depressing bow at the end of each stroke

[1xsculler]

How do you break the habit of depressing the bow of your boat at the end of each stroke? Drills? What to keep in mind?

[Long'n Strong]

Ask the cox'n to lighten up on the poor guy...

[1xsculler]

Single sculling only.
I think the problem may be that I am opening up to soon which dumps my upper body into the bow which depresses it. I have a video in Dropbox and I will try to post it.

[KitD]

Ask the cox'n to lighten up on the poor guy...

This deserves more credit

[1xsculler]

Makes no sense to me and not helpful.

[sandor]

Makes no sense to me and not helpful.

How do you break the habit of depressing bow?

Ask the coxswain to lighten up on the poor guy in bow (seat)

nyuck, nyuck, nyuck

[1xsculler]

Having never rowed with more than one person in my boat the humor of this escapes me totally but I am glad someone got a laugh out of it.

[bd_sculler]

Is your boat level while you are in a neutral position? You can attach a small level and check. Maybe you need to adjust the position of the rigger. Do you have good pressure on the foot stretcher all the way to the finish? There should be a slight rise of the bow as you go into the finish, I think.

[Sarge]

I saw a blog post on the Hudson site about position within the boat. The basic idea is that you should set yourself (you, your rigger, and foot-stretchers) in a position so that, as you row, the bow comes up slightly. Now, there is a difference in setting yourself as someone who does high speed stuff vs someone who does lots of SS or slower speed stuff. Read the article and think about it.

BUT, I think the question you are asking is different and the answer or fix is much more difficult to achieve/attain. When you look at video (and Henley video is a good place to start) you will indeed see bows rising and falling throughout the stroke cycle. This is natural. What you want to avoid is the boat diving at the finish, looking as if there is weight applied at the bow ball pushing the bow down. The way to minimize the bow diving is to make sure you are strong at the release: I have folks thinking about everything moving on a slightly upward sloping plane approaching the finish. Elbows up and out, no collapse of the lower back and certainly no lay-back after the blades pop out.

Connection is the key, stay connected without lugging on the oar handles. Squeeze the stroke off finishing in the ribs, not lugging at mid-drive and then finishing into the lap. Handles level on the drive. Everything horizontal. I suspect that your stern is also dipping a bit at the catch. Stay light on the feet until the blades are dropped into the water.

A lot to process and best accomplished by learning this at low pressure, and then gradually increasing pressure over time

[caustic]

Single sculling only.
I think the problem may be that I am opening up to soon which dumps my upper body into the bow which depresses it. I have a video in Dropbox and I will try to post it.

feet-out rowing. There's a couple potential reasons why your bow is driving down.

1)As you said, you're opening up too early, losing the pressure on the blades as you come into the finish because you've lost the connection between your legs and your arms.
2)You're pulling yourself out of bow with your feet.


Now, these are likely very related, and you can fix one by fixing the other. If you can row, feet out, without having your feet come off the foot stretchers, it means that you're maintain a balanced position at the release, which is crucial - if you fall backwards after the release, it's because you have too much layback and you're not effectively using the oars to help you get your body around the corner and back into a neutral positon.

An exaggerated way to look at it would be to look at rowers who row dories. They have just a single thole pin on the gunwhale, so they have no oarlock to keep the oar in place. In order to keep the oar from sliding up and off the pin, they have to synchronize their body so that their back and arms all complete the stroke at the same time, ensuring that there's pressure kept on the oar all the way until the motion is completed - including getting the body "around the oar" and back over the hips so that they don't fall backward (especially because dories don't have foot stretchers either).

Another good visual to help - put a small piece of tubing on the stern, so that one of the open ends it facing bow-ward along the outside of the keel, and the other end wraps around the stern and points straight up. If you move the boat forward, you should see some water move up the tube and out the top. AS you move more quickly, it's a small fountain shooting straight up. The goal of this is to try to keep that fountain at an increasing height through the entire stroke and around the release (since you're accelerating the boat through the drive and around the release), and then to reduce any drop in fountain height at the catch (since you're trying to maintain the speed of the boat, not trying to pull it forward from a dead stop ever stroke).

