- So, today, I wanted to talk briefly about
the top three things that you can do as a coach
to improve the way that you talk to people about the rower.
For those of you that don't know by the way,
my name is Shane Farmer, this is Dark Horse Rowing
and what we do is we talk about everything
that there is to know about the indoor rowing machine.
Pretty much any brand falls under what we talk about.
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So, today we are talking about the top three things
that you can do as a coach to improve
the way that your athletes, or your clients,
or whatever you wanna call them,
the top three things you can look at,
the way that you see the way that they move
to help them move better, be more comfortable,
and help everybody just at the end of the day
get far more out of this machine.
So, let's just take a trot over to the machine.
Now, the number one thing that I tend to look for
is just, A, what kind of positions
do my athletes put themselves in?
Now, by that, we need to naturally understand
what the right positions look like.
Now, there are two main positions
and then, the other two are simply
pass throughs or they're the transitions to get to those.
So, the first and most important position
for you to understand is the catch.
This is the catch.
In this position you want hands wide on the handle,
elbows extended, shoulders reaching,
head and neck relaxed, back flat, hips behind
the shoulders, knees tracking underneath my arm
not outside, not caving in, and, for beginners,
I want my heels connected to the machine.
So, what I'm look at every single stroke
is do my athletes get back to this position,
this perfect catch, and if you see deviations from this,
that would be heels lifting, posture giving way,
shoulders behind the hips, if you see
any of those positions, that's the number one thing
that you can automatically say, "Alright, we need
"to slow things down and come back to good positions."
So, that would be position number one.
The second position, what we call the release,
it's just called the release because this
is where you release the handle, but the things
that we wanna make sure to avoid are looking
for overextending of the hips or weird positions
with the handles, meaning the handle coming up too high.
The general target is right at the base
of the sternum and the trunk at 11 o'clock.
So, the rest, the in between positions,
would be the drive and the recovery.
The drive is from the catch to the release
and the recovery is from the release back to the catch,
but what I am looking at as a coach,
the two positions that I see most frequently
are the catch and the release
and then I'm using those as my basis
because if those two positions don't happen,
I can guarantee you the positions to get there
are also not happening, so that's number one.
We're talking about three things.
That's number one that I would do
to analyze the way somebody is moving.
The second thing that I would do
is I'm gonna take a look at what this handle is doing.
Now, I am generally trying to ensure
that this handle maintains as straight a path as possible.
What's the fastest way between two points?
It's a straight line.
I'm trying to see as little up
and down movement of the handle as possible.
Now, it's very quick and easy to note
if somebody's hands are dropping and riding low
and then lifting, and I can guarantee you
that's gonna be causing issues on both ends of things
because if the hands carry low and then lift,
the body is going to follow where the hands are going
and this is very naturally going
to put me into a poor position.
So, hands low are generally an indicator
that something is going wrong.
The same goes for hands high and then carried down.
So, what I'm looking for is
straight in, straight out to the body.
So, that is the number two thing that I am going to analyze.
Now, the third thing that I'm looking for
is basically can the person move through their hips,
and this is as easy as evaluating from a standing position.
Can the person move their hips
without their back having to round?
And if I put an athlete into a standing position
and I ask them to move their hips and perhaps
I even guide them to move their hips
but what ends up happening is this,
then I know that we're immediately
going to have issues on the machine
because during the stroke it's really critical
that my athlete be able to rock through the hips
because that creates a significant portion of the stroke.
So, as a coach, the three things that I'm looking at,
one more time, just to summarize for you.
Number one, I am checking the
catch and the release positions.
If those are going wrong, I know
that I have to get back to the movement.
Number two is that handle height.
Am I keeping a consistent handle height into
and away from the body because that's gonna tell me if
there are any up or downstream issues happening from that,
and number three is can my athlete
actually move through the hips?
Without that, you're not gonna be able
to have a very effective stroke.
So, guys, those are the three things
that I would use and that I do use
to evaluate athletes immediately
when they are on the machine and they're
a quick and easy way for you to evaluate
if your clients are doing it right as well.
From there, you're gonna start to implement
drills and things that you'll find in our other videos.
So, make sure that you explore our other videos
for ways that we can use to repair
the stroke for your clients.
Guys, thank you for tuning in.
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