=140715#p140715

Davies does have a lot of layback on the erg but is nowhere close to a 90 degree back swing. Ten seconds with a protractor will confirm that.

Caryn Davies won silver for the US in the 2004 Olympics and stroked the women's viii to gold in 2008. IMO the odds that she is doing something unsound are rather small (which is not to say that she could find microimprovements, though changing any one thing might actually have adverse effects somewhere else). She is 6' 4" tall and listed at 174 lbs.

The narrator in the video says the recommended body swing goes from 11 to 1 o'clock so I assume a typical body swing would go through about thirty degrees. Judging by the videos, Xeno Muller did not use a big layback whereas some Italian lightweights and for a time some Canadians used a big layback. I don't remember the reference, but one person remarked that the big layback evolved from rate capped pieces. If you are next to another boat doing a piece and you are now allowed to raise the rate and you are already doing a leg drive as hard as you can, a natural tendency would be to lengthen the stroke.

I was curious about the forearms not staying horizontal. I know some ergers lengthen the stroke by raising the hands and pulling in higher at the finish. Xeno Muller recommends that you keep the forearms horizontal during the drive in his indoor training DVD's.

added later: in one of his indoor training DVD's (Say, have I ever mentioned how much I like Xeno's DVD's?) Xeno has you sit at the finish position and do some reverse curls (usual hand position on the grips and using the C2 resistance as the load.) To me it feels like my arms in a weaker position as the hands rise. After some time, he has us reverse the grip so we do ordinary curls and that feels so much better. On the other hand, maybe it is just me.

In the Row Like Pigs video, starting around 14:00 you can see some ergers pulling in high.

(Warning: some coarse language)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 0359505388#

[NavigationHazard]

Byron, I wonder if Davies' sweep-rowing background has something to do with her forearm positioning on the erg. OTW, she's going to be coming into the finish with the inboard hand rather higher than the outboard hand, and then tapping down to more or less level as the blade extracts. OTE, hand position is going to require a compromise if you're to avoid twisting. She may find it feels more natural to raise the outboard hand and keep the handle level than to drop the inboard hand.

OTW she doesn't do nearly as much layback. Here she is at stroke in the 2008 Beijing Final. Look about 1:45 into the video:

[Byron Drachman]

Hi Jon,
I was also wondering something along those lines but I don't know much about sweep rowing. Dang, she is impressive isn't she? Merry Christmas.
Byron

[chgoss]

notice that she is on a floating dock doing that? You hardly see any motion of it in the water, so smooth... I bet if I did that I could get one of those erg legs plenty wet.