THE SPORT OF ROWING achieved throughout the entire rowing cycle.”5096 You may recall, however, that according to Professor Andrew Carter, no matter what coaches may say or think, all crews must use their legs and backs concurrently at the entry regardless of the motion that results.5097 The first American crews to display sufficient emphasis on leg drive to exclude all back motion at the entry, as Rosenberg desires, were the mid-1950s Cornell crews rowing Stork Sanford’s 3rd Generation Conibear Stroke, but they were always aware that their sequential motion was brought about by concurrent effort, what I have described as hybrid-concurrency. George Pocock also coached hybrid- concurrency, and though he had no trouble actually coaching the technique he sought, the concurrent effort-sequential motion enigma was too subtle a concept to be succinctly described by George Pocock in print, so it was left to Stan Pocock to straighten out the resulting near-universal misconceptions that continue to this day.5098 These very same misconceptions arose again concerning Vesper Boat Club in the years after 1964. Rosenberg has also written, “One must keep in mind that the legs and back comprise the largest and strongest muscle groups in the body, consequently the oarsman must depend on them to accelerate the boat from its lowest speed back to its maximum.”5099 But Allen has been equally concerned with the continuity and integrity of the stroke as a whole. 5096 Qtd. by Ferris, p. 9 5097 See Chapter 48. 5098 See Chapter 47. 5099 Qtd. by Ferris, p. 9 Kernschlag and Force Discontinuity History documents that most coaches have agreed that moving a boat efficiently requires a smooth, continuous pullthrough from entry to release. This was already well understood in the early 19th Century, but as with the 1957 Yale and 1964 Soviet crews, when too much emphasis is placed on the initial hit, the athlete’s effort at the catch tends to become literally explosive. Since the very definition of “explosive” is that it is a singularity, over almost as soon as it has begun, the rest of the stroke becomes an adjunct requiring a separate, segmented second effort. Such a stroke is less effective by and definition by near-universal consensus.5100 British 20th Century rowing historian Paul Wilson: “By experiments in a sculling boat, it is possible to establish that a violent leg kick gives a higher specific power impulse than progressive opening of back and leg angles, but it does not last long enough to accelerate the boat very much, and leaves the rest of the drive to the arms and back, which are relatively weak.”5101 On the subject of the pullthrough, as mentioned before, George Pocock has written, “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.”5102 Allen Rosenberg has always been acutely aware of the potential disadvantage of truly explosive catches, and accordingly, contrary to the conventional wisdom about 5100 See the Introduction for a discussion of the evolution of the 2004 U.S. Olympic Champion Eight. 5101 Wilson, p. 21. This conclusion also applies to rowing in pairs. See Introduction. 5102 Qtd. by Newell, pp. 160-1 1408