Tech Tip: From Snow to Row
by COC Sculling Coach and former Camp Director, Troy Howell
It's winter here in Craftsbury for a good while longer, and every winter at the Outdoor Center affords us with new opportunities to learn about sculling from what Nordic skiing teaches us if we are paying attention. I've got a couple of stories to relate, but first, keep these three items in mind: 1) If you're going to add effort, make sure that it increases your speed; 2) Body position is as important in sculling and rowing as it is in any other sport; 3) Learn to ride the glide (or in sculling terms, maximize run). So let's look at those one at a time:
1) If you're going to add effort, make sure that it increases your speed
As a sculler who uses cross-country skiing as cross-training during the months that the lake is frozen, I'm well aware that my skiing is inefficient - I can feel the wasted effort and the watts I'm pouring into the snow and I’m always trying to figure out how to ski better. A few years ago, I was skiing up a short uphill section with two elite scullers. We had all just finished a clinic with several of our GRP skiers, and we were skiing better than usual as a result. One of them observed, "You know, sometimes in skiing when you add effort, you don't get any faster." There was a brief pause and the other said, "Yeah - actually sometimes when you add effort you get slower." That was the whole conversation, and it made me chuckle at how much faith most rowers and scullers have in effort for its own sake. We expect discomfort when we are rowing well, and we are suspicious if it doesn't "hurt the way it's supposed to." Nordic skiers, by and large, know better and they adjust accordingly to maximize their efficiency and minimize wasted effort. Granted that you have to ski hard, row hard, swim hard, or run hard to go fast, wasted effort just makes you tired, not fast. In skiing, sometimes the problem is more slow feet, but most often, it is faulty body position that is the real culprit, so that's our next topic.
2) Body position is as important in sculling and rowing as it is in any other sport
If you are observing our Nordic trails in the winter, you can usually tell who the rowers are - just look for the people who are standing straight up on their skis or letting their hips fall behind them when they are skiing uphill (think toddler with a full diaper). Good skiers have learned to flex at the knee and ankle without flexing at the hip; bad skiers have not, and the difference in speed is truly remarkable. Just recently, I asked one of our ski coaches and ex-GRP skier Ollie Burruss to take a quick look at my skiing and tell me one thing to work on. He watched me for less than a minute and said, "You're doing a pretty good job of committing your full weight to your right ski, but less so when you transfer to the left. It's a matter of where your hip bone is and the difference between fully committing your weight and not quite doing that is a matter of a centimeter or two." He was right, and making that small change was as close as we can get in sport to magic pixie dust.
Now, at this point, dear readers, I can readily imagine you thinking and perhaps saying, "What's that got to do with us? In our sport, we're seated!" So let me ask you this: does gravity affect you less when you are seated than it does when you are standing? Does the boat respond to when and how skilfully you shift your bodyweight during the stroke cycle? Is it plausible that if you move clumsily or in an awkward sequence that your boat will go slower than if you move it cleverly and with grace? Or does the boat sit stationary on the floor like an ergometer? You know the answer, so I'll close this segment with one of my favorite pieces of winter training advice from the late Larry Gluckman: when you erg, don't cater your technique to the erg - do your best to be attentive to moving on the erg as closely to the way you would want to move in the boat as possible.
3) Learn to ride the glide (or in sculling terms, maximize run)
Finally - "Ride the Glide" is a phrase I first heard used by swimming coaches, but it applies equally to Nordic skiing, sculling, and rowing. Watch elite swimmers next to average or even very good swimmers - you'll notice that they get across the pool in a lot fewer strokes; their bodies are gliding even as they continue to pull and kick. Watch elite Nordic skiers - they travel substantially further per stride than the rest of us. Watch elite scullers - the understanding that the boat travels further on the recovery than on the drive has become something they are always aware of, whether consciously or automatically, because of the training habits and technical refinements they've cultivated over many years.
If you're fortunate enough to have access to Nordic skiing, you can explore the parallels on the snow this winter. If you live where it's warm, you can do distance per stroke work at low ratings on the water. Lacking those options, you can do fixed length pieces on the erg and work to take fewer strokes to go the same distance. 5 X 500m has always been my go-to for this, and if it doesn't meet your heart rate/perceived exertion goals for the day, you can use it as a warm-up or cool down activity. What's a good number? One fewer stroke than the last time you did it, of course, and certainly less than 50. The erg doesn't glide and the flywheel slows down quicker than the boat does, but that's a reason to add post-workout visualization to the day. After the auditory feedback of the flywheel's acceleration/deceleration cycle, try to sense the tactile feedback that you'd be experiencing in the boat. Give it a try - it works, even if you aren't among the lucky people who can play video loops in their mind's eye.
Get the most out of the energy you expend by positioning your body optimally and riding the glide. Make good use of winter's opportunities, and we'll see you on the water when it's time.