Sculling E-Book

Paul Thompson

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Whether you are about to go out in a sculling boat for the first time, simply enjoy recreational sculling, or have aspirations to be a member of the national team, this book contains information that will help you to improve your performance and maximize your potential. Sculling considers the principles that underlie training, technique and the correct adjustment of the boat's rigging and gearing. It also offers practical advice on how those principles can be applied. In addition, the book covers a wide range of other important subjects, including; technique and training; confidence building and mental skills; racing strategies; physiological requirements; healthy sculling, nutrition and injury prevention; effective learning and coaching; safety; and different types and designs of sculling boats, blades and equipment. Written by an internationally successful rowing and sculling coach, this comprehensive book will be invaluable to all scullers and their coaches.

Leseprobe

Sculling

Training, Technique & Performance

Paul Thompson

The Crowood Press

First published in 2005 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Paul Thompson 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 061 4

Disclaimer

Please note that the author and the publisher of this book are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any damage, or injury of any kind, that may result from practising, or applying, the techniques and methods and/or following the instructions described in this publication. Since the physical activities described in this book may be too strenuous in nature for some readers to engage in safely, it is essential that a doctor be consulted prior to undertaking training and sculling activities of any kind.

Throughout this book ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’ are used as neutral pronouns and as such refer to both males and females.

Illustration Acknowledgements

Photographs by the author.

Line drawings by Ben Webb.

Contents

Foreword

Dedication and Acknowledgements

Preface

1     Introduction

2     Sculling Fundamentals

3     Principles of Sculling

4     Sculling Technique

5     Rigging

6     Physiological Requirements of Sculling

7     Training to Improve Your Sculling

8     Mental Skills and Racing Strategies

9     Healthy Sculling and Injury Prevention

10   Effective Learning and Coaching

11   Sculling Boats and Equipment

12   The Last Word

Glossary

Further Reading

Appendix I: Sample Training Sessions

Appendix II: Two-Week Taper

Appendix III: Weights Testing Protocol

Index

Foreword

Sculling has always been a mystery to me. My very first moments in a boat were in a single scull. Feeling a little nervous, I was pushed off into mid-stream and in seconds was rewarded with a swim. But within a few days the confidence had returned and I was getting the very first basics of the discipline.

Sculling has always remained at the very top level an illusion to me. I can do it to a certain standard but I would never have been as successful a sculler as a rower. Part of it is confidence, part technique but, most importantly, I didn’t have the desire ‘to go it alone’. I never could do the training alone or, indeed, go out to face the world alone. To those that did I will always have time and a huge amount of respect.

Paul Thompson’s book, Sculling: Training, Technique and Performance, provides the reader not only with the opportunity to understand the principles behind the methods but also presents invaluable advice which will enable the sculler to improve his performance. This volume is a great resource for scullers of all levels who want to combine balance, power and rhythm to make their boat sing.

Sir Matthew Pinsent CBEBritish Rower and QuadrupleOlympic Gold Medallist

Dedication

Dedicated to my two boys, Jordan and Lachlan.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my partner, Alison, for her unfailing support, ideas, patience and editorial advice; along with my father, John, whose belief, guidance, advice and editorial support have been invaluable.

Thanks also to Miles Forbes-Thomas, Steve Kerr, Craig Williams, Al Smith, Julian Jones, Chris Shambrook, Colin Brown and David Tanner for their chapter reviews and comments, and to Ben Webb who provided some outstanding illustrations, the like of which I could only dream of drawing.

I would also like to thank Lizzie Webb and Harry Wardle for their influence on resistance training for rowers and scullers, and Frances Houghton, Sarah Winckless, Bev Gough and Marcel Hacker for agreeing to be photographed demonstrating the skills that have seen them excel as international athletes. Chris Dodd from the River and Rowing Museum at Henley provided expert guidance and advice for which I am grateful.

I would also like to acknowledge the Amateur Rowing Association and thank them for the use of their educational material.

