THE SPORT OF ROWING FISA 1988 Video FISA 1996 Video Steve Redgrave 1988 (coached by Spracklen): +10, +15° to -20°, 0-8, 0-9, 0-10 1996 (coached by Grobler): +5, +20° to -20°, 0-7, 0-10, 0-10 perfect technique. The breathing is steady rather than rushed, and the boat can take on a relaxed loping rhythm. All our speeds can be compared to a Gold standard. We know even at 18 strokes a minute and a heart rate of 145 we should be producing seventy-five percent of world-record speed.”6903 Redgrave: “In all, spread over seven days, there were eighteen sessions a week, mostly between one hour and two, ninety percent on water, and all endurance-based, normally over sixteen kilometers. Gym work would include circuit training – body curls, sit-ups, lateral pulls, leg extensions and weights – all without a break. We’d have a day off a month. We trained forty- nine weeks a year.”6904 Rory Ross, author of the history of Grobler’s first decade at Leander: “The programme differed greatly from that of twenty years earlier [in Britain], when the squad of time-starved amateurs gave it an hour and a half every evening in the gym, 6903 Pinsent, pp. 36-9 6904 Redgrave, A Golden Age, p. 229 blasting away at sprints and speed circuits undertaken in oxygen debt, while racing each other and the clock. “In comparison, Grobler’s way was a long, slow, measured burn.”6905 Technique – Before and After Redgrave’s technique under Mike Spracklen had reflected concurrent leg and body motion. Force application was Schubschlag, but the most notable feature of Redgrave’s body mechanics was that his legs went flat, his back stopped swinging and his body settled onto the seat when his handle still had nearly a foot yet to travel to reach his chest. The result was an inevitable hint of ferryman’s finish, and the force curve would have been a parabola with a flat tail, in the manner of Xeno Müller, discussed in Chapter 133. Redgrave’s use of extreme leg compression harkened back to Bob Janoušek’s English Orthodox Revival of the 6905 Ross, pp. 49-50 1920
