Leaning to Port

[April27]

Hello everyone
I'm training for my first single head race (sculling) and my coach is telling me I keep leaning to port. He says I'm dropping my right hand lower and is wondering if I"m pushing more with my left leg, causing me to not row in a straight line, creating a zig zag to correct my direction.
The boat is unsteady but I can't say I feel my right side dropping a lot. Also, I feel I'm barely pushing with my left leg an always pushing hard with my right to keep myself straight.
So I don't know how to correct this? Could it be my body posture?
I'm focusing on keeping my hands level but the coach says I'm still dropping my right hand at the catch. I've tried dropping my left hand more at the catch in order to compensate and to not catch water when I square my blades but I still wobble.

Please help

April

[Bob S.]

You may get some helpful response on this forum, but most of the members are strictly ergers without OTW experience. It would be well to find a forum devoted to rowing on the water, especially one with emphasis on sculling. My apologies that I don't know what is available.

Bob S.

Edit: Added note. Out of curiosity, I goggled "sculling advice" and a load of hits came up, many of which looked promising.

[robhen]

Tape a small level across the top of your stretcher or across the rigger, if you have winged rigger. You will get feedback on balance instantly

I read a top coach say how he coaches balance - he said he can't. Keep sculling and the balance will come.

It sounds like you are new to the single, its a hard boat to row, keep perservering. I have been sculling for 30 years and stll learning.

[robhen]

One other thing - it is quite common for the left hand to row your right around, in other words to row to the port. The left hand gets more leveridge. This gets fixed, like balance, without notice by doing the hours.

[gregsmith01748]

I second what others have written here. Balance is learned through time and practice. I recommend that you explore drills that put an emphasis on balance, such as square blade rowing, arms only rowing. The web site rowingrelated has been running a series on drills with videos that is great. Today they posted some suggestions from Esther Loftgren, here:

http://www.rowingrelated.com/2015/05/be ... es-of.html

Previously, they posted this one from Megan Kalmoe, which included a drill called "Top Quarter". This is my Everest right now. The drill involves going from the catch to about 6 inches into the drive and then popping the blades out and going back to the catch. It is very challenging in a single, but worth the work to try to master because you get to feel much more balanced at the catch after you do it for a while:

http://www.rowingrelated.com/2015/03/be ... .html#more

If you want a good laugh, here's a short video of me trying to do it.

[jackarabit]

From http://kchenausky.typepad.com/serious_s ... hnique/nnn

Many, perhaps most, of the things you can do to make a boat not set happen around the release, too, which is soemthing I was trying to get across to Sam. I started with the general things: You want to be sure your own blades aren’t washing out (that almost always makes the boat wiggly) and that they are coming out of the water at the same time. It’s best if your hands aren’t right one atop the other as they come away from the body, or you’ll put yourself down to port already. Instead, make sure your left hand releases the water by coming down enough to make the right hand come down too, brushing the heel of your left hand against your right knuckles. That slightly staggered position helps ensure that the handles are the same distance apart as the oarlocks are. If your left hand is directly over the right, the handles will be farther apart than the oarlocks are, which is what makes you go down to one side.

Makes sense as the starboard lock (or in a few cases the starboard rigger in pre-wing rigger designs) is usually set a mere .5-1.5 centimeters higher than the port, not enough to account for the difference in blade height if the hands are completely overlapped at recovery. Jack

[jamesg]

If the boat doesn't go straight when you stop, maybe you need to give the skeg a touch or two. Also I'd check the gate heights so that hand over hand doesn't push you too far one way.

Singles don't balance even when there's no one aboard. All we can do is learn how, mostly by practice and relaxing. One coach told me that keeping knees together tends to form a more compact boat/body structure that better resists rotation.

If you've done any amount of sweep, starting very young, you may be stuck with some asymmetric postural problems; I still am after 50 years since I last touched a sweep oar. Nowadays youngsters scull only, even in 8s. Maybe I should have rowed sweep both sides.

