THE LESSONS OF 200 YEARS important factors in rowing perfor- mance.”8390 Keeping the stroke high denies the boat opportunity to slow down as much on the recovery and allows the crew to begin each pullthrough at a higher initial boat velocity. Accordingly, even though more strokes are required to propel the boat over a given distance over the water, each stroke requires less effort. This is not a new idea. Archibald Maclaren, 1866: “It having been found that a short stroke [i.e. high rating], by which the boat is kept at an almost uniform rate of speed throughout, is a vast saving of propelling power, the difference between this and the old stroke resembling that between an unbroken, even, level run, and a succession of leaps and bounds. . . . while the old-fashioned long swing of the back is discarded for the new high-pressure stroke . . . a boat-race has now become a matter of wind rather than muscle, and, as an old waterman at one of our races last year remarked in my hearing, ‘The crew that can bucket it fastest will win the race, if they don’t bu’st.”8391 How about the athlete? Is a rower more effective and/or efficient pulling very hard on each stroke but rowing fewer strokes per minute or pulling less hard on each stroke but rowing at a high rating? Dick Lyon, co-designer of the Stanford ergometers that predated the Concept2 and Gjessing models: “Experiments on the rowing ergometers of the 1972 era showed that oarsmen could generate the same horsepower with a lighter load, higher RPM, or a heavier load, lower RPM. It was less comfortable to row with a heavy load, but the power generation was identical.”8392 8390 Nolte et al, p. 121 8391 Maclaren, pp. 20-2 8392 Lyon, personal correspondence, 2009 Then again in professional cycling, Lance Armstrong based his training on time trialing and climbing using lighter gearing and pedal turnover between 90 and 110 per minute while the conventional wisdom in the European peloton was heavier gears and around 70 pedal strokes per minute. Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times in a row and revolutionized the training for his sport worldwide. Nevertheless, many rowing coaches throughout history have gravitated toward the middle ground between the two extremes. Harry Mahon: “Slide control, either too much or too little [, is a problem]. In the first case, it means that by the time the crew is entering the water, the boat has slowed considerably from the previous stroke. Consequently, more effort is required to ‘pick up’ the boat again. If the slide has travelled too quickly, the run generated from the previous stroke is cut considerably as the boat is not allowed to run. This generally results in a high rating crew which does not have a strong finish to each stroke. “It is important that a perpetual motion situation is developed which allows for maximum efficiency.”8393 In recent years, stroke rates in general have risen as athletes have become stronger and fitter and as equipment has become lighter and less cumbersome with less inherent inertia. Nevertheless, there still remain crews who tend to row higher than average and others who tend to row lower than average. Valery Kleshnev: “Crews from the main rowing countries perform differently in terms of rate/distance-per-stroke (DPS) ratio. GER, CAN and AUS usually have a 8393 Rowing the Mahon Way, Keystrokes, April 2005 2363
