THE SPORT OF ROWING especially those coaches who had rowed as undergraduates at Washington.”1681 And it is through his magnificent writings that his reputation and influence on American rowing has gone far beyond the generations of coaches who sought and received his technical and spiritual advice. It’s a great art, is rowing. It’s the finest art there is. It’s a symphony of motion. When you’re doing well, Why it’s nearing perfection. And when you reach perfection, You are touching the divine. It touches the you of you, Which is your soul. The trouble is that his technical writings have been for the most part misinterpreted in the most fundamental aspect of the stroke, how to move the boat. Force Application Revisited Concerning the pullthrough, George Pocock has written, “with the arms straight and the body angle kept the same, drive the legs steadily (extend the legs smoothly) as this is the maximum power drive. “The arms are used only as connecting rods to the body.”1682 “You are right in starting your [pullthrough] with the leg drive. It has to be, but don’t throw your shoulders in doing it. Keep them still at the forward position until the blade is under full pressure, and then bring them over.”1683 “When the slide starts moving, it keeps going all the way back until the legs are flat, but those legs must go down slowly. “Don’t whang them down! “As the oar reaches the right angle position to the boat, the back starts up and 1681 S. Pocock, op.cit. 1682 www.pocockrowing.org, p. 2 1683 Ibid. the elbows break so as to keep the blade going through in one cut. If the arms are kept straight at the point when the oar is at right angle to the boat, the oarsman has to coast over this dead point . . . That is the point where the blade must be kept moving, otherwise you are going to get a double- stroke.1684 “You must go through that high point by breaking the elbows down and getting one cut at it and therefore a shorter time in the water and loads of time for recovery. “This ‘one-cut stroke’ is not a loafing stroke but takes a lot of pulling.”1685 Here George Pocock and the Conibear coaches appear to have materially diverged, Pocock’s writings clearly describing sequential legs, back and arm motion, Husky coaches teaching concurrent leg, back and arm effort from entry to release. On the surface, this is a huge and fundamental difference. Or is it? Stan Pocock: “Herein arises the cause of some confusion. “Theoretically, if one is to get the oar through the drive as quickly as possible, (one cut!) the squeeze of the arms, the swing of the body and the push of the legs would have to happen at the same time. “In practice, this cannot be. “What actually happens is that while one tries to use all the related muscle groups at once, the legs, being strongest, move first while the arms, being the weakest, stay straight, and the back, straining to swing through, shows no change in angle. “Then, as the boat picks up speed, the back begins its swing, while the arms remain pretty straight until about at the middle of the drive, when they must come into play. 1684 also referred to as a “two-part pullthrough.” 1685 Qtd. by Newell, pp. 160-1 446
