(upbeat music)
- There are five really common mistakes
that a lot of people make when they get onto
the rowing machine and it's unfortunately undoing
a lot of the benefits that they're trying to reap
from using the machine in the first place.
Are you doing any of them?
A really good indicator of if any of these mistakes
are possibly plaguing your workouts
is, basically it's two different camps,
they arrive at the same point.
But if you're in one of these camps
and there's probably something here that could help you out.
The first camp is,
you just don't feel like you can put enough energy
into the rowing machine to get a good workout.
If that's you, one of these is possibly keeping
you back from being able to get
something fantastic out of this machine.
The other camp is you dump a ton of energy into it,
but you feel like you don't get
a lot of value on the other end.
Meaning, you dump all this energy in,
but it's not equating to the same benefits
that you know you could be getting.
So, if you're in either of those two camps,
pay attention and let's get into
what these mistakes could be.
And remember, any of these five
or all of these five could be the culprit.
So make sure that you're really being honest
with the way that you're moving.
And I'll give you some ways of evaluating
how you move so that you can understand if perhaps
that is you and if you have
five of these to take care of or just one.
Now the first of these mistakes is your
head position
and what are it's doing in space and time
because where your head goes, your body has to follow.
Think of it, if somebody walked up behind you,
grabbed your head and pulled your head back,
you very naturally have to follow
because of this little pesky thing called the spine
that connects your head to the rest of your body.
So, the head is really, it's actually quite important
in what the rest of your body is going to do.
And what we find is that people can come up
with a lot of different head positions
from tucking the chin really in tight
to craning the chin up
to leading with the head
to tucking, though basically tucking chin in as you drive
or cocking the head off to the side
or looking off to the side, looking down at the body.
There are all these different ways.
The head can be in a funky position
and all that serves to do is put your back or your trunk
into an odd position.
That odd position leads to all of these downstream errors
that can have an effect
on the way that you are interacting with the machine.
The fix to this is that number one,
you need to understand what the right position is.
Well, the right position is essentially this.
A neutral head that as you move
stays level to the ground.
It doesn't do any crazy opening or closing.
I'm not like a nutcracker to like somebody feed
a nut that I can then, you know,
(cracking)
that's the objective.
The goal is that the head stays basically a relaxed neutral
that moves and allows the body to move underneath it.
Now there are a couple of ways to be able to fix this.
Number one is a simple monitor adjustment.
Perhaps your monitor is sitting too high or too low
and it's causing you to have to look up or look down.
That can happen as well if you are tilting
your monitor down, maybe somebody hasn't tightened the bolt
and so the monitor falls down
and you're trying to look under
as you're rowing to see the results.
Same if it's tilted up and you'd like to
trying to peek down.
Alright, so an easy way of adjusting this is simply adjust
the monitor face so that it is in line
with your eyes and straight ahead.
So that it keeps your gaze
where you want it and distraction free.
The other, and this is a favorite drill of mine
that I don't think I've talked about on the channel before,
so insider tip.
Puh puh puh.
Now it's time to pay attention.
This is called the basically the rag drill.
I take a rag or a towel or a tee shirt
or even a tennis ball works,
I roll it up and I tuck it under my chin as I'm rowing.
Now, this serves better for somebody who has an issue
with cranking their head open.
And what this serves to do is it takes away the ability
to open the head as you are taking a stroke.
And so what you have to do is you put it under your chin,
pin it down, and you have to row continuing
to hold that towel in place.
Now by doing that,
it forces your trunk to basically act as one
from your waist up to the top of your head.
And it's really interesting
what that does to your mechanics.
It often forces you to push through the legs
instead of leading the drive with your head,
which then leads to the shoulders.
So for those of you that are noticing that perhaps
you lead with your shoulders in the stroke,
odds are the head is the first culprit,
and if we can get a towel or a ball under the chin
and get you holding that in place,
you're probably gonna fix it.
Number two, and this is a super common mistake.
Taught like to so many people.
I just, even I, if you watch my videos,
there's even a little bit of time
where I go through this one and it's the early arm pull.
That is at the catch position,
you are breaking with the elbow
to create tension on the handle.
Now why does it happen?
Well, the arms create a much faster twitch than the legs do.
Why is that the case?
Well, when you are trying to establish tension on the handle
and tension is what we're all searching for,
whatever your deviations,
they all come back to the fact that the body
is attempting to find tension on the handle
because that's how you actually apply force to the machine.
So, if the elbow is breaking,
it's usually because you haven't learned how to create
a quick, leg drive yet and to compensate
for that you break the elbow because this smaller joint
than the leg or this smaller system of joints I should say,
you know, lots of joints along the way.
