ENGLISH ORTHODOX MEETS CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE “Now this is where I think we get into the communication problem in rowing. This can easily be misunderstood, and in turn miscommunicated to others. “What the principle of Summation of Segment Velocities is actually saying is that in skills like rowing which require maximum velocity, joint movements should be timed sequentially – but body segments should not be triggered sequentially. “What actually happens is that the larger, slower joints start the movement, and the smaller, faster joints each add in when the preceding joint reaches maximum velocity. “As the principle’s name suggests, the goal is to add together angular velocities about joints in order to achieve the highest velocity at the end of the combined movement.”719 So according to Carter, concurrent effort would be the most effective strategy, even if the resulting motion appears sequential. With Hanlan and with Fairbairn, the effort and the motion, at least of the legs and back, were both concurrent. Survival of the Fittest Now evolutionary theory would lead us to expect that if there are two ways to row, concurrent motion and sequential motion, and if the distinction between the two indeed makes a significant difference, then they should compete for dominance, and at some point the competition should drive one or the other to extinction. The genetic principle of selection720 would come into play. Survival of the fittest. But in one hundred twenty-five years, it hasn’t happened, and we shall soon see that the reason is that the difference between concurrent and sequential rowers is illusory, more attitude than fact, and in any case it is 719 Carter, personal correspondence, 2005 720 See the Introduction. a means to an end. The real issue that divides rowers is force application: Schubschlag versus Kernschlag. Today rowers whose joints visibly move more-or-less concurrently are certainly in the overwhelming majority in world rowing, and in numbers they completely dominate international sculling,721 but sequential motion in rowing remains alive and well, the late 20th Century Italians and early 21st Century Australians perhaps being its most successful adherents. Most notably, perhaps 80% of North American crews, junior, senior and masters, in the first decades of the 21st Century still purposefully attempt to row with sequential motion and effort! The reason that neither approach has driven the other to extinction is that in order for there to be true ideological competition between two philosophical branches of rowing, coaches and rowers have to perceive that there indeed exist two viable alternatives, that they make a meaningful difference, and that one must actually choose between them. Astonishingly, even after more than a century, neither side in the illusory concurrent-versus-sequential debate, and indeed neither side in any of the three issues that actually are fundamental to boat moving (and which continue to divide rowing today), lends any credence at all to the other side’s position. Neither camp can even imagine abandoning its core beliefs, and so the various evolutionary branches continue side-by-side in parallel but separate universes. That’s history for you. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. 721 although as I write this the four-time World Men’s Singles Champion, Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand, is a sequential rower. See Chapter 168. 193
