Losing the seat in short sprints.

[jackarabit]

Drat! Surrounded by M.E.s. So the condition that induces (lectercal term) liftoff is puny manpower meeting up with a Newtonian tendency. Why didn’t youse all just say so? And low df mitigates the consequences on all strokes but the first.

[Remo]

I am never going to accept that a drag of 100 is anyone's best setting. If that was supposed to be Rob Wadell, I find that very hard to believe.

lol, Waddell was notorious for using a low damper setting. I remember (misremember?) a Waddell interview on Row2k in either 1999 or 2000 talking about is WR wherein he said that he set the damper at level 2 (this would have been on the Model C erg). I could not find that interview, but I found a recap of his race in Rowing News which states he rowed with a damper level 3.5 https://books.google.com/books?id=okcEA ... ng&f=false, which, for a clean erg, is in the low 100s for the df. This guy heard something similar search.php?keywords=Rob&t=77943&sf=msgonly Humor aside, Waddell was not doing a 100m sprint.

Impedance is a good analogy. Peak torque and horsepower is another. Even though this is just a 100m, my personal experience (did a bunch last summer with my kid) is that there is a broad range where the damper doesn't make much difference in the final time -- you begin running out of gas before the final stroke. That said, I had problems reaching peak speed at both high (too heavy) and low (too fast) damper setting. Everyone is different. Time to experiment.

(I remember the Waddell stuff for all these years because it just seem crazy)

[lindsayh]

I am never going to accept that a drag of 100 is anyone's best setting. If that was supposed to be Rob Wadell, I find that very hard to believe.

lol, Waddell was notorious for using a low damper setting. I remember (misremember?) a Waddell interview on Row2k in either 1999 or 2000 talking about is WR wherein he said that he set the damper at level 2 (this would have been on the Model C erg). I could not find that interview, but I found a recap of his race in Rowing News which states he rowed with a damper level 3.5 https://books.google.com/books?%20okcEA ... ng&f=false, which, for a clean erg, is in the low 100s for the df. This guy heard something similar search.php?keywords=Rob&t=77943&sf=msgonly Humor aside, Waddell was not doing a 100m sprint. Impedance is a good analogy. Peak torque and horsepower is another. Even though this is just a 100m, my personal experience (did a bunch last summer with my kid) is that there is a broad range where the damper doesn't make much difference in the final time -- you begin running out of gas before the final stroke. That said, I had problems reaching peak speed at both high (too heavy) and low (too fast) damper setting. Everyone is different. Time to experiment. (I remember the Waddell stuff for all these years because it just seem crazy)

Yes there is also photographic evidence of the damper that I saw copied from a magazine article that was written at the time. I agree with Remo that DF is actually less important than many people think as Waddell vs Ripley shows but the general principle still applies for specific events like the 100m which is what Brian is interested in improving. There is a sweet spot for DF that varies for event and people and it will be higher on the very short ones than longer.

[jamesg]

it is that initial all out pull that tends to lift me off the seat so, I can but give the lower drag a trial.

Doesn't follow. At low wheel speeds there is no drag. It's a statics problem, you have a force/position combination that lifts you off the seat. All you need do is use half slide or less and maybe reduce the initial force, to adjust that combination. Starts are always cautious, no one wants to lose the slide or catch a crab.

Later on when internal overload limits external work, it may be a good idea to look at Impedance if only for efficiency; high impedance will limit our amps even if we are high volt, while at the other end a short circuit will be evident, but no danger.

[Brian Lancaster]

Those were very interesting posts, from Remo and Lindsay especially. It seems that some people CAN produce record times on insignificant drag factors.

When I first started at TRAX, my current gym, they had two model C's. They were so dusted up as to produce virtually no drag. ( I had a B and a C at home at that time. On the B you had a choice of two drive cogs and with the smaller one I think that the maximum drag that could be set was a lot higher than what is possible on current machines. So I knew a lot about drag factors). I had an argument with the then owner about why the drag was so low. He reckoned that it was a weak shock cord. I told him that I thought it was dust in the grilles. He said, 'I don't care what you think. I will get the cords changed and we will see who knows what they are talking about'. Someone came, presumably through C2 and told him that dust was the problem. He was good enough to offer profuse apologies and the machines were regularly hoovered out from then on (by me, with his permission).