Finally, I would like to thank all the rowers and scullers I have coached, the coaches I have had and coached with, to whom I owe so much for the enjoyment that sculling, rowing and coaching gives me. Thanks also to those who gave me their time to talk about sculling and to Sir Matthew Pinsent for his Foreword.

Preface

I have been fortunate throughout my rowing and coaching career to have rowed and worked with some exceptionally talented people, not only rowers and coaches but also scientists and medical support staff, who have all shared a burning desire to see rowers and scullers realize their full potential and achieve outstanding performances on the world stage. These colleagues have always challenged my thinking on how to do things differently, rather than simply encouraging me to adopt the ‘harder or more of it’ philosophy. In this book I have attempted to explain up-to-date and cutting-edge concepts and principles, while giving practical advice on how these may be incorporated into sculling. I should add that I have used these principles with national crews with great success. Whether you are a coach, a keen club member, Masters sculler, national team aspirant, or simply enjoy the occasional recreational scull, I hope to challenge your thinking. My objective in writing this book is to move you closer to attaining the level of sculling to which you aspire and also to increase your enjoyment of the sport even more.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Rowing has been used over the centuries for many different purposes, including trade, transport and military operations, as well as for sport and recreation. In Stowe’s survey of London in 1598 he reported that 40,000 men made their living on or associated with the Thames.

On British waterways, the watermen would row their wherries. The wherry boat was the water taxi of the pre-steam age, used to transport passengers from one side of the river to the other. The wherry could be sculled by one or two men or rowed by two. It is believed that in the eighteenth century, the Watermen’s Company had 10,000 men working the Thames from Gravesend to Richmond.

To celebrate the anniversary of the House of Hanover’s accession to the English throne, Thomas Doggett founded a race for apprentice watermen in 1715. The tradition has continued to this day and, as such, it is reputed to be the oldest annual sporting event in the world. Winners of the race become eligible to row the royal barge on state occasions.

During the nineteenth century, the introduction of the sliding seat allowed for greater power in the stroke to come from the use of the legs. Another innovation was the swivelling gate on the outrigger which increased the effective stroke length, and a more efficient hydrodynamic hull shape was developed with the keel inside the boat. As a result, the working boat became faster and sleeker, eventually evolving into the racing shells we see today.

From the water taxi to the racing shell.

Sculling became a source of great national pride amongst the emerging nations of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. In 1788, the British in the penal colony of New South Wales banned rowing for fear of escape attempts by convicts; however, by 1818 there were organized races among the crews of ships in port. In 1876, Sydneysider Ed Trickett travelled to the mother country to make a challenge for the world sculling title. He won by four lengths and returned home a hero and Australia’s first sporting world champion. The Canadians were also boating through their waterways at this time. In London in 1880, Ned Hanlan, who was already the professional champion of England, Canada and the USA, became Canada’s first sporting world champion by beating Trickett.

A year prior to the first professional world sculling championship in 1830, the first amateur championship, the Wingfield Sculls, was raced on the Thames. However, while the Wingfield Sculls are still raced today, the professional championships declined in popularity between the two world wars and have not been raced since the 1950s.

By the late nineteenth century, great debate had arisen about the definition of an amateur sportsman. Status rules were devised by bodies such as the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA), formed in 1882, and the Henley Royal Regatta stewards as to who could enter amateur regattas. These rules were primarily concerned with what an amateur was not. He was not a mechanic or a professional; nor could he have taken part in athletic competition for prize money, entrance fees or against a professional. He could not earn a living from teaching or pursue a livelihood associated with athletic endeavours. He definitely was not a manual labourer, employed on or around boats, or received wages. The amateur rowing competitor was also certainly not a woman! The National Amateur Rowing Association, formed in 1890, had a similar definition of the amateur except the manual labour clause was omitted.

