reducing skimming

[1xsculler]

I'm beginning my eleventh year of sculling and the lazy and bad habit of skimming, among other technique issues, has plagued me.

After receiving two of the best bits of advice I have ever gotten about technique I believe I may mostly conquer the problem of skimming this season.

From Dick Kendall: Aim your hands towards your Speed Coach early in the recovery.

From Marlene: Approach the catch with your chin up and chest out. This does several things. It causes you to sweep your hands towards the stern at a lower level which contributes to less skimming. It automatically increases your reach at the catch which gets your lower legs closer to vertical promoting a longer stroke. You row through the pin or come closer to doing it.

Now all I have to do is release square, roll up earlier rather than flip-catch and incorporate the proper sequencing of power in my drive and I may actually end up a descent sculler even if the best guys in my age group still kick my a$$.

[KiwiCanuck]

A few things you can try:
Pay attention more to the blades (first, make sure the pitches are the same on both blades so you've got equal vertical components of force acting on the blade when you're pushing through to the release) than to your hands. Aim for pushing both blades the same against the water, releasing both at the same time, same speed, and coming out of the water together, same speed, same height.. If you focus on that, your brain will make your hands do the necessary motions.

Take the blades high enough off the water that they COULD be squared - so that you don't have to raise them off the water to square them when you approach the catch.

If you wobble a little, so be it, that's how you learn to not wobble.

Remember that the centre of mass of the sculls are outboard of the riggers, so when you move your handles up or down, the riggers get a huge vertical turning moment on them, and the boat, being roundish on the bottom, will roll in response - try to keep your hands from wandering up and down.

Exercises.... row for a while with one blade squared and one feathered (during the recovery, although I shouldn't have to state that), and alternate sides every stroke.. This is challenging for a couple of reasons - one- it punishes you for lowering the feathered blade back near the water because it un-weights that rigger, and causes the squared blade to dig during the recovery - hence, you get forced to keep the feathered blade high off the water if you want to keep the squared blade up - two - requires you to pay attention to what you're doing.

Relax - that "athlete relaxed" not "couch potato relaxed"
And... Well... concentrate.
HTH
WM

[lt.wolf]

I have on easy one that will help. Row quarter feather and I mean a lot of it. For like 80 percent of your row at least 4 times a week. Do it in between pieces etc, let me know how it goes in a week or two and I will give you a few more drills

[Steven M-M]

All great advice. 1/4 feather is great for the skimmer because you have the stability of skimming but you are almost keeping your blades/handles at the proper height during the recovery. It will help clean up you releases and entries. The only thing I would add is that from release to entry you should feel like your "weight" is always over the handles, your hands, arms and shoulders are "resting" weight on top of the handles. Once square then the entry is mostly just releasing the weight. Most of this is good posture aka Marlene, but many scullers drop their weight below the handles at the release. The suggestion to aim for the toes is a cue to not let the weight leave the handles after body prep.

[bloomp]

Let me be the third person to voice support for an "italian" feather. 1/4 or 1/2 feather works quite well to re-adjust your hands to traveling lower on the recovery.

I'll spend the first 10-20 minutes of every row doing so, then conclude with some strokes on the square (or half/quarter feather) to reinforce good technique while fatigued.

[sul]

the reason you are skimming because you are trying to balance the boat with the blades to keep boat steady on recovery, particularly right after release.

It is a very common thing to do, and indeed it's amazing how many scullers skim just a bit right at release, and lift off as their hands move away.

Here's a drill.
release very high and pause for one to two seconds at the finish position. Relax relax. Allow the boat to fall over to one side or other, do NOT attempt to balance the boat at the finish or recovery. One side will skim on early recovery other blade well off but by mid recovery the boat levels off for a decent catch.

repeat.

When your blades release with the same pressure/depth/timing, the boat will balance itself, it'll feel like you're sitting an aircraft carrier, lots of positive reinforcement.

By skimming, or attempting to balance the boat, you never get the positive feedback from simultaneous even releases.

square or partial square blades can be useful for getting you to release higher. Downside of partial square is constant gripping of the oar on recovery which is counter to learning to relax on recovery. Proper hand grip is essential for relaxation.

mix in the pauses, too many pauses can stress the lower back, so 5 and 10 pause/no pause is pretty good. You can do this for miles with light and hard pressure.

O er time and miles your releases can be more reasonably low.

The side benefit of working your sculling in this fashion is the ability to release higher in rough water, you should be able to adjust your recovery blade height to conditions.

Expect when you first do this work that you'll have one in 20 good strokes, but that one stroke will feel so good that it will be worth it. boat balance comes from the finish.

This is consistent with Walter's comment that the highest point of recovery should be at release, you should not lower your hands during recovery.

[Steven M-M]

Sul – The advice I’ve been given, and in turn given, to feel like you’re pushing your hands down as your knees rise during the recovery is to resist the temptation to raise the hands/lower the blades. The goal is to keep the hand/blades straight, as you suggest, so this advice is more a trick or optical illusion (and that is how I explain it).

