News

Got a lovely photo from Malvern Prep school who have an 8 man Dreher sculling tank installed.

You can see coach Craig Hoffman in the background (he's the one holding the paper).  

The lads use the special Dreher tank sculls and you can clearly see the the bolt-together sections of the tank along the back wall, the walkway so coaches can get close to correct athletes' technique and the mirrors so athletes can see themselves.

We interviewed Coach Hoffman for the newsletter at Henley Royal Regatta.

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Dear Rowperfect community

Welcome to another year of Rowing (and training) perfectly.  We were reminded at the ARA conference that only perfect practice makes perfect!  Nice words to support our mission to sell products that lead to improved technical excellence in rowing, sculling and coaching for clubs, athletes and coaches in the UK.

The Rowperfect Seminar will be on the night before the Eights Head in London (Friday 30th March) and we are delighted that Jim Flood will lead an interactive workshop on “The Skill of Coaching”.  More details are below and on the website.  Please can you help us to publicise it by circulating this notice around your club’s email list?

We have launched a blog on the website news page.  Here you can comment on articles and start ‘conversations’ with other coaches and athletes about the topics we write about.  We are keen to become a useful learning resource and so all articles are categorized for easy reference.  Categories include coaching, equipment and testing.

Please let us know what you think of the new design and any improvements you’d like.

Rebecca Caroe and Grant Craies, Rowperfect UK
 

Coaching – Achieving the best results possible: Rowperfect Seminar 2007

Rowperfect UK is keen to support improved technical excellence in rowing, sculling and coaching for clubs, athletes and coaches in the UK.  Each year we host a seminar for the purpose of coach education.  Past speakers have included Harry Mahon, Martin McElroy, Paul Thompson, Rosie Mayglothling, and in 2006, Duncan Holland.  The seminar slides are published after each event. 
This workshop is about two things; the knowledge and communications skills of the coach and how to ‘balance the boat’ so that the best possible results can be achieved.

In order to achieve this, a skilled coach has to be able to educate crews and individuals (shape their knowledge to each individual rather than the individual to the coaches knowledge) rather than the coach retaining power and control which limits the achievements of the athletes and may prevent them achieving their potential.  Effective communication skills in the coach enables this process to begin.
Then a coach must know the techniques required plus the process of implementing them.  A coach must also know how to develop the best teams/crews possible with the skills available.

Broad aims:
This will be an interactive workshop to explore the ways in which communication between coach and crews can be improved. It will introduce techniques for analysing lack of progress and in particular, suggest ideas for achieving rapid results with beginners and improvers.

Learning outcomes:
At the end of the session, participants should be able to:

• Analyse how they communicate with crews and have new techniques to try out with the aim of improving this aspect of their coaching
• Understand the way in which feelings can be created by using words and how to use this technique when coaching
• Try out some practical communication methods to enable beginners and improvers to make quicker progress
• Understand the possibilities and limitations of athletes and crews participating in the coaching process
• Handling troublesome individuals

Venue is:

Kings College School Boathouse,
Putney Embankment. 

Starting:

7 pm and running until 9 pm;
Friday 30th March, 2007. 

To book a place email us.  The entry fee is payable on the door of £5 to cover costs.  Last year we ‘sold out’ and so please do reserve your place.

Rowperfect News Blog

You have probably all heard about “Blogs” or Web-logs as online journals or newspapers.  Here at Rowperfect we have made our news page on the website into a blog.  This means that instead of just reading our news – you have the opportunity to talk back and start a conversation with us and other readers.

When you read a news item on the blog, below it are the word “Comment” or “No Comment” in blue type.  Click this and a new page opens with a form which you can use to write your comment and send it to us.  This will be published on the blog so that others can see what you think and whether you agree or disagree.   

You can subscribe to receive the blog news as it is written by hitting the RSS Feed button which will add it to your bookmarks.
The button is bottom right of this page under the Categories list.  Or if you have a Bloglines, Google or Yahoo account you can click the relevant button and have it delivered to your account direct.  We hope that this will make the news section a place you will want to come back to more regularly and will use as a resource and information source for your own coaching and rowing.  

There are quite a lot of people writing about rowing, sculling, coaching and race results online in the form of blogs.  If you are interested in finding the addresses of more of them – drop us a line and we’ll write about it in the blog so that everyone can see where to find interesting people writing interesting stuff about our sport online.