The Henley Royal Regatta was first organized by the mayor and people of Henley in 1839 and held in conjunction with a fair and other public amusements. In 1881, it received its royal patronage from HRH Prince Albert, a tradition that has been upheld by each reigning monarch since his death. As the Henley Royal Regatta was instituted prior to the formation of the ARA or the International Rowing Federation (FISA) it has its own rules and does not fall under the jurisdiction of either. It has been organized and run by a self-selecting group of stewards since 1884.

In 1920, the Henley stewards refused the entry of the American amateur J.B. Kelly for the blue ribbon Diamond Sculls event. This may have been because it was rumoured that Kelly had once been an apprentice bricklayer but probably had more to do with the fact that he had a very good chance of winning! Kelly had been looking forward to a showdown with Jack Beresford Jr, the outstanding British sculler of the day, who went on to win that year.

Two months later, in the Olympic final in Antwerp, Kelly won the title by one second. Beresford went on to win medals for Great Britain at five successive Olympic Games between 1920 and 1936. This record was only recently surpassed by Sir Steven Redgrave who won six medals (five of which were gold) from five consecutive Olympics.

Founded in Italy in 1892, FISA is the oldest international sporting federation in the Olympic movement. The first European Championships were held in 1893 and continued until 1962 when the first World Championships were held. Currently, FISA organize world and age-limited championships annually, and scullers and rowers have the opportunity to compete every four years in the Olympic Games.

In 1956, after sixty-five years of co-existence, the ARA and the National Amateur Rowing Association merged to form the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) as we know it today.

The ARA is the national umbrella organization for a vibrant sport that now has over 20,000 members in more than 500 clubs throughout England. Its many activities include ‘Project Oarsome’, a programme funded through Sport England and the Henley Stewards’ Charitable Trust, that aims to introduce 30,000 youngsters aged between eleven and fourteen to rowing. Its ‘World Class Start’ programme, also funded by Sport England, has tested around 30,000 school and university students throughout England in a search for the next generation of international rowing and sculling stars.

Scotland has thirty-five rowing clubs with a total membership of approximately 2,000; Wales has twenty-five clubs and Northern Ireland has twenty.

There are many competitions throughout the UK and around the coast in both specially designed and traditional boats. Today, the number of competitors in major events is extremely healthy. The Fours Head, raced in November each year on the Thames, can have up to 500 crews on the water at the same time; while in March the Eights Head races will have 350 women crews entered and the men 450.

The rowing world has often been blessed with two outstanding opposing athletes at the same time and this has produced some epic races on the water. The battle between such individuals can be fascinating; their rivalry and tactics often reflecting their personalities.

‘Sculling is like theatre, that’s why it’s so interesting,’ says prominent rowing author, journalist and rowing curator at Henley’s River and Rowing Museum, Christopher Dodd. He laments how often scullers that have dominated the world have come in pairs. The American Jack Kelly and Britain’s Jack Beresford Jr in the 1920s; the Russian Vjacheslav Ivanov and the colourful Australian Stuart Mackenzie in the 1950s and 1960s; and in the 1970s and early 1980s, West German Peter-Michael Kolbe and the mighty Finnish sculler Pertti Karppinen. Kolbe then went on to fight ferocious battles with East German Thomas Lange when Karppinen left the single and raced in crew boats. More recently, the sculling races have become more and more competitive amongst a number of scullers. The New Zealander, Rob Waddell, the Olympic Champion in 2000 and Xeno Mueller the Swiss Olympic Champion in 1996 who Dodd saw in Atlanta as racing from the start with ‘the knowledge he was going to win written on his face.’

The finals of the men’s and women’s races in the Athens Olympic single scull were both exciting and fiercely competitive events. In the men’s race, Norwegian Olaf Tufte came from behind after being passed by the rejuvenated Estonian veteran, Jueri Jaanson. Jaanson led after 1,000m only to fade and be overtaken in the last 300m by Tufte to claim the Olympic title. In the women’s final, Belarusian Ekaterina Karsten was going for her third consecutive Olympic title only to be overtaken by German sculler, Katrin Ruschow-Stomporowski, who came from fifth position after 500m.

