- What's up Dark Horses and welcome back to another video.
In this week's video, I wanted to cover something
that I mentioned in a previous video
which is that in the thousands of people
that I've coached, I've never seen
a single person get on this machine
and do it right the first time.
What that means is that there are tons
of errors that can come when you are on this machine
and yet it can be very hard to know
which ones you may be doing and how
they're holding you back and also
how do you fix them so that you can get better workouts?
So today, we're gonna cover three
of the most common errors that I see that tend to,
I would say they make about 80%
of the issues that we see on the machine.
We're gonna cover those three problems today
and more importantly, how to fix them.
Let's get inside.
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Problem number one that we're going
to cover can go by a number of names.
You can call it leading with the head,
with the shoulders, opening the hips early.
Basically, it's that the first move you make
is here as opposed to a push of the leg.
Now why is that a problem?
Well, because it breaks the sequence of the movement
and once that's happened, you've basically taken
your legs out of the equation for the stroke
and the legs are the largest force production
muscle group in your body in the rowing stroke.
So if we open those shoulders, we limit
what the legs are able to do which means
that we've now taken away one of the
most critical work elements in the stroke.
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So one of my favorite drills to fix this
is called the Top Quarter Drill.
Now you can take that Top Quarter Drill,
you can lengthen into the top half
and then into what we call legs only.
I'll show you what this looks like
but the intent being that what we do
is we lock our body in the forward angle that you want
at the catch position, the front of the stroke.
So at the catch, I want my trunk in,
I guess to you it would be a one o'clock angle, so at
this one o'clock angle, I'm strapped in, I'm locked in.
As I'm about to take the stroke,
I brace here, I keep the arms long,
and I focus only on the leg drive,
moving back and forth in the catch
with the objective of push and relax,
push and relax, so that I can feel
the brace and the tension and the push
of the legs without needing this movement here.
So let's take a look at what that looks like.
So I set up at the catch, my arms
are long, my trunk is braced, my feet are down,
and I'm focusing on that first quarter of the push.
(machine noises)
Notice that my trunk angle,
my body, isn't moving, my arms aren't breaking,
and I'm just sliding in and out
and using the push of the legs to give myself tension.
From there I can lengthen it in the top half.
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And then I can go to full leg drive.
Still not bending the arms or opening the hips.
So if you're gonna be using this drill,
what I would suggest is that you work through
20 Top Quarter, 10 Top Half,
and five Legs Only
and then I would work through that two times.
Now, I would use that on a fairly regular basis
until you're very confident that you're initial movement
is not here but that it's a push of the legs.
So use that as frequently as you need
but that's the system I would use, 20, 10, five.
20 Top Quarter, 10 Top Half, five Legs Only.
So the second most problem that I see is on the recovery
and I like to call it over the hump rowing.
Essentially what it is is that
as the hands travel forward, the knees bend first
and the hands come up and over
so that they're having to go up and over this hump.
Now why that's a problem is because
it, as well, is breaking the sequence
and you'll find that is a very common
trend amongst all these issues,
that by breaking the sequence,
you break the body's ability to engage properly
with the stroke or in this instance,
you break the ability to set up
into a good position, in order to have a good stroke.
And that's why we want to avoid the handle
moving up and over the knees and we want
to correct it so that it creates a straight path.
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So one of my all time favorite drills
is what we're gonna use to fix this
handle up and over the hump that we see on the recovery
and what that drill is, they're caused Pause Drills.
Now, the Pause Drill is versatile,
you can use it any number of ways.
For this specific instance, what we are going to
institute is a pause at what's called arms and body over.
So what this looks like
is that I would take a stroke,
release the hands, close the hips, and pause
My arms and body are over my legs, if you will.
And I'm gonna pause here for, depending,
if you don't have a coach, I would say
a five count, a slow five count, not a fast five count.
The objective is that you are giving yourself
time to get into position where you're normal habit
is to break the knees, we want to avoid that
so that they legs stay straight,
get the arms and body over, pause for five,
and then continue into the next stroke.
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So that is how you're gonna operate that drill.
So you're prescription for this drill,
if you're going to run it is in sets
of 20 strokes with a five second pause.
Now to ensure that you have a five second pause,
I would have a clock, if you can,
on the wall in front of you or a very slow
count or have a coach counting for you,
but you'd be amazed how quickly that pause
starts to reduce to two seconds
or one second or half a second
when five is really what I want.
I want to give you time to sit there
and think about being in the right position.
So as many sets of 20 strokes as you need
until you can permanently fix this issue.
Now problem number three, I like
to call collapsing at the catch.
The catch is the most important part of the stroke.
It's the front of the stroke in the moment
where we are loading to explode.
