Simple Guide to Sculling without Tears
DISCLAIMER OF NON-CAPSIZE WARRANTY:
This is meant to be a short introduction if you fancy sculling and want
to know a bit more about it. By no means is it a complete, comprehensive
or definitive guide to sculling. Nor does it promise that you'll gain perfect
technique from following it, but I believe it is better than nothing. If
you are an experienced sculler you may not find anything new from this
page.
You probably have to be a bit maverick to fancy sculling as opposed
to the ultimate team sport it is to row with sweep oars. Perhaps you belong
to one of those underestimated talents who never got to stroke an eight
and by mistake were placed in the three-seat by ignorant coaches, humiliating
you with careless remarks, forever tainting your vanity by not recognizing
your talent. Now's the time to strike back, unleashing your potential and
prove them all wrong with a vengeance!
The topics covered here are:
Learning to scull is very much like learning how to ride a bike although
it may take longer before you are content with the result. The process
is the same, you teach your body/nerve system how to execute a certain
pattern of motions. To facilitate that, your body establishes new connections
between appropriate neurons, connections which only develops as you persistently
let your body repeat the exact movements you demand of it. By the end of
the day you will no longer think about how to recover from crab strokes,
just as you don't think about how not to fall of your bike when you cycle.
Not being a natural rower is not the end of the world. But you may find
you have to be more stubborn and, first of all, patient than others. Some
improvements do not come after one or two outings but take weeks to learn.
When you take up sculling make up your mind about
what it is you want to achieve. Doing 4, 5 or more outings per week together
with a good training program can save you lots of time than if you only
do the odd outing without a serious training program. If you want to improve
fast, note that anything less than 4 outings per week is wasting a considerable
amount of time because it always takes at least a day or two to get back
to last weeks standard.
Certain technical concepts are not always easy to
convey and metaphors are frequently used in this text. By the end of the
day if you want to become good at sculling you have to practise it, not
read text books about it!
The first few outings
During your first 3 to 5 outings you must have a reasonably experienced
supervisor with you. Choose a calm day. Your vessel should be a boat that
is easy to sit, preferably a play boat, but a wide clinker will do. Make
sure to get the blades out on the bank before you get the boat on the water.
If possible get the blades in the gates before stepping into the boat.
Before you get into the boat a few things are worth mentioning. First
of all as a novice there is a significant risk that your first outing is
gonna end with the disgracing capsize drill. So what you don't want to
do is to tie your shoe laces or your foot straps too tight in the boat.
The reason being that in case you fall in, the last thing you want to deal
with is working out how to untie your shoes whilst holding your breath
under water!
The way to hold the oars is with the thumbs resting on the end of the
handles and lightly curled fists, i.e. avoid tight clinching. When you
get in the boat, avoid pulling any of your blades in as to avoid obstructions,
otherwise you'll easily fall in. If you are about to hit something in a
collision then fend of gently with your blade from the obstruction. Balance
comes from being absolutely symmetric in any of the motions you execute.
This means maintaining equal handheights throughout the stroke and during
the recovery, but it also means that sudden movements like turning your
head around disturbs the balance.
Steering and coping with
various situations
When learning how to manoeuvre the vessel it is easiest to take a natural
scientist's approach as to deduce how the boat will move when you apply
a certain motion to one of your blade handles. It basically boils down
to applying Newton's third law: Action equals reaction.
To sit in a dead safe position hold onto both blade handles with one
hand only, with a stretched arm, oars perpendicular to the hull, blades
feathered and resting on the water. This is a very stable position if you
need to mess about with something in your boat.
When you spin make sure the water is not too choppy. If you do spin
anyway in wavy conditions there's a significant risk of capsizing once
the waves becomes parallel to your vessel. So if possible you should rather
row a bit further until you find sheltered conditions where you can spin
more safely.
Over the time when you scull you may experience that you inadvertently
keep steering to bow side or to stroke side. If you initially rowed with
sweep oars this may be the reason, that your left/right leg by default
applies more power than the other leg. One way to rectify this is to pay
attention to your handheights and ensuring you're not looming more with
one oar than the other.
When you return to the river bank aim with an angle of about 15 degrees
to the bank. If it is too obtuse you will bounce off. If it is too acute
you will break your bow. Before the blade closest to the bank hits the
bank grab hold of both blade handles in one hand, clear them from the water
and lean slightly away from the bank as to avoid your blade hitting the
bank.
