Schubschlag vs Kernschlag
Peter Mallory in "The Sport of Rowing: Two Centuries of Competition"
3/14/15
See also The ferryman's or Schubschlag finish, as Mallory calls it.
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What is the essence of Schubschlag? You ask a pertinent question, but I'm not sure if there exists online or anywhere else a short, complete and concise answer that will satisfy anyone. Let's at least agree on a definition for the benefit of the other readers of this newsletter. Schubschlag is a term first used by the scientists and rowing coaches of the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and '70s. It means "thrust stroke" and is contrasted with Kernschlag, which means "solid stroke with a hard beginning." In essence, a Kernschlag rower emphasizes the front half, often exploding with the legs at the catch, while a Schubschlag rower emphasizes acceleration from entry to release. In practice, they are VERY different, polar opposites, in fact, each with distinctive force curves. Throughout history back to the beginning, many coaches have taught or at least encouraged Schubschlag, but they usually saw it as the natural way that didn't need description, so they didn't bother trying. In your own rowing career, you have been coached by some of the greats of our time, but for the most part they have also been short on descriptions of force application. I remember Mike Teti telling me that when he sends a boat out to race, he doesn't want their heads filled with technique this and technique that. He wants them focusing 100% on racing. Harry Parker was famously a man of very few words, but he created a world of seat racing where his highly competitive athletes could figure things out for themselves, including the most effective way to pull. Mike Spracklen depends on intra-team competitions in pairs and lets the pairs do the teaching more effectively than any words from him ever could. No concise discussions of Schubschlag from these guys! Another coach you were fortunate to work with, Charley Butt, now he's a horse of a different color. To my knowledge, he doesn't use the term Schubschlag, but he describes the concept at length to his athletes, and it is written all over the boats he coaches. You have confirmed this in our recent conversation. Not everybody uses the term Schubschlag. Apparently, the University of Washington women call it "The Kevin Sauer Method." Whatever you call it makes no real difference as long as you're doing it. Steve Fairbairn described Schubschlag without knowing the term - "water boiling aft!" - but I'm afraid he was the polar opposite of concise. Karl Adam of Ratzeburg Ruderclub and Theo Korner of the German Democratic Republic were aware of the two alternatives - Schubschlag and Kernschlag - but neither was really in the business of proselytizing, and so they never dwelt much on the differences. What they did say I have presented in The Sport of Rowing. I believe I have spent the most time and effort of anyone in history attempting to describe the advantages of Schubschlag, but I, too, have danced around the subject. Why? Because discussions of rowing philosophy are fraught with real and often caustic passion! I have received so much ridicule from those who believe in Kernschlag with their quasi-religious fervor that I tend to hide behind the words and examples of respected coaches of the past (The Sport of Rowing) or sugar coat the message with amusing stories and anecdotes (An Out-of-Boat Experience). But for you and your boys, let me try one more time.
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Water. Getting through water is the greatest challenge a rower faces. How does one do that? Look at a fish, the thrust of its tail. Is that Schubschlag or Kernschlag? I rest my case. ------------------------------------------------------ Seriously. I could stop there. I probably should. But let me say just a couple more things. Banging the catch is just so darn satisfying that there will always be rowers doing it and coaches advocating it. You're 2 seats down with 200m to go, and somehow you want to act on your frustration. You want to make a difference RIGHT NOW! How much more forceful and assertive and aggressive can you get than banging the next catch? The trouble is that they give no prizes for banging the catch, only for getting to the finish line first. How do you do that? By rowing the next stroke in such a way that the boat squirts ahead a little bit further and faster. You do that by surging and sending your puddle "boiling aft," NOT by banging the catch. Again, I rest my case. Enough persuasion! If I have learned anything over the last half century, it is that almost nobody in rowing ever changes their minds about anything. Kernschlagers, please stop reading here. You are my brothers and sisters. You have my respect, and I wish you the very best. My next newsletter is bound to be more enjoyable for you. If there is anybody still reading this who is actually interested in how best to row the Schubschlag stroke, I have a couple of suggestions: Fairbairn once said to a teammate, "Look at your blade - row it through." He told his crews to focus on what the blade was supposed to be doing, and subconsciously the bodies would figure out how to deliver that blade motion. Nowadays, you can make sure your rowers look at their force curve display every single stroke they are on a Concept2 ergometer. It should look like a symmetrical haystack. How do you generate a symmetrical haystack? Legs, back and arms all begin pulling simultaneously at the entry, and the back and arms HAVE to finish absolutely simultaneously at the release. That is super important, but no time here to explain why. Just do it, and the result will satisfy all your doubts. As for the legs, in reality they usually go flat at 80 or 90% of the pullthrough. If they finish at 50 or 60%, then you are a Kernschlager and you are not sending the boat. Period. Consider that like Newton's Laws. One last thing. It's easy to pull effectively in the first half of the pullthrough. The boat is going its slowest, and the three muscle groups have their best leverage. It becomes increasingly difficult to hang onto the water and keep accelerating all the way to the release, so it can feel like you have to try harder and harder the closer you get to the finish. In reality, at each moment of the pullthrough you are trying as hard as you possibly can to keep adding acceleration to the handle. Adam, if your boys understand and buy into the philosophy of Schubschlag, the rest is just tinkering with the details.