Now, if I'm collapsing, it can
come out in any number of ways.
Number one would be that the hips
are sliding underneath my shoulders
and the seat is coming up and hitting my heels.
Another way would be collapsing my posture,
meaning rounding my back as I come forward.
A third could be that the knees are
splitting to get further into the catch.
All of those are displays of the body
collapsing into the catch position.
Why is that a problem?
Well because if the body collapses
in the moment when my body is supposed to be tensing,
getting into position, ready to push, it's never
going to feel like I have connection to the machine.
Now the way to know if this is you,
now you may not be able to identify which
of those you're doing, but if you catch yourself
saying, man, the machine just never
gives me any resistance or I can't
feel any resistance and no matter
how much I move, it just doesn't
feel like it gives me a good workout.
All of those things might be a trigger
to let you know that you are collapsing
in some way at the catch and so
we want to be able to repair that, fix it,
so that you can get connection to the machine
because that is how you get work done,
that's how you get a great workout.
(machine noises)
So to fix this, I'm going to give you
three potential drills that you can use.
All of these are fantastic to help
so think about stacking them on top of each other.
Number one is strapping into your machine,
grabbing your handle, and walking
yourself through a catch checklist.
That would be hands nice and wide on the handle,
thumbs wrapped around, elbows extended,
shoulders reaching, back neutral and flat,
head relaxed, hips behind the shoulders,
knees tracking underneath the arms,
heels down, and then sliding forward
as far as you possibly can and then
holding that position for two minutes.
That may not seem like a lot until you get
into this position and you try to hold it, you should be
shaking everywhere, trying to maintain position.
So that is number one, number two
is slow down your rowing and this one's easy.
I would like to see you take five to
seven seconds per stroke, why?
Well there's no rush to get anywhere
and the slower you move through the stroke,
the more time you have to think
about being in the right position.
So, if I'm taking five seconds per stroke,
that's one, two, three, four, five,
two, three, four, five,
two, right?
If I go to seven, that's even slower but what that does
for me is it allows me to organize my body
and make sure that I'm in the right position.
If I am speeding through the recovery,
it's very easy to blast in and out of the catch
without thinking about it, letting the body collapse,
without even realizing it, so that's number two.
Number three is I'm gonna use a band.
I'm going to set myself at the deepest catch position
that I can achieve and then I'm gonna
take this band or a rope or whatever you've got
and I'm going to tie it around the slide
of the machine then tie it down.
So I'm gonna bump it up against
the wheel and then snug it down.
What that does is it creates a break
on the slide, the seat cannot move past that.
So when I go in to workout now, this is going to reinforce
that I am not sliding too far forward.
It may even short me a little bit but that's okay,
we're practicing improving our movement here.
So, I'm then going to row, I can row
any distance, I mean you can do your
entire workout with this thing on.
The first few, I expect your seat will hit the stop
and it's probably going to jolt you a little bit
but your goal is to learn where that is
and then every stroke, get as close as possible
without hitting it and you begin to develop
and teach your body the proprioception
to know exactly how deep you can get with good position
and that's going to eliminate the collapsing that comes
from getting too deep into the catch
until you've reinforced good positions,
good behaviors, you can then take this off and then
perhaps you can get a little bit deeper but with control.
So my prescription for those three drills would be
number one, get into that catch hold for two minutes.
Do that at the beginning of every workout
just to reinforce that position.
Number two, that slow rowing, I'd
like to see two minutes of a five second stroke.
Again, if you have a coach or somebody nearby,
perhaps a significant other, a child, anybody
who can just count to five on repeat for you, great,
or if you have a clock on the wall, do that.
And then, finally that banded row.
Use that for an entire workout
if you know that collapsing into the catch is a problem.
Throw that band or that rope or a t-shirt,
tie it around there, and run an entire workout
that way and I think you'll find that it does help you.
Once you get to take it off, you'll understand much better
where that good catch position is for you.
At the end of the day, we're bringing it back to basics
and it's important to remember that
on this machine, you're not in a rush to get anywhere.
You're in a rush to get a great workout
and slowing down the mechanics
can often give you a better workout,
give you greater connection to the machine,
give you greater understanding,
all by slowing down the movement
but being able to put more quality into it
which is going to give you a better result in the long run.
Don't be in a rush to move through the stroke.
Be in a rush to learn good movement patterns
which are going to benefit you to give you better workouts,
that's why we're doing all of this.
And if you can eliminate any of these three problems,
you're gonna find a huge benefit to your own performance
so take advantage of what we've done here,
implement the drills in the prescription
that I gave you, and it's going to give you value.
As always guys, thank you for hanging out
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