Challenging to learn, a wonderful full-body workout –
& a whole lot of fun |
|
A rookie goes
ROWING By Greg Marr
My first experience rowing reminded me of those days early in the ski season when the awkwardness drains from the body and, without warning, you're suddenly actually skiing, not struggling, putting together efficient pole and leg kick to glide effortlessly down the trail. You think to yourself, "Yes! This is it! God, this feels
great!" And then you miss a pole plant or you get out of rhythm and the awkwardness rushes back in again. But for that brief moment you remember why you're doing it. You struggle on, looking for that elusive smoothness, knowing that it will be back sooner now rather than later, adjusting, tweaking your technique, waiting for that pure feeling of skiing.
Rowing started innocently enough. On the long ride back from Marquette, Mich., after the Noquemanon
Ski Marathon, we were talking about trying to stay fit during skiing's long off-season. There's always running, bicycling and roller skiing, but each has its limitations. Cross country skiing is a full body workout, one of the most complete forms of exercise known to man or woman. Running is great for cardiovascular fitness, as is bicycling. Roller skiing, of course, is perfect, but not always convenient or practical. Then I
remembered Craig Schowalter's articles in this magazine about rowing. I knew nothing about open-water rowing when Schowalter sent in his first article, but it seemed to fit in with the overall "silent sports" picture: an aerobic, full-body, self-propelled workout. The Monday after I returned from the Noquemanon, I called Schowalter.
Schowalter, who owns the South Shore Open Water Rowing Center in Washburn, Wis., is on a crusade to
take open-water rowing to the masses, to interest people like you and me in this unique form of exercise. To say he is passionate about recreational rowing would be to diminish the word "passion."
Schowalter came to rowing six years ago "from the outside. That is, I didn't row in college or come from that culture, so my whole approach to the sport is different. The traditionalists are more interested in training
technique for racing. My interest is in the technique of training to get new rowers. I'm interested in how people learn, how they respond, so they'll be successful the first time out."
In his day job, Schowalter runs Business Plans Etc., preparing business plans and economic feasibility studies for everything from hotels to golf courses. He's applied his skills in that endeavor to developing his
rowing center overlooking Lake Superior. Schowalter knows introducing a new activity is to fight a proverbial uphill battle, but so convinced is he of the benefits of rowing, it's a battle he fully expects to win. Besides, as a businessman, he knows what it will take to get the center to be financially viable.
"I've found that visionaries are only half of it. The other half is being good with numbers," he says.
The problem is to first overcome the image of rowing as strictly a competitive sport – long, skinny boats rowed by a team of Ivy League college students being bellowed at by some little guy who appears just along for the ride. Yes, rowing is that, Schowalter confesses, but it is so much more.
If Schowalter can overcome this competitive imagine, he must then convince people to try rowing. And that,
quite honestly, is where I fit into the scheme. Schowalter is no doubt holding his breath, hoping that a complete novice like myself, one who seldom even canoes, will write favorably about this water sport.
Like cross country skiing or swimming, rowing uses every major muscle group in the body: legs, abdomen, chest, back and arms. What I found surprising, and encouraging, about rowing is the fact that over 50
percent of the propulsion comes from the lower body, making it a true full-body exercise. I know of many talented skiers who paddle – canoe, kayak or sea kayak – during skiing's off season and swear by the exercise. Those particular forms of paddling, it seemed to me, lack the same thing as running or bicycling: They aren't full-body workouts. Alternate paddling with running or bicycling and you have something – but that means finding the time for two exercise sessions.
Of course, rowing, like the other forms of recreation, has its own limitations. For one, there's water. Rowing requires a fairly large body of water and, ideally, calm water is better. Then there's the investment in equipment. Expect to pay a minimum of around $2,000 on a basic shell to get started.
There are ways to get around this expense, however. One is to join a club. If you're fortunate enough to live
in a metro area with a large, open body of water, there is probably a rowing club. Madison, Duluth, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago and Schowalter's own center at tiny Washburn are clubs that provide lessons and allow members use of boats. For the cost of annual membership, you can row to your heart's delight.
Another way to get around the initial cost is to go together with a friend or two or three and share the shell.
