THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DYNASTY “If they don’t, you end up with a double-stroke, which guarantees a slow boat.”1686 Concurrent versus Sequential Stan’s description forces us to take another, much more thorough look at the whole issue of concurrency versus sequentiality. As far as legs and back are concerned, so far in the history of rowing we already have seen the full range of possibilities, from back motion only at the entry in pre- and post-Fairbairn English Orthodoxy to legs and back together in Hanlan, Fairbairn, Warre, de Havilland, Bourne, Ward, Courtney, Ten Eyck and Conibear all the way to leg motion only in the Ernest Barry Style, the Jesus Style and the Fairbairn-influenced 1936 German Eight. What we have not fully grasped is that at both extremes and at every point in between, both legs and back must be fully engaged from entry to release. At the legs-only end of the continuum, the back must be working to “brace” the legs. Otherwise, bum shoving, the British term, or slide shooting, the North American term, will result. At the back-only end of the continuum, the legs are likewise fully engaged to “brace” the back. Harvard coach Harry Parker1687 puts it this way: “In sound rowing, and I think there is such a thing, there are lots of different versions of it, and the wonderful thing about the sport is that it’s still the same. Sound rowing is sound rowing. It has been for decades and decades and decades, and it involves just a couple of basic things, one of which is a really good coupling of the legs and back. Some people will use the back earlier or more, but you have to be coupled. 1686 S. Pocock, op.cit. 1687 See Chapter 100 ff. No matter what you do, you have to be coupled! “Even when you start with the legs you have to engage the back, so that you are not just pushing the seat away “The next phase is from the back to the handle, and the power that gets transmitted off the stretcher has to get transmitted to the handle, and in order to do that you have to have a coupling through the legs and the back, and you have to have a coupling from the back to the handle [i.e., the arms and shoulders also have to be engaged]. “There’s no way to get around that, and that’s one of the good things about the sport.”1688 Andrew Carter, Professor of Biomechanics, and Head Coach at the University of Miami in Florida, has done extensive research into the relationship between muscle groups during the rowing stroke: “In fact, muscles are not recruited in the same timing as we see joints move. Some are acting isometrically [straining but not causing motion] while others are acting concentrically [straining and causing motion about the pivot point at a joint]. “A perfect example of this is the erector spinae group in the back. These muscles extend the vertebral column and are working all the way from entry to release, no matter what the technique. “I know because I’ve measured it on the ergometer and on the water with electromyography.”1689 So in all cases, from one extreme all the way to the other, there is a concurrent blend or mixture of leg and back effort, like mixing colors of paint. If you think of legs as black and backs as white, you can adjust the amounts of each to end up with virtually all black or all white or any shade of gray in between. 1688 Parker, personal conversation, 2004 1689 Carter, personal correspondence, 2005 447
