Same workout that I have been doing the last two weeks: slowing down the stroke to row at a target rate < 20 spm.

This evening, in taking a friend out the back door, her wheelchair caught on the edge of the ramp and started to drop, and I used the muscles of the upper back and neck to catch it; and as I did I felt a sharp sensation in this area. A tearing sensation is how I would describe it.

The reason I mention this is that I suspect I have strained the muscles in my upper back and neck and that this strain is not solely attributable to my trying to catch my friend's wheelchair. I suspect some, if not most, of the strain may be attributable to poor rowing technique. I suspect that I am straining my upper back and neck while I erg.

I am trying to train myself to increase force faster at the catch by hanging from the leg drive and connecting with the upper body without pulling. But I seem to be doing this the wrong way because I am ending up driving so hard against the stretcher that as a kind of by product I create a sharp suddenly arrested motion in my upper back and neck.

To put it simply, nearly every catch I jerk my upper back and neck. For two weeks I have been wondering, how can this be the nice, easy, flowing movement, which Harry Mahon says is the ultimate goal? It cannot. How could it?

So I have revisited Concept2’s article on “Using the Force Curve.” Assuming Concept2 is right about the shape of the force curve, then clearly I am trying to produce a shape that is less than ideal. To be blunt, I have been assiduously trying for the curve that shows I am “exploding at the catch,” a curve that Concept2 names the Double Diamond.