I tried the Silent Sports own Marketplace section for a used boat. I did receive a call, but decided that
boat wasn't right for me. I located several others through the Internet but was a bit leery of having a used boat shipped from New Jersey. Even used boats will likely cost over a thousand dollars, however, and probably need some upgrading, which brings the final cost close to that of a new boat anyway. If you just gotta have your own, there are a number of manufacturers nationwide.
Schowalter is a dealer for Alden Rowing Shells, and he put me in touch with the company. Alden made the
first sliding-seat recreational rowing shell over 25 years ago and remains an industry leader today. I will soon be in my own boat (it has yet to be delivered at this writing), an Alden Horizon, a new model introduced this year that is a molded 17-foot shell created specifically for the beginner. Priced at $1,500 retail, excluding oars, it's one of the less expensive boats out there.
(I should note that I am not paying full price for the boat. Alden recognized that a series of articles on rowing, with their boat prominently featured, just might be good for business. They offered a boat at wholesale and I accepted – there goes the recumbent for another year. Schowalter also donated a private lesson, a $70 value.)
While I do not live on a large body of water, I do live a few miles away from central Wisconsin's Chain O'
Lakes and a half-hour from the Wisconsin River. With the boat ordered and a place to use it determined, it was time to learn to row. I drove to Washburn on an absolutely beautiful late-April day to spend the afternoon on Lake Superior with Schowalter.
While rowing is a relatively simple procedure, there are a few things to learn to get off to a proper start, and Schowalter proved to be an enthusiastic and thorough teacher.
I did not have the mistaken impression that I would be able to simply hop in the boat and row. I didn't anticipate, however, that it would be as challenging as it is to get started. I equate learning to row to learning to bicycle or cross country ski. Most of us have likely forgotten what it was like the first few times on a bike, but we probably well remember those early ski experiences: the ground was like a magnet and we
were wearing steel mesh clothes, or so it seemed. Today, bicycling is second nature. We jump on that seat, sitting high on two wheels and a narrow metal frame, and we just do it. We seldom, if ever, fall. Amazing, if you stop to think about it.
Rowing will, in time, become second nature Schowalter assures me, but for now I feel like a kid who needs training wheels. Why the difficulty? Try sitting on a narrow blade of a boat 17 feet long, just wide enough in
the center for your body then quickly narrowing to the bow and stern. Shift a little left and right and the entire package – you and the boat – will quickly roll over, sending you into the water. But that seldom happens. In fact, Schowalter says it's never happened with the hundreds of people he has taught to row. Most rowers will go their entire lifetime as dry as someone who's never ventured from shore.
The reason an inherently unstable craft can be so incredibly stable is the oars. From tip to tip, oars stretch out about 18 feet across and act as stabilizing outriggers. Once Schowalter was confident enough for me to leave the land portion of our lesson behind and allow me into the water, he demonstrated. With me seated in the shell holding the oar handles, paddles flat on the water, he grabbed the bow of the boat and tried to
dump me. I felt him twisting and turning but the shell hardly moved. Not wanting to slip into the icy Lake Superior waters, this was one lesson I would not forget. In fact, by the end of the lesson, this simple concept of getting an oar out for balance was second nature; I noticed I was doing it without even thinking about it.
Rowing is about balance, propulsion and concentration. Just as with a bicycle, a rowing shell is designed to
be moving. Sitting on the water with oars out is like sitting on a bike at a stop light with your foot down: you won't tip over but you're not having much fun either.
Schowalter is meticulous in his teaching. He begins assembling the shell, positioning the sliding seat and the oars locks, then slides in the oars. We used an Alden 16 single, a boat Schowalter likes for a couple of reasons. First, there are more Alden 16s on the water than any other single from any other company, and
the same design has been in use, unchanged, since 1967. The boat sells for $2,345 fully rigged with carbon fiber oars.
While still on land, Schowalter shows how to properly enter the boat, then begins a demonstration of the techniques needed for rowing. First, and perhaps most important to a novice, he emphasizes how to stay high and dry with the oar handles held and the paddles out.
Like skis or bikes, rowing shells come in a variety of shapes and sizes, each designed for different uses and skill levels. The shell I'll be using, the Alden Horizon, for instance, is 17 feet long and weighs about 50 pounds rigged. On the other end of the spectrum is the Alden 26, an elite racing shell measuring 26', 1" and weighing a mere 35 pounds rigged. Of course, expect to pay more for less; that is, the heavier entry-level
shell is $1,500 ($1,900 with oars and rigging) while the racing shell retails for $3,620.. Similar to all are a sliding seat, oarlocks and oars, but even here, not all parts are alike. Like components on a racing bike vs. those on a low-end touring bike, there can be striking, and costly, differences.