This book is about sculling, how to improve your technique and coaching skills, but what is it that separates sculling from rowing? Is it merely that the sculler has an oar in each hand and the rower just one oar for both, or does the lone sculler have different character traits to crew boat rowers?

The single sculls race at the World Championships and Olympics is ‘the battle of the best individual athletes. The winning single is genuinely the best rower at the regatta’ according to Brian Richardson, head coach to the Canadian Olympic rowing team in 1996 and 2004. Richardson coached Canadian Derek Porter to the single sculls world title in 1993 and a silver medal at the Atlanta Olympics.

The single sculler has nowhere to hide – he must rely on his own skills, strengths and mental toughness, but the enjoyment of success will be his alone, so is responsibility for failure.

Hard-nosed Australian, Peter Antonie, lightweight single sculling world champion and Olympic heavyweight double sculls champion, describes the mindset necessary for success in single sculling thus: ‘There had to be only one bottom line, the buck stops with me. I had to live and die on the performance that I could or couldn’t do’.

Antonie was one of the few scullers or rowers to have made the transition from lightweight to heavyweight. In 1992, he and another former lightweight, Steve Hawkins, won the heavyweight double sculls at the Barcelona Olympics. For Antonie this was the perfect race, ‘It is clearly the best race I’ve ever rowed, it was spot on. We were out of the blocks as fast as we could go. I felt like I was out of the boat watching it from outside’.

For three-time world lightweight single sculls champion, Scotsman Peter Haining, single sculling is about self-expression. ‘Sculling is about showing off, expressing yourself. Showing how the constraints and deprivation through the long hours of training can be released through a race. In the race you are like a cork exploding out of a champagne bottle.’

Haining recalls the final of the men’s lightweight single sculls at the 1986 World Championships held in the UK. Peter Antonie had opened up a large lead on the defending world champion from Denmark, Bjarne Eltang. However, Antonie had rowed himself almost to a standstill in the last few hundred meters of the race and Eltang was gaining on him with every stroke. Haining was impressed by the tenacity and determination that enabled Antonie to hold off Eltang by the barest of margins to take the world title: ‘This race was about an athlete refusing to lose, it was total desperation’.

Haining had his own desperate races. In the 1993 world title he was comfortably leading the final of the men’s lightweight single sculls through 1,500m when his blade caught a lane buoy and the boat stopped dead in the water. This allowed Australian Olympic double sculls champion Steve Hawkins, who had returned to lightweight sculling, to burst past him. Haining, however, with an unrelenting 300m sprint rating forty strokes a minute, pulled back the large lead from Hawkins to win the race. Haining described how it was:

…like watching a movie. I could see myself, as well as the others. I could feel everything but nothing. When I caught the buoy I went straight to my plan B strategy which I had worked on with my coach, Miles Forbes-Thomas. During training, Miles had me doing seven-minute workouts on the leg press machine in the gym. He would suddenly jump on the weights and stop me, ‘You’ve caught a buoy what are you going to do?’ When I caught the buoy I had rehearsed the situation over and over – I went ballistic! I had to win; if I did not win I could not afford to keep sculling. I had to justify the faith others had put in me. I went that hard my foot stretcher broke!

Haining has kept the foot stretcher. He also kept the buoy. George Parsonage, one of his previous coaches, retrieved it from the water. He had it mounted in a glass case and presented it to Haining at a rowing dinner.

Sculling can be a body and mind experience. It can provide you with physical and mental challenges. In the single you can be as good as you will let yourself be.

CHAPTER 2

Sculling Fundamentals

BOAT TYPES

There are primarily three types of sculling boat: the single-, double- and quadruple-scull. These are propelled by one, two or four scullers, respectively.

The single-sculling boat (1×) is approximately 8m in length and has a minimum racing weight of 14kg.

The single-scull.

The double-sculling boat (2×) is approximately 9.9m in length and has a minimum racing weight of 27kg.