Land training.
Ideally anaerobic work should be exercised only on the water as it is important
to learn how to maintain the technique whilst coping with exhaustion. However,
there are number of useful exercises to do on dry land. Stretching should
always be incorporated into the training program not just before exercise
but especially after. Muscles become physically longer during a couple
of weeks when regularly stretched. This eventually makes your hamstrings
facilitate doing a proper "un-hunched" body swing from the hips which is
important in terms of avoiding injuries.
Running twice a week is good for more reasons. Rowing is quite a static
exercise ( i.e. lots of muscle work applied but only moderate movement
around the joints) and during intensive training in the days up to an important
race one can easily become stiff not just in the muscles but as well in
the spine and rib cage. Running helps loosening up. Another common rowing
injury is the developement of too strong outer-thigh muscles. This
occurs because at backstops position in the boat the legs are hardly stretched
completely. However, the inner-thigh muscles are used for stretching the
legs the last ten degrees while everything before that (i.e. from frontstops
to backstops) is done mostly with the outer-thigh muscles. As a result
the unequal strength of the thigh muscles pulls the knee cap unevenly to
one side which can lead to athritis. This insiduous injury is often first
discovered when one starts to run after not having done so for some months.
Regular running maintains the strength of the inner thigh muscle and prevents
this injury.
Weight on the toes.
This is obviously a metaphor but one way to picture "weight on the toes"
is to imagine you're a tightrope walker or a cat and have to balance your
body/boat on your toes! You have to be relaxed and coordinated in all your
motions. During the recovery don't abuse the slide by falling or slumping
into frontstops but rather be delicate and decelerate the slide almost
after you've started sliding.
Relaxing
So how does one relax when you get hit by the waves from from other big
crafts or if you're rowing in the wash from an eight? Practise and more
practise is probably the best way, i.e. go out in adverse conditions and
learn to cope well with them. A few points can however be mentioned. One
useful thing to remember is to always get the weight on the toes and to
retain clean finishes. Anticipate the correct motions of the stroke before
you've executed them, i.e. at backstops anticipate hands flowing smoothly
away, when hands flows away anticipate swinging body weight onto the toes
and so on. Thereby you'll be much more smooth in your motions.
When you begin to take the pressure up it is important that you remember
to relax in those muscle groups that are idle, i.e. during the first part
of the stroke (leg drive) make sure to have loose shoulders and arms, during
the recovery relax in your chest and shoulders and unclinch your fists
around the handles. This increases the bloodflow through those muscles.
Square blades
Square blades is an important exercise for many reasons. You get a better
feel for the water. You learn how to recover from crab strokes. You enforce
balance control and confidence to square early. Start off with tapping-down
exercises. That is sit at backstops, extend your arms fully with the blades
feathered on the water. Now square your blades in the water and make sure
the spoons are fully covered by the water. Now, unclich your fists and
alost let go of the handles, just let them float in the water due to their
own weight. This not easy but is a good confidence drill.
Start then to tap down both blade handles as to get the spoons clear
off the water and drop the spoons back again. The point is to retain the
balance. You'll find that it is easier to do if you have a high rating,
but by the end of the day you want to master it at a fairly low rating
compatible with normal rowing. Make sure you maintain proper backstops
position with your back. This is a good exercise for learning how to balance
the vessel.
When you are proficient in tapping down you want to do backstops paddling
with square blades. You can make the transition from tapping down to backstops
paddling simply by squeezing the blade handles before you extract them
from the water. Make no attempt to move the blade handles the full length
of your arms as this will just screw things up. A third or a half of your
arm length is just fine as this is not an exercise in applying brute force.
Attempt to make a little squeeze at the finish as to get a clean extraction
of the spoons from the water. As you improve over the weeks/months you'll
begin to hear a certain "plop" from your puddles at each finish and you
can sense the smoothness by which your hands flows away during the recovery.
The plop sound is a result of the spoon's clean extration from the water
because of the constant pressure applied to the spoon by you.
