Three cheap and simple hacks to help your sculling. Small clever fixes to real problems that scullers deal with all the time. One for your head, your wrists and your blade depth.
Timestamps
01:00 Sculling Hacks for self-coaching
Sculling technique faults are very subtle and you can't always feel them from inside the boat. These three hacks move that feedback from external to the boat (from your coach) to inside (you can feel changes yourself and can act on them).
01:50 Hat brim position
If you move your head during the stroke, this is the hack for you. Ideally you want your head to be in line with your spine during the stroke and to stay in line when you swing your body back/forwards. The head is heavy - 15 lbs or 7 kg. Wear a cap with a stiff brim so that you can see the horizon from under the cap brim.
The horizon is always horizontal - pick a single point to watch (a tree, a house, the back of the head of the person in front). Keep an eye on the horizon point while you row - this will give you clues about how your head moves.
05:30 Wrist tape
When feathering in sculling you want to use your fingers and not your wrist. Take a piece of tape from your forearm across your wrist towards your knuckles - masking tape / electrical tape / micropore are all suitable. If you move your wrist it will pull on your arm hairs and serve as a reminder. As a rule of thumb tape 20 minutes before you start rowing - this gives time for the adhesive to bond with your skin.
07:30 Shaft tape
A hack for those whose oar spoons go too shallow, too deep or corrugate through the stroke. Tape the oar so that when the oar is sitting in the water at the correct depth, you can just see white tape on the oar shaft.
How to position the tape - sit in the boat with it level and put the oar, squared, into the water carefully so you don't get the shaft wet. Let go of the handles and the blade will naturally sit at the correct depth. The blade will tend to sit 1 cm above the water surface (this gets covered up when you are rowing as you push a mound of water in front of the spoon). Track where the shaft gets wet and that's where you put the white tape. Measure the distance from the spoon insertion point and you can then put tape on other oars at the same place.
As you row, the white tape is then above the water surface while you are rowing - adjust your handle height so that the tape stays visible.
Further resources
- Sweep rowing hacks - our companion episode for sweep
