Erging is Not Rowing

Why we Erg

With the start of the school year, a lot of teams are recruiting new athletes and teaching them how to row. It’s a super exciting time, and as a novice in college myself, I’m always excited to see teams make an active push to attract more athletes.

The first thing that coaches usually do to teach people how to Row, though, is put them on a Concept2 static indoor rower (henceforth, an Erg). And I’m torn about this.

On one hand, there is no better way to have a large number of people simulate the rowing stroke in a stable, coachable environment. But on the other hand, you are ingraining bad habits (bad = not contributing to boat speed) right from day one. Habits that will take many many focused strokes on the water to undo.

Handle Force and Foot-stretcher Force

In both Erging and Rowing, you need to apply forces. One is the force on the drive to move the handles — this is the same (roughly, wait for part II) on the Erg and in the Boat. On the Erg, this is attached to the flywheel; in the boat, this is levering the boat past the water. This averages about 200-300 Newtons for women or 300-400 Newtons for men, with higher peaks (Note 1).

What is vastly different between the Boat and the Erg is the force needed at the front end of the stroke, when we change from moving towards the Boat/Erg to moving away from the Boat/Erg.

(For those of you who are still struggling with your physics homework, see note 2)

Math: Erging is 3-5x as hard

(at the front end)

On the Erg, you need to apply force to change the direction of the movement of your body weight (130-200 lbs) relative to the Erg, which does not move relative to the ground. 

In the Boat, your body changes velocity relative to the Boat, which is also moving relative to you and to the earth. If you weigh 4x as much as the shell, then you will accelerate at ¼ the rate as the shell. (note 3)

Let’s approximate that, at race pace, a rower accelerates around the front end at 10 m/s^2 (this is roughly correct — see below). On the Erg, for an average weight rower, this requires a force of 800 Newtons (80 kg * 10 m/s^2). 

In comparison, let’s say that the mass of the rower is 80kg and the mass of the Boat 20kg. If we want the acceleration around the front end to be the same, 10 m/s^2, then we only need to apply a force of 160 Newtons (see note 4). So we see that, theoretically, the Erg requires 5 times as much force.

To see a similar, data-driven result, we can look at a real-world example of measured foot-stretcher force. Using data from Kleshnev (see note 5), we can see that, in the boat, the athlete’s force on the footplate is about 340 N at the front end. The peak acceleration of the seat relative to the boat is ~13 m/s^2, which breaks down as the rower accelerating at about 4 m/s^2 and the boat decelerating at 9 m/s^2 (4 + 9 = 13) (see note 6). If he tries to keep the same movement on the Erg, with the body weight still accelerating at 13 m/s^2, this gives us an estimated stretcher force of F = 85 kg * 13 m/s^2 = 1105 N.

The data shows that, for the same athlete to achieve that movement and acceleration on the Erg, he would need to apply over 3 times the amount of force at the front end.

Ok, how does this apply?

Practicing any athletic motion repeatedly causes neural pathways to form and strengthen, aka Muscle Memory. Especially with athletes just learning to row, their very first introduction to the rowing stroke has them applying three to five times as much force around the front end as they need to. 

What does this error look like in the Boat?

1) Athletes “bombing” into the catch, trying to load up their muscles like a spring (which you can do on the erg)

2) Rowers going through the front end of the stroke with their blade/s out of the water.

Athletes, accustomed to putting down 800 Newtons of force at the front end, now accelerate four times as fast around the front end, giving themselves a tiny window of time to put the blades in at the right time. Also, if they do happen to put the blade in at the right time, it will feel immensely heavy to them, since they are trying to accelerate so fast. 

To achieve the same acceleration around the front end, without any force on the handles, they need to be in control a lot softer — using 1/4 of the force that they are used to in the last inches of the recovery and the top inches of the drive. 

Then, once the blades are in the water, they can put their 800 Newtons on the footplate and into the handles.

Do sliders or dynamic ergs help?

Yes, all of these are much better options than the static erg, because at the front end, your body weight stays roughly in place and you can focus on changing the movement of the machine itself.

How should I coach this?

Coaches — here’s what you’re trying to get the athletes to feel. Take two chairs — one an office chair with wheels and another static chair, desk, or table. First, sit in the office chair as if it is the seat, roll up to a static point, and push off. This is what Erging is like. Next, switch seats. Sit in the static chair/desk/table and put your feet on the wheeled one. Bring your feet towards you, and then push the chair away. This is what the front end in the Boat should feel like. 

If you’re moving your athletes from the Erg to the Boat, this is a high-priority topic to coach. Make sure that your athletes can feel that the boat is moving underneath them. The catch/front end is coming “towards” them, they are NOT rolling up “towards the catch”.

Will slowing down on the recovery help?

Yes and no.

You can still apply too much force even if you go super slow, but moving at an even pace the whole way is better than being too fast.

Even if you are crawling up the last few inches of the slide at a snail’s pace, an athlete can still try to accelerate very quickly and apply a lot of force at the catch. Think rowing on the erg with a pause at the catch — you can still jump on it as hard as you want.

However, moving at an even pace on the recovery is usually* better than trying to “accelerate into the catch”. It is much easier to control your limbs and body weight around the front end if you are … controlled on the slide. “Bombing” into the catch can load up your muscles like a spring, which makes it harder to match the speed of the boat around the front end and put your blade in at the right time. It’s easier to over-do the force and speed in the top inches of the drive if you’re trying to “jump” off the footplate. 

*It’s not impossible to put the blade in at the right time and drive the boat well if you do this, but in my experience and opinion, accelerating into the front end makes these things much harder.

The end

So, hope you can understand now why Erging is Not Rowing and how you can work on making the boat faster.

✌🏼