The three areas I see ripe for improving rowing power over current technique

[max_ratcliffe]

If means of help are not part of the rules, then no it does not change the rules. But those are part of the rules, see swimming. Rowing is not a record sport, so a change does not matter much. But still the more “pure” a sport stays the better I like it. I like to see the best, combi of talent and training win and not the one with the best techniqual tools.

What does "pure" mean. This is simply a matter of training the athlete differently to get more power out of him or her into the water. Just because it is something you didn't understand possible doesn't make it unpure (all of the power is generated by the athlete), just different than before. Carbon shells, fat blades, and electronic megaphones are "unpure" to me. If it is legal and you want an advantage over your opponent to win then training a technique to get more power is about as pure as one can get.

Seriously FC, you really do have a strange way of expressing yourself. "Didn't understand possible" is extremely arrogant. If you'd taken that attitude when you were a physician, you'd have had no patients: "you don't know what your symptoms are. I'm the expert".

Some of your ideas are interesting, but I do wonder if you've just completed a course in how to rub people up the wrong way.

[frankencrank]

If means of help are not part of the rules, then no it does not change the rules. But those are part of the rules, see swimming. Rowing is not a record sport, so a change does not matter much. But still the more “pure” a sport stays the better I like it. I like to see the best, combi of talent and training win and not the one with the best techniqual tools.

What does "pure" mean. This is simply a matter of training the athlete differently to get more power out of him or her into the water. Just because it is something you didn't understand possible doesn't make it unpure (all of the power is generated by the athlete), just different than before. Carbon shells, fat blades, and electronic megaphones are "unpure" to me. If it is legal and you want an advantage over your opponent to win then training a technique to get more power is about as pure as one can get.

Seriously FC, you really do have a strange way of expressing yourself. "Didn't understand possible" is extremely arrogant. If you'd taken that attitude when you were a physician, you'd have had no patients: "you don't know what your symptoms are. I'm the expert".

Some of your ideas are interesting, but I do wonder if you've just completed a course in how to rub people up the wrong way.

This thread sat there for several days without a single person bringing up this possibility. None of you had thought of this possibility. Not arrogance, simply a fact it would seem. If any of you were familiar with my cycling work you might have figured it out.

Actually, in my physician work, patients don't care if you are "arrogant" as long as they believe you care and will do your best for them. More than half of the chronic pain patients I saw were so because of wrong diagnoses. Many times it was a diagnosis that many physicians had never heard of and if they did, didn't understand.The second most missed diagnosis was one that many believed simply couldn't cause that much pain (these people required surgery and I got them to someone who did understand). While I didn't "cure" everyone I had pretty good results seeing as how I was dealing with everyone else's failures. Thinking outside the box helps in those instances. It took me many years to figure some of this stuff out (like it took me 15-20 years to figure out all that was going on to cause my cycling improvements - some of which I have brought here.)

Experts (of any persuasion) don't like being told there is something they don't understand or hadn't thought of. There is no polite way to let them know, especially on the internet where nuance gets lost. I for one, have been wrong before in my musings and I expect I will be wrong again. but, even a broken clock is right twice a day so keep trying.

[jamesg]

I am not sure I understand what you are saying, especially about the oars on an ergometer.

C2 supplies oars and sculls for rowing. Blades today use hydrofoil designs that reduce slip and turbulence. You can see them all here:
https://www.concept2.com/oars/oar-optio ... acon-blade

[hjs]

If means of help are not part of the rules, then no it does not change the rules. But those are part of the rules, see swimming. Rowing is not a record sport, so a change does not matter much. But still the more “pure” a sport stays the better I like it. I like to see the best, combi of talent and training win and not the one with the best techniqual tools.

What does "pure" mean. This is simply a matter of training the athlete differently to get more power out of him or her into the water. Just because it is something you didn't understand possible doesn't make it unpure (all of the power is generated by the athlete), just different than before. Carbon shells, fat blades, and electronic megaphones are "unpure" to me. If it is legal and you want an advantage over your opponent to win then training a technique to get more power is about as pure as one can get.

You don’t talk about training differently, but about changing sports. We now have a rowing motion where we use the drivefase and not the recovery. Ofcourse we can think up gear that also uses there recovery energy. Making it a pulling plus motion motion. This will be faster, but not rowing like we have now.
The more “stuff” a sport gets, the less interesting it becomes.

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

[gouldilocks]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

Couldn't agree with you more, Henry.
The sports that are quantitative, measured in either time elapsed or distance, should be left alone.
It still annoys me to see some of the swimming WR's set in 2009 with those buoyancy suits are still on the record books, and the road runnig marathon WR's for both men and women are now skewed by these new running shoes.
Not quite as bad as track and field where Koch and Kratochvilova, amongst others, still hold WR's set back in the institutionalised doping days of the '80s - but that's a different issue altogether.

Paul G

[Citroen]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

The piece our Californian correspondent is completely failing to grasp is that rowing using the current technique works the way it is now. It's been developed since at least 1829 and will be demonstrated in everybody's favourite event on the River Ouse on 4th April. There's not much left that can change to make it any better without adding extra technology. Most of the increments have been done from wooden boats to carbon fibre shells and aerofoil blades compared to straight flat wooden oars. If technique changes worked in the way that's suggested then those technique changes would have already been introduced to the sport. The technique on a sliding seat is now baked in stone and changing it makes it a different sport. Basically, what's being postulated is complete nonsense.

If we want to look at how sports technology ruins a sport then Formula 1 vs British Touring Car Champs is an excellent example. F1 is won by how much money is spent on technology. Then in the race it's won during the three stage qualification and pit stops, not by "pure" driver skill on the track. Watching F1 is a tedious parade. BTCC (where the car's are more evenly matched and the money is spread more evenly) is won on the track by driver skill including the audacious overtaking and is much more of a spectacular sport to watch.