Today is a gym day. We still have those two C's (still working perfectly) but also a couple of good D's with PM3's. I am quite excited about trying out the set of options offered to reduce my 100m time. However, the range of variables is considerable. I am reminded about an old Bob Hope film called either 'Paleface' or 'Son of Paleface'. He was playing 'Painless Potter', a dentist in the Wild West. He had somehow got himself lined up for a gunfight with a notorious gunman (who might have been Jane Russell dressed as a man). He was trying to prepare himself on the basis of what he had been told about the technique of his opponent. So he was muttering to himself along the lines of:- 'He shoots to the left, so lean to the right', etc.

For me it goes:- Set a lowish drag, make sure that your feet are high, sit initially on the front of the seat, make the first couple of strokes short ones. Oh, and don't forget to wet your pants! What can go wrong?

Despite all this, I am quite optimistic.

[GJS]

Sam has graciously answered here: (Episode 11 @ 1min 45)

http://www.thewattfarm.com/podcast/

Very wise counsel, I think, which amounts to: ' You fall off because you are gym scum. Try not to row like gym scum.'

A mark of the gulf between us that the raising the feet thing is something he's never heard of: the shabby quick fix of amateurs.

I spent some time last year practising becoming technically proficient at 40-45 spm but it had never occurred to me that one should and could do the same at c.55 Funny how the noggin works.

[jackarabit]

Gary quoting The (Beeeeeg!) Man:

' You fall off because you are gym scum. Try not to row like gym scum.'

A mark of the gulf between us that the raising the feet thing is something he's never heard of: the shabby quick fix of amateurs.

I resemble that!

[Brian Lancaster]

My optimism proved to be sadly optimistic!

I arrived at the gym full of confidence. I had it in my mind that I might do three PB's. The 100 m, the one minute and the 500 m. I got on my usual machine and did a gentle !k. I then checked the maximum drag to find that it was only 160 odd. I was surprised at that because both machines were well cleaned internally just a few weeks ago. I had expected a much higher figure. No problem. I was there to trial a lowish (for me) drag so I set it to 140. I raised my feet one hole higher than usual to give three holes showing on the flexifoot. OK then, Ready, steady, GO.

It was a disaster. I never really got up to pace and started losing the seat with 30 m still to do. I ended up flailing weakly just to get over the line.

21.8 seconds. Absolutely useless. I did a 1k recovery and got on the other machine.

The maximum drag on that was 180+ so I thought I would set my feet to three holes again and go at that. Ready, steady GO. Better, but by no means safe on the seat. This time it was 17.6 seconds matching my PB for this season but still 0.3 seconds off my 80-89 PB. A gentle 2k recovery but I was not happy. It was very hot in the gym and there is no air conditioning.(With subs at just £16/month I sometimes think that that hardly pays even for the showers). What to do next?

I want soon to establish a 1k at 1:55 average pace. This would bring me almost to within 10 seconds of my friend and chief rival, Mike Hurley's current World Record for 80-89. Actually his record is at 1:48.? He is a real pain in the proverbial, holding most of the World Records for 1k and above, up to 6k (only the British Record for 2k for which I sat on the next machine to him at BRIC last year and watched. I had arrived too late to race and had no chance anyway).

So, back to the gym. I got halfway at 1:55 and didn't fancy the next 500 and bailed out, not really anywhere near spent, just apprehensive. Another gentle 2k and I thought, 'let's try a one minute. Same old story, 40 seconds in and on schedule for a PB, I bailed out again. Don't you find that on some days it goes very well and on others it sucks? I think I had still some of Monday's dead-lifting in my legs and back. I carried on with various erg pieces for a total of 11031 m then 20 minutes on the bike and a good weights session. All in all, I was well pleased with the overall session despite having nothing rankable to show for it. I remain optimistic about the 100 m but I think I need at least two clear days after a good workout if I am to produce PB's.

