in this video we're focusing on the ideal that the blade should
be well connected with the water before the leg drive commences
as you can see here joel's demonstrating a good catch position with shins vertical blade buried
ready to undertake the drive phase here he is rowing with that same particular technique
getting well connected blade deeply buried before the drive phase here he is in the same session but
on purpose demonstrating the way that we don't want to see the catch taken and from a distance
it looks as though it's not a bad catch but let's break it down and have a look at the differences
between the two strokes let's have a closer look see the white mark on the oar there that's just
30 centimeters from the end of the blade we see as he takes the catch you just see the white mark
just under the water at that point let's hold the frame at that point and compare it to when
joel's undertaking the catch to his best see here the white mark of the tape inside the green circle
see here the blade is buried just buried under the water not a bad position but
i would prefer to see the blade deeper in the water but that occurs later in the same stroke
here when joel's rowing correctly you can see the same tape at the same point and see it's
in the water at at this point you see the white tape in the middle of the green circle so in both
images the oar is at the same depth the same part of the stroke if you like see the blade
again buried to the same extent as in the other image it's the same boat same session same rigging
if you see here in the blue circle the position of the legs in relation to the
boat in both circumstances let's have a closer look with the image on the left
you can see that the legs are on more of an angle than on the right so let's measure the angles
rowing correctly here we have 88 degrees with the blade buried to the white mark on the ore 30
centimeters up the up the shaft here deliberately rowing by missing the catch we see it's 82 degrees
quite a significant difference of leg drive used not correctly now let's have a look at the
a little bit further through the stroke and let's find a point where both oars are at the same depth
the deepest they go to on the left hand side rowing without proper connection and so we'll
move the images so that both of them match the image on the left hand side at its deepest point
so here we have another white marker on the oar that's another 30 centimeters
up the shaft from the first 30 centimeter mark
so this point on the left is about the deepest of the blade gets to so let's make the one on the
right match the same depth so we can have a good comparison between the two here you can see that
the rowing more correctly that the blade is a little deeper in the water yet we still have a
lot of leg drive yet to go compared to the one on the left where we're rowing missing the catch so
let's move the image so that they're both the same i.e that the oar is at the same depth in the water
at about halfway between the top and bottom white markers this way we have a fair comparison of
where the blade is in an equal point of connection in the water see here it's about halfway between
the two markers if we look again at where the legs are in relation to the the angle between
the thigh and the shins you can see that there's a significant amount more leg drivers been utilized
in the image on the left where the catch hasn't been as well connected as that on the right
we measure it 86 degrees for rowing correctly and 71 degrees for rowing missing the catch so as you
can see it's very clear that we can get the blade into the water well connected before we use any
significant amount of the leg drive if we get that executed correctly now let's have a look at the
blade depth overall just as an indicator which is not necessarily related to the leg drive
because once you're connected then i'd say you're connected but essentially the deeper the blade is
in the water without going to extreme the better connected you're going to be and the more chance
you have of being able to have the boat levered past the blade in the water rather than having
the blade move through the water and so let's find the deepest point so on the left hand image
we find that the deepest point is about halfway between both the white markers i
about 45 centimeters from the blade if we look at the right image where we have a better catch
you can see that the blade is also deeper in the water in that the water level is pretty much where
that second marker is is 60 centimeters up the blade and so that's going to be better connected
because it's deeper in the water i don't think you want to be any deeper than this because then
the amount of extra connection you get is going to be compensated for by the shaft in the water and
other issues in the boat here we show both images in slow motion linked together at the same speed
rating is slightly different and so there is little difference but as you can see
the blades are well connected right the way through the stroke pretty much to the end
the blade that's not quite as deep in the left hand side does tend to come out early but that's
clearly a different problem than the catch that we're talking about on the right hand side it's
held right through to the finish and having the blade deep in the water makes it easy to do this
so here we have joel demonstrating how to start the leg drive before the catch before the blade is
connected and something we want to avoid here we have him getting well connected before the drive
phase and if you look carefully you can you can see a clear difference between the two techniques
and if we can get our athletes to connect like this before the leg drive will get better outcomes