[caustic]

You know, I tend to skim at low rates and with light pressure, and I'm betting something similar with you. I've found that when I bring up the pressure and rating, the skimming goes away. What if you toss in some sudden rate changes in your practice rows? Maybe not 20s, but perhaps just 5 strokes to get the speed up a bit and to keep yourself from getting too complacent during the longer rows? With complacency comes poor posture and slow hands, so injecting a bit of zippiness every so often will help keep your mind on the right track.

[sul]

Sul – The advice I’ve been given, and in turn given, to feel like you’re pushing your hands down as your knees rise during the recovery is to resist the temptation to raise the hands/lower the blades. The goal is to keep the hand/blades straight, as you suggest, so this advice is more a trick or optical illusion (and that is how I explain it).

Of course I'm making suggestions w/o seeing any of the sculling, so my suggests may be worthless.

My observation is that most scullers skim, and the vast majority skim right from the finish where the boat feels most vulnerable, then the blades come off the water during recovery toward catch. A deep, covered finish helps a lot, but few scullers accomplish this, and I've seen decent scullers rowing with clean strokes, oars off, while still washing.

Conn Findlay solidly disagrees with what I teach, and our 1000 mile road trip together last fall didn't resolve the difference. :^)

He firmly believes that beginners SHOULD recover on the water for a while, and as they gain proficiency and consistency, the oars come off the water. That theory says that this will help scullers learn relaxation better. We agree on that, relaxation is most important.

[bd_sculler]

According to Nolte, if I am understanding the article, Steven M-M is right: there is a lowering of the hands during the first part of the recovery. What surprised me is that there is a slight "skying" right before the catch, but not a complete surprise, and that the hands continue moving toward the body for a short time after the blades are out of the water at the finish. And it appears there is no "tapdown," a sudden vertical motion of the hands to raise the blades high off the water at the finish, although I think I see why coaches teach that. I also find, like Caustic, that keeping the blades off the water during the recovery is much easier if I am going faster.


http://www.biorow.com/RBN_en_2008_files ... News03.pdf

[sul]

According to Nolte, if I am understanding the article, Steven M-M is right: there is a lowering of the hands during the first part of the recovery. What surprised me is that there is a slight "skying" right before the catch, but not a complete surprise, and that the hands continue moving toward the body for a short time after the blades are out of the water at the finish. And it appears there is no "tapdown," a sudden vertical motion of the hands to raise the blades high off the water at the finish, although I think I see why coaches teach that. I also find, like Caustic, that keeping the blades off the water during the recovery is much easier if I am going faster.


http://www.biorow.com/RBN_en_2008_files ... News03.pdf

In a training film of the 96 Netherlands eight, some of the rowers had a very flat release as sketched above, others had a higher finish. When I talk about the propensity to release flat, this included many international scullers. There is no such thing as a perfect stroke, as we try to teach, because we teach to get the blade in on the recovery, we really don't. The tip enters at recovery, and blade buries during the drive. The quicker the blade buries, the more effectively we apply power. Similarly, at the finish, you cannot go from buried to release instantly, there is going to be a time where the blade is both loaded and rising out of the water. the longer it takes for the blade to come out of the water, the less efficient the blade is being used, and pressure is subtly removed.

I have vids of a world class European sculler taken a couple years apart. I took the film. In the earlier vid, he had higher releases, deeper finishes, flatter washy finishes in the later vids. The time of year and type of pieces were the same, SS mileage. Sculler's front end was improved, getting into the water with more length. His coach told me that finishes had degraded while working that year on building up the front end.

I don't agree with the notion of necessarily teaching exactly what is happening, but instead of modeling an action that we try to match. In coaching someone to shoot a basketball, there are imagers used by the coach that don't match reality. On followthru, you are told to hook your fingers over the rim on the release. That imagery achieves the proper follow thru, but no, you don't actually put your fingers over the rim.

A good coach can teach an image of a more "square" release while realizing the reality is much flatter and round.

[KiwiCanuck]

According to Nolte, if I am understanding the article, Steven M-M is right: there is a lowering of the hands during the first part of the recovery. What surprised me is that there is a slight "skying" right before the catch, but not a complete surprise, and that the hands continue moving toward the body for a short time after the blades are out of the water at the finish. And it appears there is no "tapdown," a sudden vertical motion of the hands to raise the blades high off the water at the finish, although I think I see why coaches teach that. I also find, like Caustic, that keeping the blades off the water during the recovery is much easier if I am going faster.


http://www.biorow.com/RBN_en_2008_files ... News03.pdf

The first time I saw a presentation about handcurve from Volker at a coaching conference I thought, Hmm.. When I got home from the conference, I went back to my TV/VCR with a piece of overhead projector acetate, and tracked the hand pattern of the (1996) Olympic champion women's 2X (Canada) Heddle and McBean. This was in 1996 or early 1997, I don't remember - the video was something I shot while visiting their training camp about 6 weeks before Atlanta. Sure enough, the pattern was almost identical to that shown in the biorow article cited above. I think it was about then I changed my coaching of the release.. Why coach what isn't happening? Computer software makes it SO much easier to do this sort of 'study' today.

If you are able to keep the blades high enough off the water that they COULD be squared, you don't have to "sky" to square.