[peterspivey]

Another good exercise is single stroke rowing. Finish with hands away and a 2 second pause between strokes. It gives you time to feel and think about each stroke and is the easiest exercise to begin with. keep hands low in the boat so the sculls don't touch the water and make slight modifications to hand height to keep the balance. then move onto square blade rowing once that is mastered……good luck

[JLB123]

So, reading this, there are 3 issues right?

1) Bodyweight over to port side.
2) Right hand drops (at the catch I'm guessing, not for the whole recovery).
3) Not going straight.

My guess is your stroke goes something like this - you finish the stroke, then start recovery, and as you move forwards, boat isn't 100% stable, but doesn't dip to either side. Then, as you approach the catch, you lean slightly to port. This makes the boat lean over to port, and you respond by dropping your right hand so you have room to square the blade (ironically the dropping of the right hand pushes you further down to port side). This makes it harder for your port blade to connect, meaning that at the catch (i.e. the point where the blades have the most turning effect and any difference in power will make the most difference), your port blade is less connected than your starboard, so you go off course (to port).

A good way to check if my theory is correct is to look at the trail your boat leaves on the water (obviously needs a fairly calm day). If this is true, your trail will be mostly a straight line, but with a slight kink every stroke (roughly at the catch).

If so, the root cause (and the thing you should focus on addressing) is the lean (as your coach has suggested). Some ways to address it (not exhaustive, these are things I find have helped me in the past)

1) Check your rigging. A lot of the time, people do odd things because their boat isn't set up properly. Biorow can give you a fairly good set of measurements (ignore innovative), or Rowing Faster if you want the low tech option. In particular, make sure left and right gates have a suitable differential, and that the pitch is (a) sensible and (b) the same for both blades (FYI unless you are using macons, the pitch is done by the pitch inserts in the gate, you can just pull these out and read off (and check the pins aren't bent)
2) Seems obvious, but check you are sculling left over right. If you are right over left (which some people naturally do) then obviously rigging needs to be adjusted
3) Focus on keeping the weight in each bum cheek the same on the recovery. This stops you leaning (which I don't find stopping leaning does). A similar focus (which some people find works better) is keeping the weight in the sole of each foot the same on the recovery.
4) It's also possible that you just don't leave yourself enough room to square without dropping your hands at the catch - you could also focus on carrying your hands lower during the recovery. But this isn't addressing the root causes, so should only be a focus once (3) is working. You could also experiment by raising BOTH gates up (by the same amount), which would have the same effect

[Ralph Earle]

Do you feather with a wrist flip? If so, learn to roll up. http://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=84667 If that doen't solve the problem, relax.

If you think that advice is superficial, consider this: your problem is balance.

The solution is kinesthetic awareness. Kinesthetic awareness is compromised by tension.

When you get in your scull, do not push off. Sit there for as long as it takes to relax.

Start with the soles of your feet. If they are not wholly in contact with the stretcher, how will you steer?

Next, relax your hamstrings. If they are not relaxed, how will you get to the catch balanced?

Next, your psoas. What ? You don't know that is the crucial muscle for rowing? It's the one that keep you from bum-shooting, only one that doesn't move. It's the (usually sub/unconcious) vital link between the footplate and the oar blade. Except that it is not static -- it should be "liquid steel." Try this: Sit on the ground in a V, legs and trunk at 90°. Now, expand and contract your abs -- In, Out, In Out. If you can, just Left, In and Out; Right In, and Out. If you can do that -- well, how did you do that? Answer: your psoas provided the stability. Make sure it's relaxed.

Next to last, relax your shoulders and your neck. Finally, relax your hands.

Wait another thirty seconds. Or more.

Wait some more.

Only when The Universe tells you, leave the dock with as little effort as possible.

And only when the boat has almost stopped, row at 18 spm for the next two months.