Warm regards, my friend,
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Comment: Sounds good to me - mostly. I think the Pocock/Cunningham scullers stroke is Schubschlag. The one comment Peter makes with which I disagree is "... the back and arms HAVE to finish absolutely simultaneously at the release." My understanding is that the legs and back HAVE to finish before the arms which are used to round the corner, simultaineously finishing the stroke and pulling the rower up on the recovery more ready for the next stroke. Otherwise the rower dumps his weight in the bow and checks the boat as he rushes to the next catch behind anyone who finishes correctly at a high stroke rate. This finsih, attributed to Fairbairn, Pocock and Cunningham and demonstrated by Rod Johnson is the way we all rowed in the 1960s and why we practiced with our feet out of the stretchers - can't do that if you don't pull yourself up with your arms at the finish. I'm also interested to know if Peter would characterize John Van Blom as a Kernschlag rower since he emphasizes the catch and the "lift" you get from an serious catch angle. - Jim B 3/16/15 Jim - Reprint away. Please credit Peter Mallory and refer to www.rowingevolution.com. I will answer your thoughtful question in my next newsletter.
Warm regards,
Oh my! My last newsletter elicited quite a response!
First, let's get some historical perspective:
I'm curious as to which style of stroke you think might have been used by the '50s crews who rowed a mighty 29-30 stroke per minute as contrasted to the Karl Adam influence of awesome 38+++ strokes per minute?
Sincerely,
Truth be told, I've never heard of Schubschlag or Kernschlag. When Carl Ullrich and Stork Sanford taught us how to row back in the day, the idea of force curves didn't exist (nor could they be measured effectively). The core feature of technique drilled into us at Cornell was to avoid checking the boat at the catch.
The two requirements we were taught relentlessly were to
The mantra for all this is "the catch is the last part of the recovery, not the first part of the drive (which initiates after the blade is buried)." Like the other great coaches you mention, Carl and Stork left it to us to figure out the rest, which becomes obvious when the boat locks it in properly and swings.
This technique accelerates the boat through the drive and sends it powerfully into the release, and produced excellent results for the Big Red. So with the help of your clear summary, I am happy to declare myself of the Schubschlag camp. And it seemed to work pretty well for me in the single.
Cheers,
Don, here's an irony. Do you know who is responsible for history's first use of force curves in shaping force application in rowing? It was Charles "Pop" Courtney of Cornell University in the year 1900. Go Big Red!
Don pretty much answer's Jabo's question. Starting with Pop Courtney of Cornell, the most successful IRA coach in history and mentor to the great University of Washington Coach, Hiram Conibear, and continuing through three generations of Conibear followers, including Ed Leader, Rusty Callow, Ky Ebright, Al Ulbrickson, Tom Bolles and Stork Sanford among many others, the emphasis was on approaching the full reach carefully, locking the oar into the water at the end of the recovery and then massively accelerating the oar through the water all the way to the finish. This was called the Conibear Stroke.
For all those coaches, preparing for the annual 4-mile IRA Championship involved endless multiple competitive pieces of 6 and 7 miles during practice with ratings capped at 18 or 20 strokes per minute, which naturally led to the rowers learning to pour all they could into each individual stroke. They rowed Schubschlag with a passion and a vengeance. During the 1950s, non-Washington grad coaches such as Joe Burk and Jim Rathschmidt carried on in a similar tradition. I know whereof I speak. I have rowed in the boat with Rathschmidt's 1956 Olympic Champion Yale Men's Eight and the 1960 Navy Olympic Eight, and they definitely rowed Schubschlag.
