THE SPORT OF ROWING and even if they were reliable, certainly irrelevant to them or their rowing. But there is another saying that is equally relevant here: In regione caecorum rex est luscu!8350 So for all the Cyclopes among us, I will continue. Technique or Style? Burnell: “By ‘style’ we used to mean the way a man looked in his boat. By ‘technique’ we mean what he is doing.”8351 West German expatriate Volker Nolte is the brain trust behind the selection of Modern Orthodoxy as the current Canadian National Technique. Nolte is a prolific writer, the designer of the World Champion Empacher sliding-rigger single in 1981,8352 an Assistant Professor in Biomechanics at the University of Western Ontario in London and the head rowing coach of their very formidable rowing program, winners of the Temple Challenge Cup at the 2008 Henley Royal Regatta.8353 Nolte: “It is easy to make the mistake of not distinguishing between technique and style. I believe we have to define techniques as founded on basic principles, and there are some principles that are absolutely true from a biomechanical point of view, at least to our knowledge now. “Then there are individual styles within a technique based on idiosyncrasy or personal preference.”8354 On the other hand, as we have seen, different biomechanical principles can 8350 “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” – Erasmus, c. 1510 8351 Burnell, Sculling for Rowing, p. 35 8352 See Chapter 139. 8353 See Chapter 134. 8354 Nolte, RCA Coaches’ Conference, 2005 Either/Or Most aspects of technique form a continuum of possibilities, from one extreme to its opposite, and every single one has probably been tried out at one time or another over the last two centuries. There are only five areas of “either/or” in rowing technique. 1. Sweep or Scull. Regardless of one’s ultimate goal, on any given day, a rower must choose whether to hit the water with one oar or two. 2. Hand protocol in sculling, left-over-right or right-over-left, left-before-right or right-before-left. They all work, but there are no middle grounds. One must choose. 3. Hand protocol in sweep rowing. Either you feather and square up with the inside hand or you do it with both hands. 4. Ambidexterity in sweep rowing. Either you can row both sides equally well, or you can’t. 5. The role of the arms early in the pullthrough. Are they active or are they passive, “alive” (Fairbairn, Craies, Rosenberg, Parker) or merely ropes (Lehmann, Burnell). These are mutually exclusive. Everything else in rowing is a matter of degree. Sweep or Scull It is generally accepted that the symetricality of sculling is less stressful on the human body than the asymetricality of sweep rowing, especially for adolescents with undeveloped skeletal structure and musculature. For the purposes of learning, conflict, and every decision, whether technical or stylistic in nature, involves tradeoffs, advantages gained inevitably tied to opportunities lost. In addition, one must always balance effectiveness with efficiency. 2350
