FOCUSES DURING ERGING AND ROWING
The focus is to really think about technique. Why? because you are ingraining in your neuromuscular memory the stroke movement as YOU do it. When you get out on the water you will slip into the same sequence of using your legs back and arms on the drive and on the recovery that you were doing on the erg.
Mindless rowing on the erg may help your fitness but it will ingrain bad technical patterns. You will have to re-educate your neuromuscular memory to unlearn these patterns when you get on the water!
A two minute focus is actually hard to do as your mind will usually wander in less than 2 minutes! Stick a card on your erg monitor with your focuses listed.
Useful Focuses are while Erging and Rowing:
1 HANG. This is for the first half of the drive and is all about driving with the legs while keeping your body angle unchanged and your arms straight as you “HANG” on the oar. This is all about not opening your back or bending your arms too early. Get those powerful quads driving the boat first!
2 RECOVERY with early BODY PREPARATION – Get the arms out fast at the finish followed by the body so that your hands have passed your knees before you bend the knees. Have your body fully prepared i.e. inclined towards the stern – by the time that you are half way down the slide. Now at the catch you are all set to drop the blades in with out any body motion. (and no boat check!) Do not lunge towards the stern just as you come up to the catch.
3 REACH and KEEP IT LONG. This is a part of #2 get the body way out towards the stern so that your reach is good.
4 CATCH. at the last 10 % of the recovery, lift the hands and let the erg handle (oar blade) drop into the water.
5 SMOOTH ( YOUR SECRET WEAPON) It is important that you do not slow the boat down 1) on the recovery or 2) in the transition from drive to recovery and 3) the transition from recovery to drive. Note that strangely enough your boat is actually going itʼs fastest at the beginning of the recovery when your blades are out of the water.
You do not want to “shake” or check the boat but want it to run smoothly on the recovery – with out hesitation. So… come out of the bow gently but promptly with your body and arms. To aid this row a lot of your pieces with out strapping in your feet.
5 EYES CLOSED . Yes! close your eyes and do 40-50 strokes focusing on all four of the above. With your eyes closed you remove visual distractions and can be more aware of your body and what it is doing.
6 ADD YOUR OWN TECHNICAL FOCUSES !