Lately something that has been grinding my geers more and more is this pause-finish during normal rowing in river boat-shells. More and more videos online are showing crews using this pause. I would love to know a coach's justification for this technique. Lets take a looks at my pet peeve - pause finishes in continuous rowing.
1. Teach the Right Feeling
Rowing well in a crew boat means being in-sync with eachother throughout the drive phase, and recovery phase. A coach can introduce pause drills to a crew in order to take back control of the chaos, and get everyone in time. Progression of pause drills is then used to return to normal rowing, in an ideal world, where rowers' timing has improved from the coach's intervention.
Unfortunately, crews can often depend on pause drills because their timing is good and the boat feels good. The coach's hardest job is showing the crew what good rowing feels like. Good rowing has to be accomplished at low rate and high rate. Why row completely different at low rate compared to high rate? Surely we should work on refining high rate technique using low rates? This would force us to improve our skill level where there is more time (during the recovery) to lose balance and make mistakes at low rate.
However, when a crew learns to only row well together at low rate because they are depending on the pause-finish, this leaves their high rate technique vulnerable to mistakes when fatigue or poor conditions take effect. Skillful rowers are in-sync with eachother without the pause. They also move well with the boat without the pause. This leads me to my next point.
2. Acceleration or Deceleration Graph
In recent years, more and more technology is available to allow coaches and rowers to view their efficiency on the water. These technologies include Peach, X-Boat, NK Power Oarlock, and BioRow. While not all crews have access to this technology, the theory behind it and it's practical application is still important. Of most importance is being able to show rowers how well they move with the boat, rather than moving against it. This is where the acceleration graph comes in. The pause-finish, in my opinion, directly impacts the acceleration curve negatively compared to the continuous rowing acceleration curve. Point being, if you want to be efficient on the water with good distance per stroke in an active and connected stroke, pausing at the finish is not the way to go. While you might get more distance per stroke using the pause-finish, this is only because you have stopped rowing. Actively looking for good distance per stroke without the pause-finish is a better approach to efficient rowing and highly skillful rowing in developing rowers.
3. More Work for the Coach
In the case where the pause-finish is used, the coach now has more work to do in order to get everyone moving in time together. Specifically I am talking about the timing to get to "hands-away", "reach" (or rock-over), and seat movement on the slide. While the pause-finish will bring everyone together for balance and distance per stroke, the velocity of the boat will take a hit during the recovery phase where rowers move between these three positions asynchronrously. Maintaining good boat velocity on the recovery phase of the stroke requires good definition between hands-away, reach, and slide movement. Trying to get crews competent at this while using a pause-finish, means more work for the coach because not everyone will pause for the same length, or move between positions at the same time. My argument is that learning to row without the pause-finish develops rowers to have better timing between these sections of the stroke, and subsequently means less velocity loss on the recovery. A coach adopting the technology mentioned above will be able to see these changes/differences in the data produced by the same technology.
4. Worst Case Scenario - Pause Dependent Rowing
Overall, the worst case scenario that comes out of pause-finish-rowing, is a complete dependance on it. By this I mean rowers who do not have:
- skill to row well in multiple boat types
- skill to row well in different crew line-ups
- capacity to transfer skill well between scull or sweep
- competency to row well without the pause in crew boats at any rate below race rate
I challenge coaches to work on developing competent rowers who can move well with their boat whether they are sitting still (tap-downs etc.), rowing at low rate, or rowing at high rate. More importantly they must be able to move well together! Once they can move well together, they will know the right feeling of moving well with the boat.
If you think you need new ways of tackling this problem with your crews, get in touch with me to see how I can help with an in-person technical approach for the issues above. Keeping an open mind to the possibility of being completely wrong here, please get in touch with me if you're a coach that uses pause-finishes with your crews. I'd love to hear your perspective.