Why Individualized Rigging

In high performance sports, with reference to rowing, when in a Olympic Games or World Championships the first three teams cross the finish line in one second, even a tenth of a second is critical and it makes the difference between gold, silver and bronze.

Specialists in the filed claim that “from training you can gain lengths of boat, from technique, you gain only seconds”. Based on that assumption I claim that you have a very serious reason to grant a higher state of importance to the rigging of the equipment.

We shouldn’t forget that even in training there are some limits: the developing of biometric qualities has almost reached its human limits, training methods are know world wide by most of the coaches (there aren’t great differences from the way sportsmen train in America, Asia, Australia or Europe).

A correct rigging and a continue preocupation to find the maximum of eficiency contribues to the improvement of the rowing experience.

Let me quote the authors of the book “Canotajul”, the well known coaches Victor Moceani and Corneliu Florescu:

A subjective appreciation, with an acceptable error is the fact that 50% of the effort made by sportsmen in training goes down the drain and does not contribute with anything to the increasing of the specific posibilities in rowing(…)
If the first way of increasing the quantinty of training is relatively accesible, especially from the coach’s point of view, the second one, the quality, is troublesome for organization and profesional competence, with a long stroke.

Also don’t forget about the famous researcher Corneliu Radut, the one who along his whole activity had made a important contribution to the Romanian rowing.

The inevitable questions that need to be answered when it comes to rigging the rowing equipements:

  1. Why should one do the rigging of the equipments?For the rowing to be more efficient, more ergonomic and to obtain a better performance.
  2. What equipments are actually rigged?The competition equipments – oars (total length, inboard and outbard length); boat components: footstreatcher, height of gate, rails (slides).
  3. Who benefits from this rigging?The sportman, as a key element in obtaining performance.

The sportman shouldn’t adapt to the rowing equipments, but the other way around. A sportman is characterised by a total of parameters. For the sake of simplicity I’ll only consider three of these parameters:

  • trunk height;
  • shoulders breadth;
  • specific amplitude (length of stoke).

Distance between sill gate to water level depends on the trunk’s height. Span/spread and the inboard length of the oar depend on the shoulders breadth and the specific amplitude. If the first two parameters are easy to measure, the third one, the specific amplitude can be obtained in different ways:

  • while the sportman is in boat, the distance between attack (catch) and finish position;
  • while the sportman is on the rowing ergometer – again distance between attack (catch) and finish position;
  • using a deduction method, considering several parameters of the sportman – the method I prefer.

Two sportsmen can have the same specific amplitude, but the ratio trunk/leg or the ratio thigh/calf can be different, fact that requires a different rigging.

We can continue with the reasearch at the point of the selecting the sportsmen even, mentioning that a sportman with a longer thigh and a shorter calf has a slight advantage to a sportman with the same foot length but with the thigh/calf ratio reversed.

Likewise two sportsmen with the same height, but one with longer feet and shorter trunk in comparison with the other – shorter feet, longer trunk the former has an advantage too.

Because of these facts i consider that individualized rigging in the field of rowing offers advantages which deserve to be noted.