THE SPORT OF ROWING letter U upside down”1451 that Courtney chose, and the Schubschlag curve that the GDR scientists preferred. We shall discover that a perfect parabola occurs only rarely in real-world rowing, but many individuals and crews have come close, usually without knowing it, in the century since Charles Courtney performed his experiment. We shall Cas Rekers, Rowperfect Thomas Lange, GDR 1988, 1992 Olympic Singles Champion Near-perfect parabola Ward’s American Classical Technique were all Schubschlag. In a force curve, the work done is represented by the area under the curve, but that area represents only how much work is being done, not about how effective that work is in moving boats. In the modern era, if one wishes to compare athletes quantitatively, any ergometer or rowing simulator system has the ability to count flywheel revolutions, and I suggest that ergometer scores are roughly equivalent to area under the curve, to work done. Pull harder, do more work, and you get a higher score. Force graphs allow qualitative It is an accepted truth that comparisons. some techniques which allow success on an ergometer do not translate onto the water. To quote a common cliché, “Ergs don’t float!” I believe that the shape of a rowing force curve is indicative of how well an athlete converts his work into boat speed.1450 It is an interesting fact that the curve shape which mathematically maximizes the area underneath is a parabola, the “wide 1450 Mallory, Optimal Force Application, p. 6 further discover that throughout history, even if one starts with the goal of organic integrity and Schubschlag, the act of focusing on sequential motion of the legs, backs and arms generally leads to an eventual evolution to segmented-force application, as happened with Courtney’s Extended Body Swing Style, and to Kernschlag, as with late, inbred English Orthodoxy and its descendants,1452 and also with Fairbairnism as it morphed into the excesses of the Jesus Style.1453 As already noted, the issue of Kernschlag versus Schubschlag is one of the three issues in history which continues to divide coaches down to the present. Force Curve Research Today A great deal of progress has been made with rowing force curves in the hundred years since Charles Courtney performed his experiment. Eastern Bloc teams made use of templates to train and help select composite crews as early as the 1970s. Now the practice is found throughout Europe and the Americas. Valery Kleshnev (www.biorow.com) makes available an elaborate system which places sensors on the oarlocks of a boat and elsewhere and records force curves and a number of other biometric parameters. 1451 Mallory, Secret, p. 197 1452 See Chapter 17. 1453 See Chapter 20. 384
