Rowing Proformance

Question
hey, i was wondering how to improve my rowing performance, because, for a 6k my urg split is 2:10, but when i get out on the water, i seem to always make too fast of a recovery (go back to the catch) and catch crabs allot, also i feel more tired out in the water after about 1k and i have do do races that are 5-6k, do you know what i can do?

Answer
Hi Mo: First off, I am assuming you are a woman.  Your erg times are good.  But as I tell many people, erg results and on-water perfromance are not always directly related.  I've seen people pull great erg scores and be a liability in the boat (you can't crab on the erg).  As for myself, I wasn't the greatest on the erg, but I could beat people with higher erg scores in single sculls.

Crabbing is a serious error in rowing that must be corrected ASAP.  Recovery crabs are pretty rare compared to crabs at the catch.  Without seeing video of you, I'd suspect either you are over feathering the oar (i.e., the blade is pitched in a way that it plunges into the water as you come up to the catch) or your hand level coming up to the catch is too high and allowing the blade to dip and catch the water.

You need to really focus on clean releases at the finish, making sure your blade is exactly parallel to the water coming up to the catch, and that you are pushing your hands down after the finish to elevate the blade so it stays clear of the water and won't catch an edge, resulting in a deadly crab.

As for your on-water conditioning, I can only speculate that on the water there are many factors that contribute to fatigue when the boat is not moving too well.  These include: bad set preventing you from getting a good effective stroke, blades dragging on the water, and/or bad slide ratio (i.e., it takes longer to pull your oar through the water than it does to come up on your slide). Some of these issues won't come up on the erg, but do come up on the water.  I also am guessing that your wrists and forearms are getting tired and sore.  This is not only painful, but could be causing your crabbing issues.

I don't have any magic secret that will make you row less tired.  You might want to augment your off-water training with a good weight lifting routine and running if you have not done so.  Your lifting should emphasize light weights and high reps of the major rowing muscles -- so do squats, seated leg press, seated rowing and bench press.  You may also want to consider exercising your forearms with exercises like reverse curls and seated wrist rolls.  Sharper Image sells a need little device that exercises your wrist and hands.  A link on the gyroball is below:

http://www.powerballs.com/?gclid=CJSBuerHoZYCFQVfFQodXDiU5w

Good Luck/AP