Common erg technique mistakes, in angles

The seat moves away at the catch before the handle does. The legs push, the trunk gives, and the handle is left behind, so the leg drive goes into moving the seat rather than the handle. Coaches also call it a bum shove.

In the angles: the knee starts to open while the trunk holds its forward lean, or leans further over, and the hand hasn't moved. The rowing view measures it directly as how far the seat gets ahead of the handle during the drive. Its starting guide is no more than a few centimetres.

The body swings back while the legs are still bent, so the drive becomes legs and body at once instead of legs, then body.

In the angles: the trunk starts moving from its forward lean toward upright while the knee is still far from straight. The rowing view times it as how far through the leg drive the body starts to swing, from 0% at the catch to 100% with the legs down. Its starting guide is 60% or later.

The elbows bend at the start of the drive, before the legs and body have done their work. The arms take the load before the legs and body have delivered theirs.

In the angles: the elbow drops away from straight (180°) early in the drive. The rowing view reports how far through the body swing the arms start to bend, with a starting guide of 60% or later, and checks the elbow at the catch against 160° or more.

Two catch faults that often travel together. Overreaching is lunging the shoulders forward past a set body angle to find more length. Over-compression is bringing the seat too far up the slide, so the shins pass vertical and the knees close further than they can push from.

In the angles: for overreaching, the trunk's forward lean at the catch, against a starting guide of 20–35°. For over-compression, the shin past vertical and the knee at its most bent. Both are read at the catch, the moment the knee is most bent.

Swinging well past eleven o'clock at the finish. Coaches usually discourage it, because the body then has a long way to come back before the next catch.

In the angles: the trunk's lean back from vertical at the finish, against a starting guide of 20–40°. Our example rower finished 33° back, inside the guide. Too little layback shows up the same way, at the other end.

The slide comes back up too fast, often with the knees rising before the arms and body are away. The rower arrives at the catch unset, and the stroke rate climbs without any more work going into the drive.

In the angles: the order is reversed at the start of the recovery. The knee bends while the trunk is still upright or back, when the arms and body should go first. The timing shows in the drive-to-recovery ratio. The rowing view's guide is a drive of about a third of the stroke. Our example read 1 : 1.4 at 23 strokes a minute.

Technique that holds for the first minute often goes in the last. The body swing shortens, compression creeps in and the arms start to take over. Save the first and last minute of a piece as clips and put them side by side, and the change becomes a number instead of an impression. File every session under the rower in People to follow it across a training block.

In Hyrox the row comes with running and other stations already in the legs, so fatigue arrives early and brings the faults above with it. Nothing about the measurement changes: the same side-on clip, the same angles, compared against the rower's own fresh strokes.

Film side-on from a tripod at hip height, level with the middle of the slide, and read the side nearer the camera. The angles chart every joint on one time axis, and the rowing view finds every stroke and its timings for you. The catch and finish, as angles covers the two positions in detail.