I will have a listen to the words of the expert to see if anything else in the blog is worth having a go at and, next Saturday, I hope to come up with some real progress in the rankings, I think I may be better off using my D with PM4 at home. Here I can row stripped to the waist in front of a massive fan which is a great help psychologically on hot days. There is a much bigger fan in front of the rowers (about 4 feet across) at the gym but it comes on only intermittently and today, not at all.

[GJS]

Brian, if you're willing to wet your shorts in your quest for glory perhaps you'd be willing to drive a few miles and get some tips from Rob Smith?

Henry will have more details to hand but Rob was a phenomenal sprinter and conspicuous for the excellence of his technique. Would that I lived so close.

https://www.r8fitness.co.uk/rob-smith-pt/

[hjs]

Brian, if you're willing to wet your shorts in your quest for glory perhaps you'd be willing to drive a few miles and get some tips from Rob Smith?

Henry will have more details to hand but Rob was a phenomenal sprinter and conspicuous for the excellence of his technique. Would that I lived so close.

https://www.r8fitness.co.uk/rob-smith-pt/

Never seen anybody more stable on an erg like Rob. Plenty from him to find on youtube.

My 2 cents. Doing 3 different distances at one session is not possible 100%. Would advice against that.

Second, making changes, sprinting is about small changes, if you change up things left, right and centre that won,t work, again focus on one thing during a session.

Training, technique wise, try doing pieces at 85/90% effort, this gives possible serveral goes, and good volume to get your technique more stable. Sprinting is not easy, most ergers can,t row a decent 100. You need strenght and control, a tough combi.

[jamesg]

Had a go at the 100m and 1min this am. Never tried either before, I stay below 140W these days, usually for 3 to 5k.

6 min wu at 120W, 19, Work = 120/19=6.3 W-min

100m: 19.5s, 378W, pm says rate 58 but I lost count. Work 378/58=6.5 W-min so quite likely.
Two minutes rest.
1 min: 285m, rate 36 according to pm, 300W, Work 300/36=8.3 W-min.

Both at drag factor 85 (I have a dust filter over the air intake, to keep the fan clean). No lift-off in either piece, but the erg was moving in the 100m.

What makes 100m slow is the stationary erg, we have to drag ourselves forward. Slides would help, it's easy to go over rate 60 with very little lost work.

[Brian Lancaster]

I 'know' Rob Smith but I don't suppose he is aware of me now if he ever was.I watched him at several competitions when I was actively competing fifteen years ago. In those days, (here I go again), C2 ran what it called the annual 'Grand Prix' series of competitions around England. You got points according to where you finished in a 2k race in your age category. Individual medals were awarded at each event and an overall Grand Prix winner in each category according to total points accrued. It ranged from Manchester Velodrome to either Southampton or Portsmouth (I forget which). Rob was a regular competitor in those. I often wondered, given his physique, why he didn't win the 2k. At some meets there were sprints over 300 or 500 m. In those he was unbeatable.

I thought I saw him break the World Record for 500 m at one of them. In my memory it was something around 1:10 but I must be wrong because he doesn't show in the rankings for the time. He was a personal trainer then. The big gun then (and now) was an up and coming Graham Benton.

I have been looking for a trainer but at my gym there are only a couple of females who just urge their geriatric clients to do 'just one more rep' on conventional apparatus and demonstrate hardly anything. (I am a geriatric myself of course but I can do much more than any of them can do on any apparatus, except perhaps the cross trainer. I don't like that machine. Oh, and possibly the treadmill. My back stiffens up when I run).

