Tag: bungee rowing

Thursday: Easy Technique

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Weather: Sunny, hot – in the 80s, light wind around 4 mph from the west, generally a head wind when going up river.

I was out late for dinner with a customer on Wednesday night, so I decided to sleep in, and maybe catch a row in the late afternoon after work.  I was able to get out around 4:30PM and I was on the water by about 5:15.

I was originally planning to do a hard threshold session, but I’m still feeling a bit worn down.  I’m also working through some lower back pain.  I was dreading the session enough that I found myself trying to come up with reasons to not row.  Once I figured that out, I decided that it was too nice a day to miss getting out on the water to enjoy it, and reset my plans.  I would do a low intensity technique session.

I didn’t have a ton of time, so I decided to just do one lap of river, about 9km.  It’s been a while since I did a bungee row, so I opted to row from the dock to the end of the river with the bungee and then take it off for the row back.  The main thing I try to do when I row with a bungee is to work on my form during the drive.  I want to accelerate smoothly while maintaining a body forward position, with my shoulders relaxed and my arms not bent at all, then swing my body through, and finish smooth and early and get my blades out of the water cleanly.  The big thing is avoiding opening up my back early.  Paradoxically, doing this session with a bit of lower bak pain was helpful.  Essentially, my back would remind me with a twinge anytime I opened early.

I was surprised by the pace I was getting with the bungee.  I usually lose about 15 seconds or more off pace, but today it was less than 10.  Once I turned the boat around and took the bungee off, I understood why.  I was rowing with a gentle tail wind.  Now I was rowing into the wind and frankly, it felt a lot like rowing with the bungee.  I tried to just stick at an easy 18 spm, and ignore the pace as much as I could to focus on getting the drive right and enjoying the sunshine.

 

Friday: 14K of Technique

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Beautiful morning!  Cooler, around 65F.  Sunny.  Light NNE wind 0-4mph.  This was a headwind going downriver.  It was a non-factor in the first 2 intervals, but was a little head wind in the third and a little tail wind in the fourth.

Today was my first experiment rowing with a bungee.  I have seen this referred to in a number of sources (Marlene Royale’s book, “Rowing Faster”, and other articles, like this one, in of all places the new york times)  A google search turned up a variety of opinions about the efficacy of using a bungee or other device to increase the drag of the boat.  This thread on rec.sport.rowing was particularly vituperative about it.

I fashioned my bungee out of a 12 foot long piece of 1/4″ diameter shock cord wrapped around the boat 4 times right at the foot stretcher and hooked end to end.  This created quite a dramatic amount of turbulence and a rather impressive, splashy wake as I pushed the pace.  Here is a youtube video I found of an 8+ doing some starts with bungees on the hull, you can get the idea of what it look like.

This flowed up the gunwales of the boat, and squirted through the footstretcher mounting holes.  By the time I did about 7K of rowing with the bungee, I had a few inches of water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat.

Note to self:  Next time put the bungee on right at the stern end of the cockpit so the wake will not put water in the cockpit!.

The intent, as I understand it, is to add drag to the boat, which decreases the run and therefore the boat speed at the catch.  This higher drag also increases the drive time, unless a hugely higher amount of handle force is applied.  This has the effect of slowing down the whole stroke sequence.  I found it made it a lot easier to focus on isolating my leg drive and delayed opening my back.  This helped to work on one of the areas that I want to improve in my stroke.  So, I guess for me, it’s a good thing.

Plan:

(With bungee)

  1.  pick drill: arms only, arms and body, 1/2 slide
  2. full slide warm up at r16
  3. 2 x low rate ladders (1000m at r16, 1000m @ 18, 750m @ 20) / 1′ rest
  4. remove bungee, 2 min rest
  5. 2 x low rate ladders (1000m at r16, 1000m @ 18, 750m @ 20) / 1′ rest
  6. 1K square blade rowing

Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 12.47.21 PM Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 12.47.08 PM

Start_|_Dist_|_Split_|_Pace_|_Strks__|_Rate_|_DPS_|_AvgHR_|_Remarks
00020_|_0980_|_05:47_|_2:57.0_|_095___|_16.4_|_10.3_|_119___|_warmup
01000_|_1000_|_05:20_|_2:39.8_|_086___|_16.1_|_11.6_|_135___|_r16 w/ bungee
02000_|_1000_|_05:12_|_2:36.2_|_094___|_18.1_|_10.6_|_145___|_r18 w/ bungee
03000_|_0750_|_03:46_|_2:30.9_|_076___|_20.1_|_09.9_|_152___|_r20 w/ bungee
03750_|_0250_|_01:25_|_2:49.6_|_023___|_16.3_|_10.9_|_133___|_r
04000_|_1000_|_05:20_|_2:39.8_|_089___|_16.7_|_11.2_|_145___|_r16 w/ bungee
05000_|_1000_|_05:16_|_2:37.8_|_096___|_18.3_|_10.4_|_152___|_r18 w/ bungee
06000_|_0750_|_03:50_|_2:33.3_|_077___|_20.1_|_09.7_|_157___|_r20 w/ bungee
06750_|_0250_|_01:25_|_2:49.6_|_022___|_15.6_|_11.4_|_131___|_r
07000_|_1000_|_05:04_|_2:32.0_|_083___|_16.4_|_12.0_|_146___|_r16
08000_|_1000_|_05:03_|_2:31.3_|_094___|_18.6_|_10.6_|_150___|_r18
09000_|_0750_|_03:39_|_2:25.7_|_075___|_20.6_|_10.0_|_154___|_r20
09750_|_0250_|_01:22_|_2:44.0_|_021___|_15.4_|_11.9_|_132___|_r
10000_|_1000_|_04:57_|_2:28.5_|_082___|_16.6_|_12.2_|_145___|_r16
11000_|_1000_|_04:55_|_2:27.3_|_090___|_18.3_|_11.1_|_149___|_r18
12000_|_0750_|_03:30_|_2:20.3_|_072___|_20.5_|_10.4_|_156___|_r20
12750_|_1090_|_06:35_|_3:01.2_|_129___|_19.6_|_08.4_|_131___|_square blades

Dist__|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strks_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_AvgHR_|_Remarks
00980_|_05:47_|_2:57.0_|_095___|_16.4_|_10.3_|_119___|_warmup
04000_|_20:40_|_2:35.0_|_340___|_16.4_|_11.8_|_143___|_r16
04000_|_20:25_|_2:33.2_|_374___|_18.3_|_10.7_|_149___|_r18
03000_|_14:45_|_2:27.6_|_300___|_20.3_|_10.0_|_155___|_r20
11000_|_55:51_|_2:32.3_|_1014___|_18.2_|_10.8_|_148___|_Main set
00750_|_04:12_|_2:47.7_|_066___|_15.7_|_11.4_|_132___|_rest meters
01090_|_06:35_|_3:01.2_|_129___|_19.6_|_08.4_|_131___|_cool down

So, the bungee slowed down splits by about 7 to 9 seconds at similar rates and effort levels.  The boat certainly felt light after I took it off.  I was very happy that I was able to establish a nice rhythm at r16.  I don’t I’ve ever done that before.

I think I will do a bit of bungee rowing on Fridays for the next few weeks as a way to work on stroke mechanics.

Tomorrow:  5.5K hard distance on quinsig at r26

Found a set of very pretty images of the river that I row on…Here

This one is the view from the prospect bridge towards the moody street dam.  On the left is Nova Pharmaceutical.  They are the folks that the lactate meter that I use.  I may have to stop in to see if they’ll give me some strips!

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