RowingChat

Weight on the feet is one of the three key concepts for rowing and sculling mastery. How it's a key transition point in the stroke cycle and the giant advantages for crews who can all get there at the same time.
Timestamps
01:00 Weight on the feet
This can be hard to understand how to do weight on the feet. After learning how to do this you will learn slide control (stop rushing) and how to move your body in time with the hull of the boat. Learn how to slow down the boat speed less on the recovery - your speed is the net of power phase acceleration and recovery phase deceleration.
03:00 How to locate weight on the feet
Sit on a hard chair and take your two forefingers and put them under yourself and find the "sit bones" which is the ischial tuberosity. It will crush your fingers a bit. While your fingers are there, rock forwards and back with a straight spine. If you are using your pelvis to rock you'll feel the sit bones moving over your fingers. Note if you curve your spine and don't rock from the pelvis, the sit bones do not move over your fingers.
05:00 Find weight on the feet
Stand up from your chair (sit on the very front of the seat to to this). As you stand up you will rock your shoulders forwards and feel pressure through your socks and shoes onto the floor.
In order to push through your feet in rowing you have to get your body mass rocked forward and your hips pivoted. Get your hands and arms straight and your body rocked forward then bend your knees a little and you will feel pressure on the soles of your feet. This is "weight on the feet".
The leaning forwards is an important part of the sequence because it's hard to get weight on the feet when leaning backwards.
Get the feeling of weight on the feet by clenching your glute muscles. At the finish, tighten your glutes which helps you to locate your sit bones on the seat, then straighten your arms and when they cannot straighten any more - the shoulders naturally follow and your legs bend till you feel you can push on your feet. This may be at one quarter slide or half slide - it depends on your flexibility.
You HAVE to get your shoulders forward, if you do not do this you will find it harder to locate pressure on your feet.
The glute engagement connects your back and legs like a door hinge. Soggy glute muscles means you don't get the connection or the transition of body weight forward successfully.
09:00 The key transition point
When you have your feet pressed into the foot stretcher, it's an important transition point in the rowing and sculling stroke. Weight on the feet is the moment when you move from tension to deep relaxation in the stroke cycle. You stay relaxed until the oar goes into the water at the catch.
With deep relaxation you have very deep muscle relaxation in your legs and you can remove all tension from your body (while maintaining poise in your posture).
Elite rowers work hard because they give themselves extreme relaxation and "turn off" muscles when they are not needed - this means they don't get tired so quickly.
At weight on the feet your oars should be off the water in a high balance position (shafts horizontal to the water surface), controlling the blades with your hands. The control of the oars and your body means you are able to relax your body and prepare early for the next catch.
Weight on the feet is one of the 4 key concepts we teach in our Sculling Intensive course.
https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/sculling-intensive/

The advantages for crews "From Frustration to Flow" using the four quarters method taught by Richard Parr - learn how to do this quarter in his masterclass webinar.
https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/frustration-to-flow/

Once you can handle weight on the feet you can do three things
1- better prepare for the catch. blade entry
2 - further control the balance on the recovery
3 - manage wind/waves better

Repeating workouts to improve your skill at doing them - how to sharpen into the piece, count down, ways to swap with bow four. How not to waste strokes and ways to start on the right stroke rate.
Execution quality is a performance variable in its own right.
Timestamps
01:00 Execution quality matters
What do you think is happening when you do a workout? Execution skill improves with repetition. There are repeating workouts in any training program - this builds fitness and your ability to do that practice. The second time you do a workout, you know what it feels like, how to make your effort work consistently across the whole piece. This is performance-relevant knowledge.
Poor execution comes from wasted strokes at the start of the piece, being at the wrong stroke rate, the wrong pressure, taking 5 strokes to get to the specified stroke rate. This affects your pacing (too hard or too light) and also changeovers (steps up in rate for example).
Your physiological adaptation needs to be as good as it possibly can be.
Over a season there is a compounding effect of successful physiological response to training stimulus.
03:45 Use a countdown
Get into the work and don't waste your approach. For a 20 stroke firm / 10 light piece. All the 20 firm need to be at the right stroke rate and intensity. Use the last few light pressure strokes to build pressure and rate. By counting down into the work piece so each stroke builds to the stroke #1 rate and pressure.
Have in your mind the target stroke rate - what does SR 24 feel like? Build your familiarity without needing a stroke coach to count rating.
06:30 Build in the right order
First add pressure before adding rate. Rate without pressure leaves you "spinning" especially at rates over 24. Call "Going up in 3 -2 1 - GO" or "Going up, on the next stroke [wait one stroke] now".
Our cox calls "Build pressure now'; two strokes pass then 'Rate up now'.
At rates below 25 it's easy to hit the rate just using increased pressure - it is harder at rates from 26 and above to get the rate - you have to be more deliberate building the pressure then the rate.
Start a change like that at the correct place in the stroke cycle. Make these changes at the catch. The pressure change starts at the catch; stroke rate changes begin at the catch.
To do this effectively, athletes must know they are making a change half a stroke cycle in advance of the change. Call the change at the FINISH. This gives them advance warning of the change.
There are changes which happen at the finish like stepping down in stroke rate or a rhythm call and these must be called at the catch.
Be half a stroke ahead of time if you give the calls. Listen to when the cox or the caller made the call to change.
Your goal for the workout is to execute more and more successfully.