But that smaller system of joints creating
much faster twitch than the legs do.
And so in an effort to find tension faster or sooner,
we break at the elbow because that gives
us tension immediately.
The problem is,
because this is a smaller and a weaker joint,
if I break the elbow now,
any of the work that I try to do with my legs
in pushing into the machine
is absorbed into that broken joint
because that broken joint that,
the saying is, when the arm bends, the power ends.
That comes from coach Mike Burgener
and he's an Olympic weight-lifting coach,
an incredible human being and great coach.
He developed that Q about a barbell coming up off the floor,
but it's very applicable to rowing as well
or to the rowing movement.
Because when the elbow breaks this broken joint
is now having to hold the load that you are attempting
to deliver from somewhere else.
In our case, the legs, right?
Imagine if I told you to do a handstand,
(hitting)
Oops!
If I told you to do a handstand on the floor,
would you wanna do it with a broken elbow
or a straight elbow?
It would be a locked out elbow.
Just like if I told you to push a wall over,
you would lock out your arms and then push into it.
If the elbows are bent, when you go to push,
you end up coming closer to your hands
because the elbow cannot support that load
or that work that's happening.
It goes in both directions.
If you break with the elbow,
this now becomes the weak joint
and you're not able to transfer the force from your legs
to the handle 'cause this is causing a giant break.
The fix for a broken elbow is a couple of fold
and actually there are a whole bunch of ways
that we can address this.
Number one, go purchase a shirt of ours,
the Push Don't Pull shirt.
It will remind you every time that you get on the machine
that you should push instead of pull with the arms.
I kid, but seriously you should check out the shirt.
It literally just says push don't pull.
Big block letters.
Cool shirt, I love it.
It's one of my favorites.
But I digress.
The other great way is using a drill
that's called the pectoral or in this case
it's the reverse pectoral and we use our legs
and our hips only for the stroke
and what this does is it forces you to hang
off of your arms because you don't get
to use the arms and the drill.
You have to use only the legs and the hips
to connect with tension on the handle
and drive force to the machine.
The third mistake that is just all like just
as common as the early arm break is body position
and that is your angle, your body angle,
like the way that your trunk
is sitting at the catch position.
Now, the perfect catch position puts your body
at 11 o'clock that is a forward angle of 11 o'clock
or one depends on which side of the clock
you're looking at, but it's 11 or one o'clock.
That forward body angle is critical.
Good posture, leaning forward at 11 or one o'clock.
The issue where most people end up is their body
is at 12 o'clock shoulders stacked on top of the hips,
and let me say this really quick.
If your body is ever stacked shoulders on top of the hip,
something has gone wrong and we need to fix it.
The only time that should happen
is in the drive as you're swinging over
or on the recovery
as you're swinging over the other way, right?
The reason that this is a problem is because if your body
is horizontal, it is not allowing you to load properly
into your posterior chain,
your backside to get the full engagement of the body.
And what happens there
is that you are effectively falling away from the stroke
instead of being braced and being able to drive
through the stroke.
Now why that happens is because if you're already open,
when you go to engage with the machine,
you have nowhere to go.
So what happens is that the hips,
the opening of the hips
creates this really dynamic portion
of your force on the drive.
Those of you that watched our recent force curve video,
you'll understand that
why that hip swing is really important.
I'll maybe link to that right here.
So that hip-swing is really critical in the drive phase.
Well, guess what?
You can't open your hips if you never closed them.
If the hips don't close to 11 o'clock,
if they're stuck at at 12 well there's nowhere
for them to open to to create a dynamic swing.
And that's like 30% of your force production
and the stroke is that hip swing,
but more importantly than the 30%
is it's the relay between your leg drive
and the finish with the arms?
So if that hip is missing, guess what?
You're gonna be missing
a huge fundamental core force center for the stroke.
The way in which you're gonna fix this is two-fold.
The first is with a good solid two-minute catch-all.
I've talked about this drill before in past videos,
I love it.
It's a regular, you put yourself
in the right catch position and you hold it.
Two minutes.
It's a grinder but it's so good for you and you're welcome.
Those of you that have done it before,
'cause I know you found the value in it.
If you have, drop a comment below 'cause it's a doozy,
but it's really good for your positioning.
Number two is simply sitting with legs extended,
arms straight and just rocking the hips back and forth.
All this is teaching you to do is how to hinge
at the hip without giving up posture like the spine flexing,
which we don't need.
Okay?
And teaching you where is 11 and one o'clock.
That's the best way to approach this so that
you can really see and make sure
that you are getting to that forward body angle
instead of just stopping at 12.
