more effectually when bent than when rigid. Therefore, since staying power is greatly affected by the amount of exertion in- volved in recovery (as explained in previous pages), the oars- man will last longer in proportion as he thus omits the recovery of his trunk, by accelerating his slide on the return.
Many good oarsmen slide until the knees are quite straight. Tn the writer’s opinion, this is waste of power: the knees should never guile straighten ; the recovery is, for anatomical reasons, much stronger if the joint is slightly bent when the reversal of the machinery commences (No, 4, p. 111). The extra half- inch of kick gained by quite straightening the knees hardly compensates for the extra strain of recovery ; also-leg work to the last fraction of a second of swing is better preserved hy this retention of a slight bend, and an open chest and clean finish are thereby better attained. Engineers, who know what is meant by a ‘dead point’ in machinery, will at once grasp the reason for not allowing the legs te shoot quite straight.
When a crew are being coached upon slides, it is of great importance to get the slide simultaneous, and as nearly as possible equal. A long-legged man, sculling, may use a much longer slide than a short man. But in an eight, if the long man fits his stretcher as if for sculling, he will be doing more than his share, and may be unable to shoot so long a slide through in the required time, except by dint of ‘hurrying’ it ; and, if he does this latter, the result is to cripple his swing, as shown sxpra, There must be a certain amount of give-and- take in arranging slides in an cight or four oar. That length of slide is best which all the crew can work simultaneously and effectively, preserving uniformity of swing and slide.
When tires are being taught their first lesson in sliding, they should be placed on very short slides, say 3 inches at most. The centre of the slide only should be used. The runners should be blocked fore and aft, so that when the slide stands half way (24 inch from foremost block), the dis- tance from the seat to the stretcher should be just as much as
the man would require if he were on a fixed seat. 12