New Rowperfect Design

There has been a lot of correspondence about the new Rowperfect design.  Photos are on the news page and we hope that the first models will be delivered to the UK after Easter. 
A line drawing of the new Rowperfect Indoor Sculler model.

Indoor Rowing Tanks

Several clubs have approached us to ask about the Durham Boat designed indoor rowing and sculling tanks.  We wrote an article showing photos of a tank being installed and got these very prescient questions from a prospective customer.I was wondering how the tank is designed.

I for instance noted the V shape on the bottom of the tank. I assume this is to assist the two opposite waterflows to be separated from each other?

I was wondering how the problem of sculling vs sweep rowing is solved in this tank. Since sculls of course are much shorter than sweeps, the place of the blade in the tank is different.

I read on the Durham BC site that special tank-oars and sculls are used. I was also wondering whether the proportions of the tank are the same as rowing in a boat (thus about 30 cm of 'overlap' of the oar for sweep rowing) and the same angles of catch and finish as in the boat.

And whether it is possible to also use big blade-shaped oars, since these have a very different catch (next to their overall behaviour in the water).

Durham Boat have written some answers… but you’ll have to go to the News article  for the full detail. 

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Since we published the news item with the photographs of an indoor rowing tank being installed, we have had quite a lot of interest.

Here are some questions from a prospective tank customer which may be of interest to more people.  And the answers we received from Durham Boat are below.

I was wondering how the tank is designed.

I noted the V shape on the bottom of the tank. I assume this is to assist the two opposite waterflows to be separated from each other?

I was wondering how the problem of sculling vs sweep rowing is solved in this tank. Since sculls of course are much shorter than sweeps, the place of the blade in the tank is different. I read on the Durham Boat website that special tank-oars and sculls are used. 

I was also wondering whether the proportions of the tank are the same as rowing in a boat (thus about 30 cm of 'overlap' of the oar for sweep rowing) and the same angles of catch and finish as in the boat. 

And whether it is possible to also use bigblade-shaped oars, since these have a very different catch (next to their overall behaviour in the water). 

Durham Boat's answers

In answer to your questions about the tank design:  The tank has a peak that directs the water flow, but allows spill over from one side to the other to keep the depth equalized.  The design is based upon minimizing the volume of water to be pushed around the tank and having as little friction as possible with the smooth surface and rounded corners. 

One of the keys to keeping the water volume down was done by scaling the sweep oars down in size.  Many historical tanks use a full-sized sweep oar and have a much deeper tank.  As a consequence, it takes so much energy and the load is too heavy.  What happens is that blades are cut down or made with a wire outline.  As the blade area is reduced the resistance is less, but less energy is imparted into the tank to move the water.

Because we are attempting to move as much water as we can, Durham Boat tanks have a sweep oar that is made with a scull shaft and full sized scull blade with a special sweep handle that will fit into a scull shaft. 

In tank rigging to get the lightest load, you have to get the blade tip as close the outside wall to get into the fastest water. This is counter-intuitive to most of our coaches.  They are used to shortening the oar length to lighten the load.  Another way some of our customers adjust load is with water height and by rowing all 8-sweeps on one side from time to time.  The tank has great versatility.

Most of our customers find it too much trouble to change the spread (span) when going from sweep to sculling and will optimize their rig on one or the other.  To get the most out of the tank, the proper method is to move the pins wider for sculling.  When customers are interested in doing this we have provided a plate with two holes to allow spread/span adjustment.

Our customers are supplied with Macon shaped blades for both sweep and sculling (the sculling blades are cut-down).  I think that a narrower blade works best with our design constraint to keep water depth and total water volume at a minimum.  We could do a hatchet blade and would have to cut down the inner part of blade and use our narrowest hatchet (Little Big Blade).  Also we would have to increase the shaft length. 

There are differences in tank rowing, just as there are differences in erg rowing.  However our customers find that it is the best off season teaching tool for improving blade skills and blade work, which is the limiting factor in getting one up to speed on the water. 

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Ever thought of installing an indoor rowing tank?

Durham Boat has devised a
tank that is modular and holds a lower volume of water than other designs.  This
enables athletes to row higher rates without the expense of a pumped water
tank.

Their pricing is around
half to two thirds comparable tanks.  We got a quote for a Putney club for an 8
man sculling and rowing tank in November 2006 and it was £75,000 including
delivery and fitting but excluding VAT.

Here is a series of photos showing an installation, fitting and final layout of an 8 man tank to Hudson River Rowing Association, USA.

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