February Masters Feature

January 31, 2012

We were fortunate enough to be invited back to coach in Brazil this winter – this time for two weeks – one in Porto Alegre and the other in Rio de Janeiro. We coached two three-day sessions in each spot, mostly masters rowers the first week and a good mix of elite and masters rowers the second. We found that while the Brazilians made some of the same mistakes we’re used to seeing, there were other parts of the stroke that were quite different, for us refreshingly so.

Two months ago I wrote about our biggest pet peeve, sitting up. Interestingly, in Brazil, we didn’t have to mention posture to anyone. All the athletes we coached had a relaxed, natural curve to the back and did not try to keep the spine erect at either the catch or the finish end of the stroke. We also rarely, if ever, had to correct anyone’s grip. All the scullers we saw had a relaxed grip, keeping the wrist flat and using the fingers to hook and hang onto the oar, as compared to having a death grip. It’s difficult (impossible?) to say why this is, but I wonder, only half-jokingly, how much it has to do with their more relaxed personality in general.

The grip is one of those seemingly little things that has a huge effect on the boat. At Calm Waters, we try to get people to think of the hand as just another link in the chain connecting the body to the oar. If we develop a good grip early, it stays with us forever, becoming so ingrained we don’t even have to think about it. Changing a bad grip that has become a habit is difficult and can take years. The easiest place to start trying is on the erg – no balance issues, no fear of falling in the water, no squaring and feathering so you can work simply on relaxing the grip, keeping the wrist flat and only the fingers in contact with the handle, none of the palm.

As in the U.S., many of the rowers we coached in Brazil felt it was of paramount importance to keep the blades off the water. Many preferred to give up fluidity and relaxation in exchange for the blades never touching the surface. We feel that’s a mistake. Better to relax and keep the knees and body directly over the keel and maybe have one blade or the other skim the water than have the blades high off the water and the body and knees rocking back and forth. The further the blades are off the water, the more the boat can rock from side to side. The closer the blade, the less the boat can roll.

While reviewing video there, most everything we said had to be translated into Portuguese, leading me to be more careful with my words and trying to be particularly clear in my descriptions. What I found we kept coming back to was body preparation. We’d see the rowers lunging at the catch, slides being rushed, blades skying, pressure on the foot stretchers before the blade was in the water and blades going too deep on the drive. The root of all these issues was lack of body preparation.

In Brazil, as in the U.S., there is so much emphasis on quick hands out of bow, which does nothing to prepare the body and can lead to all of the mistakes mentioned above. But if the body angle is set by half slide (which many coaches advocate, but then in the next breath insist on quick hands away), the body remains steady going into the catch, the hands remain steady and the focus can go into the catch. With a steady body, the blade remains closer to the water and the catch takes less time, allowing us to minimize the check that comes from applying pressure to the foot stretchers before the oar is anchored.

As I was telling my mother about our coaching experience in Brazil, she asked some good questions – “Did we invent the style we coach and if not, how did we come by it?” No, we definitely did not invent this style and we make a point of letting people know that. The style that we coach, and strongly believe in, is the most efficient. It’s simply the style that we see the Olympians rowing. We study what the best of the best are doing. We have DVDs going back 10+ years of all the world championships and Olympic finals. Technique has certainly changed over those years and we’ve changed what we coach accordingly. There are a lot of similarities among what the best rowers do – they have a relaxed posture, loose elbows, steady head, their  bodies move out of bow in tandem with their arms, they carry their blades close to the water and more than occasionally, the blades briefly skim the surface. They are relaxed and fluid and steady and, of course, strong and fit. We study what the best rowers are doing, we watch in slow-mo and frame by frame we break the stroke down into all its parts and then we simply coach what we see. We recommend that you take a look at the videos as well, get a good image in your head of what you see and then try to replicate it.

Charlotte Hollings and her husband, John Dunn have spent more than 70 years immersed in the sport of rowing. Both have rowed on the U.S. National Team, winning several international medals. Charlotte’s coaching career has taken her west to Stanford University before heading back east to Boston University and then Cornell University. John remained close to home, coaching at his alma mater of Cornell University for 18 years, first as the frosh lightweight coach, then varsity lightweight and finally varsity women. In 2001, Hollings and Dunn started the sculling camp Calm Waters Rowing in Lancaster, Va. For more information, visit www.calmwatersrowing.com.

Charlotte Hollings

Masters Features