During the 1960s, Harvard coach Harry Parker changed everything. He took his inspiration from the Soviet Men’s Crews of the era, though most assumed he was following Karl Adam of Ratzeburger Ruderclub. The Soviets rowed Kernschlag, and using Harvard as an example, the rest of American coaches more or less began following in lock-step.
During the '60s, I rowed lightweight at the University of Pennsylvania, and we rowed Kernschlag, attempting to follow Harry Parker's example.
My Penn teammate Bob Fountain: "I just remember hitting the catch HARD, mega-explosion of legs. Fred Leonard [our coach] had us pause at the finish to let the boat run out - remember?"
When I was a sophomore at Drexel, we were taught by Joe Greipp to POUND the catch. What he failed to teach us was how to avoid checking the shit out of the boat by not entering the water at a critical moment. Ironically, he took us to Penn’s tanks and Ted Nash, whom I had never seen before, said to our group of hacks, "Who is your 7-man?" I put my hand up, and he sat me down and taught me how to anchor the blade before I POUNDED the catch. I didn't know squat about rowing. I just did what the coach said.
This little lesson sparked my quest to know what the hell made boats go fast and, more importantly, made them stop.
So in all my coaching years since, I have worked feverishly on making the catch part of the recovery, and not worrying about pulling until the blade was buried. Now this is no easy task considering that the boat is moving quite fast. I would emphasize technique at the front end and getting the blade into the water first (without missing water) and then proceeding with the stroke exactly as you have described. My analogy was to pretend that your foot stretchers were a bathroom scale and imagine it reading -0- until your blade was in the water.
Anyway, I enjoyed your response. God, Pete, your passion goes on forever.
LW
The trouble is back then nobody noticed. Like lemmings, everybody kept on pounding the catch in imitation of the way they thought Harvard rowed. Harry never corrected them.
All this is interesting enough and complicated enough that you could write a whole book about it. Oh, yeah. I already did. The Sport of Rowing in four volumes.
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Now to a couple of thoughtful questions from Jim Buckley of Pocock Classic Cedar Single Racing Shells:
I agree with your comments on Schubschlag vs Kernschlag - mostly. I think the Pocock/Cunningham Sculler’s Stroke is Schubschlag. Would you agree? The one comment you make with which I disagree is "... the back and arms HAVE to finish absolutely simultaneously at the release." My understanding is that the legs and back HAVE to finish before the arms which are used to "round the corner," simultaneously finishing the stroke and pulling the rower up, heading aft and more quickly ready for the next stroke. Otherwise you dump your weight in the bow and check the boat as you rush to the next catch behind anyone who finishes correctly at a high stroke rate. This finish, attributed to Fairbairn, Pocock and Cunningham and so clearly demonstrated by Cunningham and Rod Johnson, is the way we all rowed in the 1960s and why we practiced with our feet out of the stretchers – Can't do that if you don't pull yourself up with your arms at the finish. Warm regards,
Jim Buckley
Yes, the Pocock/Cunningham Sculler's Stroke is most definitely Schubschlag, as I have documented at great length in my book. Incidentally, George called it the Ernest Barry Stroke after an English professional sculler who was his childhood model. And yes, there are two ways to complete a Schubschlag pullthrough. In my last newsletter for the sake of brevity, I chose only to describe the purer form of Schubschlag. Rather than accelerating the boat all the way to the very moment of release, one can reach the chosen layback angle with the hands still a few inches away from the chest. This is a technique that dates back before the birth of rowing as recreation and sport in the 1790s, all the way back to the artisan professional rowers of the Middle Ages. For more than a century this technique has been known as the ferryman's finish, and it has always been controversial in some circles. Nineteenth Century British gentry considered it inelegant and identified it with the working class rowers they shared the Thames with. In his youth, George Pocock was one of those British working class rowers, and he brought the ferryman's finish with him to America. The ferryman's finish entails using that last few inches of the pullthrough after the legs and backs have fully completed their motions to basically chin one's self back toward the handle in order to 1) reverse the momentum of the upper body and get a head start on the next recovery, and 2) move the weight of the upper body out of the bow as quickly as possible in order to avoid having the bow plow down into the water at the finish. This was a special concern of George Pocock, and he wrote about it often. You describe it well in your email to me. The ferryman's finish involves tradeoffs, which I discuss at length in my book. Does it work? Yes, it does. There are plenty of examples of international crews finding success using the ferryman's finish. For a good example of the two styles of the Schubschlag finish, one can look at the two great men's pairs of the 1990s and 2000s, Great Britain's Redgrave and Pinsent using the pure, concurrent finish, and Australia's Ginn and Tomkins using the ferryman's finish. Both crews won an Olympic Gold Medal. (I was there in Atlanta to see Steve and Matthew win theirs.)