Recreational or competitive, the drive phase and recovery phase of the paddling stroke is essentially the
same, and Schowalter begins, with the shell still on land, by demonstrating the basic techniques.
"In each sport," Schowalter says, "there's a whole bunch of confusing words, and the people who are into it use those confusing words to make it look more difficult than it is. I try not to use some of the technical terms and we call things 'thingies' and 'doobabs' just to put people at ease."
"Part of it we go through on dry land so there's no intimidation factor with the water. In a regular lesson we go through the words, we may watch a video, then we put you in the water and do the whole thing again with me holding the boat. There's absolutely no risk; I totally control the boat. Once that person is competent on dry land and in the water, then and only then do we release the boat. The number of little
drills we do are such that you never get too far away from the instructor. It's quite a series of repetitions so you gain confidence."
"So we start out trying to keep everything really simple: no variables, dryland, walk through all parts of the stroke, break the stroke into three critical components, then do the same thing in the water with the complication of the boat balance and me holding the boat."
"Finally," Schowalter said with a sweeping gesture toward Lake Superior, "when they have the mastery of that – and it's just like riding a bike – we release them. Once they have their balance, they'll never have a problem. Some people take more time, some people less."
Common questions Schowalter gets from nonrowers are why the seat needs to move in the first place and why the oarlocks are so far out and away from the boat itself.
"The difference between this and fixed-seat rowing, where you're just using your upper body, is that here it's two-thirds lower body and you're going to use the leverage of the oars, 18 feet of oars, that you're driving with your lower body. That's what justifies all the rigging."
The oars are tapered – thinner at the blade end – so they can slide into the oar locks. It's nearly impossible to accidentally pull one out.
Schowalter demonstrated the proper way to step into the boat, holding the oar handles, then lowered himself to the seat. "About the only time you'll ever let go of the handles is just after you get in and have to tie your feet in."
Wait a minute – tie yourself in? Feet slip onto a footrest and a velcro strap secures them into place.
"People wonder about that all the time," he said, "and I tell them it's virtually impossible to tip over unless
you let go of the oars. Being tied in with your feet really allows you to drive with the legs. People who have rowed a fixed-seat boat – kayakers and canoeists – are almost instantly converted because you have so much power and most of your power is in the lower body."
In a worst-case scenario, a rower can reach down and pull the velcro loose or pull hard with the legs to free the feet.
Women grasp the concept of using the legs quicker then men, Schowalter says, because typically men have more upper body strength and the thing they want to do is pull. Women are more inclined to use their legs.
"I've found that women actually learn quicker then men," Schowalter said. "And women are more flexible at the hips so they seem to picked it up faster."
Schowalter demonstrated the first two-thirds of the paddling stroke by starting in a squat position, knees up
to the chest, arms extend and oars back. He then simply pushed back, straightening his legs.
"If you take a look at the rowing stroke, basically, everything is fixed. Your arms are passive connectors to the oars; your hands are like hooks."
"I'm not using any upper body," he added as he moved back and forth. "No arms; my hands are totally passive connectors to the oars. This is really the biggest hurdle to overcome. Once people get the oars, they
feel like they have to be doing something with them, pulling on them. Actually it's simply standing up from a squat, only you're doing it on a sliding seat. If you do this right you almost get the feeling that you're hanging on the oars because your upper body is totally passive."
Before finishing the stroke, Schowalter demonstrated the technique of "feathering" the oars, tipping the blade parallel to the water before sliding back to the power phase of paddling. Reasons for feathering
include wind; if you don't feather, the open face of the paddle catches the wind during the recovery. The flat blade can also catch the tip of the waves and make the boat veer to one side, causing a loss of balance.
"This is probably the biggest challenge with the new rower," Schowalter said, "getting them to feather the blades."
The oarlocks and the oars have flat sides. The oar sits in the lock on one side. Properly done, with the oar
blade vertical, the back of the hands are to the sky. To feather the blade, with hands relaxed, simply roll the oar into the fingertips.
