THE LESSONS OF 200 YEARS way aft before you stop pressing with your legs. Remember that once your slide starts down on the runners, there is no more arm or back movement; it will all have been done on a dead seat.”8421 Harry Parker: “I don’t like the idea of arms extending all the way, then the body all the way; it’s not a natural movement and not a good way of rowing.”8422 Paul Thompson: “The aim of a well- organized recovery sequence is to achieve full body length and strong body position by the time the rower is one-half of the way along the slide.”8423 Allen Rosenberg: “You should reach full body angle after 20% of the slide.”8424 Kris Korzeniowski: “Body angle before we start slide. In my opinion, that’s the most important.”8425 Experience, however, has led to universal consensus that no additional body angle may be attempted after the seat has reached the stern stops. This is known as “lunging” or “diving” in the United States and “bucketing” in the Commonwealth, and it is universally understood as a major cause of boat check by forcing the stern of the shell downward into the water. Charles Courtney: “Don’t let the slide stop and your shoulders keep going out for the reach.”8426 Rowe & Pittman: “Any tendency to rush the last part of the swing forward or – to use a common phrase – ‘tumble over the stretcher’ is fatal to beginning.”8427 Mike Spracklen: “It is particularly detrimental to stretch for more length when the seat is at frontstops.”8428 Kris Korzeniowski: “If we have this good body preparation, we can eliminate many mistakes which might occur later on, especially diving, which can be avoided if we have our body set before we approach catch.”8429 Richard Tonks: “The body swings over into the catch position at the start of the recovery, so it must not swing forward after the slide reaches the front. The seat rolls to the front of the slide and is instantaneously driven back by the legs.”8430 Recovery Rhythm The two extremes in recovery rhythm are fast-slow handle speed, as in the well known Courtney/Conibear recovery, and slow-fast handle speed, as in the Lady Margaret, Moscow, Ratzeburg, GDR and Stop & Shop Techniques. The rationale for both extremes is essentially the same. Since the weight of the modern shell represents less than 20% of the total weight of the crew, shell and oars together, when the rowers move toward the stern on their slides, the shell reacts quite strongly by moving in the opposite direction. Leverage within the boat/oars/crew system has no impact on the center of gravity of the total system, but movement of the crew with respect to the hull does influence the movement of the hull, even while the combined center of gravity is preserved. This is an example of Newton’s First 8421 Stanford Crew handout, 1959 8422 Ferris, p. 38 8423 Thompson DVD 8424 Rosenberg, USRA Clinic, Chula Vista, CA, Sept 11-2, 2004 8425 Ferris, Korzeniowski 8426 Conibear, p. 319 8427 Rowe & Pitman, p. 21 Law (Conservation of Momentum) and Newton’s Third Law (Action-Reaction).8431 The phenomenon can be simply demonstrated in a shell at rest in the water 8428 Nolte et al, p. 149 8429 Ferris, Korzeniowski 8430 Nolte et al, p. 169 8431 See Chapter 90. 2367