[jackarabit]

Here’s to The Boat Race, a shell game superior to the one running in this thread! River Ouse, 4 April. Your virtual attendance required.

[frankencrank]

I am not sure I understand what you are saying, especially about the oars on an ergometer.

C2 supplies oars and sculls for rowing. Blades today use hydrofoil designs that reduce slip and turbulence. You can see them all here:
https://www.concept2.com/oars/oar-optio ... acon-blade

I don't see where they discuss the engineering but it seems to me that in designing an oar one wold want to increase the drag as it moved through the water. I am certainly no expert here but turbulence usually increases drag (in medicine, turbulent flow in the trachea prevents one from increasing respiratory minute volume at high exercise intensities). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

I would be interested in learning a little more but for the purposes of this discussion, the oar is what it is. I am talking about a better technique to deliver power to the oar, whatever the physics of the oar.

[frankencrank]

If means of help are not part of the rules, then no it does not change the rules. But those are part of the rules, see swimming. Rowing is not a record sport, so a change does not matter much. But still the more “pure” a sport stays the better I like it. I like to see the best, combi of talent and training win and not the one with the best techniqual tools.

What does "pure" mean. This is simply a matter of training the athlete differently to get more power out of him or her into the water. Just because it is something you didn't understand possible doesn't make it unpure (all of the power is generated by the athlete), just different than before. Carbon shells, fat blades, and electronic megaphones are "unpure" to me. If it is legal and you want an advantage over your opponent to win then training a technique to get more power is about as pure as one can get.

You don’t talk about training differently, but about changing sports. We now have a rowing motion where we use the drivefase and not the recovery. Ofcourse we can think up gear that also uses there recovery energy. Making it a pulling plus motion motion. This will be faster, but not rowing like we have now.
The more “stuff” a sport gets, the less interesting it becomes.

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

Unless they change the rules, I am not talking about changing sport. The rowing motion will remain essentially identical, the only difference being allowing some of the big muscles we have that do almost nothing to contribute to the power generation. You can train harder or you can train smarter. I am looking at training smarter, getting more bang for your training buck. You can add harder to the equation also but only after you have got the new technique basics down, which takes a little time.

There are many ways to do this (or something similar). A spring in the oarlock. A spring on the slide. A spring attached to the chest/shoulders. A slanted slide (recovery is uphill) - although this changes the rowing motion and has limited potential). A bungie cord is simply the simplest method of achieving this, especially if one just wanted to try it out. On the ergometer the simplest way of trying this is putting the flywheel end on blocks, the amount gained depends upon the lift height during recovery.

[jackarabit]

Swimming in your birthday suit is about as pure as it gets never mind that we are neither cod-headed nor mackerel-tailed.

[frankencrank]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

The piece our Californian correspondent is completely failing to grasp is that rowing using the current technique works the way it is now. It's been developed since at least 1829 and will be demonstrated in everybody's favourite event on the River Ouse on 4th April. There's not much left that can change to make it any better without adding extra technology. Most of the increments have been done from wooden boats to carbon fibre shells and aerofoil blades compared to straight flat wooden oars. If technique changes worked in the way that's suggested then those technique changes would have already been introduced to the sport. The technique on a sliding seat is now baked in stone and changing it makes it a different sport. Basically, what's being postulated is complete nonsense.

If we want to look at how sports technology ruins a sport then Formula 1 vs British Touring Car Champs is an excellent example. F1 is won by how much money is spent on technology. Then in the race it's won during the three stage qualification and pit stops, not by "pure" driver skill on the track. Watching F1 is a tedious parade. BTCC (where the car's are more evenly matched and the money is spread more evenly) is won on the track by driver skill including the audacious overtaking and is much more of a spectacular sport to watch.

Look folks. I have simply analyzed the rules and come up with a totally legal way of improving power. Unless the rules are changed, someone who is intent on winning will do this (or something similar) someday because they won't care about your feelings. rowers already do things during recovery to maximize boat speed like manipulating slide speed to minimize boat speed variation. This is simply another thing they can do. Is it really that hard to learn something new, do something different, that might be better?

[frankencrank]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

Is what's bothering you the "bungie cord" changing the look of the boat. What if I changed the slide. changed the wheels to a cog and put a mainspring in it such that the rower wound that mainspring during recovery that would put in energy that would be recovered during the drive? Everything would look traditional. Boat would just go faster.

[hjs]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

Is what's bothering you the "bungie cord" changing the look of the boat. What if I changed the slide. changed the wheels to a cog and put a mainspring in it such that the rower wound that mainspring during recovery that would put in energy that would be recovered during the drive? Everything would look traditional. Boat would just go faster.

You can (ofcourse) do whatever you want or like, but you would loose my interest. A bit what happened last season with long distance running. The shoes made the runners faster, that killed my fun. I want the best human to win, not the best tools.

[jackarabit]

Is it really that hard to learn something new, do something different, that might be better?

Not at all.

A short respite, a brief divertimento which may help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpelstiltskin

[frankencrank]

Give me “pure” as in run, swim, a distance, with zero help. Throw a shotput, jump heigh etc. The only variable is the body. Thats also why those sports stagnate, we are close to what a current human can do. Swimming a bit excluded, which shows that humans are no real natural swimmers. Technique needs to be taught, running much less so.

Is what's bothering you the "bungie cord" changing the look of the boat. What if I changed the slide. changed the wheels to a cog and put a mainspring in it such that the rower wound that mainspring during recovery that would put in energy that would be recovered during the drive? Everything would look traditional. Boat would just go faster.