"It's a very loose grip," Schowalter pointed out. "You never really grip it like you do in a fixed-seat boat. Once you get that down, we build the rest of the stroke. Basically, we use this with what we've already done, the straight-arm leg drive. These are the first two piece of the stroke. Then we add the last two pieces."
To fully complete the slide, you can use the arms pulling the oars into just below the rib cage. You then push down, bringing the oars out of the water, feather them, then reach out straight in front and slide back into the crouch position. Feather the blades again so they're vertical, drop them into the water and again push with the legs.
"I'll simplify it as I go along," Schowalter says, slowly moving through the entire stroke, repeating his
mantra. "Legs, back, arms, down, feather, reach out, slide back, square the blades, legs, back, arms, feather … If you get confused, rather than trying to save a stroke that's fatally wounded, it's best to just go back to the start again. And usually before you start again it's best to do a visual check: square the blades, adjust your hands so the backs are to the sky then go ahead and do your leg drive."
Schowalter demonstrated the stroke over and over, chanting his mantra.
"We can keep it even simpler," he added. "Just legs, back, arms. Do those three things and anyone can row. Will you win the Olympics? No, but you will continue to improve over the years by concentrating on those three things."
"As soon as I see a new rower doing the self-talk thing, saying to himself, 'legs, back, arms,' I shut up. You can give people three things, three critical things, that if they do these things, they're going to be all right.
Now what we'll do is stick you in the shell and you can do it."
And we did it, over and over and over again. Legs, back, arms, down, feather, reach out, slide back, square the blades, legs, back, arms, feather – over and over again, first on land and then in the water. I will admit now to some mild impatience with Schowalter's repetitiveness. I caught myself thinking, "Yeah, yeah.
I got it. Why don't we get this show on the water already?" Once on the water, we went through it all again … and again … and again, with Schowalter holding the shell. After dozens of practice strokes, Schowalter finally said, "The next one's live; I'm going to let you go," and away I went.
My initial reaction was, "Whoa!" Without Schowalter holding on, I immediately felt tippy. I tried to concentrate on what I was doing, however, and managed to put together two or three semi-competent
strokes before my technique completely fell apart and I had to stop, get the oars out on the water, regain my balance, and start again.
"It's perfectly fine to stop and get yourself together," Schowalter said. "It's not uncommon for even experienced rowers to stop when their stroke starts falling apart. It's better than trying to struggle through a bad stroke."
Part of what makes rowing challenging is that not only are you sliding on the seat and rowing, you remove
the oars from the water and slide again to position for the next stroke. Let me repeat that: sliding on the seat with the oars out of the water. This is the tricky part. Remember that the stability comes from the oars being out on or in the water. At this point in the stroke, not only are the oars not on the water, you are sliding forward and the boat is moving. That takes some getting used to.
A clumsy turn and a couple of sloppy strokes later, I had the shell back in front of Schowalter. No longer did I question his insistence that I repeat, over and over again, the simple basics of rowing. This time when he held the shell, I concentrated even harder on putting together all aspects of the stroke into one efficient package.
"OK. The next one's live," he said again, and I was off. This time it felt better, smoother, less clumsy – and
then I "caught a crab." In rower's parlance, "catching a crab" is the act of feathering the oar – turning it face up – before it clears the water. Instead of slicing out of the water, I was trying to pull the oar blade up flat through the water. Catching a crab causes the rower to tip to that side. This is easily corrected by simply releasing pressure on the caught oar, laying the opposite oar on the water and regaining balance. I had
caught a few crabs while still in Schowalter's hands, so I was somewhat prepared for the incident, yet it still caused a bit of an adrenaline rush when I felt myself suddenly tipping to my left. I caught enough crabs that first day out to host a crabfest for the local Kiwanis Club.
"One thing that's bad for the sport is that it looks so easy," Schowalter would say later. "It's like cross
country skiing. People seem to think they can just buy a pair of skis and be able to go skiing. It looks easy. Without lessons, they find they can walk on skis but they aren't really skiing. There is nothing wrong with walking on skis but if they want to go to the next level, to learn to ski, they should get some instruction."
"It's the same in rowing," Schowalter continued. "A lot of people will see an experienced rower, order a
shell, have an 18-wheeler drop-ship it to their house and end up hating it. Can you imagine doing this on your own?"