My daughter has a chap in London who is very good at devising schemes for specific applications such as rowing. I find that a session with him sets me up with ideas that I can use for weeks to come if not indefinitely. I saw him on the 24th of last month and we did deadlifts, some lunges using rectangular plastic blocks and use of elastic bands in sideways steps and standing row action. I am waiting for the items to be delivered from China through EBay. He also had me doing press-ups with the blocks. I can't do a normal press up because I have a Dupuytrens Contracture in my left hand which stops me putting it flat on the floor. The blocks solved that problem.There were several other things we did such as moving forward in a series of vertical standing jumps on the balls of the feet and throwing a medicine ball against a wall by thrusting it as hard as you can against a wall and then catching it. All very innovative, interesting and useful. One session has set me up for a while with stuff to try except that there are no medicine balls or suitable walls at my gym plus, if I started leaping about like that there, they would think that I was having a seizure.

I looked at Rob's link and read the blurb. I got the feeling that it might not be easy to be one to one with him in person or, if I did, it would be very pricey. It's also still quite a way from Worthing for a short training session. For now I have decided that the feedback from this thread has given me a lot of things to 'mess' with for some time yet. As has been said here, ' one variable at a time'. I am confident I will improve my 100m PB significantly during this session. Always provided nothing 'falls off' of course. I use very heavy weights for my age and have reached a point now where common sense tells me that it might be foolish to try for more. The last thing I want is elbow or knee damage.

I realise that three PB's in one session is a bit fanciful. I did say that I was feeling confident yesterday and they are all short events. I thought that starting with a 100 costs very little in overall fatigue, the one minute is demanding going as fast as you can but with a decent recovery one might then be ready for the real killer, the 500. Anyway, as I have said, it all came to nothing apart from a season's best eqalling 17.6 for the 100. I hope to do better on Saturday. This morning we went swimming for an hour or so. I find that is very beneficial after a hard gym session. Tomorrow will be another restful day pottering in the garden. Then, lookout, here I come. Hopefully.

[Brian Lancaster]

By the way, I have another variable to throw in. I use the plastic handle on the D upside down. It took me some time to accept that it was an improvement on the wooden handles on the B and C models. To be honest, I am still not entirely convinced. For several years I had both a C and a D at home. I used the C much more than the D then but competitions were using the D so you had to be used to it for those events.

However, I have never used the D handle the 'right' way up. Perhaps I should put that into the equation.

I was part of a team of fifteen or so 70+ year olds last year in Newquay last year. I was 79 at the time and my current main rival, Mike Hurley was counted as a valuable team member at 81. We rowed 20 strokes each as hard as possible and then passed the handle to the next man. The machine was set to 100k at the start and we rowed it to zero. The drag was set low and the handle was the usual way up. I wondered about the sense of taking part in such an event given what I saw as severe constraints on my usual rowing parameters. It became very wearing after four and a half hours of these relays but we did it and now have the large team World Record to our names. C2 recognised the event and gave us all certificates to verify our record.

I managed to see 1:31 - 1:32 on the monitor for at least the last ten of my twenty strokes until very close to the end of the 100k so the drag and handle didn't seem to be a significant handicap. I had some difficulty walking back to our hotel afterwards. Newquay is quite hilly and our hotel was at the top of one of the hills while the one used for the event was close to sea level.

There were three large (20 members or less but more than ten) teams each on a model E all going simultaneously in the same large room. There were women 60+, men 60+ and my team at 70+. I felt sorry for the women who, because they had the lowest average pace, had to keep going for the longest time. I knew how I felt so they must have really suffered. All the teams ended with World Records. Ours was a first and so a new one. The others broke existing records.

Before the event I did a bit of research on YouTube and saw a video of the open World Record holders for the event. (The MAD team). They were doing ten stroke cycles and diving off the machine at the end of each cycle. I emailed our event organisers and said that was not for me. However they assured me that diving would not be necessary since we would be using E's which are easy to stand up from. Even so these events are still no pushover given how long they take.

So handle up or down? Maybe retrofit a C handle? Too many variables.

[Dangerscouse]

By the way, I have another variable to throw in. I use the plastic handle on the D upside down. It took me some time to accept that it was an improvement on the wooden handles on the B and C models. To be honest, I am still not entirely convinced. For several years I had both a C and a D at home. I used the C much more than the D then but competitions were using the D so you had to be used to it for those events.

