Rigging heavy or light? What is better?

Rigging heavy or light? What is better?

This is a difficult question to answer.

Let's think what can be the advnatages of rigging heavy or light and also let's see how it can be done for different weather conditions.


Advantages of heavy rigging:

1) Easier to connect to the water.
2) Easier to move the boat with bad coordination and muscle speed contraction.
3) Easier to use your not efficient power.
4) Easier to coordinate the drive.
5) Easier to match with other rowers.
6) You keep working on power x stroke easier.

Disadvantages of heavy rigging:

1) Doesn't improve your timing at the catch.
2) It forces you to brake your arms and use your shoulders if you don't have good upper body strenght.
3) It doesn't help you to improve your acceleration and the speed of your muscles contraction.
4) It is hard to go to high rates with the right ratio.
5) It is easier to injure your back and ribs.

Advantages of light rigging:

1) Improve your timing at the catch and it eventually will be better.
2) You can take more often the boat with good extended arms and relaxed shoulders.
3) It improves your acceleration and spped of contraction.
4) You can row at very high rates with the right ratio.
5) You stay a lot more away from injuries.


Disadvantages of light rigging:

1) It is very hard to fully connect to the water, to catch the speed of the boat.
2) It is harder to move the boat and to generate a good power curve with bad coordination.
3) You can lose power.
4) You need to practice a lot more and have a lot more skill.

If you have no time to row, you have a lot of power and are new to the sport, don't try to move the boat with light rigging because it won't happen.

If you want to go as fast as you can and can practice a lot and have the skill, you should start challenging yourself rigging your boat lighter to improve your coordination, timing at the catch and acceleration.

The weather also has an effect on all this.

If your drive time can go from 0.6 to over 1 seconds depending on the direction of the wind.
Think about how much the rigging can play a rol on this.
Posted by Carlos Dinares at 10:50 AM