Here is a frame grab from the video I posted on Wednesday.  I am mid recovery.  At this point, my arms are extended, my back should be in the catch position and I am starting to roll up the slide.  I have drawn a line from my knee to my hip, then to my mid back, and then to the back of my shoulder joint.  You can see the shallow angle that my hip is making.  Essentially, my hips are rocked back in the same position through the whole stroke.

Compare that to the video I uploaded after figured out what was going on.  I am consciously trying to sit up and hinge at my hips during the recovery.  It is the same moment in the stroke.  The yellow lines are from the picture above.  The blue lines are the connecting to the same points in my mid back and shoulder as the first picture.  So, this is about a 25 degree change in the angle that my hips are making with my back.

The good news is that this conforms more closely with what a stroke should look like and enables a great deal more back swing.  The bad news is that trying to make this change after rowing 16 million meters on the erg is horrifyingly hard.  It’s like walking with a stone my shoe.  The other thing is that by hinging on my hips, I am rolling over my sitz bones every stroke.  Today I tried a C2 seat pad with sitz bones holes and that helped a bit, but I am still sore in those spots.

This is a very hard thing to do.  I hope it helps in the long run.

I was obsessing about how bad my rowing looked in the videos that I posted and I was really puzzled by why I could see no real lean forward even though it felt like I was doing it while I was rowing. Then it stuck me. I’m actually not as fat as I look in the video! 😀 It’s really that my posture sucks! I am really slumped over and my back is very curved at the catch. It also explained my hand position. My hands weren’t too high, my chest was too low!

The reason I don’t see layback or lean forward is that the bottom of my back (and my hips) are a not moving. All the movement is coming in the middle of my spine. With that in mind, I decided that the best coaching advice for me would be remember what I always heard in junior high.

“Sit up Straight!”
“Stop Slouching”
“Suck in your gut”

Did I mention that it was not a very nurturing environment?

So, I tried to keep that in mind today and, woo boy, was it hard. It was like writing with my left hand or trying breath on the wrong side when swimming the crawl. Entirely unnatural. But effective. I could sequence the recovery better. It was more taxing from a CV perspective since I wasn’t used to it, but I think it’s the right adjustment.

What do you think?

After my steady state session today, I took a little bit of video to see how I am doing in terms of “fixing” some things in my stroke.

Here’s the video:

Looking at the video, here’s what I see:

• I am pulling in too high.  Essentially, this seems to be caused by me not pulling my upper arms back enough at the finish.  Could be a flexibility issue, or just a bad habit
• My shins are a little past vertical at the catch, so I am over compressing at the catch.  I am not sure how great a sin that is.
• At the beginning of the recovery, I break my knees, just a little bit, and then recover with my arms and body and then my legs come up.  I suspect that I should keep my knees locked down until I have my body in the catch position would be more efficient.
• I have very little lean forward.  Part of this is the excess weight I am carrying, but I suspect that it may also be related to body dimensions, and the angle that my thighs at at when my shins are vertical.