However, I have never used the D handle the 'right' way up. Perhaps I should put that into the equation.

I was part of a team of fifteen or so 70+ year olds last year in Newquay last year. I was 79 at the time and my current main rival, Mike Hurley was counted as a valuable team member at 81. We rowed 20 strokes each as hard as possible and then passed the handle to the next man. The machine was set to 100k at the start and we rowed it to zero. The drag was set low and the handle was the usual way up. I wondered about the sense of taking part in such an event given what I saw as severe constraints on my usual rowing parameters. It became very wearing after four and a half hours of these relays but we did it and now have the large team World Record to our names. C2 recognised the event and gave us all certificates to verify our record.

I managed to see 1:31 - 1:32 on the monitor for at least the last ten of my twenty strokes until very close to the end of the 100k so the drag and handle didn't seem to be a significant handicap. I had some difficulty walking back to our hotel afterwards. Newquay is quite hilly and our hotel was at the top of one of the hills while the one used for the event was close to sea level.

There were three large (20 members or less but more than ten) teams each on a model E all going simultaneously in the same large room. There were women 60+, men 60+ and my team at 70+. I felt sorry for the women who, because they had the lowest average pace, had to keep going for the longest time. I knew how I felt so they must have really suffered. All the teams ended with World Records. Ours was a first and so a new one. The others broke existing records.

Before the event I did a bit of research on YouTube and saw a video of the open World Record holders for the event. (The MAD team). They were doing ten stroke cycles and diving off the machine at the end of each cycle. I emailed our event organisers and said that was not for me. However they assured me that diving would not be necessary since we would be using E's which are easy to stand up from. Even so these events are still no pushover given how long they take.

So handle up or down? Maybe retrofit a C handle? Too many variables.

Great story and even greater effort. Seriously impressive

[Remo]

Ahhh an engineer ... someone who can understand my quirks.

I did some experimenting!

Backstory: In a previous life, many decades ago, I used to be a better than average sculler. During workouts and races, I would occasionally adjust my butts position on the seat. I did it by getting some of the weight off my butt while I was on the drive. Still do it occasionally on the erg. So I experimented to figure out how I could enhancing that lift to mimic what you are probably doing, here are my results.

I found that the following actions created greater lift:

1. Large impulse force cause by the change of momentum at the catch, i.e., faster slide speeds and quicker turns at the front end,
2. Larger than average compression of the legs, the shins are more than 5 degrees past vertical and your butt is getting pretty close to your achilles.
3. A "dive" at the catch. As the legs start to compress, the body continues to move forward causing it to swing in a diving motion, and
4. The legs begin driving hard before the chain engages the flywheel.

Actions 2 and 3 allow your center of mass to be farther forward compared to the balls of your feet than normal, and 1, 2 and 3, together allow your leg drive to be in a direction that is both horizontal and vertical. And without anything slowing your body will cause liftoff from the seat. Of course, if you engage the flywheel timely, #4, you will slow yourself down enough for this not to happen.

So how do you stop this?

First, as a matter of good practice no matter how hard or fast your are going, you should try to always try to engage the flywheel within 2 inches of making the turn with the handle, and you make sure that you don't dive at the catch.

Second, you don't want your center of gravity so far forward on strokes 2-5. How? With a racing start. First 2 strokes at 1/2 slide, the next 3 strokes at 3/4 slide. As a matter of fact, you could probably row all strokes at 3/4 slide and it wouldn't cost much time, if any, over the 100m. The reason? When your legs are compressed, as at the catch, they are at a leverage disadvantages: You jump higher if your legs are slightly bent then if you are in a deep knee bend. (Muscles, have a fairly uniform force per degree angle of rotation they cause. Because of the compressed legs you get a heavier load at the catch. This is because per degree of rotation there is greater lengthening of the legs than when the legs are near being straight.)

Lastly, I reread your original post. Don't worry about your 100m time too much. It is not a great predictor of your 2k time. There are tortoises and hares. Last year I jumped into the post 60 category. My 100m time was in the 65% percentile and everything else was above the 90% percentile.