No, I can't. Oh, given enough time and perseverance, I imagine I would be a competent rower on my own. Chances are, however, the boat would end up in the Marketplace section of this magazine.
Even at the end of that first lesson, when I had the knowledge of the proper rowing stroke, I found myself
frustrated when my timing was off and I'd "catch a crab," forget to feather the oars, pull too much with my upper body or do any of the other things that cause a stroke to break down.
"You're doing fine," Schowalter would say with an encouraging smile. "All that is to be expected. It's going to take some time, but you'll make a fine rower."
As I struggled back and forth across the bay under Schowalter's watchful eye, occasionally he'd yell out,
"Great strokes! You're doing great! Hey, you're a rower! How's it feel?"
On those occasions when I'd put together a few smooth, efficient strokes, feeling the narrow shell glide straight and true beneath me, legs and arms and back all working together with the boat, I have to say I felt absolutely great.
Another parallel to skiing is that efficiency, not speed, is paramount. Yes, the more efficient you become, the
faster you can go, but speeding up inefficient technique will just cause you to become frustrated and tired.. The best skiers go farther and can ski longer than a more fit individual with poor technique, and it's the same in rowing. I would catch myself gliding smoothly across the water with a few slow, efficient strokes, then try to increase my tempo. Before long I'd be pulling too much with my upper body and not feathering the oars
properly. In short, my technique would just fall completely apart. Schowalter would smile and gently remind me that a slow, efficient stroke is much better at this stage.
Rowing is similar to skiing, but I think the learning curve will be shorter since there is only one basic technique, albeit comprising several parts. In skiing we have numerous techniques for different terrain and
conditions. Schowalter tells me it's all a matter of repetition, and soon it will be as comfortable and as much second nature as riding a bike. Well, almost. We can ride a bike without a lot of concentration. In that respect, rowing is more akin to skiing; you have to continually concentrate on putting it all together to keep that efficient, smooth stroke going.
Because of this mental aspect, Schowalter says rowing is a wonderful stress release because you are not
only getting exercise, you are forced to banish other thoughts – workday worries and family problems – from your mind and concentrate on the simple, pure act of rowing.
"I'll get going and I'll get lost out there," Schowalter says. "All my concentration will be on rowing. I'll leave everything behind and come back in pleasantly exhausted, physically and mentally, sometimes not knowing if I've been out there two hours or a half-hour."
Two days after my introduction to rowing, I'm noticing some soreness in my arms and shoulders, a soreness not entirely unpleasant because it reminds me of that fine late-April afternoon on Lake Superior. It will be a month between my lesson and the time my shell is shipped to Schowalter's rowing center. Before my lesson I toyed with the idea of having the boat drop-shipped directly to my home to avoid the eight- to nine-hour
round trip to Washburn. Now I welcome another chance to spend the afternoon rowing under Schowalter's knowledgeable eye before venturing out on my own. Like a young child waiting for Christmas morning, I wait impatiently for Schowalter's call that the boat is ready to be picked up.
I know there are hours of frustration ahead of me before I can truly call myself a rower, but I eagerly look
forward to the challenge. I can distinctly recall those few times when I managed to pull together three, four or five efficient strokes and propel the shell cleanly through the water. I can still feel the melding of legs, arms and back working together with the boat to glide smoothly across the bay. For that brief moment, I was a rower!
This introduction to recreational rowing is the first in a three-part series. We'll be back later this
summer with an update on how rowing fits into a regular exercise program. The last article will be a fall wrap-up on what it is hoped will have been a season of training on the water.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Internet is a great place for a novice to get information about rowing. A good site is www.rowersworld.com, a clearinghouse for general information with plenty of links, including various manufacturers.
The Joy of Rowing is an open-water rowing center located on English Bay in Vancouver. Its website, www.joyofrowing.com, has a lot of information and links to other good rowing pages.
To contact Alden: Alden Rowing Shells, LLC, 167 1/2 Main St., P.O. Box 368, Eliot, ME 03903; 1-800/477-1507; www.rowalden.com.
Schowalter can be reached at South Shore Open Water Rowing Center, P.O. Box 364, Washburn, WI 54891; 715/373-0794. He offers a variety of lesson possibilities, including groups, and rents shells to competent rowers.
|