Mistake number four is leaning way too far back.
It's just, there's nothing good back there.
Got nothing good back there.
Now, why is this a problem?
Well, think of it this way
and isn't this actually quite simple.
I will try not to expound too much.
But essentially once you pass one o'clock the backside
of the stroke where we wanna stop our body angle,
once you go past that,
you're just wasting energy supporting
yourself in space and time.
You're not actually delivering
any more force to the machine.
A lot of people however have heard that length
is good in the rowing stroke and that it is,
but length is only good if it's good length.
Let me explain.
Length is good at the catch,
if you're in good position and you're making sure
that you are holding that good position to get good length.
It's why I'm not a fan of getting length at all costs
at the catch, meaning giving up posture
or lifting the heels as much as possible to get deeper
into the catch because once you pass good position,
you're not connected.
You're just wasting energy moving through that position
and you have to get back to good position
before you can actually start applying force to the machine.
The same goes for the backside of the stroke.
Once you lay past one o'clock or 11 whatever
you wanna call it, once you lay past that position,
you just become wholly ineffective.
The best way to prove this,
is to grab your hand or get on the machine
and just lay all the way back to like two,
three and just feel,
how strong do you feel on those positions?
I guarantee you once you pass one
your body just starts shaking
because you're having to hold it in place.
Guess what?
That's not effective length on the back-end, right?
You're not getting anything extra out of it
other than wasting energy.
The easiest way to fix this and it's not really a drill,
is simply set up your phone on a horizontal
and record yourself rowing
for 10 to 15 strokes and just watch it.
Make sure it's perfectly in line with you
so you don't wanna be like at an angle
'cause that could skew what you're seeing.
Perfectly profile to the side.
Watch yourself, take 10 to 15 strokes.
Understand where one o'clock is on a watch face
and then just see is your body passing that every time.
If it is, dead ringer, what you need to do is start focusing
on better engagement of the midline
and cutting off that lay back.
It may feel like you are shortening the stroke,
but that's fine.
You're gonna waste less energy,
which is gonna save you more in the long run
to be able to put into your stroke.
And finally, mistake number five is breathing.
And breathing is such a huge piece of the rowing stroke
because, well, if you didn't have air,
you couldn't continue rowing.
And I think a lot of people probably
know that instinctively.
But you might not actually be thinking about the way
in which your breathing as you row
and it's causing a detriment to your performance
because, and this is the big one that a lot of people do.
They hold their breath,
they haven't found a way to settle into a rhythmic breathing
that's going to benefit you as you try to improve.
And so, if you've been holding your breath,
what you're finding is that it's really hard
to go for any kind of distance on the rowing machine.
And maybe you've watched some of our follow-along videos
and you just can't hang for 20 minutes or 10 minutes.
Well, there's a really high likelihood
that you may be holding your breath.
So maybe your breathing is actually holding you back.
The easiest way to work on this is honestly
this is just a self-promo.
Go watch our, it wasn't intended to be a self-promo,
but the easiest way for you to digest this info
is go watch our recent video on breathing.
It's gonna be somewhere here because it's way better
than what I could try and offer
in a little 30-second snippet here.
I really tried to go in-depth as to how to improve
your breathing when you're on the machine
and giving you practice in ways that you can work on it.
So, if breathing is perhaps your Achilles heel,
if you will, then go watch that video.
Give it a look because you'd be amazed how much improving
your breathing can improve your performance.
So here's something I want you to do.
Question of the day,
which of these were you doing unknowingly
and what are you going to do to work on fixing them?
Drop that answer in the comments below.
Help others understand that there are lots of people
going through this and that you are working
to fix it just like they are.
And that's the whole point of this Dark Horse community.
We like to get to know each other
and we like to support each other as we move through.
So, drop your comment in the comments below
so that we can start a little discussion around that.
So if you enjoyed this video and you want more of it
and you just, you're like, you know what?
Dark Horse, that rings true to me and you'd like the message
that we're here talking about,
which is that you are the hero of your own story
and we are the guide that helps you get there.
Well then, hit that subscribe button
and the little bell next to it so that
you get alerted every time we come out with a new video,
and that's gonna help propel you to become
the person that you wanna be.
And at the end of the day,
that's really what matters to me most is that you are making
a continued improvement and that
you're making great gains in your own life.
So with that being said,
I'm gonna repeat what I always repeat,
which is that I love you all from the bottom of my heart.
Please go and share your own love
with the rest of the world around you.
We need way more of this in our everyday lives as it is.
I want more love.
I want you to have more love, and I love you all.
So thank you all so much for tuning in,
and as always, I'll see you on the other side.
(upbeat music)