---------------------------------------------------------------- Last, one of the naysayers.
Not sure I agree that Kernschlag is simply banging the legs down hard. The science shows us that the most effective way to propel the boat is to achieve peak force early in the drive; the faster the boat-class, the earlier, while in the single we want peak force to be before mid-drive. But that's not all. [On our team] we teach early peak force, followed by an acceleration into the finish – Perhaps you'd call that a hybrid Schub/Kernschlag. XXX
First of all, Schubschlag and Kernschlag in their purest forms are the two extremes along a continuum, and so it is possible to at least attempt to blend the two in order to get the best of both worlds. I have heard many people describe to me their preference for a left-leaning haystack to a pure Schubschlag symmetrical haystack. For me the most troubling statement in this thoughtful email is: "The science shows us that the most effective way to propel the boat is to achieve peak force early in the drive; the faster the boat-class, the earlier." There is no science anywhere that says that! No rigorous studies have ever been done. There are researchers who sincerely believe in Kernschlag, and it seems to me that they have sought out and published the data that supports their preferred outcomes. That's not science. That's advocacy. One researcher has stated that 85% of the world's rowers row what GDR scientists called Kernschlag. When I first read it, I took him at his word, and it very well may be true of ALL the rowers in the world. But I was interested in the rowers who make it to the highest level of our sport, who make it into World and Olympic finals. So I checked the entire population of finalists in all categories with as much of an open mind as I could muster. I did find some Kernschlag rowers . . . but not 85%. More like 15% or even 10% or even 5%. And winners? Over the last decade you could count them on the fingers of one hand. How could this be? "Scientific" results need to be repeatable. It's all in my book. But what if I am the biased one? What if I am seeing only what I want to see? There's a continuum, after all. What if the average Kernschlager and I might differ a bit on the degree of Schub or Kern? But would they see 85% while I see 3%? Seems unlikely, no matter how looney I might be, but don't take my word for it. Decide for yourself. How does my friend and his fellow Kernschlagers explain away all the New Zealand Crews of the late '60s and early '70s, of the early '80s and of the last few years? Or all the GDR men's and women's crews of the '70s and '80s. Or the Romanian women of the '80s and '90s and '00s? Or Olaf Tufte? Or the 2004 U.S. Men's Eight or all the U.S. Men's and Women's boats of the last decade. Or all of Steve Redgrave's boats? Or the Oarsome Foursome? Or the 2000 Polish Men's Lightweight Double. Or the 2013 Croatian Men's Quad? Here's my opinion. There is no "best of both worlds." There is no benefit to Kernschlag. Trying to compromise only waters down the organic integrity of Schubschlag. But you believe what you want. When I was younger, I wanted to convince everyone and change the rowing world. Now all I want to do is make the little world around my coach's launch a little bit better place . . . and do that one stroke at a time.
From: Peter Mallory Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 To: buckley@rumford.com Cc: John and Joan Van Blom Subject: Re: [General Information] Schubschlag Oh, John Van Blom is a Schubschlag sculler. No question. I have tested him and analyzed films of him in 1968 and '69. It is my understanding that when he coaches he emphasizes hesitation-free entry technique and immediate application of effort. That is different from encouraging people to explode at the catch. Perhaps he could elucidate further. I have no desire to put words in his mouth.
I would agree with Peter's assessment of my technique. While I feel is important to to get the blade in as quickly and smoothly as possible at the catch and begin applying pressure immediately, I don't try to to explode at the catch, but rather build up the pressure through the first third or so of the drive. As my friend Tom McKibbon like to point out, you don't open a revolving door with a sledge hammer – you build up the pressure to get the door moving. That being said, in the bigger boats (double and especially the quad) you need to get the power on more quickly. Sy Cromwell pointed that out to me years ago. If the power is not applied quicker in the bigger, i.e. faster boats, the stroke is over before you've had a chance to pull hard. Also, since they don’t slow down as much between stroke as a single there’s not as much strain on the your body when the pressure is applied quicker at the catch.
Best to both of you,
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