Three fixes for your indoor rowing technique faults.
Timestamps
01:00 The unforgiving erg
Interrupt the fault before it becomes a habit. Foot connection gets lost at the finish as your toes come away from the footstretcher. When you lose connection you aren't moving the boat forwards, same on the erg because the feet are the only connection to the boat.
Take a $10 bank note and put it under the toes of the athlete - if they lose foot connection at the end of the drive, the money falls to the ground. Have a bet with your athlete - they can keep the money if it's still under their toes.
The whole of the sole of your foot needs to stay pushing on the footstretcher at the finish. Try it separately for both feet.
04:00 Catch position
Avoid over-compressing at the catch with knees going over your toes. Take a bungee cord or some electrical tape and wrap it around the rail so the seat wheel butts up to it at the correct catch position. The athlete will feel the wheels rolling over the tape - it acts as a gentle physical reminder to stop at the catch position.
Check your catch position first using a mirror or a photo - get your shins vertical. Do some steady rowing to learn where your new compression limit is.
06:00 Slide control
If you tend to pause at the catch, try this. On the erg the rail slopes downwards towards the footstretcher. Lift up the front leg of the rowing machine by 10-15 cms. Use a crate, an aerobics step or a big book. The incline means it's harder to rush forwards. Note if your catch alters when you change direction with the front leg raised. Gravity will tend to make you want to roll backwards away from the flywheel.

Three cheap and simple hacks to help your sculling. Small clever fixes to real problems that scullers deal with all the time. One for your head, your wrists and your blade depth.
Timestamps
01:00 Sculling Hacks for self-coaching
Sculling technique faults are very subtle and you can't always feel them from inside the boat. These three hacks move that feedback from external to the boat (from your coach) to inside (you can feel changes yourself and can act on them).
01:50 Hat brim position
If you move your head during the stroke, this is the hack for you. Ideally you want your head to be in line with your spine during the stroke and to stay in line when you swing your body back/forwards. The head is heavy - 15 lbs or 7 kg.
Wear a cap with a stiff brim so that you can see the horizon from under the cap brim. The horizon is always horizontal - pick a single point to watch (a tree, a house, the back of the head of the person in front). Keep an eye on the horizon point while you row - this will give you clues about how your head moves.
05:30 Wrist tape
When feathering in sculling you want to use your fingers and not your wrist. Take a piece of tape from your forearm across your wrist towards your knuckles - masking tape / electrical tape / micropore are all suitable. If you move your wrist it will pull on your arm hairs and serve as a reminder.
As a rule of thumb tape 20 minutes before you start rowing - this gives time for the adhesive to bond with your skin.
07:30 Shaft tape
A hack for those whose oar spoons go too shallow, too deep or corrugate through the stroke. Tape the oar so that when the oar is sitting in the water at the correct depth, you can just see white tape on the oar shaft.
How to position the tape - sit in the boat with it level and put the oar, squared, into the water carefully so you don't get the shaft wet. Let go of the handles and the blade will naturally sit at the correct depth. The blade will tend to sit 1 cm above the water surface (this gets covered up when you are rowing as you push a mound of water in front of the spoon).
Track where the shaft gets wet and that's where you put the white tape. Measure the distance from the spoon insertion point and you can then put tape on other oars at the same place.
As you row, the white tape is then above the water surface while you are rowing - adjust your handle height so that the tape stays visible.

Limiting beliefs can hold you back due to fear of failure. Is this the biggest hurdle for your rowing progress?
Timestamps
00:45 Fear of failure
I would love to go and race at (this regatta) but I don't want to come last. What is it that they are frightened of? Would you like to do the world masters regatta?
02:30 Redefine failure
What holds us back? Feeling well prepared for your event is important but masters' fears show up differently than kids'. Children are less good at thinking through the consequences of their actions.
Anxiety holds you back from trying new things.
A mind shift to assess what failure means to you. A failed piece is one where you have learned nothing about your own effort or your own pacing. Did you stay within your capabilities? Did you try anything different, notice anything different?
04:40 Separate training from racing
Try to think differently about "failure" in training - we should feel safer here and able to try new things. Some feel more anxious when rowing with more experienced athletes - how could you give confidence to someone less experienced than you?
Buy the worst house in the best street - a definition of success tends to look up (better) than you.
06:00 Take risks in training
While out practicing, could you try a high risk drill during your training? Take the training wheels off and take a risk - limited but "do-able". What about a 5 stroke rule - commit to doing five strokes of your new thing / drill in a way that is confident and reflects your new norm. Do it at the same point on your waterway every single time you go out.
Even if those strokes aren't perfect you will still learn from them. The point is the repetition and becoming more familiar and this builds confidence.
07:30 3 simple strategies
When you come off the water after rowing you do a debrief - what did I do well, what could I deliberately risk next time? Use understanding risks as a mindset change to help you conquer your fear of failure. It only needs to enable you to feel just a little bit more capable of trying something different.
A limiting belief is something you tell yourself but which you won't get past unless you try. "I cannot do square blades" won't enable you to learn square blade rowing.
Challenge your limiting belief or it will stay with you. Taking risks may help you get more satisfaction from your rowing by learning something new. In the debrief, share one good failure you had and what you learned from it.
Fear of failure steals boat speed more than lack of fitness.
Pick one "low stakes" thing which you can try this week - intentionally take a risk. How did you go, what happened as a result and did you learn something from it?