At that stage you want to do backstops paddling with lean. The smoothness
you gained from pure backstops paddling should be retained when implementing
the body swing. The key thing to remember is hands go away first then body
swings over. Make sure to do a proper swing from the hips and not a nasty
hunch from your lower back. The proper swing from the hips feels slightly
uncomfortable because your buttocks muscles are forced to readjust themselves
on the seat when you swing forwards with a straight back. On the other
hand you may not even notice doing a hunch from the lower back until the
morning were you hardly can get your trousers or socks on because of a
slipped disc in your back. So how much forward should you swing? You should
only swing as much forward as your hamstrings allow you to. Depending on
how flexible your hamstrings are this will probably not be more than some
15 degrees away from vertical. It's easy to fake a swing of some 20 to
30 degrees by hunching your back. If you feel you don't get enough forward
reach from the body swing, you must improve your flexibility and stretch
your hamstrings during landtraining. Concentrate on getting the weight
on the toes as you have swung over. Now as you drop the blades in the water,
arms fully extended, you lean back, arms and shoulders completely relaxed.
When you've almost reached backstops then you finish off the stroke as
in backstops paddling square blades. Also here it suffices to be content
when you begin to hear the "plop" at each finish.
The final step is to do full slide square blades. The key points to
remember is to not start the slide on the recovery before you get the weight
on the toes and don't rip with your arms throughout the stroke. Think:
back and legs.
Front stops paddling
When you've become fully confident doing full slide square blades you want
to go a step further. The catch is a weak point for scullers. It's difficult
to balance the vessel at front stops and by whacking the spoon in the water
you risk catching a crab so it's tempting just to row the blade in when
you're paddling along. This however, results in a waste of leg drive, a
check on the boat and possibly bum shoving as the load on your blade abruptly
increases during the work phase. Front stops paddling is a way to rectify
lacking confidence at the catch. Position yourself at front stops, arms
stretched out blades feathered on the water. Square the blades. This is
quite difficult the first few times you do it and it is important to remain
calm and maintain equal handheigths. Now, take the first two inches of
the stroke. This should be with the legs only, that is, with your toes
pressing on the foot plate driving the slide two inches backwards. Front
stops paddling is nothing but square blades paddling at the first two inches
of the strokes. Make sure your shoulders and arms move only because of
your leg drive, that is do not open up your back or pull with your arms.
Your back should remain firm during the leg drive and the angle between
your back and the slide must not change. Your arms should not pull at all
but be completely stretched out and relaxed as were they nothing but hooks
connecting your back to the blade handles. When relaxed you can feel the
pull in your shoulders as you drive with your legs. If you are sufficiently
relaxed in arms and shoulders the ligaments will be the only constraint
holding your shoulder together and you can actually feel your shoulder
joints loosening up (see shoulder dislocation). You may get soar muscles
in parts of your body the first few times you do this exercise, which indicates
that you need to relax these muscles. The reward is that you gain much
more control and a better feel for the water. As you get more experienced
you can try frontstops paddling with your hands somewhat down the loom
of your blades. This is even more difficult and brings the focus onto balancing
the boat with your toes.
The catch
There are more schools of thought of what is the perfect way to take the
catch. This is the way I have been taught.
The idea is not to whack the blade into the water, but be delicate
and swift. Try front stops paddling again. Now rather than rowing the spoons
in try to drop them in under their own weight as you travel towards front
stops during the recovery. This leads to back splash which doesn't increase
the speed of the boat. But for a start you just want to experience that
it's possible to put the blades in on the way forwards without difficulty.
The aim now is to minimise the time it takes to drop the blade into the
water. If they go in too slowly the result will be considerable backsplash
and the handle will push you backwards which leads to a loss of coordination
and weight on the toes. Ideally you want to float towards frontstop while
your hands keep rising and just before reaching frontstop your blade enters
the water so fast that there isn't any significant back splash. This will
create a slight wall of water behind the blade and a hole in front of the
blade at which point you should have reached frontstop and be still for
the fraction of a second it takes before you go into the work phase. Beginning
the leg drive the water will readjust itself and you will sense a
"clonk" as the blades locks on to the water. Executing swift catches feels
different from rowing the blades in. The work load may not change but the
speed of the boat does.
The recovery
The recovery is your chance to recover and relax from the effort you just
put into your stroke. Concentrate on relaxing in your chest, shoulders
and fists. At the finish make sure that you back is still straight and
not hunched even at backstops. Tap down with your hands at backstops. The
hands go away in a swift motion but without flicking. As your hands are
almost stretched you continue the handles journey to the catch point by
using the body swing. It is important to obtain separation of hands-body-slide
as you otherwise will be troubled trying to balance your vessel. When the
bodyweight has been swung onto the toes you start sliding towards the catch
point. During the recovery you may find that one spoon keeps clipping the
water, usually the left hand if the vessel is rigged with left handle over
the right. One way to correct this is to move left hand slightly in front
of the right one. Alternatively it may be because you're not moving both
hands with the same speed. It depends alot upon how the boat is rigged.