Finally, another good exercise to try can be done with a friend. Basically, arms-and-bodies only, race each other for 3-4 strokes. Let it glide, see who has not only moved forward during the strokes, but *who continues to move forward during the glide*, because they've preserved their speed better.

With feet out rowing, it's expected that you will be rowing VERY short to begin with, because 1)you're likely used to having a bigger layback than what feet-out rowing allows for, and 2)because you'll be tense and uncertain due to everything becoming a lot less stable.

As you get more familiar with feet out rowing, you'll naturally start adapting your stroke to keep your feet connected, and you will start to be able to lengthen out the layback as you get more familar with using the oars to help pull your body out of bow.

[1xsculler]

Thanks for the help, guys. I have some things to think about.
When I rowed this morning I think I may have partially figured it out.
I tried to flatten everything out and move more smoothly throughout the stroke instead of jumping a little up and away from the stretcher at the catch. I could row either way and I felt a distinct difference. Tomorrow or Saturday I will try to get my neighbor’s wife to take another video so I can compare it to the video of a couple of days ago and see if what I feel is an improvement actually is.
Eventually I may figure out how to post the vids here.
My neighbor emails me a link to the vids which are in Dropbox.

[1xsculler]

Ask the cox'n to lighten up on the poor guy...

Like my wife often often says, "Quit it, you know what I meant."

[1xsculler]

Ok then, a vid taken by my daughter this morning does, indeed, show that I can greatly minimize to a very acceptable level the "depression of the part of the boat usually referred to as"the bow by simply flattening out my stroke throughout the drive and by releasing, Cunningham style, when still under pressure. The Cunningham release is releasing the blades when under near full pressure and the only thing you have to do to get an effortless and very clean release is to reverse the motion of the handles. You don't have to push the handles down at all. A millisecond after the effortless, clean release you do, of course, have to push the handles down to keep from skimming but that is another thing that I need to work on and that I may not have enough birthdays remaining to conquer. And it should be so easy but skimming is a difficult habit to break and it makes one look like a lazy old man which fits me to a T.

[rowingpun]

FWIW, I've heard Korzo say, and this is roughly paraphrased, he doesn't give a $h!t if the bow bobs up and down during the stroke. If you look at just the past two Diamond sculls finals you'll see that all four scullers have a significant difference between the bow at the catch and finish. That is, at the catch it is entirely out of the water and at the finish there is only an inch or two not submerged. I guess you've already made the changes, but as long as you aren't dunking the bowball, you're moving alright. You can only do so much as you move you mass fore and aft in such a light shell. Moving your rigger and feet stern-ward will help find a nice mid-point, but I wouldn't obsess over it. I can't say I'm disappointed that you went to the "flip-finish" I find it to be much more effective/efficient at getting the oar out and continuing the stroke cycle uninterrupted.

[bd_sculler]

I agree about the “flip” finish. Here is something you might want to try to avoid skimming. Try the sculler’s catch. It was a topic of discussion a while ago, and is described in Frank Cunningham’s book The Sculler at Ease. Here is what I try to do: Keep the blade feathered all the way to the catch, close to the water but not touching. There is s small rise of the hands at the end of the recovery/start of the drive. Start the squaring of the blades just before the blades enter the water. The blades enter at an angle. With a loose grip as you start the drive the water will bury the blades and square the blades for you. So just like the release, the water does that part of the blade work for you. If you get the timing right, there is just about no splash and the blades lock in very quickly. With the blades feathered and close (but not touching) the water it might feel more stable to you. Even if this technique does not work for you, you might enjoy the challenge of trying it. For a better and more complete description see FC’s book. I find the hardest part is to enter the blades at an angle, having spent so many years making sure the blades were squared before entering the water.

It is good to hear about your continued good health.