The workphase
The idea is that the stroke is gentle at the catch but half way through
builds up with a spring from your toes as to finish off with a defined
"send" at backstops. This differs from big boats where emphasis is put
more on applying power as early as possible during the work phase. opened.
Avoid pulling with your arms but think of them as tools for extracting
the blades from the water. Let the spoons flow in the water at their natural
depth due to gravity and remain relaxed in your shoulders as to achieve
this. In principle, this all applies to rowing in big crew boats as well.
The key difference as you'll find is that there is a greater emphasis on
the 2nd half of the stroke in sculling than in big boats because a small
boat slows down much quicker than a big boat. You'll find that if you apply
work at the catch in the same manner as in a big boat when you row in a
single scull things will become erratic because the boat speed is too slow
for taking advantage of hard work at frontstops. Moreover, blade extraction
will become difficult if you're as loose and relaxed in your arms at the
finish as in a big boat. This certainly doesn't mean you should go for
slow rowed-in catches and wrenched out finishes when single sculling. You
should still apply the same quick catches everyone teaches, but you may
preferably delay the pick up a fraction of a second before applying the
muscle drive. Shifting the powerphase more towards the end of the stroke
will assist easy blade extraction without having to wrench out your finishes.
The finish
At the finish your blades should pop out of the water in natural manner
without you having to rip or tear the blade out of the water. The latter
happens if you didn't apply enough pressure on the blades in the middle
of the stroke for some reason. The blades are then likely to get "stuck"
in the water which causes the dirty finishes. Instead you want to maintain
the pressure on the blades by "pulling with your back". A wall of water
will then build up in front of the blades and a hole will appear behind.
This facilitates extracting the blades cleanly out of the water and you
will hear the aforementioned "plop" which is really cool! You probably
won't notice this if racing in a multilane regatta event.
Adverse conditions
Depending on the weather it may be more or less enjoyable to go out sculling.
As the maverick you are, always step in your boat aiming to scull well,
even in rough weather or at the very least, to try and defy it.
If rowing into a tailwind the wind will force you
up the slide quicker than usual and you'll have to pay attention to your
slide speed. Generally it feels like you're working in a lower gear. As
a result you may apply the drive at the catch slightly earlier than usual
in order to capitalise on this situation. Finishes can probably be made
with slightly less emphasis on the arms as the relatively faster speed
of the boat should make the extraction easier.
If you are rowing into a headwind on the other hand
it will feel like everything is geared rather high. Let the rating settle
down to a natural level rather than attempting to row at the same rating
you would if no wind was present. Rowing into a head wind always ensure
dropping the blades down to the water when approaching frontstops since
the wind will blow the blades up in the air as soon as you start squaring
your blades. Because of the higher gearing in a head wind you should really
make sure the blades have properly locked on to the water at the catch
before driving with your legs. Also, because the boat slowing down will
take place much more during the recovery it is important to emphasise the
second part of the stroke more than you would in calm weather. Use your
back for doing this, not just your arms on their own.
If you scull and it gets quite choppy the keyword
is to relax. Attempt to clear the blades welll from the water during the
recovery rather than letting waves hit them and consequently knocking off
your balance. Should a wave hit your blade anyway ensure to be sufficiently
relaxed in your arms so that the impact won't be transferred to your upper
body thereby completely knocking you off balance.
Feet out
When you are quite confident with the balance and in control of your boat
another exercise for improving coordination is to row with feet out. The
objective is manifold. You learn not to pull yourself up the slide. You
enforce coordination in your movements. It is important that you maintain
gentle catches and a spring from the toes in the middle of the stroke.
Doing it the other way round results in capsizing. Only do this excercise
when you really are confident and feel very sharp.
Handles
On the way forwards relax your arms. You almost want to let go of your
blade handles as you raise them up to the catch point. Do this by unclinching
your fists around the handles on the recovery. Then with a slight pressure
from your thumbs at the end of the blade handle roll the blades square
under your palms as you approach frontstops and you're then ready to take
the catch. By squaring like this you apply minimum strain on your wrists
and prevent injuries and soreness of your arms.
10 April 2001
